The Leaves

“—honestly, Dad, you should just… turn the bloody thing off,” the voice on the phone crackled, a familiar, distant exasperation. Arnold held the receiver a little too far from his ear, a habit. “It’s nothing but noise, Clara. And what’s with the dramatics? I’m quite alright, thank you.”

“It’s not dramatics, it’s… everywhere. All those ‘reports’ about the woods, the way people are talking. It’s not healthy. You’re alone up there, you know. With all that… internet nonsense.” Clara’s voice softened, but the worry was a palpable thing, even over the crackling line. “Just… be careful, alright? Promise me.”

Arnold sighed, his gaze drifting to the window. Rain was beginning to spatter against the pane, fat drops leaving trails down the glass. “Careful of what, precisely? A digital contagion of boredom? I assure you, my dear, the biggest threat to me is running out of teabags. And even then, I’ve ample supply for a siege.” He tried for lightness, but even to his own ears, it sounded a touch brittle.

Clara didn't laugh. “Just… watch yourself. Don’t believe everything you read, especially now.” Her voice faded, a distant rustle. “I’ve got to go. Call me later. Please.”

The line went dead with a soft click. Arnold lowered the phone, its plastic cool against his palm. ‘Don’t believe everything you read.’ A sentiment he’d lived by his entire career as a research historian. Now, it felt like a warning, a dull ache behind his eyes.

He stood, stretching the stiffness from his sixty-seven-year-old bones. The silence of the house pressed in, suddenly heavier than before. He needed milk, anyway. And perhaps some of those digestive biscuits Margot kept in stock, the ones with the good chocolate. A small, mundane errand, a tether to the sane, predictable world.

The village shop, ‘Margot’s Sundries & Such,’ smelled of woodsmoke, damp wool, and stale coffee, a comfortingly familiar aroma that always made Arnold feel a decade younger. Margot, a woman who had seen more than her fair share of autumns, peered at him over the top of her spectacles, a faint smile playing on her lips. “Well, look what the cat dragged in. Or rather, the rain. Fancy seeing you out, Arnold. Not usually your sort of weather for a grand adventure to the milk aisle, is it?”

“Good afternoon, Margot. And a truly harrowing adventure it is. One might almost say… intrepid.” Arnold leant against the counter, a bag of oat biscuits already in his hand. “Though I fear my greatest peril will be deciding between the full-fat and the skimmed. A modern-day Scylla and Charybdis, wouldn’t you agree?”

Margot chuckled, a dry, rustling sound. “Oh, you and your big words, professor. Always making a mountain out of a molehill, eh? Unlike some folk. Who are making mountains out of… well. Everything.” She gestured vaguely towards the window, where a few villagers huddled under the eaves, seemingly lost in hushed, animated conversation. Their faces, even from this distance, held a peculiar, feverish intensity.

“Something amiss, Margot?” Arnold asked, picking up a pint of full-fat milk. He’d splurge. Life was too short for skimmed.

“Amis? Well, wouldn’t you say? Folks talking to themselves a bit more. Seeing things. Swearing black is white, and white is… well, something else entirely.” She lowered her voice, though her eyes twinkled with a knowing mischief. “All that… *internet* business. Seems to have got a proper hold of them, it has. My nephew, young Paul, he’s convinced the old legends are back. The ones about the woods, mind. And not just the old ones. The *new* ones. The ones he found ‘online’.”

Arnold raised an eyebrow. “Old legends, new ones? About what, a particularly aggressive badger?”

“Oh, you’re a card, Arnold, you really are.” Margot sighed, wiping down the counter with a practiced motion. “No, not badgers. The… the Murmur, they’re calling it. A sort of… blight. On the trees. On the… minds. Started with a silly video, apparently. Some grainy footage of a branch moving odd-like. Now everyone’s seeing it. Hearing it.” She tapped her temple meaningfully. “All because some blogger with too much time on his hands decided to spin a yarn.”

Arnold felt a prickle of unease. He’d seen the headlines Clara was probably referring to, dismissals of rural eccentricities, another small town lost in a conspiracy. But Margot wasn’t given to histrionics. “And what precisely does this ‘Murmur’ do, apart from giving Paul ideas?”

“Well, according to the ‘web,’ it starts slow. A rustle that isn’t wind. A shadow that isn’t shadow. Then it gets… bigger. Changes things. People. They start believing it, you see. Really believing it. And then…” She paused, leaning in conspiratively. “Then it takes root.” Margot straightened, her usual cheerful demeanor returning with a snap. “Anyway. Three pounds seventy, please. And don’t you go believing any of that nonsense, you hear? You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, professor. Unlike some.”

Arnold paid, the familiar clink of coins a small comfort against the chilling undercurrent of their conversation. As he left the shop, a gust of wind tore through the street, ripping a handful of scarlet and gold leaves from a maple tree. They danced erratically, like frantic, startled birds, before scattering across the wet pavement. He shivered, pulling his tweed jacket tighter. The air, crisp and biting, carried a faint, unsettling scent, something metallic and earthy, not quite decomposition, but close.

Back in his study, the tea brewing, Arnold found himself drawn to the window. The rain had intensified, drumming a relentless rhythm against the glass. The woods bordering his property, usually a comforting, verdant wall, now loomed, dark and indistinct, their many arms swaying in a slow, almost deliberate dance. He watched a particularly gnarled oak, its upper branches thrashing with a violence that seemed disproportionate to the wind. Or was it? He couldn't tell. The low light, the rain, the reflection of his own tired face in the glass – it was all a blur.

He made his tea, a strong brew with two sugars and a generous splash of the expensive full-fat milk. His mind, however, kept replaying Margot’s words. *The Murmur. A blight. On the trees. On the minds.* He tried to dismiss it, to label it as small-town hysteria, fuelled by the echo chamber of the internet. But a tiny, insistent voice in the back of his head whispered otherwise.

With a reluctant sigh, Arnold settled into his worn leather armchair, his old laptop balanced on his knees. He hadn’t used it for anything but academic journals and the occasional email for years. Now, his fingers, stiff with age, hovered over the keyboard. He typed ‘The Murmur local legend’ into the search bar, feeling a peculiar sense of dread, like opening a door he knew he should have kept bolted.

The results were immediate, and sickeningly prolific. Forum posts, blogs, shaky YouTube videos, local news articles that had been buried under a mountain of comments. Page after page, all detailing a growing, pervasive phenomenon in their small valley. The 'local legend' Margot mentioned had been hijacked, twisted, and amplified. It wasn’t just about a blight now; it was about *awareness*. About the woods *waking up*. About the trees *watching*. And it wasn't just old tales; there were new additions. Specific reports of a low, rhythmic thrumming in the earth, of leaves falling in unnaturally geometric patterns, of an almost-visible haze, a shimmering distortion in the deeper parts of the woods, seen only at dusk.

One thread, in particular, caught his eye. A user, 'ForestWatcher77,' had posted a series of photographs taken from various spots in the local woods. Each one showed a subtle, almost imperceptible blur in the background, a smudged outline that could have been a trick of the light, or a camera fault. But collectively, the effect was chilling. It looked like… something moving just beyond the edge of focus, something massive and formless.

Arnold scrolled down, his breath catching in his throat. A recent comment, dated just yesterday: *“Saw it. The haze. Near old Man Weatherby’s north field. Like the air was trying to breathe. And the sound… it was in my head.”*

He clicked on a grainy video. It purported to show the 'Murmur' itself. A static shot of an autumn forest, leaves already sparse. Then, slowly, subtly, the branches of a distant stand of birch trees began to sway, not with the wind, but with a strange, internal shudder. The camera shook slightly, a human hand betraying the fear of the person holding it. Then, a low, guttural vibration, like a vast, unseen engine idling beneath the earth, began to pulse through the audio. It was barely audible, a deep, unsettling thrum that made Arnold's teeth ache. The video cut out abruptly.

His stomach churned. He closed the laptop with a snap, the sound echoing too loudly in the sudden quiet of the study. It was all nonsense, of course. Collective hysteria, a mass delusion propagated by anonymous keyboard warriors. And yet… the metallic, earthy smell he’d noticed outside the shop, the way the oak branches had thrashed, the insistent drumming of the rain against his window which now, he realised, sounded eerily like that low thrumming from the video. Coincidence. All of it. Just… coincidence.

He stood, walking over to the large bay window that overlooked his expansive garden, leading into the dense, rain-soaked woods. The last remnants of twilight were fading, replaced by the bruised velvet of an autumn night. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and rotting leaves. He peered out, trying to pierce the gloom, to find something familiar, something reassuring in the impenetrable blackness.

Then he saw it. Not in the woods, not yet. But on the edge of his own lawn, where the neatly mown grass met the unruly undergrowth. A patch of fallen leaves, vibrant crimson and ochre just a day ago, now seemed to possess a peculiar, unnatural pallor. They were greyish, almost sickly, as if the colour had been leached out of them. And beneath them, clinging to the skeletal remains of a small fern, was a fine, web-like filament, almost transparent, shimmering faintly in the meagre light pollution filtering in from the distant village. It wasn't a spider's web. It was too dense, too uniformly woven, and it seemed to pulse with a faint, almost electrical energy, like a tiny, intricate nervous system.

His gaze travelled up, past the skeletal fern, to the trees themselves. The nearest maple, a grand old sentinel, seemed to be weeping. Not rain, but a viscous, dark sap that oozed from cracks in its bark, glistening like spilled crude oil. And as he watched, hypnotised, he could have sworn he heard it again: a low, barely perceptible vibration, a resonance that didn't come from the wind or the rain, but from deep within the earth, from the very roots of the world. It was a sound that resonated in his chest, a dull, insistent hum that was both external and, terrifyingly, internal.

He pressed his hand against the cold windowpane, trying to steady himself, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, what he was hearing, what he was *feeling*. The air itself seemed to vibrate with an unseen presence, a heavy, suffocating weight. The digital static, the online lies, the fabricated fears… they were no longer just on a screen. They were here, in the damp soil, in the dying leaves, in the throbbing pulse behind his ears. The Murmur. It wasn't just a story. It was a contagion, seeping into the physical world, twisting it, making it real.

Arnold stood by the window for a long time, the cold seeping through the glass into his palm. The rain continued its steady patter, an indifferent drumbeat against the growing unease within him. Outside, the night deepened, swallowing the greying leaves and the weeping tree into an inky blackness. He could no longer see the faint filament, nor the unnatural pallor of the foliage, but he felt their presence, a sickening certainty settled deep in his gut. The hum, or perhaps the memory of it, still vibrated in his bones. He knew, with a terrible, quiet clarity, that the world, his quiet, predictable world, had shifted. It wasn't just a matter of belief anymore; it was a matter of being. And for the first time in his life, Arnold felt utterly, profoundly alone, surrounded by a silence that wasn't empty, but watchful.

Something had indeed taken root, and he had no idea how deep its tendrils truly went.