Beneath the Still Canopy

The bramble tore at my jeans, a persistent, prickly reminder that we were far, far past the sensible limits of the old logging trail. Tina, bless her stubborn heart, pressed on, her blue plastic bucket swinging empty at her side, a testament to our fruitless quest. The sun, a molten disc just hours ago, had softened to a diffuse orange watercolour smear above the spruce line, hinting at a swiftly approaching evening. We’d been following some vague, half-remembered instruction from her grandad – 'past the twin birches, then follow the old creek bed until you smell the wild mint' – for what felt like an eternity.

"Any luck, Joe?" Tina called, her voice tight, a thin thread against the growing hush of the forest. I squinted, scanning the shadowed undergrowth, the same tired maples and firs staring back. Not a single ripe huckleberry or cloudberry in sight. Just the usual green and brown, and the unsettling, too-still air.

"Nothing. Not even the pathetic, sour ones. We should have hit that creek ages ago, T. Are you sure about this spot?"

She stopped, her shoulders slumping a fraction. Her brow furrowed, the fine lines catching the fading light. "It's got to be around here. Gran swore by it. Said they used to fill buckets in an hour."

"Well, Gran also lived in a time before GPS and probably didn't have to contend with whatever logging outfit came through and reshaped half this godforsaken wood," I muttered, wiping sweat from my upper lip. The air, usually thick with the scent of pine and damp earth this deep, felt… thinner. Like breathing water.

And then it hit us, or rather, it *didn't*. The sound. Or lack thereof. The droning chorus of cicadas, a constant, low thrum since early afternoon, had simply ceased. The distant cry of a jay, the rustle of a squirrel in the dry leaves – gone. The silence wasn't just quiet; it was a physical weight, pressing in, smothering. My ears strained, searching for anything. The blood thumping in my own temples was the loudest thing in the world.

"Did you…" Tina began, her voice dropping to a near whisper, "did you hear that?"

"Hear what? The sudden, terrifying absence of literally everything? Yes, I heard that." My attempt at humour fell flat, evaporating into the unnatural stillness.

She looked around, her eyes wide, darting from trunk to trunk. "It's like someone hit a mute button. It's too quiet. That's not right."

We stood, frozen, for what felt like an hour but was likely only a minute. Every shadow seemed to deepen, every tree to lean in closer. The forest, which had been merely dense and unfamiliar moments ago, now felt watchful, imbued with an oppressive sentience. My throat was dry, suddenly desperate for a swig from the water bottle I’d forgotten in the truck.

"Let's just… go back. Retrace our steps. The sun's almost down, and this isn't worth it," I urged, turning to look for the faint trail we’d broken through the undergrowth. But the path, if it had ever truly been one, seemed to have vanished. The woods behind us looked identical to the woods ahead: a relentless, green wall.

The Unblinking Eye

Tina didn't argue. Her face, pale beneath the grime of sweat and pine needles, told me she felt it too. The insidious creep of something wrong. We walked, pushing through ferns that reached past our waists, the sound of our own boots crunching on fallen debris unnaturally loud. My eyes scanned, searching for any distinctive tree, any rock formation, any broken branch we might have passed. Nothing. The trees were all the same species, the undergrowth an endless, verdant sprawl.

"Wait," Tina hissed, grabbing my arm. Her grip was tight, nails digging in. I stopped, heart thudding against my ribs. "Look."

She pointed to a towering cedar, its bark a rough, patterned grey. About head-height, where a knot might have been, was something else. Not a knot, but a series of deliberate carvings. Not letters, not symbols I recognised, but deep, gouged lines. Some were geometric, triangles within circles, squares intersecting with impossible curves. Others were more organic, like stylised eyes, unblinking and ancient, staring out from the rough wood. They were too clean, too precise for random animal scratches, yet too old for fresh human work. The edges were softened by time, but the intent was clear, unmistakable.

"What the hell is that?" I whispered, the words catching in my throat. A shiver, cold and sharp, traced its way down my spine despite the humid air.

"I don't know," Tina breathed, taking a step closer, then thinking better of it. "It looks… old. Really old. Like something somebody made, but… not like anything I've seen."

The silence pressed harder, wrapping around the cedar, around us, amplifying the eerie quality of the carvings. They seemed to pulse, almost, with a dormant energy. I felt a prickle on the back of my neck, the distinct sensation of being watched, not just by the carved eyes, but by something else, something deeper in the trees.

"Let's not touch it," I said, my voice firmer than I felt. "Let's just… get out of here. This isn't right. We need to find the road."

Tina nodded, her expression grim. We turned, moving faster now, a quiet desperation in our stride. The problem was, every direction looked the same. The compass on my phone, which had been spotty even on the main trail, now just spun wildly, a useless digital toy. Tina's too. Dead battery, she claimed, though it had been full an hour ago. Mine was still powered, but the needle was a drunkard.

"We're going in circles, I think," I confessed after another ten minutes of pushing through identical patches of forest. The light was almost gone now, the canopy a thick, black shroud above us. Only thin slivers of pale grey sky remained. "Every tree looks the same."

"No, we're not," Tina retorted, though her voice lacked conviction. "We're heading west. I think. Gran's place is east of here, isn't it? So we just keep going west, eventually we'll hit the highway or some other road."

"West of where, T? We don't even know where 'here' is!" I snapped, immediately regretting it. Her face crumpled, just for a second, before she stiffened her resolve. We were both scared, frayed at the edges. The woods were doing their work.

The Edge of Hearing

My legs ached. Every twig underfoot sounded like a gunshot. My eyes strained in the fading light, trying to discern shapes, familiar contours, anything. The air grew cooler, carrying a new scent – not the usual damp earth and pine, but something metallic, almost coppery, mixed with an unsettling sweetness. I caught a glimpse of movement, a fleeting shadow deeper in the trees, but when I focused, it was gone. Just a trick of the light, I told myself, a mind playing games in the dark.

"Do you hear that?" Tina whispered, stopping again. Her head was cocked, listening intently.

I listened. Nothing. Just the frantic thumping of my own heart. "Hear what?"

"That… hum. A low hum. Like a power line, but… deeper. And it's coming from everywhere."

I focused, straining my ears past the internal noise. And then, faintly, almost imperceptibly, I caught it. A vibration, more felt than heard, resonating deep in my bones. It wasn't a hum like electricity; it was more organic, like a vast, ancient machine buried deep beneath the earth, slowly waking. It was a sound that seemed to emanate not from a direction, but from the very air, the very soil, the very trees around us. It was a fundamental tone, raw and inescapable, and it filled me with a primal, suffocating dread.

"Yeah," I managed, the word barely a breath. "Yeah, I hear it. What is it?"

Tina shook her head, her eyes wide, glistening in the gloom. "I don't know, Joe. But I don't like it."

The hum intensified, a silent roar that vibrated through my chest. The world around us seemed to subtly shift, the trees appearing to lean closer, their branches reaching, grasping. It wasn't just the light playing tricks anymore. The very geometry of the forest felt wrong. The air itself tasted of something metallic, sharp. I felt a compelling urge to run, to scream, but my feet were rooted. Tina, beside me, seemed equally paralysed, her gaze fixed on something I couldn’t quite make out in the deepening shadows ahead. Something tall, indistinct, and utterly unmoving, waiting just beyond the visible.

"We have to keep moving," I forced out, though every instinct screamed at me to stop, to hide. "We have to get through this."