WRITTEN AND OWNED BY KRISTEN REID
“You ever look at the trees outside at night, Thomas, and you get this, well, I don't know how to explain it. Maybe I can't. Maybe I'm the only one feels this way, but you gotta agree that there’s something real menacing in the way that trees turn into black, spindly stretches of nothing against a dark sky. They almost look like brittle finger or arm bones of a witch. Like there's a million witches around us all standing up against each other, watching those that watch them who think they’re just trees. I've always been one to like trees in the daytime, but at night... I don't know. I don't care to look at them."
Thomas looked over at Emmett with a hint of amusement at the strange observation, but Emmett just kept talking about the trees and would only occasionally stop to sip at his black coffee while keeping his sharp eyes on the night sky above him as if awaiting some answer to his musings.
“That’s a bad fear for a fur trapper to have, my friend,” Thomas said with a chuckle, “Me, I’m sick of seeing trees just ‘cause it’s all my eyes ever behold.”
“Yeah, well, they just creep me out. I’m not scared of them. I mean, I logically know that trees are just wood. Wood can’t do anything to ya,” Emmett breathed out, annoyed as if even entertaining the idea was something only a child would do, and he was not a child.
A large, gruff man with a thick, graying beard came striding over to the campfire that Thomas and Emmett were warming themselves by with a hard biscuit in his hands.
“What you think, Will?” Thomas asked, with a bit of the chuckle still lingering on his lips as he spoke, "You like Thomas? You don’t like trees? They creep ya out?”
Will chewed on the biscuit and raised a brow as he looked over at Emmett, who was giving Thomas a disapproving look. “Trees? What care do I have for trees?”
Thomas shrugged. “Mm, I don’t know, but Emmett’s afraid of them, well, at night he’s afraid of them. Says they look like a witch’s skeleton or some such.”
"Witch's arms and I never said I was afraid of them,” Emmett contested before shaking his head, “You always do that.”
Thomas turned to him and wrinkled his brow. “Do what?”
“Make like I’m a child going on about nonsense. I was just thinking is all.”
“Well, you are only a child, Emmett.”
“I’m nineteen.”
“Exactly,” Will snorted as he finished the biscuit and rubbed his hands on his pants, “But, hey, you know what,” he said as he looked around at the silent forest, “They are kinda strange at night, ain’t they? Hm, I ain’t never really thought about it before.”
Thomas rolled his eyes as Emmett grinned at him, as if Will was the final voice of wisdom.
The chilly night air circled around the men as they leaned closer towards the fire. They had just started their expedition a few months prior. It would be many months more before they could look at something other than the woods, furs, and each other. For Thomas and Will, this had been only one of many expeditions that they had gone on in their lives, but for Emmett, it was his first time out in the American wilderness searching for pelts. He had already irritated Thomas to his wit's end, but Will liked the boy and had taken him under his wing. Thomas had to admit, though, that despite Emmett’s incessant, inquisitive disposition, he liked the boy, too. He just wouldn’t admit it to anyone but himself, and even then, he didn't like to think much about it.
“I’d pay you all the money I’ve got to my name if you go out there in the thick of it right now until you’re just a blurry black figure and count to ten,” Will joshed as he pointed a large finger out towards the black trees. Thomas smiled at Will’s proposition and then looked over at Emmett with a challenging glare. Emmett shifted his eyes back and forth between the men and let out a bit of a squeaky laugh.
“You probably only got one dollar to your name anyway, Will. I’m not a fool,” he said coolly.
“I swear to you now, boy, I’ll give you thirty dollars. Thomas, here, can be witness to my words." Will lifted his chin up and placed a hand across his heart. Emmett just rolled his eyes.
“You can grin all you want, Thomas,” Emmett remarked as he shot his eyes over at the man. Then, he looked up at Will. “And you can offer me money, Will, but I would be an even bigger fool to go trudging out there. Y’all can think me foolish, I don’t care.” He crossed his arms across his chest and closed his eyes. “I know what they say about these woods. It ain’t just the trees that creep me out. It’s the stories. I know they’re just stories, but even if they are even just a little bit true, I ain’t taking a chance on the contemplation of the matter.”
“You been listening to them Natives, huh? They sure got things to say to frighten a white man, son. They’ll tell you anything to scare you. Probably pegged you for the more feminine temperament and got a bit of a jest out of you,” Will remarked as he stifled a bit of a laugh.
Thomas nodded along to what he said as Emmett's hands formed fists, and he huffed. "You two really have your fun, don’t you? Well, it ain’t funny. I’m serious. Some of them told me things that didn’t feel like stories. I’m not an imbecile.”
Thomas raised a brow at his words as if to make a joke about Emmett's utterance of being an imbecile, but as the boy looked over at him as if awaiting a rebuttal, Thomas swallowed his words and shook his head.
“So, what were these stories, then, Emmett?” Will asked as he kicked his legs out in front of himself and leaned back with his arms behind his head.
“Well, reason I don’t think they’re just joking with me is that one of them looked kind of crazed when I told him where we were headed. He was older and looked, well, you know, like he didn't have time to be telling stories. He just said that we shouldn't stay too long out here. I told him we were going to be up here for a few days, and he only shook his head and...uh, well, he, um, he gave me this.”
Emmett dug around in his satchel and pulled out a bizarre trinket made of twisted sticks forming a triangle and bound with hair. In the center of the triangle was a tooth that had been wrapped with hair to keep it tied to the sticks.
“Jesus, what the hell you doing keeping that shit in your bag, Emmett?” Thomas asked as he leaned away from the boy. “That damn thing’s been with us this whole time?”
He reached over and grabbed it from Emmett’s hands and threw it out towards the edge of their camp. Emmett shot up from the ground and ran over to retrieve it. He glared at Thomas as he walked back to the fire and sat down with it, clutching it tighter this time.
“Why do you even want that thing?” Thomas asked.
“I don’t know, just in case it keeps me safe. I don’t know how Indian things work.”
“Exactly,” Thomas huffed with wide eyes, “You don’t know. It’s the hair and tooth part I’m not alright to have sleeping in the same camp with me.”
“Let me see it,” Will said as he wiggled his outstretched fingers to Emmett, who handed it over.
Thomas just closed his eyes and groaned. “Don’t you touch that thing, Will.”
“Oh, hush. It’s just that—a thing, Thomas,” Will remarked. He twirled the trinket in his hands and studied it closely before handing it back to Emmett. “Like I’ve said before, Indians are superstitious, Emmett. They have all kinds of spiritual pipes, jewelry, and whatnot. They have their own beliefs about things. It isn’t anything wicked. The man probably was trying to be kind in his own way by giving you that.”
Thomas turned to Will and grumbled. “You’re actually going to let him keep that thing here with us? You really expect me to sleep here tonight with it in our camp?”
Will nodded his head out towards the black forest surrounding them all. “Alright, go sleep out in the woods, then. I’ll give you all the money to my name if you do.”
Thomas stared at the man, irked, and with growing aggravation as Emmett gave him a toothy grin and laughed.
The three men retired to their tents after Thomas had had enough of their jesting about the trinket. The forest was silent, aside from the wispy rush of cold air against the bare tree limbs. The men were used to the sounds of the wood and the crunching of leaves beneath the feet of animals, so they never had an issue with being light sleepers through the night. No one was around them for miles, and no daring predator would come upon them with a bright and threatening fire in the middle of their tent circle. They had nothing to listen for or to fear at night. The only thing that ever jostled Will from his dead sleep was the product of drinking too much coffee before going to bed.
Will shifted in his bedroll with a grumble as he felt the gnawing pain of a full bladder. He peeled back the tent flaps and looked around at the other tents before lighting a lantern and heading off towards the edge of the woods. After he had his pants buttoned back up and was about to make his way back to his tent, his eyes caught sight of a faint light in the distance out deeper in the forest. It moved about as if someone was carrying a lantern, and then he heard a strange cry in the direction of the light. As Will studied the light and listened, he heard the cry again, but this time it was more bizarre than before and reminded him of the scream of an elk, only it didn't have that familiar tinge of animal to it that he was familiar with.
“Hello?” Will called over to the light. “Who’s out there?”
Another half elk-half human wail came as the light flickered in place between the sharp outlines of the thin trees. Will shivered as another gust of wind that felt like sharp glass cut his exposed skin. He looked around at the hundreds of trees filling the entirety of the area for miles, making the world appear to be black as sin from all directions aside from the trees' outlines against the dark blue sky and bright moon. As he looked back towards the light in the distance, he realized that it was gone completely. He squinted his eyes as he rubbed his hands together and breathed into them to give himself a bit of warmth. Surely, he was seeing things.
But then the bone-chilling wail filled the forest again.
“Are you hurt? What’s wrong?” Will yelled out into the woods, unsure of what to do with the situation. He began to worry that someone was lost out there and needed help, that or one of the men had ventured too far to carry out their business and had become lost trying to find their way back to camp. Will looked back towards camp and sighed before walking out further into the woods with his lantern lighting the way, searching for the owner of the cries.
“Where are you?” he called. The wail didn’t answer back. Will kept trekking further and further away from camp. “Where are you so I can help you!”
Then a cracking of limbs came from his right side. He stopped in place and drew in a breath as he shined the lantern over into the pitch black. As he regarded the area, it appeared as if the tall trees bent and moved like legs walking around him in a jolting, disjointed manner.
Then the terrible wail came again.
Will fought with his mounting fears and his worry for whatever lost soul was out there with him before finally deciding to return to camp. As he turned around to head back, his eyes couldn't land on any campfire in the distance. It was as if it was gone entirely.
Then tree limbs cracked and heavily fell to the ground with a thud. Will felt his heart racing. The cry was loud and shrill, and it was as if it came from all around Will. And then the forest was filled with the sound of a large snap.
Thomas awoke with a jolt as he heard the loud snap off in the distance. He rubbed his eyes and listened again. It was silent. He opened his tent flaps and looked up at the sky, noting that it was not morning at all but still the middle of the night. He never opened up his tent before sunrise. It was odd to have woken up so easily. As Thomas laid back down on his bedroll, his mind began racing. His thoughts landed on that ridiculous trinket that was probably tucked safely inside Emmett’s satchel right at that moment. Thomas felt a chill run down his spine. Was it the cold air invading the tent or something attached to the trinket making him shudder? He didn't want to think on it. Still, if he was already awake, he figured he’d check on the site and make sure everything was normal.
Thomas peeled back the tent flaps and walked out into the icy air. He immediately clutched his coat around him tighter and buried his head as far as it could go inside the collar. He went over to Will’s tent first and listened for the man’s heavy snoring, but he heard none.
“Will?” Thomas whispered so as to not wake Emmett. Will didn’t answer. It wasn’t unusual, of course, as they could all sleep through the end of the world if it happened, but no matter how many times Thomas reminded himself of this fact, he had an uneasiness about the situation that was eating him alive. He opened the flaps of Will’s tent enough to peek inside, and he saw that it was empty. Thomas stood up straight and furrowed his brow. He shot his eyes out into the forest to try to see if the man had left to go take a leak, and the harder he examined the dark woods, he started to see a faint light in the thick of it. He grabbed his own lantern and lit it and trudged out into the woods just enough to get a closer look. It was indeed a light.
“Will? “Will, you out there?”
A wail that reminded Thomas of an elk drifted through the forest. It made Thomas step back a few feet and widen his eyes at the alarming harshness of it. And the more Thomas thought on the sound and played it over in his head, the more unsettling it sounded, and the likelihood that it was an elk wore off.
“Will?”
The cry came again, and this time it was shriller. Thomas’s mind instantly went to Will, and he took off in a sprint towards the light. “Will! I’m coming!”
The more and more Thomas ran, the farther it seemed that the light was. He stopped in place and breathed in and out heavily as he tried to catch his breath and calm down. Thomas shined the lantern all around him but could see nothing except the strange light still dancing in the distance. As his eyes scanned the trees, his thoughts were invaded by what Emmett had said around the campfire.
“They almost look like the long, brittle finger or arm bones of a witch. Like there’s a million witches out there all around us standing up against each other watching those that watch them who think they’re just trees.”
Thomas swallowed hard and shut his eyes tightly. He tried to douse out the raging fire of fear growing in his mind with reason, but no matter how much he tried to talk sense into himself, the more Emmett’s voice kept speaking those words over and over again in his head. The cracking of tree limbs echoed from the right and then from the left. And the trees began to look like long, skinny legs walking around him. And the branches looked like desiccated arms hanging limply with sharp fingers. And some of them looked like stretched-out corpses that reached the stars above him. And the elk-human wail wrapped itself around the trees and cut through the frigid air like butter directly to Thomas’s ears. As he looked back towards the campsite, frozen in fear, his eyes could not find the smoke in the air nor the blurry golden glow of flames in the distance.
There was a sharp snap then in the forest, but Emmett didn’t hear it. He only shifted onto his side and started snoring.
The sun was bright that morning, and its yellow brilliance filled Emmett’s canvas tent without difficulty. He stretched and yawned before pulling back the opening of his tent to start a pot of coffee for himself and the men. It was strange. He was always the last one awake. Always. Yet, Thomas and Will’s tents were shut. Emmett scrunched his nose and cocked his head to the side as he regarded the tents. He waited around for another ten minutes, drinking his coffee and breathing in the fresh morning air that still held its icy tendrils from last night. Once Emmett finished his coffee, he decided that angering Thomas by waking him up was better than losing valuable daylight.
“Thomas, wake up,” Emmett bellowed, shooting his voice over at the man's tent.
Nothing.
“Thomas!”
Nothing.
Emmett walked over to the tent and leaned down closer to the opening. “Oh, wake up, you lazy sod!" He recoiled at that last bit, knowing that he had taken the liberties of those words a little too far with the cantankerous man. But Emmett didn’t hear any angry shouting from within Thomas’s tent. Not even the sound of movement. Emmett opened one of the flaps to look in. Thomas was gone.
“Thomas?” Emmett shouted around the campsite.
Nothing.
Emmett went over to Will’s tent and yelled for him to come out, but he didn’t hear any response or movement from the older man either. Emmett ripped open Will’s tent and saw that he, too, was missing.
“Thomas! Will!" he called, over and over and over again, all around the clearing in every direction.
Nothing.
Emmett tried to steady himself and looked at the woods surrounding him. He cupped his hands together around his mouth and shouted as loudly as he could muster, “Thomas! Will!”
Emmett gathered his rifle and satchel and slung them both over his shoulder before venturing into the woods. He was grateful for the bright sun, and the birds chirping around him as he made his way deeper in. The trees stood around the boy as nothing more than trees. Once he was deep within the forest, yet still comfortably within eyeshot of the camp, his boots crunched down onto something sturdy and unusual.
He looked down and saw Thomas and Will.
Their bodies had been snapped down the middle and pulled apart and their faces held a frozen expression of horror that stretched their mouths and eyes into terrible, unrecognizable forms. Blood covered the ground underneath them. Emmett screamed out and jumped away from the bodies, pulling out his rifle and aiming it around the area, expecting someone to come upon him, but the forest was as silent as death. Emmett sunk to his knees and placed the rifle on the ground as he examined his poor, unfortunate friends, questioning the peculiarity of their demise and shooting his eyes around him every minute in fear of being the next victim. His eyes went blank and his guts churned as he reached into his satchel and pulled out the frightening Native American trinket. Memories invaded his mind then—bits and pieces of foreign words and a conversation he had had with Will weeks prior after the Indian had given him the teeth and hair charm.
The Crow Indian had spoken something in Siouan with wide eyes, but then he had poorly mumbled a translation in English for Emmett to understand. “They walk. She. She walks. They walk.” The man had then placed the trinket in Emmett’s hands and walked away.
Later on, Emmett had asked Will if he knew a bit of Siouan, and he had nodded. When repeating the Native American man’s words to Will, he had snorted and said, "They do odd ramblings, Emmett. Do you know why he would have said that?”
Emmett had kept the existence of the trinket hidden from Will, so he had simply replied with a shrug.
“It roughly translates to ‘the black trees.’ Something like ‘the black trees walk, and that they’re ‘not trees’ and she walks, or they walk,” Will had remarked with a wave of his hand, “Who the hell knows. They say strange things, Emmett, no need to take it as anything more than that.”
Comments