The Forest

- based on a dream

I stood in a clearing in the middle of a grey forest. It looked hollow and barren, cold and uninviting. Indeed, it looked as if it were a dead forest. I cannot even describe the stone grey shade everything was in this forest. A slow, creeping mist crawled across the hard-earth pathway that went through it. Above me the sky was overcast and dull and around me it was quiet, except for a deep, low and far-off moaning of some terrible demon beneath the world. Ahead there were some bitter sounds inexplicable and strange. Otherwise, the forest was silent, and its silent was louder than any noise I've ever heard. A man stood just within it. Behind him grey-white logs partly blocked the path and the spindly, dry tress jutted out and closed above him like a broken roof. This was not a cliché forest from nightmares. God, no, it was far more surreal, far deeper and more terrifying than anything television has ever given us. This was not a Blair witch project-type collection of trees, nor was it something out of a fairy-tale. This was my mind's forest, and it reflected my inner feelings. That made it all the more frightening.

The man was an American. He was well-tanned, dressed in comfortable, relaxed clothed. He was a starling mixture of color against the snow-cold forest behind. His face was grave, though, and he gave me serious warning.

"My family live on the other side of this forest," he said. "We always get to this clearing, and have two paths to choose from. Both lead to the house. Both are dangerous. We have lived here and my forefathers have lived here and we know this forest well. We stick to the path, know what sounds mean death or peril and know how to avoid losing ourselves. My children even come through here alone after school, because they have a clear knowledge of where they want to go. As long as you're secure in mind of your destination, the forest cannot harm you."

I soaked this in, knowing that I and two shady, murky being behind me were to travel down this forest. The beings were people also created by my imagination. One I cannot remember well, although it was tall and I think female. The other was a short Irish man of some character, and I have a vague memory of him helping me destroy some enormous curtains and drop them over a cliff edge, for a reason that evades my memory. All I know was that I was grateful.

But as the forest is the only thing still clear in mind, I shall explain the experience of it, and the foreboding of the man's words.

"Throughout our family's past, there have been some...'cases', of members dying in this forest. Angry teenagers who left the house and ran into the forest in a tearing rage and misery never came out. They didn't know where they were going, you see. They didn't know how to cope with themselves." His voice slowed dramatically. "You shouldn't enter this pathway if you don't know where you are going."

And I didn't. I suppose it's easy to draw parallels between this dream and my uncertainty in real life. I am a young woman about to finish school and go alone into the big world, unsure of what I will face and who I will meet. But there was something far more sinister and ominous about this forest that told me it was going to be a bleak and awful journey.

"Which one is shorter?" I asked.

He smiled at this point, mirthlessly, and moved aside. "The one behind me is shorter, but it's more dangerous than the longer one. But if you watch your step and take care, you should be all right."

And then I walked forward and the man melted in the corners of my vision as I passed him, and was no more. I was dully aware of the other two following me, speaking to me. I immediately felt the drop in temperature. It was a bitter cold. Not cold that chilled you so much as it dampened your skin and you could feel it greedily sap and destroy your body heat.

I walked on, my feet crunching leaves that were stiff and so rotten that a film of white, fine-hair algae had grown over them, plastering them to the ground. Some of them looked like they'd been painted white. The trees had abrasions of pale brown on them, which looked like the actual bark had been stripped to reveal some colour. Nothing moved or stirred in the forest. It was all...so...dead.

I wish I could tell you what happened in there. But no climax occurred of note, there was no dramatic beast that came roaring into my path, no axe-murderer to run from or rabid creature to thrash at. Something vague descended on me. It was like an icy, ghostly hound entered my body and licked my heart with its frozen tongue. Two claws went into me and unhinged my soul, my essence and tried to hang me from it, limply like a doll. A trickle of fear started in the core of my throat and then washed down it into my body. The stream grew stronger and I felt that inner prickling and distant nausea which can only be described as some weary, frightful dread. You know something is happening to you, something highly unpleasant, and a part of you accepts it, knowing there's nothing you can do for you are dreaming and dreams have rules. But there's always that instinctual, primal urge to live, to fight it. The frustration, the desperation was all masked for me by a tiredness of soul so great, that, while I felt the fear, it was somewhat numb this time. The forest closed in on me.

I entered a blackness, that blurry, garbled stage in a dream when you change scenes. That fussy intermission as you disintegrate and reform someplace else. It takes and age and yet passes so quickly that you can barely recall it happening. I was on some adventure, trying to get to some place that I didn't know the appearance of. All I knew was when I saw it, I would know I'd found it.

What followed is too vague to describe, and largely unimportant. What I know now is, if I dream again of the forest, I shall bring an axe and strike a tree, because I know that if I do that, I will anger it, I will taint a sacred, evil and powerful entity, and my punishment will be unimaginable.