I guess if you’re hurting deep enough, if you’re screaming loud enough within yourself, if your soul is burning so hotly, so blackly, then things…forces, entities, less composite suggestions of being can hear you, can call to you. Yesterday, I was beckoned by one such agency, after having spent the better part of the week languishing in my grief over the death of my best friend, who’d died over the weekend.
I had been sitting on my back porch, mindlessly staring off into the woods beyond, when I was suddenly overcome by a sense of longing. Not the same deep, pervasive longing I’d been feeling for my friend since their death, but a more abstract sentiment; a yearning for something I had never consciously or personally experienced, but something for which my soul pined in its own, spiritual way.
Rising from my chair, I crossed my frost-capped yard in a hurry, my shoes trampling the coldly rigid blades of grass. Wearing a jacket and jeans, but nothing to protect my head and neck—since I hadn’t planned on being out long—I marched through the tree line, pulled along by that inexpressible and implacable lure.
Filtering dimly through the broad, many-leafed boughs, the sunlight illumined my path as I ventured deeper into the woods. There weren’t any animals around, most having entered their hovels and burrows with the coming of the cool autumnal winds; and I felt a profound and unshakeable sense of loneliness—of terrestrial isolation. I was driven on by a desperation to be reach something—to reach someone.
Hurriedly, as if rushing to carry out some important task, I pushed through scores of bushes and sidled between closely grown trees. Meanwhile, the sun receded, its light dimming and the air cooling with its withdrawal. But I barely noticed the passage of time, as transfixed as I was by the strange sylvan enchantment.
Coming at last to a small, irregularly lined copse, I stopped in my tracks; sensing something decidedly unnatural about the small gathering of trees. While they themselves were normal—or appeared to be—the general area seemed to be teeming with an invisible aura or atmosphere of strangeness. There was nothing visibly wrong about the place, it was as sullen and cold-touched as any other part of the shaded woods; but something about it was off, the air aberrant in an unplaceable and unpleasant way.
In the center of the copse was a particular tree, somewhat taller than the others that encircled it, and atop its gangly branches were small, orangish leaves; the last remnants of what had once been a greenly flourishing bough. These leaves fluttered subtly in the errant breezes that blew through the grove, and I swore a sound, like a whisper, issue from their contact with the branches.
My discomfort and pause at the eeriness of the scene were overridden by that soulful impulse to join with something, and I once again pushed forward—still unsettled, but lacking the conviction to fight the spell.
As I passed the aforementioned tree, I felt something brush my shoulder, and upon turning I saw that one of the branches had seemingly lowered itself in an effort to grab me. Its finger-like offshoots had managed to graze the fabric of my jacket, and were curling to re-attempt the gesture.
The unreality of this sight broke the sorcerous magnetism, and I quickly leapt away from the branch before its searching fingers could grab me. Then, to my horror, the whole tree bent and contorted itself so that it assumed, crudely, the posture and figure of a man; albeit one to whom nature had applied some hideous arboreal armor.
This tree-man then lurched toward me; its many branches now outstretched like wretched, improperly jointed arms. I stumbled backwards, too terrified to actually retreat. There were no eyes or ears on the damnable thing, and yet it pursued me as if guided by sensory organs.
In my backwards stumbling I collided with another tree, and cried out in a panic, fearing that another had animated itself to ensnare me. But it was only a normal, chest-high sapling, its vestigial limbs held passively aloft; and I pushed away from it without issue.
Regaining a little of the volition and personal agency that had been taken from me, I put my mind to exiting the grove, and jogged toward the way I’d come. I moved sluggishly and with little coordination, and immediately knew that the other, outré will was still trying to steer me toward some dark and malignant fate. And still, the tree-thing hounded me, its branches flailing freakishly as it stomped in my direction.
The next few moments passed by with little conscious acknowledgement, as I fled along the path I’d come, with a fiend of the woods on my heels. Only a few times did I dare to look back, and every time I felt a greater sense of horror and repulsion at what I saw; for the thing seemed to change and grow more uncannily human with each glimpse, even as it retained a hideous semblance to its former state.
I’m sure that the elation I felt at seeing my yard and the house beyond was not dissimilar to what one might feel upon seeing the face of their newborn child for the first time. Instilled with a renewed sense of mortal purpose, I quickened my stride, risking complete collapse on my still ungainly legs.
I had managed to cross about half the yard when I heard that monstrous man-growth shriek its excitement—or fury—from the wood’s edge. Taking a final look back, I saw it push through the bushes and come bounding onto the yard, its figure unsettlingly human—save for the haphazardly sprouted arms atop its shoulders and back. Those limbs, once uniform branches, now jutted horrifically; malformed and suggestive of a truly abominable musculoskeletal structure.
The sight put a fire under my ass, and I went into a full sprint for the last few meters to my house. I practically leapt to my porch, and was inside a moment later. I turned and shut the screen door, but stopped short of shutting the inner door at the sight of my barren yard. The thing was nowhere to be seen, the only evidence of its presence being its deeply sunken footprints.
Then I heard something heavy scramble across my roof.
Apparently, the thing had jumped onto my house, knowing that I’d seek to barricade myself inside. I now heard other sounds, violent batterings against the structure, and silently prayed to a God I hadn’t spoken to in ages to keep me safe.
The thing would occasionally let out a low snarl or senseless roar, but it otherwise kept silent as it clawed and tore at my house. There were no vocalizations that suggested intelligence, and yet it was clearly sentient in some regard; having drawn me to its trap within the woods and pursued me with predatorial intent.
Having no firearms of any kind, I had only kitchen utensils with which to defend myself; and taking these, I locked myself within the downstairs bathroom—having no basement to further distance myself from the roof-perched nightmare.
The nightmare beat against the house and raged for what seemed like hours, and then with startling abruptness, stopped—leaving the house silent, save for the occasional settling of debris. Still, I sensed its awful presence on the property somewhere, and kept myself securely tucked within my bathtub. Five or ten more minutes passed, and I had started to consider lowering the knife I’d held outstretched toward the locked door the entire time, but then a voice spoke from somewhere within the home.
Somberly, it said, “I’ve missed you so much. Haven’t you missed me?”
The words were human, and the voice’s intonation carried within it a vast, articulate sadness; but the speech itself seemed garbled or distorted in an indescribable way, as if the speaker had only recently mastered English—or human speech.
Initially, I was only puzzled, but quickly became more than a little unsettled, imagining that that bestial tree-thing had somehow developed a capacity for speech. The unthinkable concept was further concretized when I heard several simultaneous footfalls somewhere in the house, confirming that it had successfully broken in. But when it repeated the question, as peculiarly as it had before, recognition finally came to me, and a horror immeasurable overtook my mind.
The voice was that of my dead friend.
I dropped the knife, my hands trembling uncontrollably. Outside the bathroom I heard that unspeakable thing clumsily trying the knobs of random doors in search of me. Occasionally, there would be the crash of something knocked from a shelf, and my mind came up with horrific images of its twisted limbs sweeping back and forth as it ransacked the place.
Thankfully I’d had enough sense to crawl into the tub, because I felt my bladder threaten to empty itself when the knob of the bathroom door started jiggling. On the other side of the door the thing rasped and growl, though these feral sounds were occasionally interrupted by the singsong calling of my name. It was beyond disturbing, the disparity between those crazed animal sounds and the all-too-familiar, all-too-human voice of my departed friend.
When it could not open the door by normal means, it began pounding against it; enraged by the obstruction. Now, it’s voice screamed my name, evilly and insanely; pitched beyond human vocal capabilities. It was as if a maddened fiend was shouting out the name of its Hadean torturer as its skin was being stretched upon the racks of Hell.
I cowered in the tub, pressing my body against the porcelain as if it could absorb me if enough pressure were applied. The whole room shook with the violence of the beast’s beatings, and I was both appalled at its savagery and amazed at the integrity of the doorframe. But the fortitude of its craftsmanship was short-lived—a soul-diminishing roar augured the emergence of a fist through the center of the door, and upon its swift retraction I saw that mostly human visage peer through the subsequent cavity.
And though it was contorted and mishappen, and bore a few sallow buds where eyes should’ve been, I still recognized the face of my friend staring into the bathroom.
Tears, thick and sap-like, streamed from the yellowish buds, and there was an obvious pain in the ghoulishly warped expression. It had paused its assault on the door to stare into the bathroom, and when our eyes locked, I felt a profound feeling of sorrow—of infinitely mounting despair. It whispered my name, this time in that voice that was in most regards human, and I found myself rising from the “safety” of the tub.
With only that increasingly human face visible in the jagged frame of the hole, I felt a little less repulsed by the thing; even though I knew that it still bore an unwholesome and supernumerary arrangement of limbs. Its nakedness did not bother me, since I had on more than one occasion seen my friend naked.
I stepped over the rim of the tub, and my first foot landed on the knife handle. Some defiant sub-spirit of self-preservation then whispered to my mind, imploring me to pick up the weapon and drive it through the hole in the door. But the lull of my friend’s pained voice drew the next foot from the tub, and sent me walking on—leaving the knife untouched.
By the time I reached the door, the face had become almost entirely normal, except for the eyes, whose sockets still bore those darkly golden bulbs. There was a strange vascularity to the pallid face, and some part of my mind knew that the greenish-blue streaks beneath the skin were not veins, but roots. Still, I put my face right up to the hole, mere inches from that of my friend’s.
They smiled, and whispered, “Thank you.” I smiled back, tears swelling in my eyes, and the simulacrum of my friend kissed my forehead. Some of its honeyish tears rubbed off on my face, and the smell was almost intolerably sweet.
But before I could ask how they had come to exist in such a bizarre state, the thing in the image of my friend opened its mouth and breathed out a pollen-like vapor.
It took me by surprise, and I involuntarily gasped. The substance entered my my widely opened mouth, seeped into my skin, and even got into my eyes, completely inundating me. I fell back, suddenly unable to breath, and then gripped my throat in agony as the invasive element began to burn me, within and without.
Mercifully, the unprecedented scale of pain overloaded my mind, and I blacked out a moment later.
I awoke lying on the bathroom floor, which was streaked and smeared with my tears and drool. Sluggishly, I gathered myself into a seated position against the tub, narrowly missing a cut from the blade of the knife. For a moment, I simply sat there as my mind rebooted. Only after a few minutes had passed did I remember that there had been a continuously transforming creature terrorizing me.
Looking up, I saw the slime-rimmed hole, and its splinters littering the floor beneath the door; but there was no sign of the creature, and I heard only the chittering of nocturnal insects from outside.
I would’ve gotten up and gone to investigate the house, if I hadn’t seen the weird growth on my right arm, just below my inner elbow. It looked like a tumorous mass, but green. Even as I stared, it pulsed and grew, and tiny little vines lengthened from its base up and down my arm.
The revulsion I felt was immediate and powerful, and my unblemished hand quickly shot out and seized the knife. Acting almost through its own autonomy, the knife-wielding hand went to work at cutting free the growth.
It took quite a bit of effort, but I managed to excise it from my arm, at the cost of quite a bit of blood and flesh. Woozily, I rose and bandaged it with the first-aid kit I kept beneath the sink.
In my hurry to patch myself up, I hadn’t glanced in the mirror, but upon peering in to see just how pallid and disheveled I looked, I saw more of those green growths on my cheek and forehead. And they too throbbed animatedly, and more of those worrying vines sought the far corners of my scalp and face…
It’s taken about thirty minutes, but I’ve managed excise, sever, and pry those weird, hopefully benign nodules from my face. I look hideous, now—my face is a bloody, tattered mess. The exposed muscles of my face had glistened sickeningly in the mirror’s reflection, and my eyes looked crazed—but the growths are gone, at least.
I’m sitting at my desk, typing this “report” out, amidst the ruin of my living room. You’d think that a small cyclone had swept through the room—everything is either completely broken or at least significantly damaged. But I’m alive, and for that I’m thankful.
There still hasn’t been any sign of the creature, and I have the strangest feeling that I won’t be seeing it again. Whatever it had wanted, it either gave up on achieving the goal—or actually achieved it.
Now that I’m on the subject, I do feel weird. Sure, I’m woozy, weak, and disoriented from the fright and blood loss; but there’s something else, some other sensation or affliction softly distorting my perception of my surroundings. Muddying my thoughts. And there’s a weird tickling in my face, right behind my eyes…
The knife is still in the bathroom, coated in my blood and flesh. The sink is clogged with those leprous growths. I don’t want to feel my face, don’t want to rub my fingers over the warm, super-sensitive raw flesh. But I’m starting to think there’s something of those growths left. I don’t think I got them all. Yes, my face is really starting to burn, and there’s a mounting pressure behind my eyes. I think maybe something’s irretrievably enrooted itself in the soft tissue of my face, or maybe even inside my skull. I think…I think it’s trying to get out….
I have to go now—I have to finish what I started. Goodnight.