Trees

Chapter 1

It was a brisk October morning. Emma was getting dressed when something caught her eye in the field outside. A tree. This tree was new. Emma knew because her room faced that field. Regardless of season, Emma looked at the field daily. But never in her twelve years of living, was there ever a tree in the middle of it.

The tree was an ordinary tree. A tall oak with thick branches perfect for climbing and a large trunk Emma knew from where she was standing she could never get her arms all the way around. Emma frowned. How could it have grown overnight? “MOM!” She called to her mother, who was frantically packing lunches downstairs. “MOM!”

“What is it honey?”

“You have to come here and see this!” “Mom look!” Her mother lifted her gaze to where Emma’s finger pointed and joined her at the window.

“What am I looking at?”

“Don’t you see it? The tree”

“What tree?”

“The big one in the field outside!”

“Ah yes, its very pretty Emma. Now get dress-.” A loud crash was heard from downstairs, followed by a loud “MOM!” from Emma’s younger brother.” Her mother turned and hurried down the stairs. Emma rolled her eyes and looked at the time. She forgot all about the tree as she turned her attention to her closet.

Chapter 2

Danny was startled from his sleep by the shrill sound of his phone ringing. “’Ello” He answered gruffly.

“You still in bed?” Danny groaned in response to his very awake sounding father. “Well get up. Just got a call, its a weird one. I’ll meet ya there in 20.”

“Alright, text me the address”

“No need, apparently its right in the middle of main street.”

“What?”

“Told ya it was weird. Hurry up, I’m already in my way” With that, Danny hung up and raced to get ready. His father hated waiting.

Danny parked on a side and walked into the center of main eyes searching. He quickly located a large white pick up with the words RANDY AND SON TREE TRIMMIN. The G was faded and mostly gone but his dad left it anyway. “No one says the G anyway” he’d grumble. Danny stopped before he got into the vehicle, eyes growing wide. There, in the middle of main street, stood a tree. It was tall and impressively wide. An old oak. Growing straight from the ground, disrupting the donated brick pavers that hid been laid years before. Its canopy stretched across the two lane street and shaded the sidewalks and business below. The tree was still and had leaves changing color with the season as if it had always been there.

Danny met up with his father and the mayor who looked more irritated then concerned at the towering vegetation that blocked the street. “How long will this take?” The mayor asked.

“Well cutting it down can happen but stump removal…those roots have to be pretty deep.”

“How deep can they be? It appeared overnight!” Danny’s father gave him a weary look. “And exactly what type of tree grows overnight?”

“There isn’t one.” Danny interjected.

“I just want it gone.”

“We’ll take care of it” Danny responded. The mayor walked off in a huff. Danny turned to his father who was quiet, eyes concerned and brow furrowed. Danny raised an eyebrow in a silent question. His father shook his head “Weird”

For the rest of the afternoon, Randy and Son Tree Trimmin tried and failed to fell the oak. The buzz of chainsaw was constant. Wood shavings and saw dust flew, creating a pile at the base of the tree. When Danny pulled back there was no mark. Not a scratch. The tree was impervious to any tool. At one point his father took an axe to it, with no success. After hours of sweat, Randy called it quits for the day and drove off.

The bell at the top of the coffee shop rang, startling Julia. After an afternoon of constant noise, it was the first time she had heard it ring all day. Danny stepped in, frustrated. “Black coffee please. To go.” Julia rang him up and asked the question that plagued her all day.

“What’s going on with that tree?” Danny looked weary.

“I honestly have no idea, I’ve never seen anything like it. The tree won’t be cut down. It appeared over night. No, I don’t know how we’ll fix it.” Danny rattled off the answer, clear that he had been asked all day.

“I see. I suppose trees were here first. Maybe they want their land back.” Danny looked thoughtful.

“Maybe.”

Chapter 3

Emma was woke up terrified. Her house was shaking, knocking her trophies off the shelf. “MOM!” Emma screamed. Her mother burst in the room frenzied.

“EMMA! Its ok! Get under the dining room table. We’ll be safe there!” Emma ran down the stairs, crashing into the walls as she went. She dove under the table to join her little brother who was crying with his hands over his ears. Her mother was around them in an instant holding them close under the table as their home crashed around them. Emma thought she might be sick. She squeezed her eyes shut fearing if she opened them she would see the floor open beneath them and swallow them whole.

The shaking went on for almost five minutes. Then suddenly, it stopped. Emma’s mother cautiously stepped out from under the table. She surveyed the damage and after clearing some glass that had fallen, motioned for the kids to come out. Her mother tried the light switch, nothing. “Lets go look outside.” Emma felt her brother shaking and squeezed his hand as they walked out. As her eyes adjusted to the moonlight she could hardly believe the scene before her.

Trees. Trees were everywhere. Erupted from the ground with no regard for what was above them. There were at least three pines in their front yard. A maple tree had grown straight through a sedan parked across the street. A pickup had been tipped on its side to make way for another. The trees were a size that suggested decades of growth. People had begun trickling out of their homes, air heavy with fear. “What happened?” “Was it an earthquake? “Where are these trees from?” Dozens of questions with no answers. It was pitch black, the only light emanating from phone screens and the occasional flashlight.

“Its happening all over town, I called the sheriff. They don’t know anything!” “Nothing from the power company either!”

Emma watched as her mother took in chaos. Her eyes widened. “We have to go check on Ophelia.” Ophelia was an elderly neighbor her mother took care of as a nurse. After grabbing jackets and a flashlight the family made their way down the street.

They passed another tipped vehicle and an apparent burst water line on their way to Ophelia’s. Her mother had a key and walked in without knocking. “Ophelia!”

“In here!” Ophelia called. The old woman was sitting contently in the sun room facing the backyard. A scented candle was by her side and thick blanket was draped across her lap. Her eyes were trained on the backyard. Following her gaze Emma saw what had once been an open field was now a dense forest. The trees grew close together, without pattern. What was one an cozy backyard with a robust vegetable garden was now a tangled wood. Bits of Ophelia's white picket fence lay in pieces around the grove, and a rogue tomato from the former garden had rolled onto her back porch.

“They’re taking it back.” The old woman said softly, a content smile on her lips.

“Who?”

“The trees.”

Chapter 4

Danny spent the night with his father, relieved he was okay, though a thick pine tree sprouted through the garage. The two of them stood in what was left of the garage, gazing up at the tree that went clean through the roof. One wall had collapsed and was somehow already covered in ivy. Spreading into the garage, the ivy had covered Danny’s childhood bike and began curling around an old lawn chair. They had attempted to cut down the tree earlier with no success. Again. Even the twiggy birch that had sprouted in the front yard wouldn’t break. The power had not yet been restored and life had stopped. Children couldn’t go to school. No one went to work. As cellphone batteries died people wandered the streets. The road were all but unusable, trees growing erratically through them. People who were able to navigate around them packed what they could and left. Danny’s father shook his head when Danny suggested they follow suit.

“The truck can make it”

“No. My life is here. I’m sure help will arrive soon.”

“What help Dad?” Danny said gently. “If we can’t cut the trees down, what do you expect them to do? We have no power, we can’t even drive on the roads. Let’s pack the truck up and go, we can come back when someone figures out what its going on.”

“No. This is my home.” His father walked back into the house and that was it. Danny sighed and headed towards the center of town.

IT was 2pm when the shaking started again. Danny ran to the nearest building, falling into the door as the ground shook. Julia hastily opened the door and pulled him behind the counter. “WHAT IS HAPPENING?” She yelled. They looked through the glass door from their hiding spot behind the counter in horror. It was one thing to wake up to the trees and quite another to see them appear. The air was filled with the cracking of asphalt, the screams of locals as the ground was lifted from under them. The trees shot up with the steady speed of a climbing roller coaster, giving no pause to anything in their way. A nearby park bench was skewered and lifted from the concrete, bolts still attached to its base. The trees didn’t stop, they continued to rise one after the other until Julia and Danny could no longer see the shops on the other side of the street. Their view was soon blocked by sprawling ivy crawling over the glass door. A loud crack sounded as massive chestnut tree broke through the hardwood floor not even ten feet from them. Julia screamed as the counter began to tilt towards them, stacks of mug crashing around them. A sharp pain ran through Danny’s leg as a piece of flooring pierced his thigh. Danny scrambled to his feet, dragging a screaming Julia to the door. Bursting through the door, they hit the fractured sidewalk as everything went still.

Chapter 5

Emma and her family were packing their car to leave when the shaking began a second time. When it stopped, their street had changed again. No part of the road was drivable and the trees had sprung up close together, filling the spaces between the trees for the night before. There was the addition of ivy creeping over everything. Over stop signs, fencing, and cars the creeping green ivy was strangling their neighborhood. Like last time, Emma’s mother took them to check on Ophelia.

They found Ophelia on the floor in her sun room. Her mother rushed to her side, checking her pulse. Ophelia stirred and her mother sighed in relief. While her mother tended to Ophelia, Emma looked out into the forest in the backyard. The fence was gone now, the patio nothing but concrete mulch at the base of the trees. Looking back into the living room, Emma could see a tree had grown into the wall. IT branched had burst up the brick fireplace, its branched piercing the brick. A grandfather clock lay face down near the love seat pendulum turned sideways.

“Ophelia, you should sit, you need the rest.” Her mother put a gentle hand on Ophelia and attempted to guide her to a chair.

“I think I will” Ophelia said. She paused and looked and the state of her living room. A tear fell down her face. “I suppose they were here first.” She paused and looked at my mother. “You all need to get out of this forest.”

“I can pack you a bag.” Emma’s mother turned to leave.

“No.” Ophelia all but whispered.

“Ophelia, it will only take a minute I-“

“No. But thank you. Thank you for everything.” Her mother shook her head in confusion

“Ophelia…”

“It was always theirs anyway.” Before her mother could stop her, Ophelia opened the door and stepped into the trees. Emma’s mother ran out the door after her but stopped as the trees began to move again. Her eyes widened in horror as Ophelia was swallowed by the thick wood. As if it was suddenly granted permission, ivy and moss began to move over and into the house.

“OUT. NOW. RUN.” Emma’s mother shouted. Emma grabbed her brothers hand and ran through the living room, jumping over a branch rapidly emerging from the carpet. She burst through the front door with her mother at her heels, turning around in time to see the house shudder. Two more trees burst through the roof as a thick moss encased the home. In a matter of minutes Ophelia’s home was a mere memory. A crumbling memorial to a a life that no longer had a place here.

Her mother, never one for tears, drew a shaking breath. “We need to get out of this forest.”

Chapter 6

With roads completely inoperable, people began to wander. Most had their valuables on their back and were looking for answers. Somehow most of the town seemed to gather in the center of Main Street, right under the massive oak that appeared not forty eight hours ago. Danny limped over to his father, visibly relieved. His father embraced him before leaning down to inspect his wound. “Are you ok?”

“Survivable.” Danny, smiled encouragingly at his father. Julia appeared, having scavenged a first aid kit from somewhere. Danny wasn’t the only injury as people began looting the pharmacy for supplies. They were entering where the front door would be, had it not been pushed off the hinges by a rogue branch. The street held more trees then people as a group-seemingly led by the town sheriff -conversed. After much nodding, the Sheriff held up a bull horn.

“Attention, attention everyone. Now I know we are all scared but we have to stick together. In exactly one hour I will be leading a group down this main road towards the highway. I would advise all of you to join me. Our town is no longer safe. Something much bigger than us has decided that. Myself and these volunteers have looked as far out into the roads as we could. Its not something we can drive on.” This news was met with distressed murmurs in the crowd. “I know, I know. One hour folks, take only what you can carry. We will walk as group until we get through these trees. One hour.” This was met with shouts and questions from all sides of the area formerly known as main street.

Emma’s mother mouth was set in determination as she rushed the kids back to the house. “Pack only what you can fit in your backpack!” She called throughout the house as she raced around, deciding quickly what items to pack. “Jackets and hats! We leave in ten!” How her mother was treating this like a normal morning getting ready for school was a mystery to Emma. “Let’s go!” Her mother was the last to leave. Out of habit she turned to lock the door as the house began to shake. She jumped back, dropping her keys and pulled the kids to the road. Unlike the last time, it seemed only their house was affected. The house shook as more trees burst through the roof and windows. Like Ophelia’s the home was soon covered in ivy and moss. It began to crumble, sinking under the weight of the new vegetation. In minutes, it was all but gone. Wiping a rare tear from her eye her mother began guiding them back to center of town.

Chapter 7

The whole town, or what was left must have been there. Bearing backpacks of all sizes, duffle bags, and travel luggage the town turned out in droves to be led out of the forest. A couple people even pulled wagons. Danny grimaced in pain as he and his father found Julia in the crowd. She waved them over, wearing a massive backpack. Danny quirked an eyebrow and gestured to her bag. “I hike.” Julia smiled.

Emma and her family joined towards the back of the group and listened as the Sheriff raised his bullhorn.

“Alright folks, I don’t have any answers or great words of wisdom. But I know that as a unit we can get somewhere. Stay close, by all accounts the highway should only be about fifteen miles west. DO NOT STRAY FROM THE GROUP. We will get there together. Alright, let’s move out.” The group slowly began moving forward walking away from the large oak and deeper in the forest. As the town grew smaller behind them the ground began to shake. Panicked, Emma looked at her mother who had turned back to look at the town. She followed her gaze and watched as the the town behind them began to crumble. Trees shot up through the roofs of businesses and a thick moss blanketed the road. In a matter of minutes it was hard to tell it had ever been a bustling main street.

“I guess the trees wanted it back.” Danny’s father said to her mother as he walked past.

“I suppose they were there first.” Emma’s mother replied. They all turned forward as the shaking quieted and continued into the forest.