Chapter 418

The trees stood tall and gaunt, their branches like skeletal fingers reaching for a sky that was always the same dull gray. It had been a year since they stumbled into this place, a year since the familiar world had abruptly folded into this suffocating pocket of warped nature.

They were five, once, laughing and light. Now, they were fractured, broken by the relentless press of the woods.

Liam remembered the day clearly, the way the sunlight vanished as they crested that small hill, replaced by a sky that looked bruised.

He and Maya, Sarah, Ben, and Chloe, a group of college friends on what they had thought would be a weekend hike. The path disappeared behind them as if it was never there. Now it was just a maze of endless trees and a constant low drone that permeated the very bones.

They built a crude camp by a sluggish creek that always smelled of damp earth. The water tasted metallic, but they had no other choice but to drink it.

Ben had tried to map the forest, but its paths seemed to shift, trees uprooted, their very shape altered every time you glanced away from them. It was if the very land itself was in a constant state of flux, and it gave Ben headaches that always seemed to grow worse.

The early days were filled with a frantic hope, they called out names, they walked until their feet blistered and bled, every attempt at escape met with the same maddening loop of trees that seemed to grow taller every single day. Now, they walked in silence, the hope having withered into a fragile shell of something else, something akin to numb acceptance.

Sarah had become withdrawn. She spent her days by the creek, tracing patterns in the mud with a stick, rarely making eye contact, if she even noticed anyone at all. At first, they tried to talk to her, to pull her back from the edge, but it was no use, and soon, they left her to her strange silence.

Chloe had started to talk to herself, she would argue with unseen people, she would often laugh at dark jokes that no one could hear but her. Her smile became too wide, her eyes had grown too bright, she was a thing of manic energy that scared the rest of them. Liam found her eyes were the scariest now. He had seen her stare into space, her pupils dilated and unfeeling.

Maya was obsessed with the sky, she stood for hours with her head tilted back, trying to find a break in the gray, muttering about constellations that had never existed.

Her speech had become slurred and her balance was unreliable. She would claim to see patterns in the trees now. She said the trees had voices and she could hear them.

Ben just sat most of the time, his mapping had evolved into scrawling gibberish into the dirt and onto the tattered pages of his notebook. They all agreed it made absolutely no sense, his eyes often staring vacantly at the ground as he traced words that looked almost like letters, but were not quite recognizable, almost like something foreign.

Liam tried to hold it together, the leader they expected of him, but he felt the threads of his own sanity unraveling a little more each day. The drone, the constant, maddening drone, burrowed into his mind, it was a constant pressure that never relented. He had taken to picking at the skin on his arms. The wounds never bled right.

One evening, as the sun became a gray smear, Chloe began to laugh. The sound was sharp, too high-pitched, and it bounced off the trees in a way that made Liam's teeth ache.

She was pointing at a shape that was forming on the trunk of a nearby tree. It looked like a face, eyes hollow and mouth agape in a silent scream, slowly the bark twisted to form this horror.

Liam tried to ignore it, tried to tell himself it was just the light playing tricks, but the face grew clearer with each passing moment, it was not something the light could cause. Maya stared at it too, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide with a mix of horror and fascination, she let out a soft gasp.

Ben seemed to notice it too, his head jerked up, his vacant eyes now locked on the visage on the tree. He began to babble, his hands moving erratically, the words barely coherent. It was a prayer, but not one that Liam had ever heard, it was a mix of Latin and other things that sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

Sarah, however, didn't even glance at the tree. She simply kept tracing her patterns in the mud, oblivious to the face that was now leering at them. Liam noticed that she was humming, the noise was small and low, but it was still a sound they hadn't heard from her in months. The humming made the drone seem worse.

That night, the dreams began. Not normal dreams, but vivid, horrifying visions of the woods twisting, faces forming in the bark of trees, the drone amplifying into a chorus of screams. Liam woke in a cold sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs, the sounds of the forest seemed to press against him.

He tried to tell the others, but they were all lost in their own worlds, in their own forms of madness. He knew he was losing them, just as he knew he was losing himself.

The next day, Chloe went into the woods. She walked in a slow, almost float like manner into the trees, her smile plastered on her face.

Liam tried to call her back, he reached out, but his voice seemed to get lost in the trees, swallowed by the thick undergrowth. He watched as she disappeared behind the trees, the only sign she was ever there was a single, maniacal laugh that echoes.

The face on the tree had grown larger, its features more defined, its hollow eyes seeming to follow them. The drone was now a constant thrum, it felt like it was vibrating from inside his skull. It felt like the forest was closing in, becoming more and more claustrophobic, a living thing that was consuming them.

That evening, Ben became violent. He lashed out, attacking Maya with his bare hands, his face contorted in a rage that was completely alien to him. Liam had to pry him off her, he had to hit Ben with a large stick just to get him to let Maya go. When Ben hit the ground his head smacked against a rock. There was a sickening crack.

Ben lay still, his eyes wide and lifeless. Liam felt something break within him, something that went deeper than mere sadness. It was something akin to terror. A black, icy dread that made him want to vomit. He looked down at his hands, they were covered in blood and dirt. He didn't know if it was his or Ben's. It seemed like they all were covered in it now.

That night, Maya walked into the creek. She didn't scream or shout. She simply walked into it, sinking below the surface, her body floating face down as the water rippled. Liam tried to pull her out, but it was no use, her body was still and cold. He laid her on the bank, the metallic smell of the water clinging to her.

He looked around at Sarah, she continued tracing in the mud. He looked at the trees, the face on the tree seemed to smile. The drone was almost unbearable. Liam closed his eyes and covered his ears. It didn't help. Nothing ever seemed to help anymore.

He finally understood, this place, this forest, it wasn't just a place. It was a living thing. It fed on them, it twisted their minds, it was designed to break them all. He had failed. He failed to save them all. He failed to save himself.

Liam walked towards the tree, the face on the trunk was clearer now, its hollow eyes were pulling him in. He felt something inside of him, a resignation, a surrender to the horror that surrounded him.

He began to trace the face with his fingertips, the bark felt strangely smooth, almost like soft skin. He kept tracing and tracing until the face started to change. The eyes sunk deeper, the mouth widened, and soon, it was as if he was tracing a hole in the tree, like he could enter it.

He took a step closer to the hole, he could now see something inside, a dark, writhing mass that pulsed with some inner light.

He took another step. He noticed Sarah walking towards him, her eyes wide and empty. She was smiling, and she was humming, the melody oddly familiar.

He took the final step and entered. He felt his body stretch, his skin became smooth like bark, his bones became something else, he became something more than human.

He became part of the forest, another face in the endless woods, another source of the drone. A face amongst so many others. He became one of them, one of its many victims. And now, like all the others, he waited for new wanderers to get lost, so the forest could feast once again. He felt a cold sense of peace. He would never be hungry again.