They were faster than him at first, but the forest was dense and dark and the roots that sprouted up through the ground made it hard to run, hard to flee.
His legs grew longer and longer and longer and longer and he never stopped getting faster and his arms were outstretched as the sounds of crunching leaves echoed through the woods and then they were all of them dead, their organs filling plastic bags and skin stretched over the trees.
"Father, do you hear his voice?
Do you see his caped and crowned form?"
"Hush, child, you have nothing to fear;
We're arriving soon, take heart, rejoice."
Child, do you hear my voice?
Do you see my outstretched arms?
"Father, he wants me to take his hand.
He insists I make a deadly choice."
"Son, close your eyes,
Clasp your hands o'er your ears,
You're glimpsing at fog,
It's owls you hear."
"Father, I see him,
His ashen-white face,
The arms on his back
That grasp all about."
"Child, we're almost there;
If still you're afraid,
Just say a prayer."
Child, you are mine;
Do not be afraid,
You've finally arrived.
Come to me, child;
Now you're a cautionary tale.
A man was standing outside my window.
No.
Not a man.
The Distortionist.
He somehow looked like he was in a silent film. The way he tilted his head, the way he walked towards me. It was jerky, erratic, like he wasn't supposed to be in our world, like some of the frames of his movements had been lost.
And then he opened his mouth.
She's missing time. Yesterday is gone from her memory.
She's started waking up in strange places. In the middle of the woods, in abandoned homes.
She gets tested for sleepwalking. It doesn't occur in a clinical setting.
She starts seeing a therapist, thinking she might have anterograde amnesia or dissociative identity disorder or... something. When he asks her to start a journal of gaps in time and strange occurrences, it suddenly stops happening.
But her dreams become strange. She dreams of running through the woods at night, stalked by something she can't see but knows is there. She dreams of wandering through the abandoned side of town where nobody wants to build anything, where she herself never goes. She dreams of falling forever.
And then she starts seeing something, out of the corner of her eye, a tall black shape that always disappears when she looks at it. She tells her therapist. He seems concerned and asks if she's ever experienced auditory hallucinations. She tells him she hasn't. He says auditory hallucinations tend to precede visual ones, but tells her to keep journaling. He says that she should write down every time she experiences something that might be a hallucination.
That night, when she comes home from therapy and sets aside her bag, she hears something. She hears the sound of howling wind, coming from right outside her window. When she looks outside, the trees are still.
One of them, tall and thin and black, is not supposed to be there.
His impossible self moved through the forest, swift as a shadow. Everywhere he touched, flame followed, if only a spark or a flash.
When he left, the forest was ablaze.
He kept moving, thinking, perhaps, of the work ahead of him.
And where he walked, the fire followed.
We're all pieces in his game. He sets us against each other, some his vessels, others his victims. Everyone in his world wears a mask, whether it's physical or not, all of us hidden behind layers of deceit and misdirection and playing of parts.
It's not our war, and it never was.
It's his.
A suited man stood before Eve, his head tilted to the side.
"Why am I here?" she asked.
He did not answer.
His head and body twitched, and his back was turned to her.
His whole form flickered, and he was gone.
Eve decided to walk. To either side were low brick walls. Above, she could see the night sky; below, black branches and leaves, slick with rain, crunched beneath her feet.
Eve kept walking, unable to see any path but the one she was taking. After some time, she decided to climb up onto the wall and see if there was anything in the forest.
When she picked herself up off the ground and dusted herself off, she saw that there was a brick wall across from her.
How had she ended up in the exact same hallway?
She shook her head and decided to keep walking the path before her.
She walked for hours, growing increasingly exhausted, before she saw anything other than the same hallways.
It was the same room where she had started, a room with four brick corridors extending out from it. One in every direction.
Eve blinked. She couldn't remember what she had been doing, or even where she was.
She asked the suited man in front of her why she was there, but he did not answer.
His form flickered, and he was standing before the hallway to the left.
He flickered again, and he was gone.
The only choice Eve saw was to find him and ask what was happening.
