I know I’ve been away for months and I’m sorry (to the three of you who hang around here for some reason), but the place I’m working in has the worst network in existence. I’m not even sure this post will get sent. I hope it does.
I really hope it does.
Told you guys about my boss, right? How he had to lay off, like, seventy-five percent of his employees? Well, I was one of the few he decided to keep, and because of that he sent me to Dusk Hill to fill in for the folks working there. And listen, I might be a good worker, but not making-up-for-fifty-people good. Sure, all they did was watching over a field—a huge one, yeah, but they were fifty, man.
Then I arrived to Dusk Hill and another issue quickly made itself evident to me.
The town’s residents were absolute idiots. They saw that the field didn’t have its fifty guards so it became open season. They partied, they raced, and they littered. They littered so much, and if it weren’t for the fact that my boss stressed on keeping the field clean, I wouldn’t have bothered.
Speaking of which, my boss had strict demands regarding the upkeep of the field.
It had to be clean, and it had to be undamaged. Only those with a permit—if you could call the old, threadbare, and stringy ribbon tied around my right wrist a permit—were allowed on its premises.
Tough luck achieving that with a lone keeper on one side and the unhinged proof of parental failure on the other.
I didn’t understand the reason for it at first. The field had nothing. It was a wintery wasteland without the snow, walled off by steel fences. Its grass was more grey than green. Its air empty of all sound. It made me miss the chippering of birds, and I once tried to fist-fight a pigeon that woke me up a minute too early.
The most notable thing about the field was the single oak tree at its center. That thing was ancient. And ugly. Every time I looked at it I swear my eyes would sting.
It was also the most frequent victim of Dusk Hill’s idiots.
They littered around it, broke off its branches, and stabbed the notices I plastered all over the fences into its bark.
My clean up always started from the tree and I hated it. The changes began from there, seeping through the ground like spilled water on fabric, and once I noticed the first change, the others hit me like an avalanche.
The fallen branches left outlines when I picked them up. They were faint at first, then they began darkening, until they looked like scorch marks.
The grass engulfed the waste, and with every passing day I had to put more force into pulling it free from their tangle.
Intricate carvings bloomed around the knives stabbed into the bark, creeping around the margins of the notices pinned on wood. The carvings etched deeper and deeper, and as deep were the wounds the knives left.
At some point I had to call my boss. I needed something to assure me everything would be alright, that whatever was happening could be fixed. So today, standing before the tree and about to pull yet another knife, I asked him about handling persistent intruders, and he told me to kill any if I had to. He didn’t care to address my clear shock—since when did this job had killing people in its line of duties?—instead he asked me about the tree.
I told him the truth.
Whatever my boss had to say, I didn’t hear it. I was too busy looking at the tree. Looking at how the carvings climbed up dark and deep, emitting tendrils of smoky light.
When I let go of the knife’s handle, something started to drip from my hand. Blood. Not mine.
I ran. I got out of the field.
I heard silence, and I saw nothing. Dusk Hill, my cottage outside the fences, the earth under me… all were gone. My hand is still dripping with blood that isn’t mine.
I tried calling anyone, anything, only to have my own voice returning to me.
This is a long shot, but I tried everything.
Is anyone there?