Tales From The Ancient Forest

“Listen,” Joey urged the other two as they stood at the edge of the forest. He glanced around, searching for the source of the deep thrumming he’d heard moments ago.

“C’mon, stop being a wuss,” Will said, taking a few more steps into the forest.

Joey looked back at the three bikes sitting on the crumbling dead-end road, the road to nowhere that they took to get here. There were legends about this forest, about why that road was never completed. Maybe they were just stories, meant to keep kids out of the woods. Maybe they were stories the kids at school had told him to frighten him. Stories of why that road abruptly ended and had been left for nature to slowly reclaim. The road was supposed to cut right through Hannock forest to the town on the other side. The story goes that for many years they tried to complete the road, but every crew eventually abandoned the project, scared away by the haunted forest. Joey had moved to this town with his parents and sister only a year ago. When Joey had come home from school upset about the haunted forest, his father had dismissed the story. His father couldn’t believe that even the adults in their new town regarded the forest with a level of unwarranted wariness. The crews that had tried to build the road would run into normal construction problems; equipment would break down or someone would get hurt and they’d get it in their heads that the ghost stories were real. So, roads in the town went in every direction but one, and the side of the town that butted up against the forest never saw new construction.

As Will continued to goad him, Joey put on a brave face and stepped off the crumbling road to follow Will into the forest. Joey’s younger sister, Sammy, sensing his nervousness appeared beside him to take his hand.

“What’s a matter?” Sammy asked quietly. Despite being only 10, two years younger than Joey, she had always been the braver sibling.

“Don’t you know? He’s afraid of the old man in a tree,” Will mocked, swinging a stick to knock down the brush in front of him as he trampled deeper into the forest.

“Who?” Sammy asked.

“He’s a ghost who haunts the forest and eats scared little kids,” Will said, a smirk on his face as he looked back at Sammy, who griped Joey’s hand tighter. Will’s eyes glanced to their clasped hands, “Aw Joey, do you need your little sister to protect you from the big bad ghosts?”

Joey let go of his sister’s hand, “Will, don’t scare her,” he retorted feebly to his classmate, “plus he isn’t a ghost, he is a spirit.”

Will sneered at that, but was too preoccupied to reply as he hunted down a sharp rock and began to carve his name deeply into the trunk of a tree. Sammy bristled and looked up at Joey, upset by the defacement of nature, but Joey tried to spare himself the embarrassment of his little sister lecturing his classmate by launching into the story of the spirit that haunts the forest. It was a tale he’d heard many renditions of at school in the year since he’d moved to the town. The basics of the tale went something like this:

A long time ago, an ancient tribe, that called this forest by a long forgotten name, lived in harmony with nature deep within its woods. The leader of that tribe believed it was their sacred duty to protect the trees and all that lived beneath their canopy. One day, the tribe leader climbed into the largest tree in the forest and the spirit of the ancient oak that he stood upon spoke to him. He was so honored that one of nature’s spirits would speak to him that he vowed to never leave that tree and from that day forward, his tribe would do as the forest commanded. Every morning, from high in the tree, he would wake his tribe with the sound of drums and the tribe would hear the call and do as the forest asked. No creature, man nor mammal, could enter the forest without him knowing, for his spirit could talk to those of the trees. He grew very old in that tree, and before he died, the forest bestowed a gift to him. The spirit of the ancient oak entwined itself with that of the man, and he became part of the tree so that he could live on, protecting the forest for a thousand years to come. Now it is said among the townspeople, that no one may set foot in the forest, least they meet the wrath of his spirit that haunts what remains of the ancient forest.

“Boo!” Will yelled as Joey finished the story.

Joey jumped slightly, but Sammy, braver than her age, stood tall and said, “Oh shut up.”

Joey had left out the parts about the people that had gone missing over the years. He’d wanted to distract his sister, not frighten her. Unfortunately, distracting her was meant to prevent further embarrassment, but now he was sure Will had noticed his jumpiness and his sister’s instinct to protect him. Joey flushed with embarrassment and, trying to hide his face, picked up a small stone to toss deeper into the woods. Will, finished with his carving and wanting to show-up the much smaller boy, heaved his carving rock into the forest as hard as he could. The rock disappeared into the thick underbrush and struck a tree with a thud. The noise reverberated through the forest, thud thud thud, in a steady rhythm. Joey turned in a circle, unnerved by the eerie echo punctuated only by a sudden wind that whistled through the trees. Was it just him, or had the forest grown suddenly darker around him?

“Just an echo, you big wimp,” Will crossed his arms tightly as he looked down at Joey.

Thrum thrum thrum, the noise came again, deeper this time, less like the sound of a rock hitting a tree and more like the deep thrum of a drum. Will anxiously glanced around.

Thrum thrum thrum thrum thrum

 “Nice try but you aren’t scaring me! Come out before Joey wets himself over there,” Will’s said in a sarcastic tone that was laced with an undercurrent of suppressed fear.

They waited in the silence of the forest for another few moments before the thrum of a drum started again, and that time, it didn’t stop. The beating started to get louder as if it was coming closer to them.

Thrum Thrum Thrum Thrum.

The wind began to whip the branches of the trees violently about as the air turned dark and stormy. Will turned frantically and ran, pushing past Joey in his haste to get out of the forest. The shove sent Joey stumbling back, his feet became tangled in a raised root and he careened to the ground. Sammy raced over to him and knelt in the dirt beside him.

“Are you ok?” She asked.

Joey didn’t answer at first, too preoccupied as he listened for the drum, but the drumming had stopped, and the branches of the trees around him were still, unmoved by wind. Joey brushed dirt from the shallow stinging cuts on his arm from where he’d landed in a patch of small thorny bushes. “I’m fine, let’s go home,” he said, standing, he wiped his dirty hands on his filthy jeans. Joey turned to start home, but then turned again. Which way was home? There was nothing but forest as far as he could see. He looked in the direction Will had run, but there was no sign of the larger boy. Joey was pretty sure that Will had been running the wrong way. Joey looked up through the dense canopy of leaves that shaded them, the sky was beginning to darken with the colors of twilight. Sweat pricked at Joey’s skin and his heart raced as he looked at the sky with the growing realization that they were lost. Sammy tugged gently at his sleeve, “Look,” her voice filled with awe as she pointed excitedly at a shaft of light that twinkled in the growing darkness. Joey looked closer, this wasn’t just a single shaft of light; it was more like an illuminated path where light shown through the forest canopy.

Before Joey could protest, Sammy was pulling him down this shimmering path of light. After a few seconds of letting himself get dragged behind his little sister, he stopped, planning to tell her that they shouldn’t go this way… but what way should they go? It would only frighten her if Joey admitted that they were lost, so when Sammy tugged at his hand again, he continued to follow her. As he followed her, the forest grew less dense and easier to navigate. It was as if Sammy had known exactly where she was going all along.

They emerged from the forest onto the abandoned road as the final rays of daylight faded away. Joey and Sammy collected their bikes and walked in silence side by side down the cracked, overgrown road. The unspoken question of why Will had not claimed his bike yet hung thick in the air between them. They didn’t look back, but if they had, they’d have seen a slender tendril of a tree root wrap around Will’s abandoned bike and slowly pull it into the dark forest.