Howard's head throbbed as if the weight of the universe had been dropped on his head. His vision swam, blurred and disorienting, as he stumbled forward into what felt like an endless void. The darkness surrounding him was dense, suffocating, and silent—so eerily silent that even his own breathing sounded foreign to his ears.
Time itself seemed frozen as he stood still, dead, in the world around him. The cold was absolute; so too, the blackness. For that very brief moment, Howard wondered if this was what death felt like and that endless nothing that people dreaded so much. But then something began to take hold. Air began to grow heavy with energy as though the forest itself was beginning to breathe life back into it once more.
It began to clear slowly, step by step. He could almost believe he saw things- oak trees thick and tall enough above him to weave together like a cathedral of leaves with ancient branches. The world seems to flicker back to life again as if from one reality he stepped into another, the oppressive weight lifting slightly off his chest.
A nervous chuckle escaped Howard's lips as he rubbed his temples, trying to shake off the sensation of being trapped in some nightmare.
"Well, Ma always told me not to do drugs…" he muttered under his breath, though the situation felt far too real for any hallucination.
The memories of the previous hours were they hours? Days? were hazy at best. Hadn't he been running for his life just moments ago? He was running from something, hiding from shadows. He ran his hands over his head to try to clear it, and this would not let him forget. About him, though now visible, things began to warp and twist.
The bottom where he stood began to shift. It felt alive, like the rippling surface of a lake that spins and warps.
"Agh! What's going on?! Howard bellowed at the top of his lungs, his voice crashing off the trees and smashing back into his ears.
Nothing. Then, the ice-pick voice of a stranger cut in, freezing Howard in his tracks.
"You're eroding. That's what's happening."
Howard's heart leaped into his throat as he whipped around seeking the source of the voice. From the shifting shadows, a figure emerged. Dressed in black from head to toe, wearing a gas mask over his face. There was something surreal about the presence, like something out of a nightmare an apparition, yet frighteningly real.
"Who are y—" Howard began, but the figure cut him off.
"Let's skip the chit-chat, okay?" the man said, his voice brisk and cavalier. He moved with a kind of eerie grace, stepping closer and closer, his blackness somehow merged with the shadows so he seemed to become a part of them.
Howard retreated, his body tense with fear. Every instinct was screaming to run, but his legs had gone just slack. He could only watch as the figure reached out, grabbing Howard by the arm, lifting him up as though he weighed nothing. The man dragged him up one of the enormous trees with unsettling ease.
"Wow. Your situation is pretty shit? I'm glad that I am not you," the figure said, his voice having muffled a little from the gas mask, but dripping with malice.
Howard's mind literally ran haywire. Who was this man? Why was he here? But most of all, and more importantly, how did he know this stuff? Now Howard knew some things about what had been happening to him. This darkness, these strange sensations, the voices was this part of something greater, something Howard innocently became part of?
"Listen…", Howard began trying to argue with him, but the words wouldn't materialize. There was something to this figure that made it plain reasoning just wasn't going to cut it. This man was in control Howard wasn't.
He hauled Howard up into the trees so they sat perched on a thick branch overlooking the forest below. Howard saw, as far as his eye could reach, the endless expanse of trees stretching out in all directions, a sea of green and black. There was no chance for stars anywhere in the sky; a blanket of darkness seemed to press down on both of them.
"You've been caught in something much bigger than you, but let's be honest there was probably never anything special about you from the start," the man said, letting Howard loose, who collapsed on the branch, gasping for air. "And there is no magical way out, there is in and no out"
Howard gazed up at him with huge eyes full of a mix of fear and confusion. "What…what do you mean?"
The figure revolved his masked face to Howard, and through the dark lenses of his mask, he could not read his gaze. "This place … this park, this forest … it is not what you think it is. It is alive, but in a way you would not have imagined. It feeds on you, on your fear. That's why you could not get out, and from your expression, it has been eating really good"
Howard felt a chill go up his spine. "Feeding on me? What do you mean?
The man sighed a humorless chuckle. "You thought this was just a few weird occurrences you were investigating, didn't you? You're in way over your head, ranger. And the deeper you go the harder it's going to be to find your way back out.".
Howard's head was spinning. None of this made one whit of sense. He was just a park ranger brought in to look into some odd reports. Now, though, he seemed to have opened a door into something far more sinister than anything he knew in the world.
"What... what am I supposed to do?" Howard asked, his voice quaking with uncertainty.
The figure stood up, lightly balancing on the branch. "You will live," he said flatly. "But it won't be easy. Darkness will keep coming for you. It always does." And with that the man leaped down from the branch, and disappeared into the shadows below, leaving Howard alone in the eerie silence of the forest canopy.