"How about a story?" Allison asked, her words slightly slurred from the alcohol.
"Yeah!" Tom shouted loudly. "C'mon Harry, tell us a storyyy!"
I shrugged as I gazed blankly into the campfire. I'd moved out west for school a couple years ago, and when my older brother had suggested coming out for a camping trip, I'd eagerly agreed. I knew with Tom's job he didn't get many chances for a vacation, and it's not like there were any decent things to do back home in Brockton. It was going to be great, just the two of them, catching up.
Except Tom had decided to show up with his bimbo girlfriend.
"I–I dunno, not much goes on out here," I replied hesitantly.
"Nah, man, fuck that, come on," Tom pleaded.
"Tooooooooooooooom, your brother is boring," Allison said.
I rolled my eyes, thinking. Yeah, this could actually be fun. "Okay, fine...Either of you heard of Treant before?"
Tom and Allison shook their heads slowly.
"I thought not," I said with a smirk. "Treant is...well, nobody's sure if it's a man or a creature. See, back home there's too many people for things like him to exist. Treant lives in the mountains. We're actually in the middle of his 'territory', so to speak."
"So what, he's, like, Bigfoot?" Allison asked.
"BIGFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!" Tom shouted into the forest around their campsite.
"Kind of, yeah. I'd never heard of him either, before moving out here. I don't think even the locals believe it, really." I paused and took a sip of hot chocolate out of my thermos. I for one was planning on smugly flaunting my lack of a hangover in the morning.
"Nobody who's seen Treant has gotten a picture, or at least, nobody who survived. They first saw him back in the '80s, early '90s. People started telling the rangers, the cops, anyone who would listen, about a creature made of skulls and twigs, stalking them through the forest. They all thought it was a hoax, at least until people started going missing, that is.
"It was...'91, I think? The state had just sold off a block of land to some lumber company, and they were clearcutting. One morning, a bunch of loggers came down out of the mountains, every single one wide-eyed with fear and covered in blood. They said a creature attacked them, a...thing, that could form weapons out of the nature around it. The creature had pounced on them, and tore apart five of them before they even knew it was there. Cops drove up, thinking the same thing everyone else had thought, that it was just some hoax, but the logger's camp looks like a slaughterhouse. Blood all over, detached arms and guts all over, but no sign of a weapon or even footsteps from the attacker.
"Now this was before the Endbringers and all the other fucked-up shit we have nowadays. Cops think it's the work of a serial killer villain, so they call up one of the local heroes. There wasn't a Protectorate back then, not out here yet anyway. This cape's some kind of thinker, can't remember what, but gets the impression that whatever did the slaughter did so because it was attacked. Makes no sense. Police and the capes do what they can to track the killer down, but eventually they give up. The mountains are too big, and they have no leads.
"Meanwhile, hikers and hunters are still going missing in the mountains, even rumors of a cape or two disappearing. Search and Rescue is working around the clock to find people. Sometimes they find corpses, but it's weird. The bodies they find look like they've been out there for months, even if the guy was only missing for a week. They said it was like nature was trying to get rid of the evidence. There's also more and more reports of this creature, just watching them from the trees. A whole urban legend is built up around this thing. They call it Treant.
"One day some hippy commune out in the woods, they're living in a tree having free love and getting high, when Treant just walks into their camp. He's got a big elk skull for a face, no eyes, but he's staring them down. This goes on for several minutes, just staring at these hippies, before he wanders off."
"I want some of what they're having," Allison interrupts, giggling.
I ignored her interruption, "Anyway, this starts happening too, some people go missing, some people get stared down. They start to notice a trend, though. The people going missing are just pigs, throwing trash on the side of trails, poaching, that sort of thing. So the joke is that Treant is some sort of disgruntled tree spirit or something, pissed off at people ruining his forest–"
"Pffft. Laaaaaaaame." Allison interrupted again. "Yeah, right."
"Yeah, sorry bro, but this sounds like some bad fable. Nice try with the scary story though," Tom replied. He drained a beer bottle and threw it at a tree, cackling as it broke apart. "Oh no! The tree man's gonna get me!"
"Dude! Somebody's gonna get cut on that shit. Stop it."
"Whatever. I'm gonna go to bed." Tom staggered over to his tent, dragging Allison with him. I rolled my eyes. Yeah, I guess it is a little lame. Probably just something they make up to stop tourists from trashing everything. I sighed, and grabbed a flashlight and walked over to the tree, picking up the larger pieces of broken glass and tossing them in the campfire. I, for one, don't need the legend of Treant not to be a dickhead.
It took a few minutes, but I got all the glass cleaned up, before pulling myself into my sleeping bag by the campfire. I'd always preferred sleeping under the stars. I stared up at the glimmering stars for a bit, trying to ignore the sounds of drunken rustling coming from the tent. As I fell asleep I couldn't help but shake the feeling I was being watched.
"Real fuckin' funny, asshole," my brother said the next morning as he staggered back to the campsite.
"What's funny?" I asked as I continued packing the camping shit into the trunk of my car. Some trip this was.
"Oh, whatever. Look, I appreciate you trying, but your scary story was lame. Were you up all night making that?"
"Making...what? What the hell are you talking about, Tom?"
"Okay dude, your scarecrow doesn't make your story any less lame. It's morning, there's a nice breeze, why don't we go down to that lake we saw and fish, or something?"
"Tom. I didn't make any scarecrow."
"Fine, Harry, I'll fucking play along. I was pissing over there," he pointed off in the woods, "And saw your little Tree Man you made. Really funny, har dee har."
I couldn't help but feel my pulse quicken. "Tom, I'm being serious."
I grabbed the shovel I'd brought out of the car–better than nothing–and glanced over in the direction my brother had pointed. Nothing. I wandered into the trees, looking around, Tom following.
"Huh...it was just here," Tom replied behind me.
Nothing, dammit Tom.
"Oh, I get it," I said after a pause, turning to face my brother, "Cute, trying to freak me out with my own story." Suddenly Tom's eyes went wide, and he stared at a spot just behind me. "Yeah, knock it off. You got me."
"Harry, w-walk towards me, right now," Tom stammered.
"God, okay, I get it, you didn't like the story. It was just something my roommate told me, okay?" I said. "Come on, let's just fucking go, I'm tired of dealing wit–"
I cut myself off. I could hear the rustling of branches behind me. There hadn't been any trees behind me. There was a noise like falling timber.
Before I had a chance to react, I was thrown to one side. I landed hard, my head glancing off a rock. Everything was going black.
What the fuck happened?
I groaned, and leaned forward, looking around me. My head hurt like a motherfucker, and I was lying in a pile of needles, still in the forest. The shovel I had put in the car was next to me, the handle mostly broken in half.
I could barely remember why I was out here. The last thing I remembered was packing the camping stuff up in the car, and my brother bitching about...something. But that didn't explain the dried blood on my scalp, or the broken shovel.
I pulled myself up off the ground, wincing as I brushed dead pine needles off of my sweatshirt. I grabbed what remained of the shovel and plodded back towards our campsite. "Tom? Allison?" I shouted out as I walked. No response. I groaned as I walked into the clearing. "Any idea what happened to my sho–" I stopped.
The campsite was in tatters. My roommate's tent, that I'd borrowed for my brother, was in shreds. The ground around it was wet, like someone had spilled. Spilled a lot. But that wasn't what caused me to freeze in place.
A figure, probably eight or nine feet tall, made of tree branches, twigs, and moss. It turned to face me, slowly, creaking and groaning as it turned. It had no face, just an animal's antlered skull, empty black eyesockets staring at me. Vines around its waist encircled more skulls. I swallowed as I noticed some were human, chipped and worn with age.
Treant.
I glanced back at the tent.
"W-where are Tom and Allison?" I asked Treant.
It tilted its skull-head, as if curious that I had spoken. It didn't reply, but I got the mental impression of a shrug. After a second, it tilted its head towards the tent, then back to staring at me.
I took a deep breath, and sidestepped around the edge of the clearing, keeping the...thing in the center of my vision. I stopped when I had a view into the tent. It was Allison–correction–it was Allison's head. Oh God. I closed my eyes a moment later as I saw my brother's bloodied shirt. It fucking killed my brother.
It was a stupid, instinctive maneuver, I knew, as I felt myself brandish the half-broken shovel and rush towards the monster.
It raised its arm, and batted the shovel away easily, before I even got close. Then raised its other arm, vines reaching out to me, grabbing me by the wrists and swinging me into the side of a tree, my feet a yard off the ground.
I screamed as the vines constricted, razor-sharp and slicing into my wrists, hot blood pouring down my arms.
I struggled against the vines in vain as Treant walked towards me in the same slow, methodical fashion it had used when it first saw me. Even if it was nine feet tall, I was suspended from the vines high enough that we were eye-to-eye as it got closer.
It stopped when it was a foot away, ignoring my feeble kicks towards its torso, and leaned its skull-head towards me. Behind the empty eye sockets was a deep, unsettling cold blackness, nothing more. I glared at it through tear-stained eyes as it gazed silently at me. "Why? What the fuck did they do to you?" I snarled.
It didn't move, but I got the same mental impression from before, this time it suggested a mission, a task it had taken upon itself. It stared at me for a long time, until I was feeling lightheaded from blood loss, blinking away the tears as I glared.
Eventually, Treant stepped back. The vines let go, and I crumpled to a heap at the base of the tree. I looked back up at it, only to see it ambling away into the forest. Within seconds, it blended into the trees. I could only make out the slightest of movements, and then, I couldn't make it out at all.
I glanced down at my wrists, and to my surprise where blood should have been pouring out, there were thick rings of lichen wrapping around my wrists. For some reason it struck me as some sort of natural bandage, keeping the rest of my blood from pouring out. It didn't want me dead, at least. Not like...
I cowered there, at the base of the tree, crying until I could cry no more.
I pulled myself together, worked up the courage to look at the two corpses in the ruined tent. The fabric was damp with mold. The bodies half buried in dead leaves. Mushrooms and mold on every inch of bare skin. They were returning to nature.