River: The Suicide Forest Part 18

"Looks to me like we've got a good hike to reach where you've marked," Steven said.

"Come on," Roy said, "let's load up."

"Maybe people still come out here," Roy said, holding a bit of plastic tape in his hand. The tape stretched into the forest beyond him and twisted out of sight.

"What's that?" Steven asked, looking at the tape Roy was holding.

"They'd use this to find their way out," Roy said. "The trees in this part of the forest are different. They spread out at the top to make a canopy. Everything starts to look the same. You can't just look up and see Mount Rainer or the sun and have some idea of which direction is east. If they got inside and changed their mind, they could follow this out."

"Wouldn't they remove the tape as they came out?" Steven asked.

"Look," Eliza said, "there's another tape over there, heading in a different direction."

"I don't know if they'd remove it or not," Roy said. "People are lazy. But I know I don't want to follow one of these to its end. I'm pretty sure they lead to something unpleasant. I'm surprised rangers haven't cleaned these up."

They followed Roy as he followed the tape deeper into the forest. He had a heavy backpack and was carrying several large planks, as was Steven. "Watch your step," Roy said. "The ground here can be full of holes. You don't want to get your foot caught in one."

The trees around them began to all look the same, and except for the red plastic tape running ahead of them, the green and brown of the forest blended together.

"It's peaceful in here," Eliza said. "And beautiful. I guess if you were going to go out, this is as good a place as any."

"More tapes," Steven said, pointing through the trees away from them. "Over there."

"Christ," Roy said. "I thought this place was long forgotten. Looks like some people still use it."

Under the canopy it was dimmer and a little cooler. They were higher in elevation than Seattle. Hiking through the woods kept them warm. Steven trudged behind Eliza, trying to keep up. She was behind Roy.

"How much further?" Eliza asked.

"I'd say we're halfway," Roy answered. "The place I've marked on the map was a clearing I remember from a visit here many years ago. We should be able to set up there."

"If there aren't people camping there already," Steven said. "These tapes trailing off into the distance are unnerving, and they make me think there must be people around."

"Oh no," Eliza said, stopping. "I think we've run into someone."

"Where?" Steven whispered, walking over to her.

"There," she said, pointing upward through the trees to the right. "About a hundred feet. Do you see it? I think those are legs."

In the distance a body was dangling from a rope. The unfortunate victim had climbed the tree some twenty feet off the ground before tying their noose to a branch and jumping. It was far enough away that they couldn't make out anything but its shape.

"Christ," Steven said, observing the image, unsure if it was a body until he noticed it sway in the breeze. "Can you see if it's a man or a woman?"

Roy set down the planks he was carrying and removed a small set of binoculars from his backpack. He glanced up into the trees. "Can't tell," he said. "The body is too bloated."

"Should we cut it down?" Eliza said, sounding somewhat reticent to do it.

"Not right now," Roy said. "We'll report it on our way out."

"I've been in some creepy places over the years," Eliza said, "but this has to be one of the worst. Everything is so quiet and peaceful, then you run into that!"

"That's the effect we're hoping to recreate for the demon," Steven said. "Extreme reaction from peaceful to shocked."

"So this forest is haunted with demons already?" Eliza asked, looking around.

"Yes, that was always the reputation," Roy said. "I remember talking about it with my father. He said the holes in the ground combined with the high levels of human misery and death were perfect for them. He told me to never come here."

"And here we are," Steven said.

A mist began to develop in the forest, causing trees in the distance to become fuzzy and disappear. Now they couldn't see quite as far as before. The effect heightened Steven's claustrophobia and he swallowed to keep his anxiety in check.

"I hope it doesn't rain," Steven said. "It'll make being out here even more miserable." He stepped over a single tennis shoe, lying on its side, partially overgrown with moss. He wondered to whom it had belonged.

Steven decided to drop into the River and see if he could detect anything. The effect startled him instead of a flow around him, there was no movement in the River at all. Things had come to a stop.

"You might want to try jumping in," Steven said to Roy and Eliza. "Something's wrong here."

Roy and Eliza both stopped walking, and Steven saw them enter the flow with him.

Boy, really wrong, Eliza thought. Nothing's moving.

It's like everything's dead here, Steven thought.

The trees aren't dead, Roy thought. The forest is completely alive. I think the River is just different here. It doesn't move the same way. Probably why animals don't care to hang out here.

And probably why people feel compelled to die here, Eliza thought. It's not normal. It feels so stagnant, like nothing has changed in years, and nothing will ever change. Just the kind of feeling that makes you depressed.

Come on, let's keep moving, Roy thought, slipping out of the flow and continuing his trek.

Steven and Eliza dropped out too, and began to follow him. After another ten minutes the tapes began to disappear. The monotony of the forest began to make Steven feel tired.

"Here it is," Roy said, emerging into a small clearing around ninety feet in diameter. The sun was able to get through here, lighting up the middle of the area. Steven looked up and saw little beads of mist moving through the sunlight, reflecting and refracting the light as they moved. It looked like the sunlight was full of a fine, powdery dust.

"Things are flat enough here that we can set up a tent and our trap," Roy said, walking to the center of the clearing.

"I can honestly say I hate this place," Eliza said. "And I love forests."

"I know what you mean," Steven said. "This is nothing like when we dug up Samuel Stone."

"Well," Roy said, "that was a normal forest. This one is abnormal. Demonic."

"Hope we can get this done and get out of here soon," Eliza said.

"Let's not waste any time," Roy said. "Steven, give me a hand. We'll arrange these planks and the mirrors."

"You're going to need trees for the ropes," Steven said. "We'll have to set it up just inside the periphery."

They scanned the edge of the clearing. "How about over there?" Roy said, pointing back towards where they'd entered. "It looks relatively flat." He started carrying the planks toward the spot.

"Sure," Steven said, following him.

"I'll get the tent going here in the middle," Eliza said as they walked off.

Steven a.s.sisted Roy as he constructed the hinged mirrors and arranged the ropes that would raise them from the forest floor. It was starting to get dark.

"You know," Steven said, "if Aka Manah doesn't show up on his own, I'm going to need to call him somehow."

"Uh huh," Roy said, trying to adjust a hinge. "Hand me a screwdriver, will you?"

"Are you listening to me?" Steven said, retrieving the screwdriver and handing it to Roy. "I'll have to trance."

"Yeah, so?" Roy said, taking the screwdriver. "No, no, no! A Philips head!"

Steven rummaged through the bag of tools until he found an old Philips head screwdriver and handed it to Roy. "So, I don't know how to trance," Steven said. "You've never taught me."

"Sure I did," Roy said, fighting with the hinge. "When we were dealing with Lukas."

"I don't remember being taught," Steven said. "That seemed more like an accident."

"It wasn't," Roy said. "You tranced because you had to. You knew if you didn't, I'd be a goner."

"I don't get it," Steven said. "When you trance, you imagine something that extreme?"

"No," Roy said, "the extreme situation helped to focus you solely on what you needed to do. That's all trancing is. Focus."

"I wasn't able to do it with the others at the Unser Estate," Steven said.

"What were you thinking about?" Roy said. "I'm guessing you were thinking about the other people in the circle, how you were supposed to do it, why it wasn't happening, all that. Am I right?"

"Yeah," Steven said. "That's right."

"You've got to be focused on the single act of entering the trance and the purpose of the trance. Nothing else. When you tranced with Lukas, you were focused. You need to have the same focus. Then it'll start to form around you, and you have to maintain the focus until the trance is fully formed. If you stop and start marveling at it happening, it'll go away. You've seen it takes me five or ten minutes just to get calm enough to start it, and it takes a couple of minutes more for it to be fully formed. Once you get to that stage, you're good. You can invite others in. Don't rush it, just stick with it until it's complete."

"Should I practice?" Steven asked.

"Sure, go practice," Roy said. "I got this."

Steven walked back to Eliza, who had finished setting up the tent they planned on sleeping in that night. "Done already?" she asked as he approached.

"I'm going to practice trancing," Steven said. "Roy gave me some pointers. I think I'll do it over there, so I've got some privacy." Steven nodded to a spot away from the tent.

"Take one of the camping chairs," Eliza said. "It's a lot easier if you're comfortable." She gave him a big smile.

Steven grabbed one of the chairs and marched off towards his selected spot. He placed the chair down and looked around. Eliza was fifty feet away in one direction, and Roy was about fifty feet in the other. He faced the chair away from both of them, and sat in it.

OK, let's clear the mind, Steven thought. What do I concentrate on? Not Aka Manah, surely. The trap isn't ready yet. I need something else to focus on.

He looked around. Directly in front of him was another twenty feet of clearing, and beyond that, the edge of the forest.

I'll focus on this place, Steven thought. Might as well understand my surroundings. That's probably how Roy does it when he trances at a new place we're exploring he probably just focuses on the place, to see what's hidden within it.

Steven closed his eyes. He couldn't hear any sounds except Roy rustling in the distance. No birds or insect noises, he thought. He slipped into the River. Normally it would wash over him, but here the River was unmoving, and he felt like he'd stepped into Jello.

He picked a spot in the distance a tree at the edge of the clearing. He watched the tree intently, and tried to let all other thoughts go away. Everything became about the tree. What had gone on around it? What had it seen? What was in this forest?

He stared at the tree from within the River for what seemed like half an hour. He was about to give up, when he began to feel something radiating from himself. Don't lose it, he thought, and the radiation immediately went away. Roy warned me not to do that. How stupid of me.

He went back to focusing on the tree. No matter what happens, stay with the tree, he thought. After a couple of minutes, the radiation began again. This time he maintained focus. He felt the radiation expanding, growing around him. The tree is it, the tree is everything, he thought. What has this tree seen? What secret is here?

The radiation continued to expand around him until it felt it was no longer growing, but becoming stable. He stuck with the tree, afraid to change his thinking, but he knew he'd achieved it he'd constructed the trance around himself. He'd gone deeper, on his own.

The light around the tree began to change. A dark blue washed over everything, and Steven noticed objects in his peripheral vision. Can I let go of the tree now? he wondered. Is the trance solid enough? He shifted his vision from the tree to the objects. They were hanging bodies.

He could see a dozen bodies in the trees from this angle, all suspended from ropes. He felt the urge to stand, so he did and he began to walk towards the tree.

He noticed white objects in the ground. He was able to move up close to the objects, and he saw that they were bones. Animal, or human? he wondered. At the edge of the clearing he saw a large, white, round object. He bent and picked it up. It was a human skull.

He stepped into the forest. Streaks of white light were emerging from the ground in a couple of places. He walked towards one of them, and looked into the light. It goes down, he thought. Into the earth. How far?

He turned and saw his body sitting in the camping chair in the clearing. The blue haze was just as strong in the clearing. On the ground was something red. Blood? he wondered. Something bad happened in that clearing. Maybe we shouldn't camp there.

He heard a noise behind him, and he turned to look back into the forest. At first he could only see the eyes, glowing yellow in the distance. Whatever it was, it was slowly walking towards him, and soon the body emerged from the blue fog. It looked like a man, but Steven knew it wasn't. It was smiling at him. It looks hungry, Steven thought. It stopped, a look of concern appearing on its face. Its gaze dropped to Steven's hands for a moment, then it looked back up at him. Steven could see the revulsion in its eyes. It turned and walked back into the fog.

Enough, Steven thought. That's enough for an experiment. How do I get out of...?

He felt himself back in his body in the chair, back in the River. That was easy, he thought.

He exited the flow and stood up. He grabbed the camping chair and walked back to Eliza.

"It worked!" Steven said, setting down the chair.

"I know," Eliza said. "Forgive me, I was eavesdropping on it."

"You can do that?" Steven asked.

"I was watching from here," she said. "I saw you form the trance, that's all. Unless I enter your trance, I can't see what you see."

"There are bodies everywhere," Steven said. "Hanging in the trees."

"Yes," Eliza said, "I did get a sense of those."

"It isn't always blue in a trance you initiate, normally?" Steven asked. "Everything here was a dark blue."

"Only here," Eliza said.