Tales of Horror

The Trees Have Eyes

The trees have eyes, and they see all.

Crimson drops stain the fine layer of snow that has fallen in the forest. They come from a girl who runs in a limping gate, gasping as she goes, desperate to get away. The trees have seen enough prey in their time to know a creature running for their life when they saw one, though this one is different than most. They shift their gaze to the hunter, a mile back, walking with his gaze on the ground. He walks slowly, confident in his abilities. A crossbow pokes over his shoulder, and a large knife hangs at his belt. It does not take skill for him to track her; her tracks in the snow are clear, and the blood droplets stand out against the white.

This man is not entirely unfamiliar to the forest; he was there days earlier, stashing gear in strategic points in the woods; burying weapons and bags amongst the roots of the trees, stringing them up in their branches. He carves marks into their bark. The trees remember that. Their branches groan in the wind that whistles amongst them.

As the wind blows, the girl begins to slow. She is crying, and a gash at her side is still leaking sticky blood. The hunter begins to catch up, raising the scope on his weapon until he can see her. He draws his bow and fires. A bolt whizzes past her head and sinks into the trunk of a tree. The girl cries out in terror and anger, adrenaline giving her a boost of energy. She rips the bolt from the tree, and veers to the left, running faster than before. The hunter smiles as she moves directions. She is not being hunted, but herded.

The trees watch the girl, with blood matting the hair on one side of her head, one side bleeding, running on what looks to be a fractured ankle. She does not know where she is going, but the trees do.

Ahead, past the hunter and his prey, is a trap. A pit the man spent many hours digging into the ground before he disappeared, returning with a bucket and several short, sharpened pikes. He stood next to the pit, dipping the tips of the pikes into the murky brown substance before climbing into the pit himself and jamming them securely into the ground, the tips of the pikes jabbing up towards the sky. He covered the pit with branches and leaves, and he left.

This is where he is herding her. A slow and agonizing death; if the impact didn't kill her, if the man didn't kill her, then infection surely would. For years and years the trees have watched hunter and prey, and they do not interfere. The trees are pitiless; they know that this is the way, the natural rhythm of the world. Birth, death, and the fight for survival in between.

There is a balance to be maintained in nature. The trees will not watch a hunter that plays with its prey, a prey that it will not eat but ill simply hide away, a prey that is tortured and then wasted. The trees see this, and felt the marks he left in their bark, and they grew angry.

Beneath the earth in the pit the hunter dug, the tree roots begin to move. They snake around the bottom of the pikes imbedded in the earth, and they slowly, slowly pull them down, until they are beneath the level of the dirt. A gentle wind blows through the trees, and the leaves whisper a secret to it. The wind carries the secret to the girl, who stops. She doesn't know what she is hearing, but a sense of deathly calm steals through her, and the animal fear that once filled her recedes.

Slowly, the girl steps backwards, careful to step directly into her own tracks. Biting her lip, she presses harder into her wound, quelling the blood at least for a moment, until she is standing directly beside a tree. A low branch offers refuge, and with what little strength she has left she grabs the branch and pulls herself. She moves steadily up the tree, still clutching the bolt from his bow in her hand, sticky with blood. The trees offer her a sanctuary, and she clutches their branches tightly, trying to slow her breathing.

Minutes later, the hunter approaches. The trees whisper a warning, and the girl stills, watching as he comes to a stop where her tracks suddenly end. He curses lightly under his breath, and moves backwards until he is standing beneath the tree. The girl slowly makes her way down the tree, the wind shaking the leaves of the tree to cover any sound she produces.

He looks up, and the girl drops down, jamming the bolt deep into his shoulder. The hunter cries out in pain and swipes out blindly with his knife, but the girl is no longer there. She disappears into the forest.

The hunter is disoriented, the wind is howling in his ears and pain sings through his shoulder, neck, and left arm. Blinded by rage, he stumbles after the girl, shouting obscenities. The wind has picked up, and the delicate snow that covers the forest floor swirls like a blizzard and whips at his face. He shuffles forward, holding up his good arm to try and shield his eyes, to see the girls tracks, but everything looks the same. The trees loom menacingly, their branches shaking and creaking in the wind.

Then the ground gives way beneath him, and he plunges into a pit, landing on his shoulder. He screams in pain, and simply lies in the hole, trying to control his breathing.

He is just beginning to realize the walls of his own trap when the earth begins shifting beneath him. He feels a piercing pain in multiple parts of his body as the pikes begin to poke from the earth. He thrashes, trying to get away, but the more he moves, the deeper the pikes becomes imbedded. The wind dies, and the forest is filled with the screams of a tortured animal. Spikes pierce his legs, his shoulders, his abdomen. Soon, the cries cut off. He is not dead, but the spike jutting from his chest promises that that will soon change.

The girl comes to the edge of the pit and stares down at him. He stares at her, and she cannot help but think that this squirming animal in the pit never deserved to live. She walks away, and the roots of the trees pull the spikes and the man back into the earth, and wrap him tightly in roots and rocks.