I considered going upstairs. Trying to make up more half-truths or confronting Phil/Justin. But instead I ran into the tunnel.
Five feet in the wall behind me faded back into view, and while I assumed I could still get back out that way, at the moment I didn’t care. I was tired of waiting for something special, tired of being scared when something this magical was right in front of me. I was going to see things for myself instead of just reading about it.
The tunnel went on, chamber after chamber of deep red roots and dark, loamy earth. As Justin had described, I eventually came to a branching of paths. Instead of taking the rightmost, I took the center. On and on I went for what felt like hours. But I was never tired or hungry, and with each branching path I just felt my urgency to go further growing. Center path every time, always leading to another choice further down the tangled path.
Then I saw I was entering a larger chamber. It was roughly circular in shape, the ceiling and walls made up of an endless cascade of roots woven tightly together except for several openings every few feet that I assumed led to other twisting paths. The roots here weren’t red for the most part, but a smoky grey that was almost black. And the flesh of those roots was blistered and scarred in many places as though there had been a fire here at one point.
Looking to the center of the room, I saw a small upgrowth of branches that almost looked like a pedestal of sorts for the black tangle of roots that lay atop it. If I had to guess, I’d say this is where the fire had started, but whatever had happened, the Ghost Tree (or Trees, depending on how you looked at it) had survived. I could see green shoots and new, unscarred red bark poking through the black ashy residue the flames had left behind.
I was reaching out to touch it, felt a strong and compelling need to touch it, but something held me back. Whatever this place was, it was clearly significant. Important. And I had a sense that in some ways it was more of a doorway and threshold than even passing into the tunnel had been. So I stepped back, picked a new tunnel, and journeyed on.
While my cell phone was useless for phone calls here, I used it to keep track of my choice in the larger chamber and the couple of times when there was an even number of tunnels with no “center path” to pick. Finally, after what felt like another hour or more, I saw a wall.
When I approached it, it dissolved away much like the wall in my house had done, but instead of entering a dank secret cell I appeared to be entering a large, well-lit room that someone used as a woodworking shop. Entering quietly, I listened for any signs of movement, but there were none. I was still in the basement of the house…of a version of the house, and the combination of similarities and differences made it seem surreal. I paused to look under a work bench occupied by a belt sander and what I thought might be a Dremel of some sort, and there I saw a faded “43” scratched into the floor where the bed was in my version of the house.
Going into the other room, I saw it was some kind of media room, though what I thought must be the television was simply a large pane of either glass or plastic suspended from the ceiling by two braided wires. I had no idea how something like that would work, but I supposed it didn’t matter. It might be the least of the differences in this world.
I crept up the stairs and eased open the basement door, and as it swung open I saw two men sitting at a table eating cereal. Or rather they had been eating cereal. Now they were staring at me.
“What the fuck?” One of them bellowed as he stood up, his expression a dangerous combination of fear and anger. “Who the fuck are you, lady?”
The other man was trying to calm him down, but he wasn’t listening. I slammed the door back shut before he reached it and ran down the stairs two at a time, desperate to reach the wall and terrified that it might not open for me this time.
But the tunnel was ready and waiting, and as I passed into it, the wall closed behind me, protecting me. I stood there for a moment, hands on my knees and breathing heavy, more out of fear and adrenaline than exertion. I had to be more careful. I never knew what I was going to be getting myself into, and I had to be ready.
I debated heading back then. I could get proper supplies and then head back out to explore more worlds with more than my cell phone and determination. But I finally decided I would give it one more try first. I backtracked two junctions and then took another path. This time the tunnel went on for quite some time, and after seven more choices I found myself at another wall. The basement I entered was pitch black, and I gave a shudder as I crossed over into it with my cell phone’s flashlight app acting as my only source of illumination. It was freezing here. I almost turned back, but then I spied a number etched onto the floor.
“71”.
For some reason that made me want to go on. I needed to see more of what Justin had seen. Try to understand more of what he experienced before I confronted him. He had obviously been lying to me, possibly trying to trick me into something, and I didn’t want to go into that conversation with nothing but his old writings to guide me.
So I went forward very slowly into the rest of the basement, holding up my little phone like a guiding star as I pushed through the cold darkness. I listened at the top of the stairs for a couple of minutes before deciding it was probably safe to open it. When I did so, I saw the house was totally empty, much like Justin had described in his trip to the house on the island.
I also realized that while the house itself was dark, there was a faint blue glow coming through the windows. My first thought was that I was in a world where it was late twilight or early morning, but when I approached the window over the kitchen sink, I saw I was wrong.
I was in a cave.
The house, as strange and impossible as it seemed, was sitting in some kind of massive cave. I went to the front door and opened it. The air was even colder outside, and while there were no distinct sources of light, the air was saturated with a soft, blue glow. It reminded me in some ways of the light in the tunnels of the Ghost Tree, but instead of being comforting, it filled me with a vague and terrible sense of dread.
Still, I wanted to see this through. I left the front door open for a quick escape and walked a few steps further into the cave. It was an enormous cavern, and in the distance I could barely make out several dark spots that I assumed were tunnels leading to other parts of the whatever cave system this was on whatever world I found myself in.
I turned to my right and saw the Ghost Tree there, its red branches and green flowing leaves blowing in the currents of some breeze I couldn’t feel. I felt a surge of happiness and familiarity at seeing it, as though I had run into an old friend, and I found myself heading toward it. Then I noticed the bodies stacked at its base.
Perfectly preserved, twenty bodies or more were stacked at the tree’s base, and my first thought was that it was some kind of strange offering by whoever or whatever lived here. Then I saw the black lines of corruption that traced itself from several of the bodies to the trunk of the massive tree. The bodies were poisoning it. I saw the distended belly of one of the bodies shift. Or something inside the bodies was poisoning it.
I took a step back, taking in more of the details of the cavern I had stupidly decided would be good to explore. There were more bodies at different spots along the floor, some with swollen, shifting stomachs, others looking as though they were simply taking a nap. All told I saw over a hundred bodies in the dim gloom of that unending indigo light. And among all those bodies were numerous lines cut in the stony floor. Almost as though they had been cut with a blade or a saw.
What do you offer as tribute for your need, Traveler?
The voice echoed in my mind like the high tones of a church bell. Intelligent and feminine, it carried an undercurrent of inhuman emotion that could have been a cousin of anger or amusement or both. I spun around, looking for the source. At first I saw nothing, but then at one of the black tunnels in the distance, I saw a pair of blue flames dancing in the air.
They were its eyes.
I ran into the house, shutting the front and basement door behind me as I ran down the stairs and back to the tunnel. That was enough for me. I wanted to go home and leave all this behind. I’d talk to Justin/Phil if he wanted, but after that I was packing my shit and never coming back to any version of that fucking house again.
It took what seemed like hours to make it back. I found the way easily, and even when I ran across that central burned chamber with its multitude of paths, I picked the right one without hesitation. But it still felt like it was taking forever. When I finally crossed back into Justin’s cell, I was so filled with relief that it took me several moments to notice what was different.
The wall dividing the cell from the rest of the basement was back up.
I had dismantled a large central portion of the brick wall that had separated Justin’s room from the rest of the house, and that had all been replaced with new bricks except for a small space two bricks wide and tall. It was just enough space for me to see Phil looking in at me.
“Hey there, honey. Been on a little trip have you? Did you have a good time?”
I ran up to the wall, realizing in passing that the cell was now lit by a pair of LED lanterns on the nightstand and chest respectively. He was setting me up in here, the bastard.
“Phil, Justin, whatever you call yourself, let me out of here.”
He smiled at me pleasantly. “No can do, buttercup. And even if I did, it wouldn’t do you any good. You belong to the tree now. I felt it when it passed from me to you.”
I pushed against the brick angrily, but it didn’t budge. “Why are you doing this?” I paused and added. “I love you.”
His smile grew colder. “That’s real cute. You know, you’ve been gone for an entire day. I only started working on the wall a couple of hours ago. Before that I did some light reading. Your precious fucking journal.”
Taking a couple of steps back, he lifted my journal from a dwindled stack of bricks he had brought down for the job. “You see, the difference between your journal and mine is that I had actual problems to write about. Well, that and mine is far better written. Jesus, I had a ninth grade education when I wrote this, and you have a masters degree. The modern education system really is shit.” He shook his head before taking a deep breath. “But no, I’m mad and hurt, and it’s making me petty. Let me start over.”
He sat the journal back on the bricks and approached the hole in the wall. “When I went into those tunnels again, I was so happy and excited. I thought I was about to go on some magical adventure and live a life full of freedom and wonder. Instead, you know what I found?”
My mind was still racing for some way out of this, but I thought it best to humor him for now. “What’s that?”
He wasn’t smiling any longer. “After traveling to over two hundred different worlds, I figured out three things. One, many worlds are filled with people much like us. After a few dozen of those, I gave up on finding a world where people aren’t largely selfish pieces of shit. Two, some of those worlds are much, much worse.” Phil paused, cocking his head. “Which ones did you go to? I don’t know if you noticed, but I numbered pretty much every one I went to.”
I stared at him dully, trying not to show how much I wanted to break through that wall and reach him. “Um, 43 and 71.”
He seemed to ponder for a moment and then his eyes went wide. “71? Oh shit, really? You have an awesome sense of direction. Wow. Yeah, I don’t advise a return trip there.”
I shuddered at the memory. “Yeah, I don’t plan to. Look, I don’t want to go anywhere any more. Please just let me out and I’ll do whatever you want. Stay, go, I don’t care. Just don’t leave me in here.”
He was already shaking his head, and he actually looked sad now. “No. I’m sorry, but no. Because the third thing I figured out was that once you touch the root and enter the tunnel, you’re bound to the Ghost Tree. At first I thought it was a gift. I aged incredibly slowly, I never got hungry or thirsty or tired in the tunnels, and I had all these places I could go.”
Phil shoved my journal off the brick pile onto the floor and sat down. “But after a few months of that, I got tired of it. I found a world that seemed to be less terrible than most, and I settled down. I built a life there. Fell in love.” He put his hands in his lap and I could see they were balled into fists. “And then one day I woke up in the tunnels. In what I call the heart room.”
“I found my way back to my new world, my new life. But the tree wouldn’t open the way. Eventually I figured out that I had to go back and stay with it in the heart room. I couldn’t explore any world during that time. What seemed like an eternity passed, and periodically I would go back to the tunnel I needed and still see the wall up. Until finally it wasn’t.”
“I was so happy. I ran through into the basement, up the stairs, and I set out to find my girlfriend or any of the friends I had made. That’s when I realized ten years had passed.” He leaned forward, looking at me somberly. “What it amounts to is this. You can go and explore, but after about two to three years, the tree pulls you back. And after that, you have to stay with it for five times whatever time you had on the outside. I don’t know if its lonely, or it needs us for something, or if it’s just mean, but that’s the rules.”
I started to say I was sorry, and he just raised his hand with a glare. “Save it. I’m trying to explain as a kindness. So you don’t start all this totally in the dark like I was. Don’t push it.” He waited a second and then went on. “After I figured out how much time had passed, I gave up on staying in that world. I went to exploring again, although without the hope of a permanent life somewhere, it didn’t mean as much. I figured out what I’m telling you over the years, staying for different amounts of time different places, and after everything I saw, I realized something.”
“I wasn’t special. None of us are. I’ve seen multiple older versions of myself. They were all unremarkable. I’ve met people across scores of worlds, and there aren’t more than a handful that stand out. But while that was depressing in some ways, it also gave me hope that I didn’t have to be the one to bear this burden forever. I could find a replacement.”
“As I think you may have figured out by now, I did away with my parents and brother too. It was during a dark time early on, before I had found my new world and love but after I had become despondent in my travels. I came back and killed them in their sleep, dragging their bodies into the tunnels for a reason that made sense at the time but is lost on me now. Years later, I came back and bought the house from the bank who was left holding it. Oddly enough, people hadn’t been lining up to buy the old murder house with the creepy vibes, so I got it cheap. This was in the 1950s, and I’ve been sitting on it since, periodically coming out to try and find a good replacement.”
“But it hasn’t been easy. I figured out over time that you can’t just knock someone out and put them in the tunnel. You can’t force them to agree to enter it either. No, they have to voluntarily touch the root and enter the tunnel for them to be bound in your place.”
He laughed bitterly. “Of course, I didn’t know that for sure until now. It was all guesswork. About fifteen years ago I decided it was no use and I was better off trying to kill the fucking tree even if I died with it. So I came out, got a drum of gasoline, and tried to burn down the heart room.”
“Yeah I saw.” He looked up at my words and grinned, giving a nod. “It didn’t look like it worked too well.”
His expression darkened and he stood back up. “No…no it didn’t. I think I hurt it, but I don’t know if it can die. So I gave up on that and went back to trying to find someone I could get to take my place, if it was even possible. That’s when you came along. Well, not you. But another version of you.”
My eyes widened. “What’re you talking about?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “What do you think? Alternate worlds, alternate yous. Keep up. I met another version of you and got into a relationship with them. I got them to the house, but they weren’t as curious and hardworking as you are. They didn’t take the bait from my subtle hints or even me ‘discovering’ the hidden room I had made there. By the time I was getting them interested, I was pulled back into the fucking heart.”
“You should have given them a mysterious note.” I knew I should keep quiet since I just made him angrier, but I couldn’t help it. But this time Phil was looking confused.
“Note? I didn’t ever leave you a no…Oh wait. What did it say?”
“Come live in the ashes of my heart. You’re saying you didn’t write that? It was in your, or at least your old Justin, handwriting.”
Phil shrugged. “Honestly, no note from me. I guess the Tree did that. Its attempt at being mysterious and ironic, maybe? I don’t know. I wondered how you got on it so quick. I guess the Tree was tired of me too, which is understandable.”
He looked away, his expression strange. “Anyway, when I could leave the tunnels again I came back here and found you. Sought you out, if I’m being honest. And you know, I actually loved you. I’ve been really conflicted this entire time about if I could even go through with this. Well,” he glanced down at my journal on the ground, “at least before reading that.”
He turned around and grabbed up a new brick, scraping mortar into the space it was going to go. I started screaming for him to stop, but he didn’t pause. After a couple of minutes, there was only one brick left out of place.
“I put those lanterns in there for you, and there’s a backpack on the bed with food and water. I’d suggest you travel around, just be careful and mind your time limits. Don’t get too attached to any place because you can’t stay forever. And I left you a new journal on the chest. Maybe you’ll write about this part too. If you leave it behind when you’re done, I’ll keep it safe. Maybe let other people read what you wrote even. It won’t matter.” He paused, his eyes troubled. “I guess I’ll be a villain in your story.”
He started putting mortar around the edges of the final opening. “I went to 211 different worlds. And you know what? There were cells like this one in 93 of them, along with 93 corpse versions of me. Living in that room, I had always wanted to believe that my family had just made a mistake. That they were good people that just picked the wrong way when the path forked. But no, that was just who they were, through and through.” He put the last brick into position and started pushing it in. “I guess everyone is someone’s villain.”
---
Credits
Comments