The Trees Have Eyes

by Tobias Wade

  But there was nothing but darkness in the window.

  “Aw, honey, there’s nothing there!”

  “No, he was theeeeeere!” I started sobbing.

  “Shh, honey, it’s just the storm, it’s scary, I know.”

  “No,” I sobbed. “Someone was there!”

  Mommy bent down, holding my shoulder.

  “It’s ok sweetie, daddy will check if someone is outside. Don’t worry!”

  Daddy got up, and walked over to the door. He looked out the little window, and went to open the door. The moment he pushed down on the handle, the door slammed open. A gust of wind brought the rain all the way into the house, and I was soaked in a second. I screamed again at the sheer shock of the natural force out there. My dad, ever my hero, poked his head outside and looked around. He jerked back, and slammed the door close. When he turned around, he was pale as a ghost.

  “Nothing there,” he choked out, doing little to reassure me. “Nothing at all!”

  “Daddy, I saw a man!”

  “Sweetheart, there’s nothing there,” he tried again in a calmer voice, locking the door behind him. “But know what? I think you should spend the night with mommy and daddy!”

  “Why did you lock the door?” I asked suspiciously. Scared? My dad was never scared, what was happening? I cried even harder.

  I heard him take a deep breath, saying: “Nobody is out there sweetie, I told you so!”

  But then he switched to English so that I wouldn’t understand, and spoke quickly in a low, tense voice. I had my head buried in mommy’s shoulder, so I couldn’t see their expressions, but I noticed mommy’s sharp intake of breath.

  “What?” I sobbed, “What is it?”

  “Oh, nothing sweetie, just something wrong in the garden, you know, the water…” he trailed off.

  Another terse exchange in English.

  “Ok, hun, right now, you and me are going to bed, and daddy will call some people about the—about what’s wrong in the garden.”

  “What’s wrong in the garden?” I asked suspiciously. “The man is still there, right? He is! I know it!”

  “Nonono, baby, nothing serious. Come here, we’ll sleep in the big bed together tonight! Won’t that be fun?”

  I scowled at her, furiously wiping the tears in my eyes. I knew they were hiding something. I knew it. She led me into the living room, closing the kitchen door behind us. I could hear my dad talking on the phone.

  “…days?! No, we can’t wait for days, there’s a—”

  “Jon!” mommy yelled, “We can hear you!”

  He lowered his voice, and the rest of the conversation was lost to me.

  The storm raged for three whole days—the three most boring days of my life. My parents decided to board up the windows, claiming they were worried about the wind, so I couldn’t even look out. And I wasn’t allowed to leave the house. It wasn’t fair, all my life I had been told “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes,” shoved into rain gear, and pushed out the door to play. And now, when I wanted to, I wasn’t allowed. They wouldn’t even let me listen to the radio. I just sat in my chair reading, while mommy paced up and down the living room, and daddy cleaned his shotgun even though hunting season was months away.

  Three whole days of this. I was sure I would lose my mind.

  I didn’t notice the wind dying down. But on the morning of the fourth day, I heard a new sound, one I had never heard before. It was far away at first, but approached rapidly. A rhythmic succession of thudding sounds, like a flag flapping in strong wind. But the flag wasn’t up?

  “Moommy?” I yelled. “What’s that sound?”

  “Sound?” she said. “I can’t hear—Oh, that’s a helicopter! Oh thank the lord, they’re coming for us. Jon!”

  “Who is?”

  “Oh. Well, erm, the police, sweetie. Because of—well, the road.”

  “We get to ride in a helicopter?” I said. “A real one?”

  “We’ll see honey.”

  A couple more hours inside the house, and then I really did get to ride in a helicopter. I craned my head around as mommy led me across the lawn; the police had strewn stuff all over, and part of it was covered by a big tarp.

  I had to sit down with a sketch artist to draw the man I had seen. “It was probably just a nightmare,” my dad assured me, “but just in case it wasn’t and someone misses him, the police want to know what he looked like. Don’t worry about it!”

  And I never did. It’s amazing of what you can convince a child.

  ***

  I leaned back in my chair. The memory had left a bad taste in my mouth. How had I never questioned these events?

  I started flipping through the newspaper faster and faster. For every new day, there was another horrifying headline, as details became known to the press.

  “Unidentified male victim’s death ruled a homicide”

  “Murder victim was found decapitated”

  “Head of murder victim not found”

  “No leads on murder—police claims storm washed away evidence”

  I shuddered as the sketch of the man I had seen in the window rolled across the screen.

  “Eyewitness rendering of man likely connected to murder case”

  A bit more hesitant now, I scrolled on. The next headline that hit me like a punch to the gut:

  “Family trapped for three days due to storm, decapitated corpse in their garden, murderer still on the loose.”

  A quick Google search gave me all the details of the case.

  The man in the sketch had never been identified, neither was the victim. Not a single clue ever turned up. All they knew was that two men had walked through the storm, through the woods and up—or down—the steep hills surrounding our house, and, once practically at our doorstep, one had cut the head off the other, taken it with him, and disappeared forever.

  Northern Lights

  I never wanted to go on that stupid hike in the first place. Yet there I was, allegedly enjoying nature and getting healthy exercise while hiking from cabin to cabin in the Norwegian mountains with the devil spawn commonly referred to as “my classmates.” Wohoo, right? For a misanthropic misfit like myself, it was a nightmare.

  It just took half an hour of struggling along the uneven path over the heather for me to end up at the very back of the group.

  “Hey man, how’s it going there?” Nils, the teacher, asked in a cheery tone.

  “Fucking amazing,” I growled.

  In spite of the cool wind, sweat was beading on my forehead, and my breath was growing short. I glared at Peter and Jon, who were bouncing along at the front of the group. Of course the most popular guys in my class would also be the best hikers. Assholes.

  “So, Anders, do you go hiking often?”

  “Do I go hiking often?” I said. “Look at me, teach, do I look like I fucking go hiking often?”

  I gestured to my pudgy body, glaring at him.

  “Then what do you like to do?”

  “Computer stuff,” I answered curtly. “So is this temporary, or are you gonna try to make awkward small talk the whole time?”

  “Well, I didn’t think it was awkward, but if that’s how you feel...”

  I looked up to find Peter and Jon out of sight—damn soccer players and their mutant lungs—and I used the opportunity to take in the scenery. Misshapen, warped birch trees were scattered over the alternating yellowing grass and purple heather. Mountains cascaded towards the sky on both sides, towering over us. It was quite breathtaking.

  Now that the devil spawn was out of sight and lame ass Nils had shut up, I found myself almost enjoying it. In fact, I realized the whole experience would have been quite pleasant if all those fuckers would just go ahead and die. I kicked at a rock, and tripped.

  “Hey there, be careful, buddy!” Nils said, catching my arm to steady me. “Don’t wanna go and get injured on the first day, do we now?�
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  I sent him a death glare, and we kept walking in silence.

  By the end of the third day, I was not just at the rear, but pretty much in a whole other hiking party then the rest of my class. My body ached from the strain, and Nils had long ago abandoned any attempt at small talk.

  When the last cabin was finally within eyeshot, the sun had disappeared behind the mountains, and we were hiking by that gloomy, blue half-light that lingers long after the northern sun sets. The cabin loomed in the distance. What we called a cabin was really a set of small, red cabins, an empty campground, and a rather large main house. It could easily house a hundred people, probably way more with the campground open. It looked out of place there, in the middle of the bare mountains.

  I was completely exhausted when I finally managed to drag my fat ass to the front door of the main house. As I pulled it open, I was immediately hit in the face with the laughter, shouting, and all the other sounds of general youthful tomfoolery. Damn devil spawn. A sour feeling spread though my guts; I was missing out on all of this. I had no idea how to socialize with these people. God, I wished they’d all just die, maybe then I’d get some peace and quiet.

  “So, Anders, it seems the rest already finished dinner, I guess it’s just you and me now!”

  I groaned at the prospect. To add insult to injury, the dining room was at the other side of the common room. I looked down at the linoleum floor as I walked through the room, face burning as I endured the laughter of my peers. They were clever enough to not directly mock me, but I knew what they were thinking.

  Nils and I sat down at one of the long tables in the empty dining room, and I stuffed myself full of the cold pasta as he chatted easily. A friend of his ran this place, it was technically closed for the season, but he had gotten us in here as a favor. That’s why there weren’t any staff around; they’d dropped off food earlier that day, and now we had the whole place to ourselves. So there we were, thirty kids, two teachers, and the vast, empty space that stretched between the mountains.

  “Eerie when you think about it, right?” he said, winking. It was.

  I got up from the table as soon as I could, with every intention of going straight to bed. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves enough to walk through the common room again. Laughter rang through the door, filling the dining room, taunting me with happiness and camaraderie I was sure I’d never experience.

  I opened the door, and felt their eyes on me as I shuffled through the room. “You can’t even look at us,” they mocked. “You can’t even keep up on a hike.” “Fat loser, go home, we don’t want you here.” Nobody actually said anything out loud, but I knew they were thinking it.

  I walked quickly to the room I was sharing with Peter, Jon and another kid. The assholes had left me a bottom bunk, like they were such nice people. Probably too scared to sleep below fatty, I thought bitterly, glaring at the pine bunk. They’d probably laughed about it, too. I wanted to be in bed, asleep or believably pretending to be when they got here; they didn’t need to see my pudgy pale tummy, or smell the sweat that had permeated all my clothes. And anyway, the place was completely outside cell range. Without my trusty internet I had little to live for, let alone to stay awake for.

  I curled up under the duvet, and the exhaustion drowned out my usual self-depreciating internal monologue. I was asleep in minutes.

  I woke up in a panic in the middle of the night. The room was pitch black, and I just knew someone was standing over my bed, looking at me. My heart was pounding in my throat, as I lay there for what felt like hours. Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened, I tried to tell myself. I was being silly, I was safe, there was nothing but miles and miles of empty woods around here where anything could be hiding, could have followed us, could have seen us, defenseless, alone, NO! You’re safe, don’t be silly.

  How the hell had they made the room this dark? Where was the crack in the curtain, the red standby lamp on a device? I wanted to turn on the light, to see what was there, but I didn’t want to wake up the others. Guess I was more scared of their taunting eyes than I was of the crazy axe murderer that definitely was in the room. As a sort of compromise I decided to go to the bathroom. I sat up, swung my legs off the side of the bed, and felt around for my shoes. I snuck out the door, flicked the switch in the hallway, and glanced back into the room. Nothing there, of course. I just had to make sure.

  I padded down the hallway, the ugly red wall to wall carpet muffling the sounds of my steps. I shuddered as I opened the bathroom door; it was freezing. Some idiot had left the window open. I did my business, and shuffled over to the window to close it while rubbing my arms with my hands. I stretched out an arm to grab the handle, and froze.

  The night sky was visible through the window, and I had seen—it couldn’t be, not this far south, right? It could be, of course, but… really?—soft green light spreading across the starry sky. It was the first time I saw them: northern lights.

  I bounced down the hallway, and snuck into my dark room. I grabbed a coat and my phone, and was halfway out the door before I thought to wake up the others. They’d probably love to see the lights as much as I would.

  Screw them, not like they’d wake me up if the tables were turned.

  The grass crunched as I walked across it, the frost that now covered the ground glittering in the strange green light from the sky. A green blob stretched across the darkness, flickering slightly as if there was a strong wind up there. The lights weren’t particularly strong or defined, but I don’t know anything else that can turn the night sky green like that. The fear I had felt when I woke up had drained from my body, and I was mesmerized by the pure beauty of the natural show. I stood there for hours, not moving until my whole body started shaking violently and I realized I was in danger of hypothermia.

  I shuffled back to the door, and cast one more glance at the sky before I opened it. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness outside, and I snuck down the hallway without turning the lights on. I didn’t want the grim, fluorescent light burn out the beautiful memory of the Aurora. The little light on my phone was enough to identify my room. I paused outside the door, sighing, and quickly slipped inside. I curled up under the warm duvet, and fell asleep.

  I woke up, stretched my arms over my head and yawned loudly. I groped around on the floor for my phone, and closed one eye as the bright screen blinded me.

  10:37

  Immediately I was wide awake. Shit, shit, shit, breakfast at 7:30, hiking by 8:30, why the hell had nobody woken me up? I jumped out of bed, almost hitting my head on the bunk above me in the darkness. The blinds were down, the room dark. I flipped the switch on the wall, but nothing happened. I groped around for my clothes, struggling briefly as my head got stuck in the sleeve of my sweater. I opened the door. The corridor was dark too, the place dead quiet. A chill ran down my spine.

  Had they left me behind as a prank? No, Nils would never have agreed to that. Would he? I pictured his flustered face as I shut down his every attempt at small talk. Maybe he would. A slow burn of worry started in my gut as I thought of the miles and miles of empty wilderness surrounding me. All that empty space, the long lonely road. The road! Yeah, someone would have to come get me, I wouldn’t have to hike anymore. Maybe this was all for the best. Actually they had probably just cancelled the hike, and all the kids were in the dining room now.

  I set off to find people or food, preferably both.

  The common room and the dining room were both empty. They looked so much bigger today, when it was only me in them. I crossed my fingers that I’d find some leftovers in the kitchen. I pushed open the door with the “staff only” sign, shuffled across the linoleum floor, and opened the fridge. A big smile spread across my face as I took in the sight in front of me. Is there anything more beautiful than a fully stocked fridge?

  I made myself a sandwich, and munched on it while trying to decide what to do next. I went to make a second one, and paused, staring at the
packed fridge. Enough food to feed thirty kids and then some. Hadn’t anyone else eaten? Again, the image of the vast heather, the lonely road, the cabin that looked like it had been copy-pasted into the wilderness. Anything could be hiding out there, in the mountains, in the rooms—oh god, the rooms. There were so many empty rooms, empty cabins, closed doors. Closed doors with god knows what behind them.

  I should have checked the rooms. Why hadn’t that been my first move?

  Panic spread again; I had to do something before I was completely paralyzed by it. I took a deep breath, got to my feet, and left the kitchen. My footsteps rang through the cavernous dining room. My heart was pounding in my throat when I snuck down the long hallway, past door after door, the only light what seeped in from the window at the far end. The gloomy sky outside did little to provide light, and even less to assuage my fears. I stopped in front of my room. It felt like a safe place to start.

  I pushed the handle, and the door slid open without a sound. The room was as dark and quiet as ever. I crossed the room in two long strides, and groped around for the string to the blinds. I tugged at it, and jumped slightly as the sound of the curtain rolling up rang through the room.

  I turned around, and to my great surprise found Peter sleeping peacefully in his bed. Relief flooded through me. I wasn’t alone.

  “Peter!” I croaked. I cleared my throat. “Peter!” I repeated a little louder.

  No response. I stared at him, wondering why he was still there. And why he looked so oddly… still.

  I took a step toward him.

  “Peter…” I whispered, heart pounding in my throat.

  I reached out, grabbed his arm under the covers, and shook.

  No response. He seemed totally dead.

  The thought hit me like a ton of bricks. Dead? No. No way. Absolutely not. I forced my shaking hand towards his neck to check for a pulse. My fingertips made contact with his icy skin, and I knew. He must have been dead for hours. My knees buckled under me, and I crashed to the floor. Peter was dead? He was just lying there, he had been lying there for hours. Right next to me, and I had walked in and out of the room, I had eaten breakfast, I had slept there, right next to his corpse. Oh god.