I’ll never forget how cold the wind blew on the day we found those tunnels.

My pa always said it was "the ill wind", brought down from the mountainside, that told him when things were about to go wrong. It’s the kind of wind that shakes your bones, leaves you feeling as if the air goes right through you and takes your soul with it. And when you look up into the trees - stretching high above the horizon and covered in deep, thick pines - it all makes sense.

I own a Christmas tree farm, you see. For years and years, there was never a problem, until now.

The trees have been dying, choked out at the roots. It starts with the bottom, moving its way up until all the needles fall off and the thing just shrivels to bits. The trees next to the forest always seem to go first. I wish that was the worst of our problems.

A few days ago, a mother of four from around the mountainside brought back the withered remains of a small pine she had just bought from me. It was dead, all burnt up. I asked if there was a fire and she told me to look closer. The branches weren’t black and burnt to a crisp, they were covered in some strange, tacky dark substance with the consistency of glue. I put my hand near it and felt heat coming up from its surface.

“Don’t touch it.” The lady told me, her voice stern but trembling. “My eldest, he tried to. Melted his finger right to the bone. Welts all up his arms. You gonna tell me what kind of tree sap does that?”

I didn’t have an answer for her. The best I could do was apologize, but she was getting back in her car and slamming the door before I had a chance to even give her the money back for the tree. After she left, driving off as if the devil himself was on her back bumper, I threw on a pair of gloves and tossed the tree into a burn pile with the rest. The smoke smelled terrible, like the stench of death mixed with a rotten sweetness. It billowed up into the sky in shades of dark purple and magenta.

​

I think it’s all got something to do with the earthquakes we’ve been having. See, we never used to get many quakes around here, but lately we’re feeling them every day. The last one was so violent, the ground near the treeline started to sink, taking a few of my saplings with it. Early in the morning, old Luke from next door was out filling them in with bags of soil.

“Weird weather we’re havin’.” I commented, smoking a cigarette next to the treeline while taking a look into the deep, green woods. “Real misty up there at the peaks lately, ain’t it?”

“It’s always misty.” Luke grunted, pouring another bag and using a shovel to smooth it out. “Tell you what’s new, though. I got somethin’ pissin’ around in my chicken coop. Took out all my hens last night.”

I breathed out a long puff of smoke. “Shit, man. I’m sorry. What do ya’ think, coyotes again?”

Luke sighed, old pale eyes staring up into the mountains. He watched the swirling clouds and shook his head slowly as another one of those bitter winds passed through. “Nah, it ain’t coyotes, son,” he told me, cutting open another bag of fresh soil. “Coyotes would have eaten ‘em.”

“Something killed your chickens without eating ‘em?” I asked.

Luke laughed, gesturing to the front pocket of my jacket where I had a box of cigarettes. I handed him one, along with the lighter, and watched him take a couple of puffs before he spoke again. “Whatever it was, it just wanted the heads and feet. Left the rest untouched. …Couple of ‘em are only missing their eyes. Nah, buddy, it ain’t the coyotes again. This is somethin’ else.”

That chill went up my spine, only this time there was no wind to blame. Luke and I shared a long, uncomfortable stare before the old man pointed at the saplings at the edge of the forest where my farm and the woodlands met. “You got a blight on your new trees.” He said, taking another slow drag from the cigarette. “I can help you dig ‘em up before it spreads to the rest. Dirt’s frozen, a shovel won’t do. I’ve got an excavator out back. Tomorrow evening, seven o’clock?”

“Yeah…” I murmured, my gaze still fixed on the mist hovering over the green mountain peaks. “Yeah, Luke, that would be great. I’ll pay ya’ for it.”

“No need.” The old man said, grunting as he got back to work. “It’s what neighbors do in times like these, buddy. It’s what neighbors do.”

That night, we had another one of those earthquakes. It shook the whole house, sent dishes flying off the shelves and left the kitchen table rattling. When it woke me up out of a dead sleep, I saw an odd glow coming from outside my living room windows - pink and pulsating, coming from somewhere deep up the mountainside. I’m not one to believe in aliens or whatnot, but I’ve known enough folks around here to know that everyone’s seen something strange. If they say they haven’t, they’d be lying. This should have been the moment I knew it was my turn.

​

When morning came around, more of my trees were ruined. The needles had fallen off, the branches were brittle to the touch, and that dark sap was rolling down the bark into the snow beneath. The forest had it too, some kind of strange blight I had never seen before, turning the pines sick. No one stopped to buy a tree that day.

That night, at exactly seven o’clock, old Luke came by with his excavator and we decided to start with the biggest trees first. When he got the bucket down by the roots, the metal began to squeal in protest, as if met with something powerful and immovable. It took a few tries and some unexpected dents to the machine, but at last, a thick and gnarled circuit of plant life was dragged out of the earth in long, twisted cords. Those roots seemed to go on forever, forming a dip in the earth all the way back to the forest.

“That’s what I thought.” Luke shouted from out of the window of his machine. “It musta’ started in the woods, then spread to your saplings when the weather got cold. I suggest we get rid of this whole row near the –”

Before he could finish that thought, the ground beneath us began to rumble. Dirt was piling into the hole in the ground, tree branches creaking as they began to sink. Luke’s excavator made the most terrible sound, like rusted metal being forced to bend, as the treads got buried in the frozen soil. Under my feet, the ground was sinking quickly. I flailed with wild arms, trying to catch anything I could - metal or dirt or branch, it didn’t matter. All I did was claw at the ground as the quake took me deeper into a dark, cold pit.

I fell on something hard. The tough, gnarled roots were sticking into my back, old dust rising up around me. I had fallen at least fifteen feet down. The air around me was stale, smelling of mildew, rot, and a vague scent of ash.

“Gaw dammit!” Luke yelled from up above. I could hear the whine of the machine as he jumped out of the seat and onto the ground again. “Can ya hear me down there, son? You alright?”

“Yeah!” I yelled up, my voice echoing through a long twist of caverns that stretched in both directions. “Yeah, I’m fine! I fell into a … tunnel or something.”

Luke was quiet for a moment, as if trying to search his mind for some answer. I could hear the rustle of branches as he paced around in the snow. “Might be one of them old coal mines they closed up years ago. I didn’t know they came out this far…”

I sighed, disgruntled, wrapping my arms around myself to keep warm in the freezing cold. “Yeah that’s great, Luke, but uh…I’d like to get outta’ here, y’know?”

“Right, right.” The old man looked around. “Listen, I can drive up to PinehavenVillage, grab a length of rope from the hardware store. We’ll use the truck to pull ya’ out of there. You better scoot a bit, though. If this excavator falls in and crushes you, you'll be fertilizin' the pines yourself.”

“Yeah, okay. Just make it quick!” I shouted back up, moving a few feet out of the way. It was absurdly dark down there, the walls of the tunnel dripping with some sort of foul-smelling moisture. Luke’s footsteps in the snow started to fade, leaving me with just the light of my phone and a seemingly endless void of dirt and roots. I shined my light at the walls, inspecting the tangled plants. God, it just went on forever…All of the trees, mingling together into one huge root system that went deep into the forest. I was beginning to think that getting rid of this blight was going to be a lot more difficult than just pulling up a couple of pines.

Minutes passed, then an hour, then two. Luke hadn’t come back yet.

“Hey, buddy!” I yelled up into the dark, snowy sky above. “Luke! Where are ya, man?!” I didn’t hear anything, not the sound of feet nor the call of animals. The cold and the smell really got me wondering if there was an end to this tunnel, and if maybe those quakes had shaken loose another way to get out.

I did what I had to do: I picked a direction and I got to walking. With just a dim light in my hand, not much battery, and no idea where I was headed, it was a rotten idea from the start. But what else could I have done? The roots started to grow even thicker and more wild the further I inched into the forest. These were old, old pines - so tall you could hardly see the tops if you stood below. And the further I walked, the worse that horrible stench was. I found it difficult to breathe, choking in that putrid air with the texture of dust and smoke.

​

I said I wasn’t a believer in things like aliens, but there are forces in this world I can’t explain. If you want to see something that defies everything you think you know about this big wild world of ours, you should take a walk deep in the woods sometime. The tunnel seemed to get bigger the further I went, cutting into the mountainside. And although the dirt above my head was deep enough to hold the weight of many trees, it wasn’t silent down there in the least. I could hear the scratching of little claws, the cries of animals, the whispers of something or someone unknown.

At first, I thought it was my ears. I thought perhaps the cold and the dark had gotten to me and I was growing paranoid, looking for noises where none existed. That was before I found the bones in the walls. Wrapped up in vines and roots, held to the wall of the tunnel, bones and rotten, hanging flesh were scattered from one side to the next. It was like some sort of wild, untamed graveyard. I crept closer, inspecting a rotten hand, still dressed in tattered cloth. I can hardly describe the incredible chill of disgust that went through my body as I saw the fingers move. They cracked and snapped as the hand balled itself into a fist, the vines around it wriggling like a living creature.

Those scratching, shifting, slithering noises all around me suddenly made sense. The roots were twitching and climbing atop one another, strangling the bodies caught in their grasp…So many human bodies. All I could think in those moments was that each and every one of those corpses could have been someone who had walked these tunnels before.

I felt movement under my feet. The roots were snaking their way out of the cold dirt, reaching for my ankles. Without a second thought, I started to run, hoping that if I moved fast enough, nothing down here could catch me. I didn’t pay attention to the echo of my feet or my labored breath. I didn’t pay attention to the way my light bounced down the tunnel like a beacon for some hungry beast to follow.

The smell was getting worse, tickling the inside of my nose and making my eyes burn. It felt like acid in my throat. But no matter how far I ran down, I could never escape those roots and those twitching, shambling corpses trying to fight their way out of the dirt. Some of them were human, some were….something else. As I ran, my light caught their eyes. Some had more than two, others had limbs or faces that didn’t match the rest, like creatures that had melted together. God, they were hideous but tormented at the same time, groaning and screaming for mercy. I couldn’t tell if they reached for me with intent to kill, or if they were just reaching for anything that could free them from those suffocating roots.

I would take the cries of the dead any day over the sound I heard next. The ground shook above me, freeing clumps of dirt that fell onto my shoulders like pellets of ice. I stopped for just a moment to catch my breath, doubled over with hands on my knees. That’s when I heard the most hideous sound: the shriek of many animals at once, all combined into one horrible, bloodcurdling voice.

Something was moving - stomping - through the tunnel systems. I couldn’t tell if it was one thing or many things, as the sounds of dozens of feet and hooves rushed through the path and made the ground beneath me shiver. As its awful screams grew louder, I had no choice but to run as fast as I could down any and every path that would take me further from that thing. I looked behind me only once. It was the biggest mistake of my life.

In the circle of light, I saw many faces - human, animal, some skeletal and others with flesh still hanging - all melted into one terrible creature with dozens of limbs. It had arms and legs it didn’t even need sticking out of its body, its neck, its back. It shrieked as the light hit its many milk-white eyes, stunning it for only a split second before it began to tumble over its own body parts to get to me faster.

I don’t know how the thing moved. I don’t know how those limbs could lift the weight of the blob of mutated flesh it called a body, but it was racing towards me at shocking speeds. I could feel the ground quake. I could hear the beast knocking into the walls, as if struggling to fit through the passageways but still forcing its way through.

My phone was almost dead. I knew I only had moments left with the light that was keeping me alive, but with no path of escape to give me comfort. How long could I run? How long before the roots claimed me and I became another pile of bones trapped in the frozen soil?

The only force of nature on my side that night was the rumble in the earth itself. Another quake passed through, shaking the ground above and below with fearsome strength. The beast and I both stumbled, unable to keep our footing as dirt and stone crumbled around us both. I had to think then, would I rather be torn apart or be buried alive? Either way, I felt that these caverns would be my final, unmarked grave.

A glimmer of moonlight from above struck my eye with such an unexpected glory that I thought it was the next life coming to claim me. But as the soil above began to fall and crumble in mounds all around me, I realized that I had a chance. The forest was sinking, trees sliding into the ground in waves of dirt and snow. The beast behind me screamed and bellowed as it became blocked by a barricade of debris. I watched its many arms fight to dig through the dirt, desperate to reach me at any cost.

The roots. Those twisting, gnarled roots reached all the way up to the forest floor. I dropped my phone, leaving the precious light behind, freeing both hands so that I could climb my way out of this stinking hell. The quakes rocked me in one direction and then the next, all while vines wrapped around my limbs, my ankles, my neck. They were trying to drag me back down. The beast behind me shrieked loudly into the night air, pushing its way through one limb at a time. I had only seconds to get to the open air before I would be lost to the forest forever.

Adrenaline, fear, and panic lent me enough strength to tear my way through the vines and roots until I could feel the cold snow against my hands. Painfully, I dragged my aching body up onto the ground until my knees hit the forest floor, where withered plants continued to crawl their way up my legs and squeeze the life from me. I tore at them furiously, ripping them to pieces and tossing them like dead twigs into the trees.

The ground still moved beneath me, but it wasn’t the earthquakes anymore. That beast was trying to claw its way out, too big to climb but big enough to collapse the soil around it. I picked a direction and I ran, feet flying as fast as they would possibly take me. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I wasn’t satisfied until the world around me was silent and empty.

Every day, I regret looking at that creature. I regret walking down those tunnels, attracting its bloodthirsty attention. When I close my eyes, I can still see it - shrieking and lumbering through piles of bones and roots. I sometimes wonder if it’s still out there, still searching, still waiting for me to fall one last time.

​

When I broke the treeline, I didn’t know where I was. I stood at a long stretch of road, winding around the mountainside. In the distance, I saw the tiny shimmering lights of Pinehaven Village. And even further up the green piney peaks, I saw a heavy bank of fog beginning to roll through the forest, covering everything it touched in a blanket of gray.

There was a siren. It was distant and soft, ringing out into the night air with an eerie echo. From far away, I watched the little lights of the town begin to disappear one by one as the fog bank overtook it, swallowing it whole.

I don’t know how long it took to make my way back home. I walked through the night, following the twisting road until I could see Luke’s old red barn. There wasn’t a single soul on the road - no travelers, no neighbors, no trucks. It was just me, the mountain, and the ill wind.

Luke hasn’t turned up yet. His excavator is still stuck in the ground on my property, half-buried in the soil. There’s a layer of that dark, tacky fluid all over it. His truck is gone, his home is empty, doors left unlocked and animals still where he left them. I’ve been tending to the farm while he’s away, but…well, there’s no telling when the old man will be back.

I’m leaving as soon as I can, moving on to something new. To tell you the truth, I can’t look at the pines anymore without feeling sick to my stomach. When my eyes catch the view of that treeline, all I can think about are the tortured faces of the dead and the shambling limbs of an incomprehensible beast. I wonder if it was all a part of my imagination or some sort of terrible dream, but then that ill wind blows again. I think back on what my old man said, about the wind and misfortune. Bad things are coming. It’s right around the corner, waiting between the trees and perched on the mountaintops, watching over us from within the fog.

I don’t know what it is. I don’t think I’ll ever understand. But what I do know is that I won’t be here waiting around when it shows up. But maybe, before I leave, I should fill in those holes first.

I don’t like the way they seem to get a little deeper every day.