The Blood Tree

Again, another strikingly vivid fever dream.

I still remember the first time I saw that tree.

I attend a boarding school, and one of the teachers had found this huge tree in the forest. By huge, I mean HUGE. I don't know how they fit it into the building, but basically, you could fit at least ten people in there at one time.

The teacher who had found the tree had hired this red-haired woman to drill human-sized tunnels through it, so that we could explore. Me and another boy were the only two who did not want to go inside; mostly for claustrophobic reasons, but also because the inside of the tree wasn't like a normal tree. It had bloody roots on the inside that looked like veins all throughout it, and it had an awful reek that made my stomach turn.

 

Normally, anatomy-interested me, would have leapt at the idea of exploring the insides of a smelly tree that dripped blood, but something held me back this time.

 

It was a few weeks after that I found myself walking down a dark, Vegas-reminiscent street with places for gambling, gaming and arcades everywhere I looked. The streets were empty, and I supposed everybody was inside. The lights were on full blast, but they were strangely dim; as if somebody had deliberately chosen the darkest colours. This was a part of town I never visited, and why I was there exactly I don't quite remember.

 

I had been thinking about the tree for some time, and I had grown to really dislike it because of how it had consumed all my friends' time. Once all my roommates went in, none of them wanted to come out.

I wondered what was so interesting about that tree, and I warned everybody not to go in it for a reason I didn't know, but people just kept wanting to explore it. While I was a little worried, I didn't think too much about it.

 

As I was wandering down the streets, I found a brightly patterned door, consisting of greens, yellows and purples with pitch black swirls and stylized skulls; resembling that of a toxic-looking Dia de los Muertos kind of image.

I opened it, and found the room empty except for the trunk of the very tree that had been in my dorm.

 

The place was some kind of arcade; but the tree was the main attraction. Signs with brightly coloured slogans adorned the tree and space of the room, but for some reason all the words were unintelligible to me. As soon as some of the letters started to make sense, the rest of the sentence was obscured.

 

I directed my attention back to the tree. A good friend of mine, Luella, was staring at me with her feet buried in a broken patch of the bark. There was thick dirt underneath, and she was lying horizontally in an painful-looking position. Her ankles had to be broken or missing for her to be lying down like that.

 

Her eyes sparked with recognition as she saw me, and she immediately starting crying and blubbering out words that made no sense in her panic.

I told her to take it easy and helped her breathe slowly, and as she managed to calm down, she said to me:
"I lost my feet! I lost my feet! Don't go near the tree, I lost my feet!"

 

At that moment, the owner of the store (and obvious conman) came out behind a door towards the back of the room.

He grinned at me and began to promote the tree.

 

"Will you step up and journey into the Prize Tree?" he said, coming so close I could smell him. He reeked of contaminated soil and fermentation.

"You can have anything your heart desires if you win."

He showed me a vision of the things I wanted most in the world, but I refused to let myself be taken by it.

"And entirely free, too! No money is required. You can quit at any time, but be warned that if you do quit, you will never be able to get your prize. So what do you say?"

 

I politely refused, and even though he tried to convince me a little more, when he saw that I would not be persuaded by him he let me alone; apparently contented enough with the amount of customers he had.

He was a little suspicious when he saw me standing over Luella, wondering if she had influenced my decision, but then left back into the door.

 

Not long after, a skeletal figure came out. How to describe him is difficult. He was not human. He was very tall and thin, with a pure white face that held features lacking in detail; as if someone had drawn them on with a pen. He had no hair anywhere visible on his body, and his skin looked hard and white like marble. How exactly his joints worked was a mystery to me, as they seemed to be able to bend in any direction.

 

I told him Luella wanted to quit. He looked at me for a minute before doing something to the tree, and then pulled Luella out of the soil.

As he pulled her, I watched it suck away the skin, muscle and then bones and leave behind two clean stumps. The skin had healed over as if she had never had feet in the first place.

 

The figure stood over us, and Luella leant on me as she couldn't stand on her own.

I asked him to take us home, and he was apparently a lot nicer and more generous than anybody I had met since the tree had taken over everyone's lives.

He agreed, telling us his name was Jack, and placed us on his back.

Luella was shocked at what she had lost, but seemed even more shocked at what she had seen. She told me all the things that happened inside the tree.

 

Apparently, once you entered the "game", the tree showed you what you wanted most in the world as the grand prize at the end of the game. The only rules of the game was either to keep going, or quit.

The tree demanded a payment -- part of your body. At first, it seemed harmless. It asked for your body parts from the bottom up, so first your feet, then your shins, then thighs, then organs, which you gave one by one, and so on until the last thing you owned was your soul. You could change the prize at any time, and so players always chose to get their bodies back at the end. They had no choice but to continue if they wanted to get their selves back.

However, once it was up to their soul, there was one payment left before the grand prize, so the players had no choice but to sell their souls to the tree. This way, the tree was guaranteed offerings that would keep its power strong.

 

Jack told us the history of the tree.

Apparently, it had started out merely as a lone tree in the clearing of a forest that beckoned travellers to it. Jack had been one of the people it had claimed, and one of the extremely few people who had won the game, but he would not tell us how he managed to win. The tree, shocked that a person had actually won its game, stayed true to the rules and gave him his body.

Jack received his body; but in a twisted form. He had nowhere to go with a body like that. So the tree accepted him as a slave.

He told us that none of the players would ever get their true bodies back even if they did win the game, but as the tree's slave, he had to continue to feed and look after it.

The game master who had tried to persuade me to join the "Prize" Tree had also won the game like Jack had, but the tree had sensed his potential to be almost its equal, so had granted him a human body to allure more people to the tree.

He was still twisted, but not physically. He would never function like his old self again.

 

I told Jack to stop for a minute, and asked what would happen if we destroyed the tree.

He replied that the souls, because they were now the property of the tree, would perish alongside it, as well as its slaves.

 

We decided we would bury it in a part of the forest nobody was allowed to enter, so that it couldn't claim any more victims. Jack promised to help direct as many people away from it as possible, because he said that the tree couldn't hurt him any longer.

 

So we did.

Jack helped us with everything we needed, and it was difficult burying the tree because of its sheer size. While we only managed to cover half of it, Jack's promise satisfied me that the tree would be kept far away from victims.

 

That was the last I ever saw of the Blood Tree and my classmates. If the tree was ever conquered somehow, I might never know. But I hope it never claims another victim.

 

Luella managed to overcome most of her shock at what she had seen, but she was still pitifully broken. The tree had stolen a fair amount of the sanity she had, and had reduced her to a sad, trembling shadow. I managed to find some help for her, and she's now being looked after by a loving couple. I still visit her every week.

 

The boarding school was closed down because of all the missing persons they had once housed. Since the only witnesses of the tree were the ones taken by it, nobody knew what had happened. The only clue police had found was a sickly trail of bloody veins and reeking dirt from when the tree had been dragged in and out.

 

Sometimes I will look to the moon at night and think of the events that happened. I would be lying to say I came out of this unscathed. The Blood Tree had its effects on me, too; and I still have nightmares about the pulsing, oozing red veins.

 

But sometimes I look to the very same moon and I see a tall, skeletal monster wandering the plains, warding off whoever comes near, and I have hope that the tree will be subdued, at least for now.

Reviews

[Wolven]

Verrrrry interesting my friend. I like the whole concept of this, effectively selling your sould to the tree in a bid to win back your life... quite scary too now i think about it.
The ending was good but a little bit underwhelming given the rest of the story but, thats okay i guess, i mean every writer has their own way of ending things.

[Cobalt]

Thank you! I'm glad you thought it was scary. That was the effect I was going for.

I totally agree with you.. I mean, as a dream, it ended abruptly and some things were still loose and open-ended. It was difficult thinking of an ending and i think that reflects in it.
Thank you for your review, though :^)