In The Trees - 1933
Have ye ever heard the story of the old Hawkins Lumber Mill? A dark bit of business that was, and no mistake.
There ain’t much left of the place now, o’ course, and maybe that’s some kind of blessing. It sits, burned and forgotten, to the north of Millpond, across the railroad tracks, past the junkyard, on the very edge of Welden Woods, where the trees crowd close in a dark hush. There’s little left of the place these days. Barely more’n a pile of fire-blackened sticks. But once, many a year since, the Hawkins Lumber Mill was a grand building. A hive of bustling activity.
At the turn of the 20th century, the old growth of Welden Woods stocked lumber yards all across New England, and beyond. Thanks to the trees - and the Archingold family, o’ course - Millpond was booming. At one time, near half the town worked for Hawkins Lumber. Some drove the trucks, some worked the mill and the lumber yards. But the hardiest men, the most fearless men, spent their days out there, in the Woods.
Dangerous work that is, logging. Here, in Millpond, more than anywhere else. You don’t need me to tell you of all the strangeness that happens out in Welden Woods. You’ve heard the stories. People see things. Hear things. Things moving in the shadows beneath the trees, whispering. Sometimes even the trees themselves seem to walk about when your eye’s not on ‘em. A strange, scary place. But the pay was good, and money has a curious way of taking the bite out of terror. Especially back then, when a well-paying job was precious hard to come by. And so, day by day, the logging crews went out into those dark trees and, day by day, delved deeper and deeper into the terrible Woods.
One cold, grey morning, one of these crews, led by a grizzled old saw jockey named Rex Peterson, struck out further than any crew had gone before. They passed the most distant trail markers, forded the swollen river and climbed up into the misty foothills of Mount McCabe, where the shadows are long and the trees are older than memory. There they came across a secluded grove, filled with the tallest, strongest pines Rex had ever seen. And there, in the very centre of the grove, stood the tallest of the lot. Huge, it was. Ancient. Bark hard and cold as iron and black as a shadow at midnight. It grew tall but twisted, its branches raking the sky, its roots gutting the earth. The men were frightened by that place - something in the chill screech of the wind, or the faintest hint of sulphur on the air - and they were especially disturbed by the great black tree.
But not Rex Peterson. As soon as he laid eyes on the gargantuan thing, something came over him. A kind of madness, maybe. Or, imagining the bonus he’d get for hauling in such a monster, perhaps it was plain old greed driving Rex Peterson. Perhaps, when it comes down to it, that amounts to the same thing.
Whatever the reason, Rex had to have it.
It took four days to bring that old tree down, and it didn’t go without a fight. Tore up countless saws as if they were paper, and more’n one logger fell foul of its falling branches. But, in the end, Rex got his prize, and he rode the trunk back to the mill like a victorious general.
Hank Hawkins, the owner of Hawkins Lumber, was beside himself on seeing that tree. Near exploded with joy. Premium wood, he said! Unlike anything he’d ever seen before, and him 40 years in the lumber business! Premium wood, salable at a premium price. Bonuses were promised, and brandy and cigars, to all the men involved in bringing the monster down. Hawkins blustered and cheered all the way to the old Howard Tavern on Maple Street to begin the celebrations in earnest, but Rex Peterson stayed behind. He wasn’t about to let his prize out of sight.
He wanted to open ‘er up himself.
Under the powerful, whirring electric saws, the black beast split open like a rotten apple and from within, from the depths, practically unnoticed, came the merest swirl of vapour. Rex breathed deep, savouring the smell of freshly cut wood. The smell of victory. The smell, unknown to him, of the stuff inside the tree. And then Rex fell silent, and grew still. One by one, with the intake of breath, the other men on the floor did the same. They stood, every one, arms slack at their sides, staring with empty eyes. And then the change began. Rex was the first. He shook his head, snorted like a bull, then turned and glared at the man next to him. Without a word, he grabbed the handle of his axe and drove the blade into the man’s face. As the man’s blood soaked into the sawdust, the other men came alive, and hell followed with ‘em.
In the morning, Hank Hawkins strode up to the mill whistling a happy tune. He was a little hungover, but in high spirits. He was thinking of the money to be made on this new, strange tree, and the fact that there were likely more of ‘em out there, deep in Welden Woods. The crowd of workers - the morning shift - huddled outside the building and looking around nervously, did little to dampen his mood. But he was curious. Why on earth were his men not working? And if these men were out here, who was running the machines inside, because the air was indeed filled with the unmistakable music of grinding saws.
“Door’s shut tight,” explained one of the men. “Blocked, from the other side.”
Hawkins was perplexed, but practical as ever. He quickly organised a gang of the strongest, toughest loggers, and set them up with a makeshift battering ram. After a few swings, the doors crumbled like matchsticks, and the loggers set to work clearing the debris.
But they got no further than the doorway.
The smell hit them first. It was the smell of a charnel house. A butcher’s shop. The smell of spilt blood, and meat, and something else, beneath it all. Something green. Inside, the mill was dark, and sawdust filled the air, but it was clear that shapes moved in the shadows. Human shapes. Something was wrong here, Hawkins was sure of it, and his spirits teetered on a knife edge. He hurriedly ordered torches be brought up, and soon dusty beams of dim light split the darkness. Now, Hank Hawkins learned something that day. Something that we in Millpond know all too well. As he peered through the broken door, at the scene of repulsive horror revealed by the torches, Hawkins learned that sometimes it’s better to remain in the dark.
The sawdust covering the cutting floor was dark and slick under the torch beams, black with gore, and there were things growing from it. Plants, of a sort. Strange, unnatural plants that turned hungrily towards the light. And there were men, too. A handful of men, shambling, bandy-legged and exhausted, their faces smeared with dark filth, their eyes staring and empty. Rex Peterson was among them, and a few others from the night shift, but what of the rest? There had been fifty men working that previous night, and only this few remained. At first, there seemed to be no sign of them, but with a sweep of a torch and a sickening lurch of the guts, Hawkins solved the mystery. Their bodies - what was left of them, at any rate - were neatly stacked in the loading zone. And the other men, the living men, were working doggedly. They were using the saws, and the axes, and their bare, bloody hands, to turn the rest of the ill-fated night shift into bloody mulch. Carrying the dripping filth across the cutting floor. Gently, lovingly rubbing it on the leaves and fronds of the monstrous plants, packing it in around their roots.
Feeding them.
Hank Hawkins gaped. His mind was an empty cup, scraped clean by the horror of what he was witnessing. But he regained himself long enough to order the doorway barricaded, the windows nailed shut. Then he ordered the foundations of the mill be doused in gasoline and set ablaze. He stood with the rest of the morning shift and watched the place burn. He tried to ignore the screeches coming from within, and the desperate, blackened hands that wormed their way through cracks in the burning wood. Hawkins watched, and he wept silently.
The papers reported it as a horrible accident. A whole shift, lost in a terrible fire that burned so hot, not even bones remained. Hawkins never rebuilt the mill, and to this day, the area remains blighted and silent and willfully forgotten. But those few that have ventured out there, across the railroad tracks, past the junkyard, where the Woods hungrily gathers its shadows, have spoken of a blackened shell of fire-devoured timber, and a single tree, growing from the ashes.
A tall, twisted tree, black as a shadow at midnight.