“Do you know, whats going on?” Mariann asked, as she attached the lens to her camera.
“No.” Jaan replied.
He adjusted the glasses on his nose and turned off the circular road towards the South, onto a road which took them past the Cottage District and terminated in the Underground base.
“I only know that the mayor came, out of breath and insisted that everybody is needed in the forest, as something has happened. “Everybody” would mean people who have something to say or note, but also people who do not.”
“I can see that.” Mariann sighed. “The village hags have taken their bicycles and are also heading towards the forest.”
She looked a the two old women in thick coats unsteadily riding their bikes on the edge of the road being unable to maintain a straight line.
“Really?”
Jaan asked and slowed down to see Village Hags no 4 and 6 biking onward with no regard for the rest of the world. The only accompanying sound being heavy breathing and the metal mudguard flapping against the tire.
“I never imagined these people would still be able to ride bicycles.” He said.
“Why would you think they cannot?” Mariann smiled. “Even I could if really need be. Anyway shouldn’t the Northern Boys take point in this investigation?”
“I think they are. But as the Mayor said that he found a body, the Agents from the North will probably use the services of doctor Sare.”
“I’d be surprised if that turns out to be true.” The girl said. “These guys have plenty of resources. More than plenty. We should hurry.”
“Are you afraid to miss out on all the interesting bits?”
“I am afraid that if stuff gets interesting, they will surround the forest and two days later, no sign remains that a single blade of grass was bent in the wrong direction nor a single branch was broken.”
“Sound paranoid.” Jaan said.
“I am already expecting a parade of finned vehicles black and chrome sitting on the side of the road, revealing how correct I really am.” She replied.
“The Mayor said that we can get right by the forest with the car.” Jaan said.
“No we cannot.” Mariann replied, lifting her left foot on the dash.
“You cannot get near Forbidden Forest by car. There is no direction this is possible. The side bordering the base is mined, in the north, there is the Devil’s Bog, and here in the East there are the disused and possibly poisonous fields. People have got stuck here with tracked tractors even in dry summers.”
“You can if you go by the railroad.” Jaan said.
“The railroad?” Mariann asked. “You mean the crossing? That’s just a pair of rails in asphalt. It does not come from somewhere, neither does it go anywhere. There isn’t even a proper railway dam.”
“Not the crossing. The railroad. See? Straight ahead.” Jaan said.
The car rolled over the rails left in the pavement for some unknown reason, to stop not half a kilometer away by the railroad and railroad dam heading across the fields and the road. Right by a steel pole covered in rust stains. Some time in the past, there had probably been some kind of a traffic sign attached to it.
“See? The road.” Jaan pointed out of the side window. “It is barely visible in this tall grass, but these are the tracks for wheels. And over there that black Imperial is driving.”
True to his words, the black car was slowly traveling in the tall grass, seemingly without rolling over any of it. But it did rock on the uneven surface so there was definitely a path for cars there. He reversed a bit and directed his almost six meter long dark green vehicle onto a field road covered in tall grass of dull yellow color.
“Something is very wrong.” Mariann said. “I don’t like it at all. This road should not be here. This railway should not be here. I know every square foot of land in this area and I can say that something is very wrong.”
“I don’t agree.” Jaan said. “Your suspicions regarding the world around us have proven true in the past though. We can stop and investigate it.”
“No.” Mariann shook her head and then pushed her hair away from her face. “After we have finished in the forest. Not now.”
“Okay.”
The field track was suddenly replaced with gravel tracks with a line of green grass in the center. It continued between the fields for several dozen meters and then disappeared behind the forest with a wide turn. As they reached the patch of trees, a big open area full of tall grass was revealed, cutting the road in two. On the left there stood the Mayor’s willys with the tent roof from the Ulyanovsky factory and a black Imperial, the bright red tail lights of which suddenly shut off.
On the right however there were five black cars, each clearly with a different styling for the tail fins, yet of the same general proportions and body style. Paint and the chrome embellishments on all vehicles were flawless, as if the cars had just now rolled off the assembly line. There were no signs that the cars had driven down the same forest road, or even seen gravel dust for that matter. The side of the black Imperial was covered in fine gravel dust, but none of that on those five black cars.
“Disturbing.” Mariann uttered. “Five cars. So many black cars with tail fins makes me really uncomfortable. And this black Imperial is also of no help.”
“Your suspicions regarding cars with tail fins almost remind me of the villagers.” Jaan said.
“Maybe the villagers are also noticing things you are not?”
Mariann started to open the door when she noticed an old ambulance with red rotating beacons. It was clearly visible to be from the same era as the black cars of the Northern Boys as it had two fins at the rear with 2 tail lights shaped like jet flames on either fin.
The lights shut off and then the driver door opened. Out of it emerged doctor Sare’s silent assistant who always smiled, wearing blood red stiletto pumps, which were more fitting to city streets than a swampy forest. In addition to the bright red shoes, she also had a short and shear lab coat which hugged her figure and lips painted in the same color as her shoes. Her ebon black hair had a slight wave to it and carried a faint ashy red tone, there was also a thick white ribbon tied into her hair with a red cross on it.
She hauled a dark brown doctor’s bag of massive size out of the car and shut the door, starting towards the forest. Despite the bag’s huge size compared to her figure, she had no trouble carrying it, as if it was a styrofoam prop. And also did she manage to not have her heels sink into the ground.
“I hope you noticed that?” Mariann said, getting out of the car and looking at him over the roof.
“What exactly?” them man asked.
“So you did not notice how a woman in stiletto heels carried a heavy suitcase towards the forest?” the girl in black asked.
She grabbed her camera and sack from the front seat of the car, set the bag over her shoulder and chest and lifted the camera, uncovering the lens.
“Yeah! Now that’s a car!” The balding doctor said as he got out of the white ambulance. “1959 Miller-Meteor. They really knew how to build cars back then! Compared to that, modern cars are like shit on a shingle!”
Mariann paid no attention to him. The doctor was unfazed about that, he took a strong swig from his flask, and walked around the car, only now noticing his old friend.
“Oh, hello Jaan! You were also summoned?”
“Of course.” Jaan replied. “It seems like everybody got summoned, every last Boy from the North. The Village Hags are coming on their bicycles, even the Village Dude is here, with his SUV the size of a sauna.”
He glanced ahead, to see a gray vehicle sitting beside the road, comparative in size to old Soviet medium trucks.
“Yeah, there’s plenty of that fucking...” doctor Sare rubbed his nose, “...rabble here. These Officials from the North were supposed to take control of the situation but when the Mayor invites half the town to take a look, even they are powerless.”
He took a look her assistant standing further by the trees, waiting and still smiling. On her high heels she was noticeably taller than the doctor with his slight stoop.
“My dear colleague is waiting so… shall we go?”
“I still have to wait for my… colleague.” Jaan said.
“That girl is your colleague?” the doctor asked in a surprised voice. “I thought she was a journalist. Snapping pictures of my ambulance, of the Northern agents’ cars, event the dirt road here. She even wanted to talk to Teet Metsla in private in my hospital.”
“There aren’t many journalists in this area, nor are there?” Jaan said.
“Perhaps.” The doctor shrugged. “I don’t have much time to look around in this place.” He gave a small smile. “There is just too much to be done. Last night a young man escaped. Again. We found him wandering on the side of the road. I have no god damn idea how he manages to escape his cell.”
Mariann continued slowly towards the gray off-roader owned by the Village Dude, which had a blue oval on the egg crate grille of faded peeling plastic chrome. Te car sat on massive mud tires, each of which almost reached her hip. The car dotted with rust was not too important, but the forest behind it was. And now she could see that she had been correct. Back then, in the car, when they reached the second crossing. The road on the side of the forest they were parked along, it did not go anywhere.
The tracks of packed sand worn into the earth by wheels and dark gravel along with the grass taking root between the wheel paths ended further in the distance near and even under the trees. There was no way the forest has grown this fast and torn apart the road. And there was no way to build a road without disturbing the roots of the tall trees or compromising either the strength of the road, of the root structure of the trees. The best she compare it to was that somebody had cut a road from somewhere else, pasted it here, and then tried to smudge over the edges of the cut with barely any skill.
She turned around and rushed back to the clearing in the other direction, where cars were still pouring into.
“I was right.” She said as she walked next to the professor, a few steps behind the doctor and his lovely escort towards the blackened woods.
“This road should not have been here. It has been pasted here like part of a collage.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“How is that even possible?” Jaan asked.
“It isn’t.” The girl smiled.
The continued slowly and silently and she felt something change. All green plants were suddenly gone from their surroundings. No bush not even a blade of grass, only a black forest floor, full of dry needles and branches. There was also no sound other than people stepping on dried twigs and branches or pushing some lower plants who were strangely still living, away from their path. There were no birds singing or making other sounds. No bugs flying nor forest beasts prowling. Even people did not talk among themselves. As if everybody was somehow enchanted by the black tree trunks and the forest floor in the woods of deathly silence.
Now walking on the packed forest floor, it felt much darker and more ominous than it had seemed on the side of the forest under the open sky. The tree canopy high above their heads did not completely obscure the skies but there still ebbed a feeling that the forest was a separate world to its own. Divorced from the gray sky and the clearing they had come from. Darker, more dangerous. Full of low dried up firs which had long since starved under the bigger trees and now stood as skeletal sentries. Reminding anybody that if one stayed in the Forbidden Forest for too long, one was liable to join it.
It seemed that somebody had already become part of the forest. In a distance, off to the right from their path, a villager with a moth-eaten long-sleeved top and loose suspenders was trying to remain hidden behind a fallen log. It was impossible to tell why he was trying to play hide and seek like that as he had a perfect opportunity to disappear among the various invited and uninvited onlookers the forest was now full of.
Mariann followed the man hiding behind trunks and stumps with her gaze for a long time. Sometimes he even tried to hide behind the dried young firs. Finally he stood next to a small pine which allowed the girl in black to pay more attention to him.
He was of average height with a stout body and wide shoulders. He was wearing a dirty grayish brown moth-eaten knotted top, with plenty of holes everywhere. Dark green cargo pants with suspenders and dark wellingtons. The suspenders were off his shoulder and hanging around knee level. His matted beard and hair was as if a circle around the bald top of the head. His face was burnt from the sunlight and dark eyes were sunken in. His nose the size of a fist and bloated face indicated some heavy and prolonged alcohol use. At the same he was not fat, rather the top was loosely hanging down his shoulders as if on a clothes hanger.
“Mariann.”
She turned her gaze towards the voice and then quickened her pace to catch up with the people. Now, she also noticed another thing arousing he suspicions. The thick woods were quickly replaced with a sparser forest, which although still dark, offered plenty of light for the ferns and lowed bushes. A bit further away, between tall ferns and low cinnamon roses there stood Jaan and the doctor among a large circle of other onlookers, surrounding something.
At the same time, nobody but Mariann seemed to notice how the unearthly attractive assistant of the doctor had raised one leg and was now balancing the doctor’s bag on it, looking for something in the suitcase. Still wearing those red stiletto pumps.
The thing the people were surrounding was a half-carbonized and barely human-shaped mass of flesh. Dr Sare took a sharp medical instrument his assistant was handing him and plunged it deep into the body of the deceased.
“Yeah. There’s nothing for me to do here.” The doctor said. “He’s done.”
“So completely cooked through?” Mariann asked.
“Yep.” The doctor smiled. “deep inside, he’s still warm.”
“I did not need to know that!” Jaan said with disgust in his voice.
“So that’s why you did not come to Yuryev to learn medicine with the rest of us.” The doctor said, he had his silent assistant support him as he got up. “You could not keep medicine down.”
“Let me think: pack it up and to the Institute?” Mariann asked.
“Exactly my idea!” the doctor remarked. “The medical corps of the Institute has way more room to autopsy this poor thing than my hospital!”
“Does anybody… have any idea what happened… to this poor man?” the Mayor asked in a hoarse voice, rivers of sweat pouring down his face, having soaked half his shirt.
Obviously he had used his huge beer belly to make way for himself and easily reached the body.
“Perhaps spontaneous combustion of the human body?” the Mayor asked.
“Sure, most definitely.” The doctor said in a sarcastic voice. However the mumbling in the crowd signified that almost nobody really cared for his opinion.
“It cannot be spontaneous combustion.” A younger male voice said.
“Yes, agent Toomas.” The Mayor said. “Why cannot it be that?”
“Because too much of the deceased remains.” The young man with green eyes replied.
“Let’s leave aside all kinds of inane theories, shall we?” a man in a black suit, black fedora and long black overcoat said.
Mariann immediately recognized him as the man with the black Imperial who had asked directions for the hotel.
“It must have an organic and scientifically falsifiable cause.” the man continued.
“Falsifiable?” the Mayor asked.
“Well, something that can be proven or disproven with a controlled experiment.”
“Oh.”
“We can move on.” Mariann said to the professor.
“You know what happened?” Jaan asked with interest.
“No. But I know why it happened. The forest lake. Come.”
The girl in black stepped away from the throngs of people and approached the strange man who had previously tried to hide himself into the forest and still reminded her of yet another village drunk. One of those drunks who could not even recall their own name, let alone where they had worked or what they had been doing before their life as it was now.
“You should not be here.” She said.
Her starting a conversation with him looked like a complete surprise to him.
“W-.. what?” he stuttered.
“If you keep attracting attention like that then they just might pack you up into the ambulance with the dead and no more will you see the sun.”
She the stepped past him, completely disinterested if the man had anything to reply. She found a faintly visible trail and headed towards the dark woods once again. A direction with did not look like a direction or a trail at all, rather a wall of thick brush. Filled with nettles and hemlocks some over two meters tall, proud ferns and thistles signifying that the forest carried much more water starting here, but also to convince anybody that it was best to turn around.
“What was the point of that?” Jaan asked.
“Just a friendly warning, nothing else.” Mariann said, being silent for a few moments. “I would not want him to be yet another person to listen to me playing my guitar.”
“Playing the guitar?” the professor asked.
“Yes. I’m sure Sare told you that sometimes I visit the hospital to play for the patients. The doctor said that it seems to calm the patients almost as good as the sedatives.”
“That’s interesting. I had no idea. But Sare has always kept his personal methods for treatment a secret.”
Mariann had pulled her hand into the sleeve and now used it to part a curtain of nettles to reveal a narrow cobblestone path, wandering between the nettles and seemed to end with a small bush.
“A trail?” the professor asked.
“Part of the village which had once been here.” The girl in black replied. “They say that there are even ruins of an old church with a high dome hidden in the forest. Only revealed when the fog of the Forbidden Forest meets the light of the moon in a cloudless night. In other times it is but a foundation of moss-covered stone rarely anybody notices. And if they do then it is most doubtful they will be able to find it the second time.”
“I think I might have found the Forest Lake.” Jaan said, looking in a certain direction. “Or, what is left of it by now.”
“Yeah, only now.” Mariann sighed. “I hate the Forbidden Forest of the daytime. The distances and the flora are completely different. And seeing the ghosts attend their church is still better than to try and push through all these nettles.” She fell silent and smiled to herself. “Some even claim that all these nettles, thistles, hemlocks and ferns are but ghosts frozen into plants due to sunlight. As soon as the Sun sets, they continue their business, with no awareness that there has been a pause during which creatures of a completely different kind have gone about their particular business.”
“You really want to return in the night?” Jaan asked.
“This is no longer the Forest Lake.” Mariann said, as she looked at the mud hole ahead which was surrounded by racks and racks of equipment, and all those Officials from the North whose cars they had found.
“I also no not recall that there was ever a tree in the middle of the Forest Lake.” Jaan said.
The girl in black approached the mud hole. From the edge, it seemed to have a shape of a shallow funnel, with a bottom now full of shoe prints. With a diameter of at least 20 meters. In the middle of the mud hole there was a twisted tree with no foliage whatsoever and a trunk of carbon black color. The surface of that black trunk was covered in patches of soft bright green moss, a sign that the tree had been here like that for more than just a day. Ominously twisted trunk divided into five main branches which twisted towards the sky like a bony palm, ready to hold and support something very big. Those five branches extended so far that had the tree had any foliage, it would have most certainly extended to the edge of the mud hole. Some of the roots seems to twist out of the ground jutting in all sorts of direction creating wooden loops and nooses near the ground, before finding their way back into earth. Like a nest of snakes frozen in time and half-buried.
Under and around the tree, the Officials from the North were busy with a variety of instruments. Some small enough to be hidden in the palm, others so big that it was unimaginable how these could be moved by one person. But all those devices had some common features, such as antennae coiled in spirals of various shapes and sizes. Also what looked like vacuum tubes of different shapes, sizes, colors and brightness. The last two aspects were carefully kept track of. Men in black stroller suits paid little attention to the muddy ground, walking around without much care and the shoe prints they left into the mud were rather shallow and did little to ruin the flawlessness of their wool trousers or spotless black shoes.
Mariann moved closer to the mudhole, stepping into it with one foot but still keeping her weight on the other. She could immediately feel her leg sink. Far deeper than the couple of centimeters of the prints the men in black left behind. The whole mud had a consistency of oatmeal and she was pretty sure that if she really jumped in there, she would be hip deep in no time.
This gave her another reason for a curious smile, as she pulled her leg back on solid ground, raised her camera and started documenting the activities of those officials in black.
Jaan followed the edge of the mud crater until he reached one of the men in black who was standing closest to the edge. He was bent over a large device the size and shape of a cupboard, pushing the backlit buttons and switches and noted down onto his notepad the indications of various multi-colored vacuum tubes and dials.
“Hey! Hello!” He started. “Can you tell, what is going on here?”
“An anomaly.” the man said without a glance at Jaan. Judging by his looks, he was about 30.
“An anonymy.” another man close by said, and also noted something down into his little leatherbound book.
“This should not be here.” The first man said. “Something went wrong. There is a fault at the Center Station. The forest is not allowing the network an optimal function.”
“What does that mean?” the professor asked. “Can you explain?”
“Explanation is irrelevant. The problem is not.”
“I could not have said it better myself.” Mariann said, now standing next to the professor.
“You know what’s going on?” Jaan asked.
“Nope.” She replied. “All I have are but ideas. But the fact that the Boys from the North are worried, shows a lot.”
The man, bent over in front of the device which emitted a faint hum, raised his confused face for a moment before continuing making notes.
“Is it good or bad that they are worried?” Jaan asked.
“Both.” She smiled. “At the same time.”
She turned around to see the Mayor and the rest of the people finally making it to the mud hole and stopping before it to admire the tree. A moment later, two men in black emerged from the forest, carrying a huge tower of wooden cargo pallets. The set them down and started to create a path from the edge of the hole to the tree in the middle. It seemed like two pallets on top of each other offered enough of a buoyancy in the mud to carry few people.
Dr. Sare and his assistant were first to approach the tree. The assistant again had no issues walking on the path made of pallets with her stiletto shoes. Mariann watched from the opposite side of the crates as she handed the doctor a small hatchet. She watched as the doctor approached the tree, first he slid his hand across the surface of it and then used the hatchet to put some cuts into the surface of the carbon trunk. Blood red liquid with a similar viscosity started to flow out of the cuts.
“The tree is bleeding! The tree is bleeding!” somebody in the crowd started to shout.
“Oh please! That is just stupid!” The doctor said, not really caring whether anybody heard him or not.
Dr Sare wiped the thick red liquid off the tree with his finger and then tasted it. This made him frown and he told the assistant to gather some of the liquid into vials for further testing.
“What is happening here in my forest?!” The Mayor asked, as he slowly approached the doctor and the tree along the pallets which kept creaking and even buckling under his weight. “What kind of tree is it? Why is it here? Why is it like that?”
“I’m a doctor, not a dendrologist!” Sare said with clear disgruntle in his voice. “I don’t know why it’s here! But as a doctor, I can indeed say that it is bleeding.”
“Excuse me?” the Mayor asked. “can you please repeat that?”
“The tree. Is bleeding.” The doctor uttered through closed teeth. It was evident that he did not like admitting it.
From the crowd on the edge of the mud crater, cries about the tree bleeding started up again.
“What does this mean?” the Mayor asked again.
His voice was now calmer and he kept stroking his untamed gray beard.
Jaan gently grabbed Mariann’s shoulder.
“You know what’s going on, right? Why this tree is here?” He asked.
“No. But I have some ideas.” She replied. “Come. There nothing else we can do here.”
“What kind of ideas?” The Professor asked. “Because I still have no idea. The mayor asked me here, but I have no idea what to tell him or what to write in my report to the Institute.”
“The Boys from the North told you everything relevant.” Mariann said. “They are not behind it. They have no idea what’s going on, and the forest is not letting the Center Station to function in a proper manner.”
“This cannot be all.” Jaan said as he walked ahead of her and made a way back through the brush. “Also, it seems to me that you knew beforehand that the tree could bleed. What happened? How did the Forest Lake become this tree?”
“I think it is quite simple: the Forest Lake was deeply insulted by someone or something and retreated back into itself.” Mariann explained.
“Retreated into itself?” Jaan asked, stopping.
“Yes. There was once a legend how a drunk knight had promised a farm girl that he would marry her and said that his love for her is as unchanging as a certain lake he pointed at. Well, the next morning after sleeping with the farm girl, the knight was gone. But so was the lake. If lakes can get up and just leave, then I don’t see why they cannot feel insulted and retreat into themselves. In this case it seems that it retreated into itself to such a degree that it inverted and became its own polar opposite. From liquid into solid, from something close to the ground and reaching into depths to reaching into the skies. From something that envelops into something that stands apart. And from spiritual into carnal. It is possible that during the night, all the good in the lake simply evaporated and what remained twisted and warped.”
“You are aware that this is one of your… more poetic ideas?” The professor asked. “I am doubtful if I can explain that to the Mayor with a straight face.”
“That is your problem, after all.” Mariann replied. “The mayor is the last person to attempt to explain anything at all to and the last person that is capable of understanding it. He may say that he wants to know, but really, he wants somebody to tell him a peaceful and boring fairy tale. And my fairy tales are neither.”
“And the deceased?” Jaan continued asking.
“They came to the forest at night to see why the water is flowing out of the lake and through the town. Last night was a full moon, which means than possibly somebody saw part of the water evaporating into moonlight. It is very likely that no man should have seen it. The lake felt insulted that its secret was revealed to a mortal. Maybe it over-reacted and ignited somebody. Maybe the birth of that tree has something to do with not feeling insulted, but with despair felt over one’s own rash actions. Both options are possible.”
“And they sound pretty much alike.” Jaan said.
“I cannot help it.” Mariann smiled. “However I have no idea what happens next with that tree. But the Boys from the North will continue working on it and making things worse. Or, they might try to solve their problem with it and make things a lot more worse.”
“So what’s next?” Jaan asked, as they made it back to the cars.
“We could look into the road we used to come here.” She said. “I am yet to convince you that this road here does not exist. And maybe I will get some more ideas which help explain this corner of the world and its history.”
“Okay.”
“Professor Kotkas! Professor Kotkas!” Mayor’s hoarse voice sounded out from the forest. “Please come back here! We need to talk!”
Mariann saw the Mayor stand right next to the first trees. Next to him were the doctor, his assistant and two men. One of them was wearing a fedora and a long black trench coat and looked very much like one of the Official’s from the North, and the other one was called Toomas.
“Dammit.” Jaan said. “Do you want to explain your thoughts to them by yourself?”
“These would not be the same thoughts if I were to repeat them.” She replied. “I think you can explain the ideas perfectly to them. Even if you are mistaken in some aspect or nobody believes you, still you have done everything in your power to to make it understandable to the others. Go. I’ll wait.”
She leaned against Jaan’s dark green vehicle, observing as the Mayor started arguing with the rest of the people on how to interpret what they saw in the forest.