Even in my sleep I cannot find silence. Thick miasma fills my eyes; I am weightless. There is a woman lying prostrate in front of an oak tree with a mustached face. Its skin is gray and seeps gore where one would expect to find sap. Dead leaves and bits of flesh hang from the splinters it once knew as branches.

“I have brought our son, my love,” the woman says solemnly. She lifts her apron to reveal a wriggling pale lump within her stomach.

Blood spills from the bark of the Tree, then from the woman. She hobbles to the Tree, embracing it as the being tries to rip and claw its way from her stomach.

“HE IS COMING MY LOVE!” as her eyes begin to bleed.

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The whirling fury explores for a way out. My eyes follow the growth as it bounces from her stomach, to chest cavity, to throat. In an instant, her body is limp, but hangs in the air, frozen; the back of her head touches her shoulder blades. Four spindly, foul fingers, long of nail, outstretch from the woman’s mouth and lay themselves upon her cheek. Four more follow that and join her face on the opposite cheek. They tense, then grip, then tear. The hands, full of meat and teeth, retreat into the still standing body and I hear the creature feasting and chomping. It continues. Her head is gone now, and it has pulled one of her arms inside the hole, still attached. The elbow bobs an evil rhythm as the fingers are freed of their flesh. It roars and twists the shoulder from its socket, yanking it into the cavity. I watch as there becomes less of the woman and more of the thing I know too well, The Man of The Wood.