It was still dark in Waxahachie when George Sharpe was towed from his slumber by a series of loud and insistent knocks at his front door.
George groaned, swung his legs off the bed, and reached for the days-old glass of water on his nightstand. He downed the drink in two large gulps and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. His head thrummed with each knock. Perhaps he should have called it quits before pouring that third finger of whisky last night.
The knocking continued in earnest, and George managed to find his feet. “Hold your horses," he shouted. "I’m coming.”
George stumbled to the wall and fumbled for the light switch. His fingers found the familiar shape and flipped it, but nothing happened. Grumbling to himself, he flicked the switch repeatedly a few more times to no avail. He mentally added ‘purchase new lightbulbs’ to the endless list of chores he’d likely never get around to.
Using the wall as a guide, he navigated his way down the hall to the front door and instinctively turned on the porch light. Nothing happened. Peering through the peephole, he saw a figure pacing across his porch. It was an older man, his arms crossed at his chest like he was hugging himself. It was still night, but there was enough moonlight to recognize the man. George had known him for years. It was Marty Humphries. The sight of the typically reserved farmer in a near panic on his front porch sent a chill down his spine.
George opened the door, and Marty flinched in surprise, his eyes wide and in shock.
“Marty, what’s happened?” George asked.
“George,” Marty said taking an anxious step forward. He released his self-embrace and put an old hand on George’s arm. “It’s gone, George. Half my house and most the farm. Trees just showed up all around me.” Marty’s grip tightened. “I know I sound crazy, George, but I ain’t. There’s a goddam forest in my house, George.”
This was not what George had been expecting. At worst, George thought Marty might have found a body on his farm or that something terrible had happened to his wife. Not this. Marty was older, salt-of-the-earth. He wouldn’t wake the Sheriff up at four in the morning with some cracked-up bull.
George held up a hand. “Slow down, Marty. You’re telling me a tree grew through your house?”
“Lots of em’,” Marty said. “And they didn’t grow, George. At least I don’t think they did. They just appeared there, like… like magic.”
George looked at Marty with a close eye. He thought a tree may have fallen through the farmer’s house and knocked him senseless, but Marty didn’t seem to be injured. Regardless, the man was nearly hysterical. Maybe his age had caught up with him, and Marty had finally cracked, but George had a duty to help. Even if it wasn’t his job, George wasn’t the type to turn down someone in need.
“Alright Marty, I’ll come check it out,” George said. “You know, you could have just called the station, and they would have sent someone on duty.” He tried to keep the frustration from his voice.
“I couldn’t call,” Marty said. “Landline’s dead, and Pam’s cell wasn’t working. She’s in the truck, and she’ll tell you the same as I have. When we couldn’t reach anyone, we headed straight here.”
“I seem to be out of power here too, so I bet the grid is down again. God bless Texas, right?”
George motioned for Marty to wait, walked the short distance back to his room, and fumbled around in the dark for his phone. He checked it as he was walking back. Not a bar of signal.
“Well Marty,” George said as he got back to his front door. “No signal here either. I got a shortwave in the car. Let me get dressed, and I’ll see if any of my deputies can join us.”
---
After quickly donning his uniform and downing another glass of water, Sheriff George Sharpe followed Marty’s beat up Ford out to his farm on Orvilla Road, north of town. Two of George’s deputies answered his call over the radio and were in route. Their shifts were nearing their end, but George wanted extra eyes with him in case Marty wasn’t completely insane.
Marty eventually led them off the highway and down a blacktop country road. The stars were beginning to fade from the sky, and a faint glow to the eastern horizon marked the upcoming sunrise. As they neared the farm, George peered hard into the distance. He couldn’t quite tell what he was looking at, but the farther he looked to the north, the darker the horizon became. Indistinguishable shadows, like those of distant rolling hills, swallowed what little light there was.
Drawing closer, the shadows began to solidify and take form. As his eyes adjusted and the distance waned, he could see greater detail and noticed a separation between the dark shadows. Now, even in the dark, he could spot the silhouettes of massive trunks and sprawling branches. Marty’s farmhouse was clearly visible, but not a light was on. The two-story farmhouse stood ominously before the trees like a gloomy monolith.
Examining the house, George could see it was intersected by the line of trees. No, not intersected. Bisected. He realized his mouth was wide open and snapped it shut. Marty was right. Half the house had been consumed by the forest, but the bite was clean and flush, like it was sliced with a razorblade.
The radio chirped. “Sheriff, are you seeing this?” One of his deputies asked.
“I am,” George replied. “And before you ask, I have no idea what the hell is going on.”
They parked off the road on the south side of Marty’s farmhouse. Exiting their respective vehicles, everyone gaped at the dark tableau before them in a mix of shock, wonder, and fear.
“Marty, you said it, and I tried to believe it, but my God. What is this?” George said.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“As you said, Sheriff, it’s an act of God,” Pamela muttered softly as she held on to her husband’s arm.
“It just might be,” George replied.
His deputies pulled out their flashlights, which didn’t provide much luminescence in the pre-dawn light but nonetheless made them feel more secure in their surroundings. They began to march down the gravel drive to Marty’s farm.
“How in the hell does a forest grow overnight?” Deputy Mario Rivera asked. “I was out this way yesterday, and there damn sure wasn’t a forest here then.”
“It’s just a dream,” Bob Thederahn, the other deputy, said. “I just dozed off at the station and am having one helluva dream. Probably the leftover pineapple I ate from the fridge in the station. Monica said pineapple makes you have crazy dreams if you eat too much.”
“If this is a dream, we’re all having it together,” George said.
The point in which Marty's land ended and the forest began was clearly distinguishable. The land the forest sat on was raised a few inches above the Texan plain making the threshold uneven and stark. The ground appeared disrupted as if someone had dug it all up and then tried to put it back together. The thicket of trees grew in a straight line like an invisible barrier had prevented their growth on the side where George stood. Stranger still, no limbs or branches reached over the line of demarcation. Every branch that would have spanned over the threshold had been cleanly and evenly severed. It was like a slice of the earth had been removed and replaced with an entirely new and different piece.
“Rivera,” George said, shaken. “Why don’t you head back to your car? Go back to town and grab some of the men from the firehouse. See how far this thing… this forest or whatever it is extends. It looks like the line of trees goes east and west. I want to know how far. Radio me when you find out.”
“Yes, Sir,” he replied, happy to head back to the comfort and familiarity of his service vehicle.
George almost asked Pamela to wait inside the house before catching himself. Nearly half the house was missing, cleanly cut, replaced by tall spruces and open air. There was little to no debris, no caved in roof, or splintered two-by-fours lying about indicating the destruction. It was all simply gone.
Instead of foolishly telling her to wait inside, George offered up Rivera as an escort service back to the safety of the town. After Marty’s insistence, she accepted, and the three men were left to investigate further.
“I want to get a closer look at this. Maybe we can see through to the other side,” George said, one hand brushing his graying mustache, a nervous habit.
They inched slowly towards the threshold. The trees were reasonably spaced, each with plenty of room to grow. Pathing through them would not be a problem. Illuminating the area further with his flashlight, the trees ranged as far as he could see. A cacophony of trills and chirps from early-morning bird calls bombarded his ears.
“You know what type of trees these are?” George asked, looking at Marty.
“Not sure,” the farmer said. “Looks to be a few different kinds, but I think most of the big ones are spruces.” Marty let out a heavy sigh. “George, what am I going to do? I’ve lost everything. Even the cattle are gone.”
George wanted to tell Marty his livestock were fine and after a little searching would be found, but looking at Marty’s house, half of it seeming to have vanished into thin air, he was inclined to agree.
“Wish I had some encouraging words for ya’, Marty. I really do, but I can’t seem to muster them right now.” George’s gaze followed a towering pine tree up toward the sky. “Anyone got a signal yet? I’m beginning to think this is out of my pay grade. We need to call the Bureau of Land Management or Department of Agriculture or the damned president or something.”
No one had a signal.
Deputy Thederahn took a step past the threshold of disrupted earth and stepped into the mysteriously altered land.
“Ground feels softer here,” he said.
George and Marty followed. The ground was softer, like stepping on a carpet instead of the hard dried up Texan earth. Together they ventured deeper into the forest. More light was cresting over the horizon now, so they holstered their mostly useless flashlights. The land was starkly different from that which they had just stepped. For one, the grass was green, and the trees were thick and strong. Not only that, but most appeared to be coniferous, not deciduous. These were the types of trees you would expect to see in North Dakota, not Texas. On the forest floor, leafy ferns stretched their fronds wide. The air smelled clean and fresh and wet, and the temperature was pleasant, even a bit cold for George’s taste. In fact, it felt like it was in the mid 60’s. George realized it had felt this way since he left the house. Normally, the air around here was hot and dry, even before the sun rose.
After a few minutes of delving deeper into the inexplicable forest, there was no sign of an end to it, and George decided they had seen enough. There would be plenty of time to explore the phenomena later. First, there were people in town who needed to be looped in.
Before they could turn to leave, a deep, rugged growl vibrated through the air. All three men’s attention snapped toward the direction of the noise where they saw a massive, brown beast emerge from behind a thick tree trunk. Its body was coiled tightly as it stalked forward. Both George and deputy Thederahn drew their service weapons and pointed it at the monster.
“Holy mother of God,” Thederahn said, taking a step back. “What in the hell is that?”
“Cougar,” Marty whispered, stepping back as well.
The beast was monstrous, closer in size to a cow than any cougar George had ever seen. It had a rough patch of thick, dark fur standing along the back of its neck, like the hackles of an angry dog, and two large fangs protruded from its upper jaw.
“What should we do?” Thederahn asked frantically. “Should we shoot it?”
“No, we would probably just piss it off,” George said. “Let’s just slowly back away. Keep your sights on it. Only open fire if it makes a move on us.”
The men began to pace gingerly backward away from the beast. The big cat continued to creep forward. Each step they took was matched by the predator. The enormous fangs that hung steeply down past its jowls were stark white. Its face was wrinkled in rage, and it growled so deeply George could feel it in his bones.
The monster hissed and swiped at the air driving the men farther back. The action startled them, but they held their fire and picked up their pace as they shuffled backward.
A stick snapped and Deputy Thederahn cussed as he stumbled over his feet. He hit the ground with a thud, and without missing a beat, the cat let out a fierce, delighted roar and charged towards the fallen man. George opened fire. The creature was unbelievably fast for its size, and George had no idea if his shots were hitting their mark.
He must have connected at least once as the beast course-corrected, diverting its attention away from the deputy and went straight for George. He unloaded the rest of his clip as fast as he could, and the cat flinched and let out a terrible scream. He had hurt it, but not enough to drive it away. It swiped at the air as it howled in righteous indignation, forcing George backward. He looked around for Marty and saw the old man running back toward the house. Deputy Thederahn was lying on the ground staring in shock.
“Shoot it. Bob! Shoot it,” George yelled.
Thederahn heard him and snapped back to reality. He frantically patted the ground around him, searching for his gun. The cat followed George’s gaze and saw the officer flailing on the ground. It charged toward Bob once again and pounced. Thederahn found his gun and lifted it to fire, but it was too late. The gun flew out of his hand as the weight of the beast smashed into him. Bob screamed in pain as a pair of massive jaws tore into the meat of his shoulder, one of the large fangs piercing through him. Blood erupted from the wound, covering Bob’s horrified face in a splash of gore. The cat shook him violently, and his screams of terror were cut off abruptly as his neck snapped from the force.
George turned and ran. He didn’t look back.