Another gem with nuggets of storytelling fodder. These ones are rare, and I can’t say this discovery made the story exceptional, but that is my fault alone. So come, enter the ancient treeline to follow a man named after one of those which is absent.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Andrej Rempel
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZGwoa8
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Birch trudged through a forest that had none. The behemoths around him had no names he knew. All they did was loom dark, layered with prehistoric scabs that had never been picked.
He rested at the foot of one and went to try at one of those scabs, because he couldn’t be the only one out here bleeding. Not one gave. Maybe they were scales, armor of creatures yet to be awakened.
His flannel was a mess of sticky blood, and when he undid the buttons, each one a painful excursion, his naked torso was bare to the moonlight that cast on him like broken glass. He moved just to be sure the illusion wasn’t his own infected flesh, because that’s how he felt. Like he wasn’t his own anymore.
The last barn hadn’t been right. Too close to town, too clean, too well kept. It had been the third barn. But it hadn’t been a charm. He always hated that saying. Made him think of what got him into this ordeal, but just as he honed in on that memory, it was gone, lost to the trees.
“I’m not myself anymore,” Birch said, his voice vibrations through a long string tied to his ear drum. It itched. He scratched it, then examined his finger. No blood there at least. No parasites wedged under his nail.
“Get up,” he said. And he did, pulled by a something. He held his slick gut in case something might fall out.
“Heal,” he said. But the command didn’t work. And why would it? He wasn’t like her. That thought, like the first, dropped into a pit of tar.
The forest opened just when he needed it to. His knees staked themselves into the damp soil, so deep he though he might fall through. No such luck.
The sky flowed in gritty textures he could feel on his skin, the wash of moonlight filtering enough to make him feel naked out here, exposed. Tree cover had been all he’d known since entering the forest. Corpses of gray trees, some fallen, some not, cut the scene harder than the moon. He shielded his eyes, then peeked under his hand, which cupped the top of a dilapidated roof of a barn with two open doors, like eyes on a head sunken to the nose. Between those doors a foul gash rose to the roof’s peak. Made of flaky skin, it was ready to be peeled away by the softest breeze.
The air was dead still. He was dead still. Maybe that was his fate, to be a bleached messenger to ward off others who’d been cursed enough to find themselves here. Fate changed its mind. He was on his feet now, cold and bare and afraid. A swell of warmth produced a trickle that ran down his leg. Piss or blood wouldn’t make a difference.
“Fourth time’s a fortune,” Birch said. A saying that would most likely never leave this forest or this barn, but he was okay with that. Sometimes you deserved to keep treasures for yourself.
And so he set foot toward this barn, knowing, just knowing, this was the right one. It had to be. Every stride took something more from him, and he had little to give.
He caught his breath at the western door, where he swore he felt a tinge of the sun’s touch. He looked to the east, hopeful dawn would arrive soon. Facing the darkness ahead held a fiercer pain than what ate at his belly. Ate. That’s what it felt like. Something there gumming his flesh, nibbling away the softest ends to not alert him to its acts.
He made a fire to take his mind off it, to create a dawn all his own, and maybe, just maybe, the smoke would bring help.
Birch couldn’t rest. He was drawn inside to where the fire didn’t reach. Hay and twigs and bird bones crackled underfoot. Small things scurried to hide, kicking up the smell of mildew and rot. He’d fit right in soon enough.
He ignored it all, making his way to the center, where the barn’s gash let in a pattern of silver shaped like rows of arrowhead teeth. That’s where he sat, then lay, then lurched as something spilled out of him. And he was relieved, not unlike puking your guts out, catching your breath on the edge of the toilet, or wherever you found yourself. That moment of calm when you thought everything might be all right.
It wasn’t. When Birch allowed his eyes to open, he saw black stains that were not shadow trailing from his wound to where he could not see. But then he did see. Twin pearls regarded him, narrowed. Then another pair, and another.
He curled up in the patch of silver, hoping they would take him.
A draft of breath as old and black as the forest said, “Four.”
There were three, not four. But it could have been his addled mind, praising his genius from moments ago. When he saw the finger or tendril or twisted claw separate itself from the rest of the black, pointing right at him, he realized he hadn’t imagined it at all.
“Four,” it said again, coming from three locations as one. Him?
He guffawed, hacking out a glob of something, relief washing over him, though a devil in three lurked inches away.
That black finger elongated, bent with the pop of dry wood, and pointed to where dawn would be soon but a fire was now.
“More,” said the voices.
He knew just what they meant, what he was, and where he was going, for the first time in days.
“You are yourself,” Birch said. And he was, but not alone, not singular.
The threads of that connection didn’t dwindle with distance, and he didn’t have to look back to know the three of the four he was part of were watching him, expectantly, from the hollow of an old barn.