The Oak Tree

There was no mistaking the black notebook on her bedside table. Small and delicate it sat, almost as if it were screaming "pick me up, take a peek inside of me.". She knew she had not placed such a notebook there the night before, nor did she own one like it. Yet, there it sat, ominous and daunting. Unable to peel her eyes off of it, she leaned over and snatched it up. Only after opening it, she wished she had fought her urges. Inside on the first page she saw a sentence written in red ink:

"Meet me in the park at midnight with the money, under the largest oak tree. I know the truth."

She stared down at the words on the paper, unable to look away. Feeling her heart race upon her chest, her eyes shot to her closet where she knew a bag laid dormant and hidden. It was filled to the brim with 20 thousand dollars in it. Money that her brother had given to her unexpectedly. She stood up from her bed letting her feet carry her across the room and then let them carry her back. How could anyone has known how she had it?

The money was a “peace” offering from her brother, or at least that’s what he’d called it. An offering for all his past mistakes, throwing her under the bus and letting her take the blame in almost all his petty crimes. He showed up out of the blue, knocking on her door, after almost two years of radio silence; silence she had preferred and insisted on. He knew this better than anyone.

The notebook lay open on the nightstand, taunting her with nothing but blank pages and threatening words, yet no indication of where it came from or who had written the message, nor how it ended up in her room to begin with. This raised another uncomfortable question for her: if they had known she had been given the money, how come they didn't get rid of her in her sleep and raid her home for it? They simply left her to dream and scurried away in the night to potentially ambush her in a park. The more she thought about it, the more the dilemma did not sit right with her.

Her brother had promised her that it was not acquired illegally, yet he was always one to lie to your face, so she had no desire to believe him. She had never had a close relationship with her family due to their tendencies to choose the harsher, more questionable side of life. Years ago, she decided to take her life into her own hands and removed herself from her family’s expectations. She wanted to live a quiet existence, one without their troubles plaguing her mind or her safety. So, when her brother showed up that day with thousands of dollars as an olive branch, she could only assume the worst. This was it. Only, she had no clue what to do with it, so it began to collect dust on her closet floor.

Her thoughts became crowded, which brought her to pacing around her room, debating on what she should do. Meeting this unknown person in the middle of the night was reckless; and an obvious set up for her. Yet she wasn't sure she would be safe regardless of the action she took. She couldn’t help but wonder if her brother orchestrated this or if this could be the person he potentially robbed. Waiting it out clearing wasn’t the answer, so she decided to try and reach out to her brother, hoping he would ease some of the fear and uncertainty.

Pulling out her phone, she began to scan social media until she found him, hoping he was still active, she plugged in a message and hit send. Praying he knew something about the black book and who the possible person on the other side could be. Hours had passed, increasing her anxiety before he reached back out to her. With haste, she opened the message and read six words: "I'll meet you at the park." This did help her worry less, and against her better judgement, she decided, she must face her brother or this anonymous person and get out of this anyway she can.

Around midnight, with the money in the bag, she found herself walking down a quiet street towards the empty park. Not a single soul was about. The night seemed darker than usual. She chalked this up to anxiety and forced herself to press on despite it.

In the distance she thought she heard a twig snap, causing her to freeze on the spot. Her heart began to pound on her ribcage, which she swore could be heard echoing off the buildings around her. Reacting from fear before she could collect her thoughts, she yelled out her brother's name, hoping it was just him moving through the shadows, keeping his word on meeting her in this familiar place under strange circumstances. Silence, however, was her only response.

Fear paralyzed her and she was sure she would never be able to move from this spot, but right now she needed her to make her way into the park to confront her brother’s past. Taking a deep breath, she forced her legs to work, focusing step by step down the sidewalk until she reached the entrance to the park.

The park during the day was a welcoming sight, where you could read under the trees and bask in the soft sunlight with your peers, but when the sun went behind the horizon, it became a different world. In the dark, the trees threatened her like monsters ready to grab her in the dark if she were to stray too close to one.

It seemed now to her that the possibility of her being scammed or harmed was too high of a risk. Deciding her life was worth more than the weight and desire to rid herself of the cash and began to turn around when she heard someone shout across the park.

"Wait, I'm over here!"

There was no mistaking her brother’s voice coming from behind an oak tree off in the distance, the tree where she was meant to meet the one who threatened her. She felt herself sway on the spot. Debating if it were still worth the risk, she looked out into the darkness to where her brother was and couldn’t help but acknowledge that she had no idea who he was anymore, all she had was the memory of who he had been, and how he disappeared after leaving her a large sum of money. He was a man who robbed, cheated, and took what he wanted in life without regards to the people around him, and she had to decide if he could be trusted now. Yet the heaviness of the money dragged her down and he had agreed to meet her, so she swallowed her pride she began taking strides across the lawn to meet him.

Nearing the tree, she began to realize no one was in sight, though she knew there was no question she had heard her brother. His voice had rang through the darkness quite clearly. Really beginning to question herself and her actions, she noticed she had been lured into a false sense of security. Her breath started to rise and fall rapidly, which didn’t stop when she saw something that made her forget everything that lead her here tonight.

The trunk of a tree closest to her began to shift before her eyes, as if it were a Van Gogh painting coming alive. The bark on the tree was wiggling and twisting against itself until a small indigo color began to emit from inside, illuminating it from within. She was paralyzed from fear and in a small way, from the way it was glowing around her. The more it twisted, the more it began forming a hole, showing more than indigo inside the tree.

It was as if there was a whole other world inside the tree, a door to another place, except it was not right. It was as if it were a permanent night blanketing itself in perpetual darkness for eternity. Everything in sight was decrepit, as if it were rotting and feeding on itself. She could barely make out a dense forest on the other side, the trees were waxy and looked to be oozing something the resembled a thick green syrup. She could hear the trunks creaking under the rot, but the silence around them left her body cold. It was as if everything were holding its breath, hiding from something much worse. It was this moment she remembered she was still standing in the dark park with thousands of dollars.

Dropping the money and turning away from the impossible hole to another world, she heard the unearthly screech, the entity the forest was holding its breath in anticipation for. It felt like artic water was being poured over her, rooting her to the spot. She had never heard anything like it. It came from inside the tree, from something alive on the other side. She wished she had never come to the park tonight. Hoping she would never have to face this thing, she tried to run. Her feet failed her, and she fell to the ground.

She closed her eyes. She felt tears beginning to swell, from fear, from regret, from having to face a monster on behalf of her brother’s crimes. She now wondered if her brother had planned this, with her as the bait. Had he made a deal with an entity, was this money a curse she would now have pay for with her life?

That was when she felt it, the cold, clammy hands of the monster the paralyzing cry came from. It was like ice on her skin, burning the spot where it touched her, amplifying the smell of rotting flesh and murky water. She screamed in her head to force herself to move her body, to save herself, but she was too late. The creature had begun to drag her away from the park and through the hole in the tree.

She pleaded, she wished, that she had never answered the door the day her brother had knocked. Mostly she wished she had taken in yesterday more deeply, the last time she would remember the sun.

Leaving behind no evidence that she or the money had ever come there to begin with, the hole in the tree closed, simply disappearing from this world. When the residents of the town came to sit in the park tomorrow none of them would know what happened, none of them would ever look at the oak tree and wonder what lies within and beyond.