After the events of the morning, I returned to my Airbnb and, without taking a shower, hopped straight into bed.

I had a dream then. Again I was in the forest, Mt. Fuji looming high over me. Other than that, I couldn’t place where I was. It was darkness everywhere. I looked around for Aaron, but I couldn’t see him. I knew I was amongst the trees -- but where exactly? I was lost, left for dead, no one would be able to find me until it would be too late and a rustling sound.

I looked up. There was a figure approaching. A tiny figure with a crooked back. In the darkness, I blinked for my eyes to adjust. Was that... a nun?

No, it was a shawl around her head that looked like a nun’s habit.

As the figure progressed, the shawl floated untied, coming undone, looping around her neck like a hangman’s noose. As she progressed, she started floating too. Her whole body, rising with the shawl, as though it was pulling her along like a dog’s leash tied to an owner in the great big sky, dragging her and dragging her along and upwards into the air.

I knew, when she was twenty feet away from me, who she was -- what she was -- but I was rooted by then, as I had been rooted in the forest earlier.

The old Japanese woman stopped before me, her legs at my chest. I dared not look up. I could not see her face.

So she floated down instead. Her head, a bobbing, wizened skull, tilted towards me. Those empty, eyeless sockets stared at me.

She smiled, toothless and cheeky.

It was then that I woke up. I was gasping and making some noise, and my body was shaking and I turned to my bedside lamp to turn on the light.

The room turned bright. Not dark. No trees anywhere in sight. Only curtains and my book and my iPhone.

I flopped back down onto the bed with a great sigh.

And there she was. Upside down, dangling above me, her shawl completely fallen off now and hanging from her neck, tickling me.

I screamed and rolled away, landing on the floor in a big THUD and a heap of blanket.

I turned to the ceiling. Nothing. A blank, plain ceiling with a single ceiling fan.

***

"This has been fantastic," I said. Maybe this was a mistake.

"Really," Kelly said. Her voice sounded muffled over the phone. "Finding a dead body in Japan’s Suicide Forest is fantastic."

"Absolutely."

"You’re such a liar," Kelly said. "I can hear it in your voice. You freaked out."

"I didn’t," I said. "The tour guide with me did, though."