It’s a tradition, they said.
Now, what they meant by that was something particular. Lots of traditions out there, after all. Some of them nice, some of them nasty. Some of them get as much attention as a handshake, some of them get whole months set aside. Some of them only a few people left in all the world that half-remember, some of them everyone knows almost before they’re born.
This was a pretty small tradition. One neck of the woods. One handful of men. One campfire. One night. And an awful lot of stories.
Spooky ones, of course. There’s just something about the way those flames crackle and jerk and turn the whole world into warm-against-the-darkness that makes you start wondering what’s out there looking back in. It was all in good fun, all the stories were, but there was always that little demon of competition inside each of them, every one, that was trying to keep count of who could get the most of his friends squinting to the point of eye-puckeredness to preserve his night vision from those warm flames, aching to keep in sight of what might be out there.
There are limits, of course. Stephen told a story late one night four years ago. Nobody can quite remember what it was because nobody wants to remember it at all, but they almost froze to death waiting it out ‘till sunrise. Better that than a walk in the woods.
One year everyone got too sick to come out. Bad flu season. They almost couldn’t find the firepit next year; the trees had sown their leaves so thickly. Trying to cover up the unsightly blemish on their forest floor, no doubt.
The trees never did seem to warm up to them, or their fire, or their tradition. And maybe that’s not WHY what happened, happened. But it certainly didn’t help.
It didn’t help when Stephen tried to top his old story and failed and the trees creaked soft and slow.
It didn’t help when Louis tried to top that story and succeeded and the trees swayed gently in a barely-there breeze.
It didn’t help when it was Martin’s turn for his story and he kept stopping and starting because he couldn’t tell if he heard something or not and it was the trees rustling their leaves at him.
And it didn’t help when Roy decided to lighten everyone up and rouse their spirits with the latest rendition of their oldest, oldest, oldest favorite, as the trees watched them in that eyeless way trees have. It was a good old story, and it came out every few years. It was as much a part of tradition as the tradition was. And it went like this:
(Once upon a time there was a man, a tall, thin, long-legged man)
(He was strange and silent and so he lived alone, far, far off in the forest, on a small dirt road that wound its way all about the trees every which way)
He liked to whittle, someone would say at this point. That was about all he did. Whittled.
(One day a man found his way there – a merchant on the road. He was tired and cold and hungry and he was so friendly and genial that the tall, thin, long-legged man allowed his hospitality to overpower his misanthropy)
(And so the merchant stayed the night in the house of his strange host, and he marvelled at the fineness of the carvings that had coated nearly every wall, floorboard, beam and hoist and join)
(You could sell these, he said.)
(But the tall, thin, long-legged man frowned at the very notion, and made haste to excuse himself from conversation. It is for me, and me alone, he said. Good-night and good-bye.)
Some people are just like that, you know.
(And the merchant was left alone as his host retired to the tiny pallet in the rafters that was his sleeping-spot. And he pouted, as thwarted profit-seekers do. And then he had an idea.)
(There are so many. He can’t notice if I just take one.)
And there it is, someone else would say.
(So the merchant crept about the house, feeling by fingers and with sharp eyes in the dark until he had found the most beautiful of the carvings, a strange portrait of a dead tree with a sad face and a pair of threadbare branches. And he cured himself at this time, because he knew his small knife would be nowhere near enough to cut the thing free.)
But he wasn’t the only one with a knife.
(But he wasn’t the only one with a knife. And so the merchant carefully crept up the ladder to the tall, thin, long-legged man’s bedside, where he slipped the soft-gleaming knife from his belt. It was artful in its lack of art: purest practicality without sentiment beyond wear-care)
(And just as the merchant raised the knife to cut)
Ohhh no.
(Just as the merchant raised the knife to cut, he felt a hand on his wrist – like that!)
(And because the grip was so sudden and fierce and the merchant was alone in the woods in a strange place and because he was also in the middle of a very unkind thievery, he panicked, screamed, and yanked. And because the tall, thin, long-legged man was so very thin, down he came, head over heels, and together they tumbled, tumbled, tumbled)
(And only one of them stood up again at the end of it. The merchant’s fine clothes were a good deal damper and more cruelly stained than they had been that evening, but his host’s shirt had gone all to pieces, right over his breastbone, sliced to ribbons and a good deal deeper.)
(Now, most men would have panicked. And this one did too. But he panicked in a careful sort of way.)
(First, he went to bed on the tall, thin, long-legged man’s pallet and spent the night shivering with a blanket over the corpse’s face.)
(Second, he buried the body. It was hard because he was soft and hurried and careless, but it was done.)
(Third, he took the knife)
(And fourth, he took each and every last carving on those walls, down to the engravings on the door-handle. It would’ve taken longer if the knife weren’t so sharp.)
All done.
(And once he was done, he went home, along the winding, wooded path in the growing dark. And he walked quickly, because he didn’t want to spend another night in that place. The trees were too thick there, and the sky too far away and cold, and the grave he had dug seemed altogether shallower in his head with each passing mile – and it almost seemed to grow nearer. It made his neck prickle and his feet quicken.)
(It’s never a good feeling, out there in the night. Listening to your breath and making sure it’s just yours. The merchant was moving so fast now, so very fast, and the trees seemed to lunge at him at each turn and twist of the road. Branches dragged across his sides, stroked his face, tore at his soft, flabby skin.)
(And it was then, just as the merchant was growing giddy with fear and felt that he could take not much more, that he saw the light.)
(A light! A light on the main road! He was safe! And he ran, ran, ran, laughing with the relief and joy of it all, until he rounded that last fatal curve in his path and saw the soft-shining candle glittering in the window of the tall, thin, long-legged man’s little cabin.)
Pulled a u-y.
(Now, many people would lie to themselves at this time.)
(Oh, how foolish I was to take the wrong turn on all those twisty corners in my haste!)
(Oh, how silly of me to leave a candle burning – I could have set the forest ablaze!)
(But the merchant was a liar only in his own service, and when he saw that calm little light dancing in the windowpane of the cabin, he stuffed his fat fist in his mouth to avoid a shriek and turned and ran faster than he’d ever imagined, so fast the shush-swish-shush of his clothes against his rolls blurred into one long whisper that was almost a shriek. The path roiled under his feet, dirt mounding and pinching into unevenness that seemed to steal his balance from him, and he blundered and stumbled and wasted more time than he would have if he’d merely walked as the trees reached for him at every turn.)
And
(And then…)
Then…
(The merchant stopped running.)
(And the merchant stopped running because the path was full.)
(It was a strange and silent sight, that thing in the night. It loomed without meaning to – in a gangly, mountainous sort of way. But it could not do any other, because it was the tall, thin, long-legged man, and as the merchant flailed his arms in his desperation to halt himself his palm brushed against cold sticky wetness on the shredded shirt that it wore.)
(The merchant spun like a top and accelerated. And though the thought of looking behind him filled him with sheerest horror, it was inevitable that he did so. And when he did, he saw nothing at all – just a dark shape among dark shapes, moving in the wind.)
(Just a tree! he squeaked as he nearly fell over in his muddle to halt. Just a…)
(And it was then that the tall, thin, long-legged man came around the path’s corner, a stride to a turn, leaning into the curves. And it was still accelerating.)
(No-one ever saw the merchant again. But alas, some of them did see the tall, thin, long-legged man. And he has grown much less fond of visitors.)
And that was that for this year. Sometimes they kept going, used it all as an inspiration, but today it was a signal that they were finally out of steam. And so was the fire, and they were out of fuel, and it was cold out there – they weren’t as young as they used to be, ha ha ha ha, especially Roy, ow, watch it, ha ha. And so on.
And so forth they went, in threes and twos and then finally in ones as they each went their own way through the woods to their own homes, their own lives, along their own paths. Hurrying a little.
One of them hurried a little too much. Stephen was walking the wrong way, and he knew it was so when almost ten minutes passed and there was no meadow under his feet, no stars in the sky. Just trees, trees, trees, endlessly staring trees. He didn’t like that. Things without eyes should mind their own business. And besides, they were strangers to him. After all these years, still strangers. These were wide woods, and he must have stumbled passing far off course – the maples and ash he expected were absent, and in their place he’d wandered into a gloomy stand of thin and needlessly-crook-branched pine. Their needles prickled at his coat, and their sap globbed at his fingers as he felt his way past trunk after trunk.
It was no problem, not really. The forest was only so big, and it was bounded by roads on all sides. He would get out eventually. He would find someone’s backyard or something. See – light. He’d found it.
But as Stephen pulled his way loose past that last wall of needles and spite, he saw that he was still far from the road. The backyard was a tiny clearing, the light a feeble flickering fire in a paneless window, and the home barely a shack – wood and heaped earth, like something a man might have made anywhere from a hundred to a hundred thousand years ago.
And as Stephen backed away from that sight, his throat squeezing, his hand touched something that was not bark. Smooth, hard, polished. Someone had taken a knife to this tree and carved it from base to branches, a full ten feet in extent.
Then the light went out.
Stephen did not hurry. Stephen RAN.
And Stephen, getting on in years though he might have been, was no fat merchant – he had once been a marathoner, and had jogged for pleasure for years. Now he was a sprinter, and a good one. He did not look behind for fear of the long, slender knife he knew he would see clutched in a long, slender hand. He did not look to the sides to see the carefully-carved faces that leered at him from every single pine from this angle of approach. He did not even look at the sky to check his direction, for he followed no crooked path but a line as straight as any crow might fly as he ran, ran, ran, ran, feet pounding, heart in his mouth, ears shut to all but the roar of his veins, eyes slits, running, running.
He passed through the pines and he ran.
He passed through the tiny clearings and he ran. And as he ran his stride deepened, broaded.
He passed through the oaks and chestnuts and he ran. And as he ran his pumping arms swung wider and wider.
He passed through the ash and maples and he ran. And as he ran his spine straightened, lengthened.
Onward, faster and faster, hard on the hunt. There was a thing in the woods and he must run, holding the gleaming terror in his long, slender hand. He must run home, home to stop it before it did more harm. He could smell it on the air, feel its sweat on his cold skin, taste its fear through the open old hole in his chest.
It was not so very far to home. Look! Already the pines were there, waiting.