Darker Tide

Darker Tide - Part 2

Somehow Robbie got Elias back onto the treehouse platform and they moved apart trembling and unspeaking. For a long time they stayed like that, as if by talking they might allow the screaming to start again. All around them the night thickened between the trees and the wood stood silent save for the tortured creaking of trees as their roots were found by the dark tide. The cicadas and their endless song were gone, leaving a hole in the night that seemed to throb.

Elias huddled in on himself, trying to present as small a target to the world as possible. His hand throbbed where he had touched the oak's altered bark and James's screaming still echoed in his ears. He wanted to be home. He wanted his bed. He wanted normal things about him again.

Eventually Robbie produced a small flashlight and poked the beam out into the darkness between the trees. It made little difference.

"Look." Robbie pointed at the edge of the platform. It had been an hour since James vanished, or maybe five minutes. "No, don't move. Look at the nails." He shone his light for Elias to see by.

Elias turned slowly to inspect the nearest of the four-inch nails they had hammered through the board supports to anchor the base of the treehouse to the oak's branches. A black resin was oozing from the tree's wounds and all along the exposed part of the nails a patina of rust had crept, like frost on a windowpane.

"When it changed ... when the dark changed it ... the tree did something to our rope," Robbie said. "It'll let this whole platform tip if it can. Spill us over."

Elias peered over the edge without approaching it. The planks hid the base of the oak and he couldn't see much of the other trees through the night but in Robbie's light he could make out the black surface through which the trunks emerged. A darker darkness. It looked to be at least a yard deep around the neighbouring beeches.

"What are we gonna do?" he asked.

"Nothing we can do." Robbie hugged his knees to his chest. "Wait."

"For what?"

"For morning." A shrug. "For help."

And so they waited. Neither of them prepared to talk about their friend or what waited for them under that black flood.

"Do you think it will reach us? Up here, I mean?" Robbie asked the question that had been haunting Elias.

"I think it comes up higher each night," Elias said.

"But this high?" Robbie's face made a white blur in the darkness.

"I don't know."

Elias didn't imagine he would sleep, but he did. A fitfully dream-plagued sleep full of running from unseen horrors. He woke twice to find himself close to the edge and after that he and Robbie nailed their belts to the boards then did them up around their waists again.

Finally, against all expectations that this was to be a night without end, a grey dawn fingered its way between the branches. Birdsong pierced the quiet, hesitant but real. Elias blinked, undid his belt and levered himself up. He nudged Robbie with his foot. "It's gone."

Cautiously he moved to where he could see the ground. The soil was blackened, the trees and undergrowth altered and sinister, but the liquid darkness had retreated.

"W-whut?" Robbie tried to rise and failed, anchored by his belt.

"It's gone. Drawn back." Like the sea.