Narrator/Storyteller (138:42)
No signs of the Japs. No fire, no shells. More vehicles land. The beaches become a crowded, screaming nightmare. There's something here. Something beyond their understanding. Invisible. Killing at will. Is it the island itself? A few men managed to advance up the steep beaches and across the rocks. But soon they were cut apart as well. Other men follow and advance farther. They have been trained to advance. Take the beach forward, always forward. Slowly the men find their way farther and farther into the island interior. Through horrible trial and error, they begin to understand. They don't speak of their discovery, they don't believe it. But their overwhelming will to go forward and their overwhelming fear of death teach them what their minds cannot accept. Teach them a lesson about the island. They notice tracks of the ash and rock where there is no grass. These tracks are not foot trails, but deep tracks carved at strange angles, striated like dry streams. Places where it seems the ground is simply missing. They realize they must avoid these tracks. If they step onto them or let any part of themselves pass over them, that part will disappear. Whether it is their fingers or feet or limbs or even their heads. Sometimes parts of their bodies disappear, even when they don't cross the tracks. And they realize that there are unseen tracks through the air, invisible boundaries they must not cross. If they lose a part of their bodies, blood does not flow. But there is pain. Pain beyond flames or knives or bullets. Pain unbearable, unholy, inhuman. There are screams all around them of men who have accidentally run afoul of the invisible power. There is no time to understand this, to reason it out. They simply adapt. Moving carefully, holding out blades of wild grass or shirts or gear here, probing, waiting for part of the object to disappear and stopping, testing for a way forward. Sometimes they find it. Sometimes they are forced to turn back. In less than an hour. They have forgotten about the artillery and snipers and bayonets. There are no soldiers. Soldiers only entrances to empty bunkers, abandoned pieces of artillery, some cut in half, but no enemy. They're playing a new game now, taught to them by some unseen teacher. Playing it with total concentration. Playing and winning. The Marine wounded with their strange, unbleeding wounds are taken away. Their screams fade. Orders from command are unchanged. Take the island. They move forward, up towards Mount Suribachi. The mountain is shaped like a bull, a dead volcano. They approach by various paths, each man following another. Like a narrow path of safety, makeshift markers are set up to show their boundaries. A Marine turns and sees, floating like a butterfly, a severed human arm. It turns and floats away and disappears altogether. Minutes later, a disembodied pair of legs. Lakes scramble past. The Marines curse and speculate and even giggle, but keep moving forward. There is no time to understand. They expected to spend weeks taking the island. Now it seems they could have it in a couple of hours. A shot rings out. The first shot sends the confusion of the landing. A Marine is firing at the mountain. Others peer through their binoculars and spy a man sitting on the rim of the mountain, simply sitting alone, just a vague shape. Snipers are called in and they fire on him. But the island's air seems to swallow the bullets. The man is untouched. They pressed forward. The deadly tracks wind around them, growing more numerous. Some of the men find themselves at dead ends. One Marine slips and disappears entirely. Not so much as a shout. They come to the foot of the mountain. It is small, but rugged and steep, and the lone man sits over them, looking down on them. I hear the sounds now, coming from the other side of the ridge, coming from within the giant bowl of the mountain. Human voices, many of them, thousands. The sounds of laughter, giggling, cackling and howling. Laughter like a wonderful party where somebody is telling a hilarious story. The Marines listen to it, dumbfounded. Slowly, laughter fades. There is a new sound, strange rushing roar that quickly breaks apart into discreet sounds. Screams, shouts, gasps, weeping, terror. The sound rises and rises, and the Marines shudder. This, too, fades, and the laughter returns. So these two sounds trade places, over and over, fading in and out above the sounds of the waves. A Marine trains his binoculars on the mountain again. The man is still sitting there, Japanese, wearing a uniform. His head is floating several feet above his body. The body is in several pieces, with lines of sunshine between them. His face, sweat dripping over the smooth eyelids, shows no emotion. Slowly he raises his hand as if to wave to them, and his fingers float away from his palm. They crawl up the mountain, bare hands on sharp volcanic rock. The sun beats down on them. It's a grueling test. The island has a secret that it doesn't want to reveal. They draw close to the man at the top of the mountain, keeping their guns trained on him. He has no weapons. His body is fragmented, like an image in a broken mirror. Various pieces floating without connection. The brightness of the sky shining between them. The blood of his insides bright red. His head is like a balloon, floating several feet over the rest of him. Hello, America. The head calls, breaking into a sickly smile. The whites of the eyes are clustered with with red hemorrhages. Sweat rolls down the face. The Marines don't know how to respond. They ask if he's armed. The question strikes one of them as funny, and he giggles. A tide of giggling comes from the other side of the ridge, behind the fragmented man. The giggling turns to scream. What's going on here? You alone? A Marine asks. The man doesn't seem to understand. One of the Marines tries. His basic Japanese man makes a sour face. No Nippon Korea. Korea person, the man says, and a disembodied hand points to a nearby fragment of his chest. I Christian, the man says. He pulls a necklace out of his shirt. On the end of it is a small metal cross. A tiny suffering Jesus gleams in the sun. The Marine tries English again. What's happening here? The devil came here. What? The soldiers had built a gate. The child with the command. I don't understand. A wide smile splits the Korea man's face. He lets out a laugh and the smile flees, and suddenly he is weeping. His emotions seem to follow the giggles and screams that come from inside the mountain. The Marines feel it too, a strange urge to laugh, followed by a harrowing fear. The sound beyond the ridge rises, the screams becoming higher and louder.
