Chapter 5: The Planting of Joel

Chapter 5: The Planting of Joel

Time froze in the truck's cab. The world narrowed to the twin pinpricks of malevolent red light glowing in the creature's featureless face. Alex’s mind refused to connect the dots, to accept that the lanky, quiet form of Owen had been nothing but a mask for this abomination. His hands were fused to the dashboard, his knuckles white. The air was thick, unbreathable, each molecule saturated with a terror so profound it was a physical weight.

Beside him, Joel moved. It was a small, jerky motion, the first crack in the tableau of frozen fear. His hand, shaking but resolute, reached for the ignition key he’d just turned off. It was the movement of a man who had faced down infernos and collapsing roofs, a man whose instincts screamed act, even in the face of the impossible.

But the creature, the Harvester, noticed.

Its head swiveled with the uncanny smoothness of a serpent. The glowing red pits of its eyes shifted, their focus sliding right past Alex as if he were nothing more than a part of the truck’s upholstery. They settled on Joel.

A low, guttural click echoed from the creature’s split jaw, a sound of immense pressure being released. The sibilant whisper from before coiled through the clearing again, louder this time, scraping against Alex’s sanity.

Hhhassss... a... fittting... shhhape…

The whisper was not a threat. It was an observation. A judgment.

Joel’s fingers brushed the key.

CRUNCH!

The truck’s passenger door imploded inwards, metal shrieking as it was torn from its hinges by a force they couldn’t see. It wasn’t ripped off; it was peeled back like the lid of a tin can. Cold night air rushed into the cab, carrying the coppery stench of the new bloom.

Joel roared, a sound of pure, defiant rage, as he was yanked sideways out of his seat. He didn’t fly through the air. He was dragged by an invisible current, his boots scraping uselessly against the floor of the cab before his body was hauled out into the clearing. He landed hard on the mossy ground, the breath driven from his lungs in a pained grunt.

Alex was paralyzed, a spectator in his own personal nightmare. The agonizing ache in his joints, which had been a constant throb, now erupted into a firestorm of pure agony. It felt as if his own bones were grinding themselves into powder, a sympathetic torment that locked his muscles and stole the air from his lungs. He tried to scream for Joel, but only a choked, wet clicking sound came from his throat.

The Harvester took a long, deliberate step towards Joel’s prone form. It moved with a horrifying purpose, its unnaturally long limbs carrying it with a grace that belonged to predators from a world darker than this one. It crouched over him, not like an animal about to feed, but like a sculptor approaching a block of uncarved stone.

Joel, gasping for air, pushed himself onto his elbows, his weathered face contorted with a mixture of agony and disbelief. He stared up at the impossible being looming over him.

And then he was lifted.

He rose into the air, five feet, then ten, suspended as if by an unseen puppeteer’s strings. He was horizontal, spread-eagled against the night sky. He struggled, his powerful limbs flailing against nothing, his curses turning into strangled cries of pain.

The first sound was a wet, percussive CRACK that echoed through the silent woods, sharp and loud like a falling branch. Joel’s body convulsed, his left leg bending backwards at the knee with a sickening new angle. Another CRACK followed, then another. A rapid, brutal series of snaps as his bones were systematically broken, reshaped by that invisible, crushing force.

Alex watched, his eyes wide, tears streaming down his face. He saw Joel’s sturdy frame begin to elongate. His spine stretched with a sound like tearing cartilage, his torso thinning. His arms, which had hauled hoses and carried people from burning buildings, were pulled taut, the skin stretching, the bones inside audibly cracking and lengthening.

The creature on the ground didn’t touch him. It simply watched, its head tilted in concentration, its glowing eyes fixed on its work. This wasn’t an attack. It was a process. Methodical. Creative.

Joel’s screams had stopped. They were replaced by wet, gurgling sounds as his ribcage compressed, caving inwards before being hideously reformed. His skin, that familiar, weathered skin of a man who had lived his life outdoors, began to peel. It sloughed off not in ragged chunks, but in long, pale strips, separating from the muscle and sinew beneath. It wasn't the color of flesh anymore. It was bleaching under the force of the transformation, turning the waxy, bone-white of the other trees.

His body was being turned inside out, his skeleton becoming a scaffold for a new and terrible shape. His head lolled back, his mouth open in a silent, endless scream, his features blurring, melting, becoming smooth and unrecognizable. He was being unmade. He was being planted.

The sibilant whisper returned, but this time it was different. It wasn't in the clearing. It wasn't in the air.

It was inside Alex’s head.

It... is... time... to... grow...

The voice was not a voice. It was a thought that wasn’t his own, a cold, alien presence slithering through the pathways of his mind. It spoke of hunger, and soil, and the deep, cold peace of the root.

The sight of what was happening to Joel—the man who had been his anchor, his only ally—combined with the violation of the voice in his skull, finally broke something deep within Alex. The dam of his sanity, already cracked and leaking, shattered into a million pieces.

The paralysis vanished, replaced by a surge of pure, animal terror so potent it was almost a relief.

RUN.

The command was his own, a single, screaming instinct that drowned out the whisper. He threw his own door open, his limbs clumsy and uncoordinated. He fell out of the truck, his hands and knees hitting the cold, damp earth. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t. He knew what he would see: the final, horrific moments of Joel’s transformation from a man into a monument of bone and flesh, another pale, silent marker in the Harvester’s grotesque orchard.

He scrambled to his feet and ran.

He fled into the absolute dark of the forest, away from the headlights, away from the clearing. Branches whipped at his face, tearing his skin. Roots grabbed at his ankles, trying to trip him, to pull him down into the soil. He ran blindly, fueled by nothing but adrenaline and madness, his lungs burning, his heart feeling as if it would explode in his chest.

He was alone. Utterly and completely alone.

No, not alone.

As he crashed through the undergrowth, the sibilant, ancient whisper echoed in the quiet chambers of his mind, a constant, horrifying companion.

We... are... not... done...