1st Night
As an amateur astronomer, I enjoy spending hours on the balcony with my telescope gazing at the sky and its wonders. But for one night, I wanted to change my perspective. I pointed my telescope downwards, at the forest surrounding my town, to check if the trees could provide any form of entertainment whatsoever.
The golden quaking aspens paved several miles inland and, mounted on top of pale barks, their leaves shone in the light of the farthest forest lamppost. Moths floated next to the lantern, and they had a weird preference for the right side of it since anytime one of them slipped to the left side, it then rushed back toward the group. I’m not a moths expert, but that didn’t seem normal, so I pointed the instrument to the opposite side of their preference, in the thick of the trees.
What I saw was unnerving and difficult to describe, it was like the branches and the leaves twisted in a crooked manner to form the profile of a face. That thing had nothing humanlike except the eyes, that floated like rotting full moons staring at a point far away toward my left. The motionless grin pictured on that face made my stomach ache, repulsed by the sadistic nature it was displaying.
I moved away from the telescope and took a deep breath, since whatever thing that I saw must have been a trick of the mind and nothing more. I checked with the naked eye, and even if I wasn’t able to distinguish any shape hiding between the woods, a long looming shadow roamed in the left corner of my vision.
2nd Night
Intrigued by the night before, I tried the same experiment again and pointed the telescope downwards at the lamppost. No moths this time, just a lonely light that shone its brightness on the nearby trees.
Three lampposts are in this area: yesterday’s one is the farthest away, the second one is surrounded by shrubs, and the third one is just below my balcony at the beginning of the forest path. I pointed the instrument at the shrubs lamp, but no moths were there either. A small clearing was surrounding that place, and the light scattered through the grass until hitting an old stone wall. And above that wall moths were flying about, with some floating still and dead.
That wasn’t as concerning as the face chewing them, a face made of branches and leaves, and no trees behind justified it as an optical illusion. “I have a matter to attend,” a whisper said, and I almost knocked the telescope off the tripod as I stood up straight and screamed: “What?! Who’s there?”. But the whisper continued: “No no no, come back to your thingy” and as I looked through the lens, for the first time those rotting eyes were staring directly at me and continued: “I said, I have a matter to attend. I will come for you soon”.
“What are you?” I said, but the face was then gazing at something in the left of the woods, unresponsive to further questioning. I pointed the telescope in the general direction of its eyes, but that was a dark spot and it was difficult to make out anything clearly. There was what seemed like a long bush, agitating erratically like a fly in a glass. The wind present that night, or an animal, were reasonable explanations as to why it behaved that way.
I moved away from the telescope and started to question my sanity. I took a drink and forced myself to sleep.
3rd Night
I had two theories.
Theory one: that being was a hallucination, and I was going through a mental breakdown.
Theory two: that being was worse than a hallucination, it was a creature who denied my entire perspective on reality, one of those who fell from the skies long ago.
Motivated by the force of habit and the desire for answers, I looked through the lens, but I didn’t need to search for anything. It was there. In front of the telescope, the grinning face made of branches and leaves, with its rotting eyeballs staring back at me. Moths and flies were flying out of its mouth, and whispered: “Three nights”.
I detached from the instrument and protrude against the balcony, but nothing was in front of the lens. Then what I saw made my blood run cold, and my skin crawl to a degree I didn’t think was possible up to that point. Just below where I was standing, at the closest lamppost, there was a long bush that stood still in the wind. The bush took root in a woman’s corpse, with long vertical branches littering her back covered in leaves. From the severed neck, the longest branch was budding upwards, and on its extreme her head was impaled on it. The black eyeless cavities were exuding rotten grass.
“For three nights she agonized, and you did nothing!” the whisper said, but no sign of the face neither with the telescope nor with the naked eye. And then, I felt my throat growing sore. The ache became unbearable fast, and any attempt to produce a sound was negated to me. I was mute, and I couldn’t quite close my mouth anymore.
With footsteps devoid of sound, I ran to the mirror to check what was going on, and I would have fainted if the pain wasn’t shaking me to the core. A face made of branches and leaves fitted my own like a mask, with tiny roots penetrating my ears. But the big root inside my mouth was ravaging my throat, and I knew by that point that my vocal cords and my eardrums were permanently lost.
And yet, as I was finishing to write this, I had the impression of hearing a sharp whistle howling through a distant forest. The cracking of the wood and the shuffling of the leaves were deafening, and I heard the wind blowing in and out of my cavity. But when I checked my ear, the hand came back with only blood dripping out of the palm.
The whisper spoke one last time: “Happy seeds.”