I needed to stretch my legs, strain my time, idle away. The wind still sang its song, but I was tired of writing of it- I knew it as my own flesh. So I left my home, and I went to the silences of the streets, the flickering lamplight, amber glow shudder. I came upon a field, and spied a lonely stripped birch tree in the centre of it, at the crest of a small hill that seemed to cover, swallow, ensnare the moon in roots, tips of trees, the branches of the birth tree lanced skeletal figures over its silver beams of purity, of gentle lucidity. I found myself drawn to it.
First I passed by stabbing black branches, and I got a small cut on my neck that sent a shiver of sensation right to my tail bone, then I passed through bracken, dry as ash, the bones of the deceased left out on the sun, then the grasses, soft under my foot, and with almost no sound, it silenced all sound, so I passed seemingly invisibly, a ghost.
Now on the outline of the wood, I heard the cracking of branches, the snapping of underbrush, which set my nerves aflame with excitement. The hill blocked the moonlight, and my vision offered me nought. Soon, it multiplied, and became a noisome clamour- laughter joined the snapping, the twitching in the trees, voices seemed to climb to the sky, cling to clouds. I was beginning to feel a tightening in my chest, a tingling over extremities- the onset of panic.
My eyes, as if moved on their own, snapped to a pale lantern, and all the noise died, and I walked backwards up the hill, eyeing the full and dreaming darkness. The night empty field was only illuminated by the lantern drifting towards me now, and I now saw the hand that held it- clothed in white velvet, clutching fiercely the handle of steel- a hand filled with repressed rage wanted to burst as sudden violence, hateful malice that yearned to express itself over vulnerable flesh.
I knew I was at the top of the hill when I turned my back, wanting to break into a sprint, and return to the streets, hoping the lights held a brightness that would annihilate all shadows, a cascade of variegated blooming phosphorescence, carrying the flickering, fading fire of daylight, and I knew the birth tree in its horrible reality, as I saw it writhing, losing shape, seeing faces yawn, sneer, beg, whimper, plead, pray, and a white creature danced from the tip of the malignant tree, whipping its unnatural limbs in the wildness against the silence, and it told me what the world was at its most naked, as it clung upon me, and seemingly it sank into me, my breathing gone ragged, my flesh cool and rippling with fear, it departed from my flesh, and against the moonlight, the birch tree lost it shape, and its deviant beasts chattered and chattered, and fled to the earth, leaving only my fear, the black air, the white fleeing to the ground, to the woods, and its collection of unmentionable secrets, its veils of occulted vision impossible for my weak, limited eyes to perceive.
In the morning light, I found my way home. I never again went to that hill, nor that field. I still hear the voices in my dreams, their mad, inhuman laughter, cold as blades clashing in a hellish battlefield. I now find myself shivering at night.