But For The Trees

The clicking continued as Cassandra ran away from the mansion. It occurred in staccato bursts, click click click click click, rapid like machine gun fire and blaring like the chittering of a chitinous swarm of beetles. The noise made her believe the shadow behind her was mocking her for its own amusement. It paused occasionally, tantalizing her with the false promise of merciful silence. Then it renewed, bellowing through her eardrums and clattering around her skull.

           Fog congested around her. Cassandra was smothered by sodden vapor. She knew she could move no faster without losing her footing. Despite her attempt to escape using rapid forward motion, she stumbled and sprawled. Her knees landed heavily on the ground and a vine whipped her in the eye. The stinging sensation was enough to make her shriek, but she feared the chasing specter was near enough to hear her. She whimpered and forced herself back up.

She took her next step forward and slid down a hidden slope. Loamy soil and dead leaves stuck to her shoes as she attempted to keep her balance. Failing, she fell hard on her tailbone. Cassandra forced herself upright with wobbling legs. She smacked headlong into a tree limb angled like a narrow pike waiting to impale her. It struck her collarbone fiercely. The bone did not break, but instantly she knew the puncture wound that she suffered would leave a scar.

While hoping she could get away, Cassandra felt as though the forest struggled to prevent her passage as though it were an entire legion of enemy combatants. Each root clutched her lumbering feet, each bush extended prickly offshoots to barricade her route. The trees surged forward like a disordered phalanx fighting against any progress she could hope to achieve.

She could barely drag herself along. Reactive fatigue defused through Cassandra’s blood and pumped sluggishly through her arteries, making her feel lightheaded and feverish. Throughout the mist, dim figures seemed to creep about. She feared that they were following her. Even if they were merely hallucinations or deliria, she compelled herself to weave erratically through the underbrush so she could move as silently as possible.

An inferno roared a few hundred feet behind her. The flames produced an atrocious heat that roiled out in waves and scalded the clammy air. Cassandra’s moistened hair hung limply over her glasses, knotted by humidity and salted with her sweat. The caldera of the mansion smoldered like a glowing cigarette burning visibly throughout the forest.

Despite the wavering heat, Cassandra could not see a beam of fiery light. The fog concealed everything. She worried it would preserve the shadow entity while disrupting any ability she might gain to see its position. The fog seemed like another enemy with its own mission, a devilish wrath she that could not beg for her own survival.

Cassandra continued to hear the reverberating beat, click, click, click, click, click. The pressure of an overwhelming and irresistible reaction to the continuation grew inside her. The sound was noisome to the point of triggering madness. Stop, stop, STOP, her mind chanted, as though she were writing lyrics in a song sang at the same rhythm. The repetitive word grew louder and louder inside her head. She could think of only one possible solution.

“STOP!” Cassandra screamed hoarsely in a cracked and savage voice.

Her wounded howl lingered out of her breath before limping off and fading away through the wet and smoky vapor surrounding her. Suddenly, the clicking ceased. The sudden surprise made Cassandra freeze in place. She stood still and listened as observantly as she could force herself to do. Despite how rattled she was, she felt oddly stoic. Nevertheless, she feared that the clicking would restart after granting her the brief reprieve.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply to relax as best she knew how. The clicking did not resume. Unexpected laughter burst out of her. Cassandra collapsed against the trunk of a small birch that bent meekly beneath her. Whether her sudden victory was valid or not, the moment made her hope the forest was no longer trying to harm her.

Her lungs operated like bellows, sucking up great draughts of fog and transforming them into a high-pitched squeal. Cassandra screeched laughter until her tears commingled with the condensation on her face and dripped down her cheeks in a torrent of caustic mirth. She could not describe what she found funny, but she continued the endless laughter with increasing force.

She had no idea if any of the recent occurrences at the mansion where she and her crew had worked on their film were real at all. Cassandra wondered if it would be useful to grab a chisel, carve inside her own skull, and pull out all the sticky memories to cleanse the interior. It was not an amusing thought, so she disposed of it. Instead, she recalled a phrase recently said to her. She said to herself, fear is for the weak.

Cassandra forced herself to focus. She heard no clicking. She heard no roar from the flaming wreckage of the mansion. She felt no incoming heat and saw no blazing light. All she could perceive was the dirt on her hands, the fog in her lungs, and the sweat on her face. In the sudden stillness, her breath was a mere additive to the atmosphere, and her heartbeat was now the only rhythm echoing among the trees.

Though comforted by her moment of rest, Cassandra knew she needed to press on. She started to move forward again. As she did, she noticed the trees still reached out twiggy fingers to grab any strand of her hair or tug any piece of fabric from her clothing. Though it did not seem as rapid and ferocious as before, the shadow wanted mementos of her as she left.

Cassandra realized she had forgotten the direction in which she was traveling. She felt utterly lost. It reminded her of another recent phrase she had heard, in the forest, all places are the same. The trees still seemed to shuffle whenever she closed her eyes blinking. They seemed to mock her discordance as she struggled to regain her bearings.

Her flailing movement had brought her no closer to any type of freedom she could comprehend. The thought caused Cassandra to fear that she would never leave the forest. It did not seem to matter if her sudden memories howled throughout it like abandoned creatures screaming about imprisonment in a nightmarish orphanage.

Unexpectedly, she stepped onto a road. Cassandra did not recognize it but knew she needed to travel wherever it led. She understood she would not survive if she stayed where she was. “This is the place where everything remains the same,” she said out loud as she continued moving forward. “This is the place where what I leave behind remains.”

With desperate abandon, she hoped nothing would follow her out of the forest.