So it wasn’t just the act of suicide, it was the pain as well that you had to keep experiencing here. I thought how, in their last moments alive, almost every pathetic soul in these woods must have thought, “At least it’s all over now,” only to wake up and find out not only wasn’t it over, it had barely begun.

My God, my God, I thought. How could you allow this in Your Name?

I heard flapping in the mist above us then, so I stood. The wrist-slitter turned over and sank her face back into the pond. I hurried away, but I couldn’t unsee what I’d seen.

I hadn’t got past the suicides at all, it turned out, I’d merely been crossing a less crowded patch of the forest. As I stumbled on I passed a seemingly endless variety of living corpses, despairing humans who had killed themselves with fire, or water, or poison, or guns, a museum of final moments that would never end. I had learned not to touch them, and after the girl in the pond I didn’t want to speak to them either, but I couldn’t avoid them. In places they lay on the ground as thick as at Jonestown, other times they remained hidden and almost invisible until I nearly stepped on them, like macabre Easter eggs. And still the suicide forest went on, with nothing changing but the howls and shouts of my trackers growing louder as they began to close in on me once more.

My head was aching with unwanted movement, as though the thing Eligor had put there was excited by the sounds of my pursuers. Even the hardy demon body I wore would run out of strength soon. I had a sword—well, a large knife—but I wasn’t going to have much luck fighting off giant hellhounds with the kind of blade they used down at the hoagie shop to slice rolls. I had guns, of course, and enough bullets to shoot a few of my pursuers and still save one slug for myself, but that idea wasn’t very appealing either, especially not after spending time in this particular forest. More importantly, though, if I gave up, Caz’s last chance was gone. I might not have managed to free her, but at least while I was loose there was still a chance.

I could glimpse my pursuers now only a few hundred yards behind me, dark running shapes that appeared and disappeared in the rolling mist. I wondered if I should go guerilla-style and pick off a few to improve the odds, but I suspected that trying to hide from the hellhounds and their snuffling, wet, pink snouts would be a bad move. No, I was simply going to keep running until I found a good place for a final stand, then make as much of a mess as possible before they took me down.