I normally enjoy strolling through the forest. But not at night trying to find my insomniac wife.
We met in college. Yeah, I know, college sweethearts. They actually exist! She majored in hospital administration while I majored in accounting, then engineering…then actuarial science, maybe environmental design at one point. I never went to college with a specific aim in mind but I somehow came out of it with a career as an electrical engineer.
But no matter what careers we would end up in, we both agreed that we wanted to live closer to nature.
So after escaping from college, we moved to Northern California, surrounded by forests. Wouldn’t say we were completely isolated, the nearest small town was a twenty minute drive, but our nearest neighbours were probably over a mile away.
Yet we loved it. You couldn’t live anywhere else and find a family of deer sleeping in your front lawn.
Getting the deer of the front lawn may be something else but we were unironically living the dream.
Until the night where my wife couldn’t sleep.
It was probably around eleven when my wife slipped out of bed, saying she had to get a glass of water. Of course I rolled over and mumbled something about letting me know if anything important happened.
Normally, and as much as I love her, sometimes you get better sleep when you’re alone in bed. You can stretch yourself out, don’t have to worry about staying on your side, and no snoring. Yes, she snores. Am I bad for admitting that?
But for some weird reason it made me restless when she didn’t come back after twenty minutes.
Deciding that her absence was the only thing keeping me awake, I rose out of bed and found her in the lit kitchen, sitting down, just staring at the surface of the table.
“Do you not have work tomorrow?” I said in the driest tone possible, as if there was no other possible question that I could’ve asked.
“Yes. Of course.”
“So?”
“I just can’t sleep.”
“Why?”
“I, I don’t think you would believe me if I even tried.”
“Objection.”
“Duly noted.”
“Don’t duly note me. You’re not a judge.”
She curled up her hair in a mockery of the wigs British judges wear.
“How about now?” She asked.
“I see the supreme court in your future. So, I therefore summon you to the court. The court being our bedroom.”
She tried to smile but she was too tired to even do that. “I’ll be back. I just can’t seem to relax. But you go back to bed.”
“Is it work?” I said, practically cross-examining her. “Have I upset you? I can pretend to like your tuna casserole more. I mean, trying new recipes is difficult and I should be more supportive.”
“No, nothing like that. Really, sometimes you just have an off night, you know?”
I shrugged. No, I didn’t know. Maybe I should have been more concerned, but I was just tired and wanted her to get back to bed. After a few minutes of my masterful persuasion (where I proceeded to annoyingly sip from a single glass of water for over a minute), she finally acquiesced to my arguments and came back to bed.
She still didn’t sleep the entire night.
She even woke me up a few times.
I thought going to work was a bad idea for her. But she simply brushed it off.
“I’m fine, really. I might even just take a nap, like some of the doctors and nurses. Maybe they’ll let me borrow their pillow?” Laughing it off as if it was no concern. Typical her.
After spending all day at work thinking about last night, I was relieved to find her at home safe and sound. But she was cranky, irritated. That night was my turn to cook, I made mushroom pasta, her favourite, hoping a full stomach would lull her to sleep.
But she didn’t take a bite.
“I guess I’m not hungry as well.” She said as she toyed the pasta with her fork.
“Did you, uh, get checked up at work today? Maybe some work perks include free health check-ups for insomnia?”
“I’m not- I’m not insomniac. I just…you wouldn’t, believe me. I wouldn’t make sense.”
I gently gripped her hand. It wasn’t just an attempt at sarcastic humour, I became genuinely concerned.
“You know that’s not true right?”
She took a deep breath and her eyes stared straight at me.
“I am being completely, one hundred percent serious when I say this, in all sincerity…I can hear the trees scream.”
Nope. Just nope. I let go of her hand. You try to be genuine with someone, try to show genuine compassion, try to be a good husband. Then my wife treats me with absolutely no respect.
“I will give you credit. You kept joke up for two days, even inflicted physical harm on yourself. You really are one of a kind.”
Her eyes expressed instant disbelief and she shook her head. “I knew you wouldn’t. Why would you? I thought my husband would trust me.”
“What does a tree sound like? Is it like the ents from Lord of the Rings? All hoarse and with a booming voice?”
“Oh shut up. Can we just drop it?”
“If you’re not going to finish that, I’ll put it in the fridge so it doesn’t go to waste.”
I wanted to go to bed but I decided to stay in the living room with her. I fell asleep on the couch, watching her as she laid on top of me.
When I woke up, I found her lying on the couch streaming from her laptop some show I’ve never seen before. Honestly wasn’t that interested in what she was watching, I just asked the question straight away.
“Did you get any sleep last night?”
“No.” She said, her eyes fixated on the screen.
“I don’t want you to drive to work today. Just call in sick, okay?”
I should have got her to do that yesterday.
“Sure. I’ll do that.” She complied with no enthusiasm.
“I’ll bring home some sleeping pills. But just try to get some sleep during the day, okay?”
All I could think about while at work is if I did something wrong. If I made her unhappy. Maybe she was so angry at me she couldn’t tell me the truth. As if the bond between husband and wife was a flimsy promise, just a relationship of convenience, not the undying bond I believed that would only break “until death do us part”.
It was strange, I was conflicted finding her at home awake. On the one hand I was happy to see her safe but seeing the strain on her face, the bloodshot eyes, the sagging beneath her eyes, it was like some form of bizarre self-torture that I had to bear witness to.
“You didn’t manage to get to sleep did you?”
She shook her head- she was too tired to even cry in frustration.
She took the sleeping pills but even then I wasn’t too optimistic. It was looking like I’d have to take time off from work tomorrow and take her to see a doctor. We’d obviously never been in this situation before, it’s not like we’ve ever had any trouble falling asleep, otherwise I would’ve taken her sooner.
I woke up in the early morning before dawn. Out of habit I rolled over to reach for my wife but I slowly realised where she would be. I turned on my phone and read 4:52am on the home screen. As if her insomnia was contagious, I decided I couldn’t sleep and got out of bed.
Expecting her in the living room still awake, I walked into the room and found the lights still on. But she wasn’t there. Not panicking yet, I decided to search the kitchen, then the bathroom, finally I called out.
“Mary? Where are you?”
Silence was the only answer.
I wish I had just woken up to a bad dream. My wife was nowhere to be found and I had no idea where to look. In the living room, her cell phone and laptop lay on the floor. A dead end.
It was then that I decided to walk outside in the chilly night.
The clouds covered the moon, forcing me to peer out into utter darkness.
“Mary? Mary? Are you out there?”
My echo rang through the forest. As if I was mocking myself for losing her.
I couldn’t think like that. I had to find her.
I turned on every light in the house, searched every room, making sure she hadn’t finally fallen asleep, oblivious to my calls. But I only found myself in an empty home.
My worst-case scenario was about to be realised, it was then that I feared she would be lost in the woods, hurt, alone, in pain.
But first outside the house. I must have done four laps around the perimeter before I finally accepted I would need to venture into the forest. I cried out into night, screaming at the top of my lungs, only hearing my own voice echo through the trees in the night. I waited, listened, strained to hear anything, even a whisper. Silence, darkness. The first time I felt truly alone, the first time I felt scared. I had lost the woman I loved and I didn’t know why.
But in the darkness of the night, I thought a heard the faintest whimper, the first sign of life.
“Mary? Mary? Say something.” I screamed out into the forest.
My echo rang out through the forest and then silence. Then the whimper began again.
Panic coursed through my body, my hands were shaking, thoughts and ideas were pounding against my head. My train of thought was being hijacked by my dread, blocking off all avenues for calm, forcing me to collapse to the ground.
I didn’t know what was wrong and she wasn’t telling me. Yet, her whimpers were the faintest sign of hope, something for me to hold onto.
My legs seemed to automatically spring me off the cold, hard ground and running inside I grabbed everything I thought I needed. Torchlights. Handheld GPS.
Rifle.
There was no time to take chances, no time to be caught unprepared, no time to wait.
I left the door open as I ran out towards the sign of the whimper. My torchlight providing little guidance as I seemed to trip over every branch, root, and log in the forest. But with every fall, stumble, and stagger the whimpering sound became louder and louder.
“Mary? Mary? Can you hear me?”
After what seemed like an agonizing eternity, I check the handheld GPS which showed me I was now almost a mile away from the house, approaching the mountains.
Why the hell would she come all the way out here?
As I was stumbling forward, the whimpers turned to words and I started to recognise her voice.
“Just stop. I can’t help you. Just stop.”
Who was she talking to?
“Mary? I’m here. Just stay where you are.”
“He won’t believe me. He just won’t.” She said again. It didn’t sound like she was replying to me.
Pushing those thoughts out of my mind, I ran as fast as I could, with rifle in hand and a torch in the other, I wouldn’t want to run into me right then.
When I reached the forest clearing, I stopped dead.
Now the clouds had cleared, allowing the moon to shine down, onto the upside down trees in the clearing. Stopping to breathe, I ran the torch up and down the nearest tree, just staring at the upturned roots sticking twenty feet into the air. Maybe it was a fir tree? I don’t know. It seemed funny that trying to guess the tree species was the first question that hit me. Maybe I didn’t want to understand how a twenty-foot tree could be upside down.
So I flicked my torch to the neighbouring tree and found the same thing. Roots up in the air, branches and leaves sticking up from underneath the ground. Then the next tree, and the next, and the next one.
All upside down.
Landslide? Maybe? I’ve heard of that. I think there were even trees in Australia and Africa that looked like they were naturally upside down.
Mary’s voice shattered my amateur botany theorising.
“I- I don’t know how. We can’t.”
Her voice was clear. I shone my torchlight into the darkness, towards her voice, but all I could see were the upside-down trees.
“That’s not. That’s not…”
My legs ran towards her voice, my torch’s light darting between the trees, the tree’s shadows dancing in the moonlight.
“Stop. I don’t know-.”
I found her. Lying down, her legs underneath, she hunched over to make a pitiful sight. Gently, softly, I approached her and knelt down. Even as I walked towards her, she barely registered that I was here, or at least I didn’t notice her noticing. Her face seemed sad, exhausted, fatigued from her sleepless nights. She must have been driven mad and ran out here into the forest to talk to herself.
Deep down, I felt like I failed her. As if I was responsible for her lonely escape into the night forest.
But she wasn’t hurt. No bruises or blood that I could see. I gently lifted her head and stared into her strained eyes.
“Let’s get you home.”
Even in her state she still managed to brush off my hands.
“We need to do something. The trees want us to help them.”
Not this thing again. There was no way I was going to humour her out here in the middle of the wilderness. Just chalk that up to sleep deprivation and get her home.
“We’ll help the trees, I promise.”
When I reached out to pick her up, she recoiled. I was starting to lose my sense of humour.
“Can we just go back to the house to get some sleep?” I implored. “This is starting to get ridiculous.”
She shook her head wildly.
“You don’t understand. That won’t stop screaming, they’re in pain and-“
“For fuck sake Mary. Enough of this. Let’s go.”
She stood up and started to run towards the mountains. I stood there for a few moments, just dumb, does any other husband have to chase their wife in the middle of the night through a forest? I thought she had lost her mind and giving up reasoning with her, I chased after her.
For someone who hadn’t slept in three days she sure was making me look slow. I had only really caught up to her when we reached the tree line at which she started gaining ground again. For every skip, hop, and jump of hers I tumbled, stubbed my toe and just plain ran into trees. It was like she was being guided by something while I was losing track of her shadow.
But I didn’t let her run away. Marriage is death until we part.
She stopped. To my relief. I wrapped my arms around her, half to capture her and half back I was glad she was relatively safe.
“Look.”
In the darkened canopy of the forest I didn’t see it until a casted my torch.
Inside the open grove of a tree, was the blood-stained skull of a male stag, its antlers embedded into the bark and elevating the skull at the centre of the aperture.
I nearly threw up.
“They want us to destroy it. It’s killing them.”
Some sick characters out there must have taken the meat and put this out here as a sick joke. Must admit, my imagination ran a little wild with demonic curses and what have you. Not to mention how Mary knew where to find this place was still a mystery to me.
“Let’s just get out here.”
“You need to destroy it.”
“Mary. You’re cold, tired, and haven’t slept in three days. You need to go and get some rest. I promise, I’ll come back here and clean this up. But we need to go home. Now.”
“Hank. You have to…do something.”
Enough. I had it.
I let her go and started walking to that abomination. My torch light shining on the deep stained blood, revealing the gouged eye sockets of the skull, the velvet hanging of its antlers, this was the last thing I wanted to be doing in the middle of the night.
With absolutely no concern, I yanked the damned remains out of that tree and threw it on the ground.
By the time we reached home dawn had started to break. It was comforting to see some normality return to the forest.
I laid her on the couch and told I’ll be back. Armed with garbage bags, I returned to the scene of the makeshift totem. It was still there, bloody and awash in the stench of death.
I then carried it back home and threw it on our designated fire pit. Since I didn’t want to start a forest fire. Duh.
After it was all done, I went back inside. For the first time in three days, I found Mary, finally asleep.
I don’t know who put that thing out there but now that it’s gone, a sense of calm came over the forest and into our home.
I just laid on the couch and watched her sleep. To think, if only I had just listened, maybe we wouldn’t need to have gone through all that.