Chapter 2: The Root of the Truth

Chapter 2: The Root of the Truth

Alex stared at his hand, half-expecting it to be covered in blood or some vile ichor. It was clean, but the phantom sensation of that warm, pulsing surface clung to his skin like a static charge. The rhythmic beat he’d felt—thump-thump, thump-thump—now seemed to echo in the marrow of his own aching bones.

“Alex? What is it?” Joel’s voice was sharp, cutting through the thick, coppery air. He had seen Alex recoil, seen the raw terror flash across his face.

“It’s… warm,” Alex stammered, his voice barely a whisper. “It’s alive. I felt a heartbeat.”

Joel’s weathered face tightened, the skepticism in his eyes warring with the undeniable wrongness of the grove. He took a step towards the tree Alex had touched, his own hand rising tentatively before he seemed to think better of it. He looked from the pale, smooth trunk to the silent, watching form of Owen, who stood motionless in the center of the strange clearing. The young man’s expression was one of unnerving placidity, as if they were discussing the weather.

“We need to get out of here,” Alex urged, his gaze darting between the alien trees. The oppressive silence of the woods suddenly made sense. It wasn’t empty; it was waiting.

“No,” Joel said, his voice a low growl of pure, stubborn authority. He was scared—Alex could see it in the rigid set of his jaw—but his years of running into burning buildings had forged a spine of steel. “We have a grid to finish. We do the job. Then we report.” He locked eyes with Alex, a silent command passing between them. We stick to the facts. We don’t sound crazy.

He turned his attention back to the base of the tree where he’d knelt moments before, at the strange, gnarled mass that resembled fused bone. “But we document this.”

With a slow, deliberate motion, Joel pulled his phone from his pocket. The modern, sleek device looked profane in this ancient, silent place. He crouched down, his movements stiff. Alex watched, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The air felt thick, heavy, making each breath a conscious effort. He could feel Owen’s dark eyes on them, a placid, unnerving witness to their trespass.

Joel angled the phone, his thumb tapping the screen. The small, artificial click of the shutter was a deafening crack in the silence. He didn’t just take one picture. He took several, repositioning himself, getting closer to the twisted formation at the tree’s base. He was being methodical, gathering evidence. He zoomed in, his brow furrowed in concentration, before taking one last, tight close-up. Then he stood, slipped the phone back into his pocket, and gave a sharp, curt nod.

“Alright,” he said, his voice strained. “Let’s move. We’ve lost enough time.”

The next hour was a special kind of hell. They left the warmth of the unnatural grove, and the chill of the silent woods felt even colder by comparison. They continued their sweep, calling Quincey’s name, but the words felt hollow and foolish. How could they search for a missing girl when they had just stumbled upon something so fundamentally monstrous?

The unspoken horror hung between Alex and Joel, a shared secret that bound them together. They moved with a new tension, every snapped twig making them jump, every shadow seeming to lengthen and curl at the edge of their vision. Alex’s joint pain, which had dulled to a throb in the grove, now flared with a vengeance, a sharp, grinding ache that mirrored his anxiety.

Owen remained their silent vanguard, drifting ahead with that same eerie weightlessness. He never called out Quincey’s name. He never looked back. He simply moved through the forest as if he were part of it, an extension of its predatory silence. The suspicion in Alex’s mind began to curdle into a specific, cold dread aimed directly at the young man’s back. Who was he? Why wasn’t he scared?

When they finally met up with the other search teams at the designated rendezvous point, the relief of seeing other human faces was immediately soured by the need for secrecy.

“Anything?” Sheriff Brody asked, his tired eyes scanning their faces.

Joel, ever the anchor, stepped forward. “Grid seven is clear,” he reported, his voice steady. “Found a strange patch of trees off the main trail, south of Coulter’s Creek. Unusually pale, no bark. Looks like some kind of blight or fungal infection.”

It was the perfect lie—plausible, mundane, and just strange enough to warrant an official look without causing a panic. Brody grunted, making a note on his clipboard. “A blight. Great. Add it to the list.”

The drive back to his rented cabin was a blur. Alex mumbled his goodbyes and practically fled, the oppressive atmosphere of the woods clinging to him. Inside, he locked the door and leaned against it, his body trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline. He stripped off his hiking boots and flannel shirt, feeling as though the clothes themselves were contaminated.

Hours later, sleep was a distant country he couldn’t reach. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the grove of bone-white trees. He felt the sickeningly warm pulse beneath his fingertips. He saw Owen’s blank, emotionless stare. The silence of his small cabin was no longer peaceful; it was the same waiting, listening silence from the forest.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand, the vibration making him jolt upright in bed. The screen lit up with a notification. A picture message. From Joel.

With a trembling hand, Alex picked it up. There was no text, no explanation. Just a single image. At first, it was just an abstract mess of pale, waxy texture and dark crevices—the close-up Joel had taken at the base of the tree. It looked like a poorly rendered piece of modern art. Confused, Alex pinched the screen with his thumb and forefinger, zooming in.

The image resolved.

His breath hitched in his throat. A wave of nausea churned in his stomach. It wasn’t a root. It wasn’t a fungal growth. It wasn’t bone.

The lines were too deliberate, the shapes too horribly, sickeningly familiar. He could see the slight curve of a nail, yellowed and chipped. He could see the way the flesh—stretched taut and pale as a grub—fused seamlessly into the smooth, white texture of the trunk. He could distinguish five separate forms, crushed and twisted together in an agony that was permanently frozen in place.

Toes.

He was looking at a photograph of a human foot, the toes mangled and melded into the base of the living tree, becoming part of its very structure. The root of the truth was not fungal. It was flesh.