James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

Mike winced, slammed his fist over his mouth, and turned away. The sight on the other side was no better, as Hugh the video store clerk dropped from the air onto the copper statue of John Cromay, the town’s founder.

“Sheriff! Thank God!” cried Craig Zebsmith, who’d been one of Mike’s drinking partners after work. Sheriff Nelson rolled down his window as Craig rushed over to the car. “You’ve gotta get me out of here! You’ve gotta—”

A tree popped up right in front of Craig, catching him under the jaw and snapping his head backward in a mist of blood. The rising tree quickly hid the rest of the grisly sight.

“There’s gotta be someplace we can get these people that’s safe!” Sheriff Nelson said. “These trees can’t break through everything , can they?”

The copper statue toppled over, landing on top of Video Store Hugh’s mangled body.

“Let’s just get out of here!” Mike insisted.

Sheriff Nelson looked as if he wanted to make some sort of heroic, selfless statement… but then he slammed on the accelerator and they sped down the street. Mike watched in horror as a tree burst through a pump at the gas station, spraying fuel everywhere.

“Aw… crap!” Sheriff Nelson slammed on the brakes as a pair of trees broke through the pavement directly in front of them, blocking the road. He put the car into reverse and looked back over his shoulder as they rocketed backwards—

“ Watch out !”

—smacking into a man who ran out into the road behind them. He disappeared behind the vehicle too quickly for Mike to see who it was. Sheriff Nelson slammed on the brakes again.

“Don’t stop!”

“I’m not going to just leave him there!”

“Pretty soon there won’t be any road left!”

A tree popped up underneath the sheriff’s car, knocking it onto its side. Safety glass from the windshield sprayed over both of them, and Mike dropped onto Sheriff Nelson with a loud grunt. The sheriff cried out in pain.

We’re dead, we’re so dead , Mike thought as he scrambled through the front windshield. He shook the glass off his hands and reached back inside for the sheriff.

“You broke my damn arm!” Sheriff Nelson shouted.

“C’mon, c’mon, let’s go!” Mike grabbed the sheriff’s good arm and tried to pull him to safety.

A tree came through the ground directly beneath the sheriff, bursting right through his chest. Mike screamed and frantically scooted away as the expanding tree ripped the car in half.

Mike got to his feet, stumbled a bit, and blindly ran down the street, barely even noticing as some branches slashed across his cheek. This was not the way he’d planned to die. He hadn’t exactly given a lot of thought to the ways he might want to perish, but killer trees were definitely not on the list.

“Mike!”

He spun around. It was Jo-Anne Sanes, vigorously waving to him from the doorway of Jo-Anne’s Sweets, her candy shop. Mike wasn’t a big candy eater, but he and Jo-Anne were both divorced, and he stopped by every once in a while for some harmless flirting. She stepped out of the way as he rushed inside, colliding with the gumball machine and sending it crashing to the floor. Multi-colored gumballs rolled everywhere.

“We won’t be safe here,” he blurted out as she pulled the glass door closed.

“We might be. Those things can’t cover the entire town, can they?”

“I don’t know. They seem to be doing a pretty good job.”

The glass front of the store shattered as something exploded. It sounded like it came from the gas station.

Mike took Jo-Anne’s hand. “We should run for it.”

“No,” she said, pulling away. “We need to hunker down someplace safe! This’ll all stop, I know it!”

A tree burst through the floor of the shop, displacing an entire shelf of candy jars. A second tree followed almost immediately after, popping up directly beneath Jo-Anne and lifting her to the ceiling.

The tree easily broke through the roof. Jo-Anne did not. Her body hit the floor, landing on broken glass, Atomic Fireballs, and sour gummi worms.

Mike ran out of the shop, barely able to breathe. The trees were almost forest-thick now, and the shrieks of Cromay residents were like rusty nails through his eardrums.

A rising tree tore across his back. He stumbled forward into another one. Branches sprouted beneath his feet, lifting him up, and he instinctively hugged the tree as tightly as he could.

He quickly rose into the air. More branches sprouted from the tree, slashing across his arms and legs. One branch ripped right through his left forearm, and he could do nothing but close his eyes and scream as he went up and up and up…

Finally, the ride stopped. He waited for a moment, completely unmoving, and then forced himself to open his eyes.

From this vantage point, hundreds of feet in the air, he could see trees rising for miles. There was an end to it, though—they seemed to be forming a perfect circle.

The top branches wobbled in the wind, and he held on more tightly.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes again, and wrenched his arm free. His scream of agony echoed across the brand-new forest.

The branch beneath his feet seemed to be relatively sturdy, so he manipulated himself into a position where he could apply pressure to his injured arm while still holding on. As long as he didn’t bleed to death, he could stay up here until they sent a helicopter or something. A forest sprouting up in the middle of the desert would certainly attract quick attention, right?

He was starting to feel light-headed already. Hopefully it was just from being up so high and not from blood loss.

Be strong… you’ve gotta be strong. Wait this out and you’ll be okay, and you’ll have one hell of a story to tell on the talk shows. Movie deal, book deal, merchandising… you’ll be rich. Just wait it out. Don’t bleed to death.

The branches beneath him rustled.

A clawed hand wrapped around his ankle.

Mike screamed for the last time as he was pulled off his perch.

We’ll discuss this on Monday…

It was the adult equivalent of “wait until your father gets home.” And just as Christopher Brummit’s mother had used that technique to extend the misery of upcoming punishments, Mr. Tylerson was going to purposely make him sweat all weekend. There was no reason they couldn’t meet this afternoon and get it over with, but the sadistic bastard wanted him to suffer, unable to eat or sleep, stomach churning, headache pounding, wondering if he’d still have a job when he wandered into the office Monday morning.

Christopher had been putting in seventy and eighty-hour weeks for the past several months. He wasn’t the only one. The lack of a life outside of work was a source of masochistic pride for his co-workers; hell, it was practically a competition to see who could put in the longest workweek. Simply working eight-to-five was unheard of. Lunch breaks were for the weak. If you weren’t a slave to Novellon, Inc., then you weren’t a team player.

Christopher did his work without complaint. Since his divorce a year ago, he really didn’t have a life outside of work anyway, unless you counted Netflix. But the long hours and non-stop pressure were wearing him down, and he finally made a mistake.

A big one.

Well, technically, a small one. A single typo in a spreadsheet. But it was a typo that made Mr. Tylerson “look like an ass” in front of the board of directors.

“Would you like to explain to me how this happened?” Mr. Tylerson had asked, tossing the flawed spreadsheet across his luxurious desk. His face—already naturally ruddy—was so red that Christopher worried that his pores might start seeping blood.