Have you ever heard of the black-hill forest? If you don’t, I can’t really blame you, the aforementioned forest is rather obscure. But we’re getting off subject. Who I am, where I am isn’t of importance. My background isn’t of importance, nor is my name. However, what I can tell you, is what I know about the black hill forest, what it truly is.
It’s been 20 years since I found my way into the black-hill forest. 20 years since I saw things a person was not supposed to lay their eyes on, beheld beings best left unknown, and witnessed events even now I can barely comprehend and understand. This is the story of the 10 year-old boy who ventured into the black-hill forest.
Not much is known about the forest, as many of the maps simply mark the place as ‘forbidden’ and the grown-ups refused to tell me why none of us could go there; citing ‘I’ll tell you when you get older’. The whole town seemed to be wary and fearful of the forest. In the winter, when the first snow starts to fall, and the trees have completely lost their leaves, the forest trees would resemble spikes; warning us to stay away. It didn’t help that the closer you got to the forest, the more blackened and charred the ground seemed to become.
It was a cloudy day, as far as I can recall, and that it had been snowing. The day started out as it always did when I was younger: I ate my breakfast and got ready for another day of school.
The school bus route was… strange, to say the least. At one point on its journey, it would get really close to the black-hill forest. I’m not even sure why it moved along this path, but it always did without fail, and we would be within spitting distance to the forest, every time we went to and from school. And I could glance into the areas between the spiked trees.
That fateful day, as our bus moved along its unchanging path near the black-hill forest, as I stared out of the window, pointed towards the forest, the bus suddenly collided with something. I barely caught a glimpse of the thing when it let out a shriek. The thing was alive, and it was angry.
I can still hear the sound of metal buckling and bending and the frightened screams of my peers as the black thing began to smash the bus in anger and rage. I could only get a few glimpses of the thing, its countless eyes and tentacle-like appendages before something impacted my head, knocking me out.
I woke up after who knows how long, inside what remained of the bus. The front half of it had been removed, no - bitten off. The remaining half was badly damaged. There was no else in the wreckage, but I visibly saw what I can only assume to have been blood on the floor. I was unharmed. No injuries, no blood, no broken limbs, I was just… fine. I don’t know how I survived whatever it was. But I got up and grabbed what I could and slowly exited the bus. The first thing I noticed when I left the wreckage was the ground. I could see, beneath the thin layer of snow, the blackened ground, and then I saw the trees. Those familiar spike-like trees…
That thing, whatever it was, dragged the bus into the forest. If that thing wrecked the bus with such ease, what else could there be hidden among the spike-like trees? My mind raced, thinking of the countless possibilities of what may lie within the forest. I knew I had to leave, so I started to try and get my bearings. In one direction, the bus wreckage, in another, a clearing among the trees, and in a third one, I saw what looked like a creek.
I walked, the gentle snow sloshing and slurring under my feet. With each step, the snow piled on, and the air grew colder. Nature did not seem to care much for my situation, and the snow continued to fall. But I continued, wandering forward in a single direction, hoping that perhaps I could leave the forest. But no matter how much I walked, I could not see the edge of the forest. Its stillness was baffling. The emptiness, the lack of any life, the isolation and nothing aside from the spike-like trees. As I walked through the forest, I realized that the forest was… Unnerving quiet. Not a single noise emanated from anywhere, the silence only broken my own breathing and my steps on the powdered snow.
The spell of simply wandering through the cold was broken when I discovered a cave. Cold, and exhausted, I moved into its mouth. As I walked through the rocky formation, the moist, warm air of the cave welcomed me. The darkness compared to the starch-white landscape of snow outside was strangely welcoming. I sat down, on the rocky stones below me, and rested my head against the wall; exhausted.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw something on the cave walls. A wall painting. The painting looked a lot like cave paintings from ages past, but it seemed, well, different. Instead of the red, orange and black color that most cave paintings had, these had only, black. This one depicted not hunts, or some long forgotten tribe but, instead, the forest itself. The spike trees, the blackened ground, things that the longer I stared at, the more I got lost in their seemingly incomprehensible form. In the center of all of the paintings, nothing - just a sheer indescribable mass of blackness. And from it, all manner of beasts seemed to emerge.
The paintings seemed to ramble on, as if the ancient artist were trying to put disjointed memories together and paint them down, the beasts being peaceful, and in the next section spilling blood, humanoid beings emerging to seal away the blackness, or gods arising to reconcile with the blackness. And then, nothing, the painting abruptly cut off on a final image of the blackness, and thousands of eyes.
As my mind was lost in the painting’s majesty I heard a rumble emanating from deeper in the cave, then eyes peered out of the darkness, pale white as the snow itself. I couldn’t make out its form but it was as big as the cave itself. I saw… red fluid like liquid starting to form on the cave floor… “is that… Blood?” I blurted out, the things eyes fixed onto me as the sound left my lips. It let out an inhuman roar almost identical to the roar I heard when the bus crashed into that thing… The shadows started to almost dance, as the thing started to move towards me.
Without a second thought I ran out of the cave, my tired legs nearly tripping on the uneven cave floor, as the snow sloshed under me I turned back to the mouth of the cave, I saw the thing… dragging itself out of the cave, before letting out another great roar that shook the forest. In the sunlight I could now make out its form, and it… It didn’t make sense. It.. Its body was decaying, portions of its skeletal structure visible through cuts in its flesh, its skin as black as the ground, its bones misshapen and twisted and its limbs as tall as the trees itself, on its back it had wing-like appendages, all be it completely worn out and beyond functionality. It was almost… human.. It was massive, its form casting a shadow at least 10 meters wide. Its body dripped a black liquid-like substance that disappeared as soon as it hit the ground.
It shouldn’t have been alive, let alone moving in such a state. “No… Wha- How is that.. How is it alive?!”
I didn’t want to… I didn’t wish to see it anymore and started running, with no sense of direction, no care for finding my way out, just getting away from that… Thing… I heard a deep blaring roar loud enough to shatter glass, I recoiled in pain, my hands instinctively reaching for my ears, I turned behind me, to see that thing dragging itself towards me.
I heard trees, falling down and crashing onto the ground as I heard the thundering steps of the beast, its deafening, lonely roars as it chased after me. “Wha- What was that!?” I cried on top of my lungs, as I ran between the mighty spiked trees. The beast felled the trees like they were nothing, their grand tall structures crashing onto the ground with great force and thundering crashes. It cut through the trees like a warm knife to butter, it didn’t want to give up the chase, the hunt for me. It wanted me, it needed me.
The trees seemed to narrow and bend as if trying to slow me down as the beast kept its pace behind me, no matter how fast I ran. The quiet constantly broken by the beasts roars, and my ever tired gasps for air as it followed me.
As I ran through the nigh endless forest, I noticed that there was less, and less snow on the ground, and more and more of the blackened ground revealed itself to me, until any trace of snow was gone, and all that was beneath me was the black soil. The thing, still followed.
As I ran, I saw corpses of others like me; Some looked to be lumberjacks, others looked like cartographers, and some just like me, people who got thrown in the forest. They lacked any flesh, they just had their pale white bones, lying perfectly still on the black ground, their bodies resting against the trees.
As I looked back, the beast again slashed its great limbs, and another several trees were felled, its pure white eyes forever fixed on me, its decaying form caring nothing more than to remove me. Its body dripped that same black liquid, and it produced that ever familiar and blaring roar.
My legs started to give, and my body felt as if it needed to collapse.
I now began to see ornaments, made of the spiked tree branches, dangling down from the trees. They displayed images I could not put into words. And on the ground, effigies of creatures, beings, and charred remains of what I could only assume was a ritual pyre.
I kept running.
Emerging from the blackened ground, I saw something I never expected to grow in such an empty wasteland. A pale, white rose, a sign of innocence in such a barren black wasteland. Up ahead, I saw countless more roses, their pale white glow in stark contrast to the blackened ground and the spiked trees. Densely collected around a massive frozen lake. Hesitant, I looked behind me, only to see the beast only a couple hundred yards from me, and without a second thought I ran onto the ice.
I was lucky the ice was even capable of holding my weight as I ran across, almost slipping on the ice several times. Then, I noticed that the beast wasn’t following me, its thundering steps went silent, and I turned around expecting it to be in spitting distance, but it was standing by the banks of the frozen lake. It stared at me, its pale white eyes staring into me, never taking its gaze off of me. It didn’t even try to step onto the ice, its decaying limbs refused to move onto the ice.
I took this as an opportunity to take a breather, and I collapsed, my hands resting on my knees. Then I noticed something, in the center of the lake, standing on a small island. On it, a single tree, not like the others in the forest rested on the black charred soil.. The tree was crooked, bent, twisted beyond recognition, its branches bent and molded in such abstract shapes, it was as if you were to describe a tree to man who had never seen one.
With no other place to go, I decided to cross the ice and move towards the island. As I was a few feet from the tree, the beast let out a great roar, turning back, it swung its arms wildly, as if it were trying to reach me, but it didn’t dare step onto the ice, and simply grabbed the cold air. As I stepped closer and closer to the island, its roars grew louder, louder and louder, but once I stepped foot on the soil of the island, it immediately went silent.
It was then I noticed a stone tablet resting by the tree. Reading it out, I uttered the words into the cold air.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens, the earth, and the great empty.
God disregarded the great empty, and left it as empty as what world was before creation,
Before God.
God has long left, but his mistake of creation still lingers,
the hated creation seeps itself into the heavens, and the earth,
corrupting the works of god, blackening the soil, and destroying man’s mind,
It is here.
The gateway to the great empty is here, beneath the soil, it is here, beyond the veil of reality.
At the center and edge of everything, and at times end and beginning.”
As I read the last words off the tablet, I heard crackling above me, and the tree that stood above me was no longer a tree. Instead of its wooden bark, it now had rotten flesh. Its branches were now a series of small bone like structures and, all along its trunk, human eyes stared unto me. I leapt back in fear as the thing screeched with rage, and its pupils contracted. It let another screech as it contorted its branches and swung its rotten tree-like branches as if it was trying to grab me.
“WHAT THE-” I backed away from the tree and then, I tripped on a rock protruding from the ground, and I tumbled backwards; and broke the ice I was standing on.
I fell down, into not freezing-cold water, but pure nothing, I simply fell, fell, and fell as the world faded from my very view as I fell not unto something, but into nothing. Pure, nothing; not black, nor white, just the sheer absence of either.
Do you know those sensory deprivation chambers? The ones that dull your senses significantly, if you were to enter them? I’ve been in a couple in the past year or so, just for curiosity’s sake. They don’t even compare to what the void was like. There was utter nothingness in that void, Time, space, the real world just seemed to blur as my ears picked up nothing, my body unable to feel anything, and my eyes unable to detect even a single photon of light. That empty, it’s enough to drive a man insane.
I screamed, yelled, and cried into the darkness, but no sound emanated from my mouth. I tried to move, but my limbs wouldn’t obey me. So, I simply stared into the void, into the vast darkness, and I felt something had now fixed its attention unto me. Its countless eyes, its formless form, its… sheer darkness. It stared at me from the timeless, ceaseless void.
I could feel it was ancient, far older than the earth, the sun, and every star, perhaps even older than the universe itself.
My mind started to buckle, as my fickle mind tried to cope with the sensory deprivation, and I could feel things slipping their way into my mind. I could feel them.
I could feel things dancing in the void, things far greater than any star, things that snuck into the real world through the cracks in reality, and things that plagued our dreams. All their eyes, their eyes, oh god their eyes why do they stare, why don’t they do anything why do they hate why do they stare oh god the eyes the eyes the eyes the eyes the eyes their pale white orbs, their ever changing forms, their twisting, changing bodies, so many eyes, the void, no sense no feeling, beyond eternity beyond the heavens beyond the earth there was nothing but me, nothing but me nothing but me nothing but me nothing but me nothing but me
I could hear them hear them talking screaming roaring corruption it spread across all worlds disease pestilence plague infection it corrupts all it takes all it takes it took the forest it took the soil it takes all Uriel was the first it shall take all everything it takes all I will be taken I will be embraced by darkest expanse I shall be taken by the greatest void I shal-
…
I awoke outside the forest, beside the bus wreckage. I stood up and, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I started to hear the sirens, the police, the ambulances, and the crying parents. The paramedics picked me up and examined me, while I stood in shock, the eyes of the beasts and the voids sheer emptiness still echoing in my mind.
It has been 10 years now, and nobody knows what happened to the other children who were on board the bus, and why I was the only survivor. They asked me what had happened but I didn’t think they would have believed me if I told them, so they simply listed it as a mad accident. They assumed the bus crashed, and other children were taken away by wolves, and I was somehow spared, the only survivor. That is what they seem to want to believe anyway.
It’s been 10 years now, since the incident. Nobody wants to talk about it, let alone what happened.
I occasionally go to the site where the crash occurred, where I constantly debate to myself whether I should walk back in and see what else the forest held. Maybe answer some lingering questions on what had happened on that day. Like, who were the people who came into the forest before me, what the forest was, or hell… Jump into that lake again, to feel that absence of sense and meaning.
Now, at this point you might be wondering why I’m even telling you this story at all. Why would I even indulge you in something like this? It is because on my most recent visit, I noticed something odd about the charred black ground of the forest.
It grew further out.