The Forest

This is in response to Sadje’s Weekly Photo Prompts on #Whatdoyousee.

She walked past the stone building – old and dark. The deserted streets draped in a shroud of white. The street lamp at the corner threw more shadow than light. The grumpy, overcast sky looked on gloomily.

Almost a Holmes-ian setting, she thought…Her footprints etching reminders on the carpet of snow methodically, rhythmically.

She was a stranger in this part…a lone visitor…an explorer. But in this envelope of mystic quietude she felt like an intruder.

She followed every bend, spiral and winding of the street till it surprisingly curved into a deep, dark pine forest. A sturdy wooden foot bridge giving shape to a connecting pathway over a bottomless gorge that separated the ‘dead’ town from the verdant groves. Strangely there was no sign of winter here.

She crossed the bridge and entered the intimacy of the tall trees that almost lost themselves somewhere up into nothingness. There was something magnetic about the leafy mesh. It pulled her in.

The pines stood erect with fingers on their lips. There was no sound of birds or insects. No roar or growl of ferocious animals. No whisper of wind. No softness of  footfalls. No hardness of heavy treads. No movement. At all. As though all sounds, words and emotions laid here suppressed… stifled…surrendered…In this envelope of  intricately knitted verbose silence she again felt like a gatecrasher. A narrow, untrodden, almost hidden path let her in.

Bye and bye she came to the river – motionless…it’s water still…almost thickened by the opaque shades of the tightly hugging clusters of branches covered with sleeves of  richly embroidered velvet green threads. She peered in and at once jerked back.

Who did she see in the water? Was there someone else there inside? A mess of  colourless tangled hair encircled a pale, drawn face with flattened forehead, sunken cheeks, unbecoming nose, expressionless eyes and straight, shapeless lips.

Then she remembered. The forest was rumoured to be magical….mystical. The old hooded lady with a stoop leaning precariously on a crooked staff  had told her at the inn. The forest had power… unimaginable…untapped… unencrypted  power. A wicked grin playing on her thin lips.

It saw…observed…scanned…absorbed…and then reflected back what it had gleaned. The river in the bosom of the forest was its mirror. And the forest saw her as  uninviting… unattractive…ugly.

She stood there breathless trying to get control of herself. Her legs shook. Her heart had sunk in the pit of her stomach. She wanted a breath of fresh air. Here in this enmeshed canopy of twining leaves and branches  the sun could never peep in. She wanted to see the sky. Clear light to think straight.

She had an overbearing urge to rush back to the inn. To her room. And see what the dressing table mirror showed – who she was….how she was.

Though she blindly groped her way back with flailing arms and staggering steps something inside her knew that nothing would be the same again…her life would not be the same again…she herself would not be the same again…

***

Walking past that grim facade once again she felt as though the crooked building stared at her with x-ray eyes.

The street lamp in the corner blinked twice with a crackle before giving way to a flicker of light which did no better in the condensed darkness of a moonless night.

As she was about to pass by, the door of the building opened, as though with a sudden gust of wind and a pencilled streak of bleak light rolled out and fell on the icy street.

She had no mood to look inside but stopped short as the cackles of a high pitched, mirthless laughter emanated from the doorway and a large looming shadow writhed over the threshold and spread itself on the outer wall of the monolith like a gigantic silhouette.

She knew that laughter swirling in air. She knew that shadow carved on the wall …  a hump back dramatically hunched over an asymmetrical staff …

She ran. But the cacophonic laughter chased her with a starling speed. She put her hands over her ears to muffle the insane noise. Yet she knew it would overpower her…her body…her mind…her soul…her senses…and all her perceived reality….

Soon…very soon…

It was just a matter of time.

#Wdsy