The Whispering Tree

A tree outside my office

To my brother and to my editor, I pray that you both will not have to read this note. I pray that when I return, everything will be normal again—if such a fate as normalcy can be given to me.

I must go and destroy the thing that will not let me rest. I see it in my dreams if you can call them dreams. They were more like hypnagogic hallucinations slowly morphing into living nightmares, so real, so…tempting. I hear it when I'm alone, whispering, calling, urging me to go back. I'm sorry I have not sent the last story report, William; I fear that what I have written is too insane. Let what has been sent and published be the end of it. What is left; I know our editor-in-chief will surely fire me, and I will become some pariah.

I guess I am ok with that; I can accept being insane. I believe now that not being insane is actually more dangerous; how can one live being oblivious to what lurks beyond? That is more insane to me; to be insane is more sane because you understand what caused the insanity, you can never go back, and you don't want to go back. You-

I apologize; I was mistaken. I thought I heard a voice; maybe I did, but it is not there now. I digress…I intend to destroy this note. I am only writing it because it is soothing for me. Still, I do not want this to linger within my study and for someone else to stumble upon it and get curious about the events that followed during my investigation of the Birchhill disappearances. So, Johnathon and William, if you both are reading this, then please stay away for your own safety.

When William sent me to Birchhill to investigate reports of multiple disappearances, I found myself feeling ecstatic. I had never covered such a high-profile story, and I realized this was my chance to rise through the ranks at the gazette. I believed that a solid report would provide the perfect opportunity for the Janesville Herald to gain some notoriety throughout the state. We have covered stories from Birchhill before, the usual high school sports teams that went far in state competitions, the local judge or sheriff running for reelection, and the debates held in city hall. There have been scandals in the past that boosted our sales in papers, but my name has not been associated with any of those. I was happy, but I was foolish.

Birchhill is a quiet, peaceful town with a population of ten thousand. Its residents consist mainly of dairy and poultry farmers, good folk who care to learn everyone's name and never hesitate to lend a helping hand to a neighbor.

When I arrived on the first day, I was eager to get the scoop and quickly started interviewing locals, police officers, and the detective assigned to the case. I could see how much the disappearance of six children had affected them. Everyone that I spoke with was reluctant and rude. The air was heavy with a blanket of dread; everyone seemed tired and lethargic. I saw flowers and stuffed animals on the sidewalk of the central town park, where people had created a public site of grief. The six children were beautiful and ranged from twelve to sixteen years old. They had no relation to one another, just random kids that went missing. They had all mysteriously vanished without a trace. They did not disappear all at once; they disappeared individually, separated by weeks. The pattern shown to me by law enforcement was that each individual disappeared about a month apart from the other.

Nothing was found to indicate any wrongdoing; all parents were distraught and genuine in their love and worry. There was no history of abuse, no open CPS cases, and no forced entries in the victims' homes since all were reported to be last seen in their rooms before no longer being there in the morning. Their beds were empty with the imprints of where a human body used to lie. Every single parent said similar things about their child being more lethargic than usual weeks prior and going to bed early on the night before the disappearance. A common pattern, one that I found was easy for others to follow soon.

The first week I was there, I noticed the gentleman at the motel's front desk looked pale and sleep-deprived, which reminded me of what I had been told about the children. The lady who worked the mornings preparing the motel's breakfast had the same lethargic, dull demeanor. I did not give much thought to these appearances since people always worked hard, and the majority of the town was grieving. What caught my attention was when she commented one day, mumbling under her breath while placing the donuts and bagels in the serving trays, "What a tree, what a beautiful tree."

It caught my attention because the trees all around Birchhill were dead. It was mid-August, and the surrounding woods looked like it was well into late November. I had never heard of the woods around these lands hibernating so fast in exasperation of the coming fall. We have a lot of deciduous trees, but they do not lose their leaves that quickly. There were no beautiful trees around; they were grey and cracked to the naked eye but blue in their wilting, unnatural ambiance around them. Not even the crows and robins perched on their crooked branches.

On the seventh day of my stay in Birchhill, I noticed something strange with the drawings of the missing children. I commented about one of the children—a thirteen-year-old girl named Makenzie Briar—who had drawn pictures in school that depicted strange, colorful shapes and big trees all around the characters she had drawn. Detective Hollingsworth seemed annoyed by my observation and mentioned that it was just the girl's imagination of her property since the woods surrounded her family's farm. I pointed out that other children also had similar drawings of being in the woods and large trees looming over them.

According to the detective, the nearby woods had been searched, but there were no signs of the missing children, even with the K-9 units using the most resources they could. "We're surrounded by woods; it's all they know," he said condescendingly. Detective Hollingsworth was scruffy and practical; it was evident that many things got under his skin. He went out of his way to even comment that he did not like to repeat himself. In return, I had to constantly remind him that some of the details he was sharing with me, I was hearing them for the first time.

I could tell he did not like me much, but I was unsure if it was his serious demeanor or tiredness. The heavy dark bags under his eyes, the bloated belly, and his constant stretching and complaining of sore muscles made it evident that he was letting these cases get to him mentally and emotionally. I was too stubborn at that time, but I was noticing the same things in myself. I wasn't sleeping a full eight hours.

Detective Hollingsworth was short with me and made it clear that was just who he was and has always been. I remember him saying that it had nothing to do with the job. He did care about finding any evidence that would lead to one of the missing persons. I admired his direct approach with the workers at the corner gas station and other shop owners; he was hopeful that someone must have seen one of the children get into some stranger's vehicle. Nobody knew or saw anything unusual; Detective Hollingsworth said, "People are more concerned with themselves than what has happened. Hell, even the guys at the Elks have become more narcissistic."

I did not understand what he meant. I saw that people were grieving and tired, but no one had witnessed anything unusual. I believe the idea of fame and knowing how many people would read the papers started to play a role in his approach to this investigation and his approach to me. After the first story was published, he began to talk to me more. There was word from William that sales had gone up tremendously and some anonymous phone calls and emails were coming in to the Janesville Herald office about similar experiences. Detective Hollingsworth saw this as an opportunity to see what else can be learned. However, his brain was more addled, and his patience grew thinner. He did not hold back on what he really thought.

"These people get too lazy," said Detective Hollingsworth once while we were outside the police station on a smoke break. "They let their guard down and don't pay attention." There was a long silence between us; I was more surprised watching him down his fourth cup of black coffee before two o'clock. "Maybe," he continued, taking long puffs of his cigarette. "You could put some announcement on the next piece to the story, eh? Right there in bold letters, 'No Promises of Finding You!'"

I remember asking him why would I need to put that? What did he mean? To which he responded resoundingly, "They are running away."

"It sounds crazy," he continued, rubbing his eyes. "But it's true."

I was skeptical, but part of me believed him. You see, by this point, I had already spent close to two weeks at Birchhill, and the lady of the motel who would prepare the breakfast had not shown up to work for the last three days. There were also rumors that one police officer was not showing up to work, and no one could find him after searching his home.

The sad part about all of this is that I was too tired to really care about actually finding them. I was saddened by the news, but it was exhausting to focus too much energy on it. I had been sleeping an average of four to five hours a night. Even if I forced myself to go to bed at ten in the evening, I would wake up at two or three in the morning, unable to fall back asleep even though my eyes would water to compensate for the red dryness. My constant yawning would not cease, and the dreams of a beautiful tree would flood my thoughts about what it all meant. There was a night when I had awoken— or at least I thought I had awoken—when I heard a faint whisper, like a siren in the distance calling upon Odysseus; the whisper was haunting but hypnotizing.

I was drowsy but alert, in that hypnagogic state of awareness, but lucid dreams fool your mind. My limbs were flaccid, yet I pulled myself to the edge of the bed and sauntered with ease toward my motel room window. I pulled the curtains apart and remembered seeing a bright magenta light in the distance, contrasting the foggy night sky. It startled me, and I came to my senses. The street lamps in the motel's parking lot did not outshine the magenta in the distance. The siren's call was pulling me, calling me to go meet it. In my heart, I knew the magenta light was the siren, yet I did not know what it was. All I knew was that I wanted to…no. I needed to follow it.

I was jerked from that state because I felt my body falling, although I was oblivious to any levitation. My eyeballs were burning, my brain thudded, and my eyelids blinked excessively until I regained my bearings. I was lying in bed, moving my head around and seeing the stock wall art in the motel room lit by the glare of the street lamps outside. When I looked at the window across the room, the curtains were pulled back; I knew that no other person but myself would have done that. I was confused because staring out the window and listening to the whisper seemed like that was my reality, yet there I lay in sweat under my blankets with no recollection of coming back to bed after pulling the curtains apart. I must have sleepwalked, even though that has never happened to me. The bizarre thing about all of this is that I felt a sudden urge to go and seek that magenta light. To leave my room and try to find it, a belief started to crawl through my brain like a caterpillar, convincing me that I could find it, the source of the light. The siren's call could be tracked, and I was ready to go and search no matter if I was in my sleeping wear. I wanted to go and run and search; it was impulsive, and there was no real motive or any goal, but somehow, I still had some wits about me.

I did not care to share these things with the detective, but I think he, too, understood the pull…the whisper. That is why he came to the conclusion that the kids and all the others we suspected of missing had run away. It was bizarre to think that they ran out of impulsiveness, but Detective Hollingsworth was on to something. I knew he felt it because he shared more than usual during one of our smoke breaks the next day. According to him, the night prior. He slept about four hours and could not fall back asleep. He described a dream that had transpired, similar to other dreams he had had. That was my moment to run, to forget everything, and be done with the story. But no, I wanted to listen in awe to Hollingsworth. The recounting of his dream was like something that I had dreamed of myself.

He was alone in the woods, guided by something, though he could not see what it was. Although he was alone in this dream, he did not feel lost in these woods. It was as if he knew where he was going and confidently trusted what was guiding him.

"A whisper in the air," he said, flicking the butt of his cigarette and spitting on the ground. "Like a song played softly, you know when you're unable to find its source. When I reached my destination, well… there it was. It had bright leaves and a thick trunk with many sturdy branches. The leaves had a kind of pulsating magenta hue to them. Little wisps were floating around, creating beautiful shapes. I was amazed; it was so beautiful."

I did not judge; I did not say anything. Perhaps things would have been different if I had opened my mouth that day and explained to him my similar dreams and the connections we were making—of that beautiful tree whispering to go find it.

It had been two and a half weeks of my stay when I was notified of another disappearance; according to Hollingsworth, it was a young father. When his wife had awoken in the morning, he was nowhere to be seen. I accompanied the detective, writing down my notes and reviewing how I wanted to present this story. The only clue that was found was the wife noticing that the house's back door was unlocked when, every night, her husband checked to ensure the doors were locked. I could tell by Hollingsworth's smirk that this added to his theory of people running away.

"He was getting unhinged," said Detective Hollingsworth, tapping the hood of his car. "She doesn't look too good herself." He was talking about the wife and what she had said to us about her husband. According to the wife, her husband seemed disoriented more and more every day. I saw Hollingsworth murmuring something under his breath and pacing. I asked what was wrong, but he ignored me. He kept saying something about the woods and then just repeated, "The trees, the trees," mumbling to himself. Detective Hollingsworth ignored my company most of the day; I wrote what I wanted to send out to William and looked over some of the new photographs taken at the scene, hoping that there were clues that we might have missed. After work, I told Hollingsworth I was calling it a day and that I wished I would see him tomorrow, but he continued to ignore me.

I did not dread the evening; I welcomed it because all I cared about was going to bed. However, I did dread the possibility of only sleeping for four to five hours. My slumber was disturbed when I heard a loud knock on the door. I jerked from my bed and almost fell from it if it wasn't for me tangling myself in my sheets. The knock rattled the door and lamps attached to the walls. I saw the alarm clock; it was three-thirty in the morning. The knocking continued, and I quickly grabbed my revolver. I was frustrated but frightened at the same time, wondering who it could possibly be. When I looked through the peephole of the door, I saw Detective Hollingsworth standing on the other side before he started to knock again. I quickly opened the door, certain that I would get a noise complaint if I did not comply with this madman's summons.

"What?!" I said hurriedly in a loud whispering tone. He did not care that I was holding my gun; all he did was look at me and say, "I know where they're going."

I was confused and asked what he was talking about and if he knew what hour it was.

"The missing," he said. "I know where they are going, where they went, where they want to go; we can find them."

He told me to get ready and to come with him. I did not understand, but he was confident he had figured the case out. So I got ready and followed him to the vehicle. I had so many questions, but our ride was silent. He did not answer my questions and just gave short responses like, "I know where they went." We drove a short distance outside the town's city limits before Hollingsworth pulled over on the side of the road. It was windy and cold; the night sky was cloudy, and there were no stars to be seen. He handed me a flashlight and told me to follow him and to stay close.

"What are we doing?" I asked him as we trodded through the wilted forest.

"Finding all those that have gone missing" he responded, yawning.

"How? How do you know they're out here? How could they survive? Why at night? I thought you said the canines already went through here. What is going on man?"

He shushed me and told me to be quiet. He told me that he knew that I knew about what was really going on: the sleep deprivation, the call, the pull to locate that magenta light in the distance, the faint whispers throughout the day that I had ignored and hoped were bird whistles or other people talking in the distance. I acquiescently responded that those were some of the experiences I had had, but they were only occurrences of stress and lack of sleep.

"How can two people dream the same dreams? How can we all have the same experience? How can we all hear the same calling?" he said gruffly. I did not respond; there was too much fog in my brain to think clearly about why we were even in the woods at night.

"I hear it whispering," Detective Hollingsworth said. "Every night, every day for the past five days." He turned around and pressed his lips together, making a 'shhh' sound. He mouthed 'listen' and perked his ears up; I did the same thing. At first, I could not hear anything; we stood at the same stop for about thirty seconds before I heard something faint far away. The call could be heard ever so slightly. I easily mistook it for the wind and my mind playing tricks on me, but trying to be mindful of the situation, I realized that the forest was also silent. There were no scurrying sounds of animals, no cricket songs or owl hoots. The branches snapped and creaked with the movement of the wind, and the foliage beneath our boots crunched slightly with every step we took, but there were no animals. It was silent and eerie, but the faint whisper was there.

I continued to follow him, stopping every ten yards to listen more carefully. The more we traversed, the more apparent the whisper got. I started to think back to some of the dreams I had before, like the experience of seeing a bright magenta light through the window of the motel room, the dreams of a whispering tree calling me to seek it out, to help it. The further we went into the woods, the calmer I got; sure, the whisper was haunting. What could it be? What was making such a sound? But it was also hypnotizing. Somehow, I wanted to follow it; I wanted to see it with my own eyes, the source of its call.

I noticed that our pace was picking up. We were no longer silent in the woods. We were jogging and panting, following the call, the call to something unknown, until we stumbled upon a clearing, and there in front of us was the source of our insanity. The whispering tree with bioluminescence sprouting from its branches and leaves, its pulsating hum coming from within it. I do not know how to explain it; it was like no other tree I had seen. There were small fireflies dancing everywhere near it, as well, pulsating at the same cadence as the leaves. Why is it there? Where did it come from? I do not know; I saw Detective Hollingsworth drag his feet toward it. I called for him to wait, but he continued to inch closer to the tree. I wanted to follow Hollingsworth, not to stop him but to get closer to the weird bark and sprouts that seemed like fruit hanging from its branches. I held my ground, though, because I saw what looked like a pair of torn pajama pants swaying with the wind hanging by its threads. The light emitting from the tree made me notice other pieces of garments, or what looked like garments.

The branches then started to sway and move despite the lack of wind picking up, and that is when I noticed Hollingsworth approach the tree. I also moved my legs and called out to him, but my voice was not loud; I choked on the words, and I couldn't yell out even if I wanted to. That is when the whisper in my ear became more clear; it was haunting, inhuman, a dialect I can not describe, full of gurgles and howls. I cupped my ears and fell down into the fetal position; it grew louder in my head. Despite the misunderstanding of the language, I knew what it wanted deep down. It wanted us; it wanted us to join it, to be part of it. I looked up to see Hollingsworth place his hand on its strange bark; at that moment, adrenaline surged through my blood, and I ignored that voice in my head.

I saw Hollingsworth's hand slowly being clamped by twigs coming out of the bark, like a fly trap enclosing itself. The branches turned inward toward the trunk like fingers coming down on the palm of a hand; I got up and ran to Detective Hollingsworth, but I could not do anything. A thick branch came down and fell on me. I fell to the ground with a pounding pain in my head and was scratched deeply on my leg as another branch dragged through the dirt beside me. I mustered my strength and yelled as loud as I could. I don't think he could hear me. The bark was unraveling itself, wrapping and twisting around his arm. Through my sporadic movements of trying to pick myself up, I grabbed a random dirty shoe that was lying on the dirt. It was small, like it belonged to a child, and I threw it at the tree, but that did not do anything. I pulled out my gun and fired at the branches, but it did nothing. The branches were enclosing on Hollingsworth, inching closer to his back. I could see through the slits of the branches his body being engulfed by the bark, the magenta hue all around illuminating brighter. There was nothing I could do. I turned and ran; I ran as fast as I could, not knowing where I was going but hoping that I could find my way back to the vehicle.

I guess the branch that came down on me hit my head pretty well because I do not remember going unconscious, because when I awoke, a dog was licking my face, and a police officer was trying to make sure I was ok. I was in the damp wet dirt and in the middle of the woods. It was the morning, and one of the patrols saw the detective's vehicle; he was not answering his calls, so they sent out a K-9 unit to search for him. I tried to tell them what had transpired, but my head was in pain, and I had dried blood on my forehead. They got an ambulance to pick me up and take me to the hospital. I could not gather my thoughts to thoroughly describe what had happened; I sounded like a madman, unable to cohesively say what I wanted to say. The doctors said I had a concussion and to stay in a dark-lit room for two days. I did not want to sleep, but when my body unwillingly fell asleep. I had those dreams that I had before, except the tree's call was more intense. The magenta light was blinding, and then it subsided. What followed was a black void opening up before me like a tear through the fabric of reality that smelt like putrid sulfur. I awoke wanting to go help Hollingsworth, but it was more about trying to see the tree again and figure out what it was. It was a foolish thought, but yet, here I am.

I wrote my report in those two days, and after reading it back to myself, I decided to wait. I made it back to Janesville, and now I sit here writing this note. I do not know how other officers have not found the tree, but I know where it is. It shows itself when it wants to be seen and when it wants to feed. Even now, I feel the pull…I don't expect to destroy it, but I must try, whatever that thing is. I must try for the sake of those who have gone missing. I'll return to Birchhill tonight and pray that I return to restful sleep. I have my axe, chainsaw, matches, and some gasoline.

This was taken on the trail that I run at