Zzzzz….. zzzzzz..
A low, vibrating hum faded into the distance.
"Whoa, what?" a voice echoed through Darren's head. It sounded faint. Distant.
"Ahem…" Darren cleared his throat, blinking against the grogginess. He opened his eyes, fully expecting to see the sterile white walls of his classroom. But something was wrong.
Something impossible had happened.
He let his eyes adjust naturally to the environment. For a split second, his brain completely short-circuited. He couldn't process what he was looking at. And then, the reality crashed into him.
"Huh?!" Darren recoiled, scrambling backward.
Instead of the bright fluorescent lights of the classroom, the muted laughter of his best friend, or the warm sunlight slicing through the windows... there was nothing.
Just near-complete, suffocating darkness.
Massive, ancient trees surrounded him. Their trunks were violently twisted, and their thick roots violently tore through the earth in every direction.
A dense mist clung to the ground, swallowing his shoes and making the shadows look even deeper.
Wait, what? This… this doesn't make sense.
He tilted his head back, searching the sky. The heavy canopy of leaves blocked out almost everything, letting only a few weak slivers of grey light bleed through.
There was no moon. It was a completely pitch-black.
Darren let out a shaky gasp. Could this… could this be a dream? he thought, suddenly realizing he was sitting on the damp earth, his back pressed hard against the rough bark of a tree.
He quickly pushed himself up and spun around, scanning the tree line.
He looked down, hurriedly brushing the damp dirt off his bare arms. He let out a heavy sigh of pure confusion.
But as his hands brushed his skin, he froze.
Even in the suffocating darkness, Darren could see something unusual faintly visible on his arms.
Stripes of vibrant color.
What… what is that?
He frantically rubbed at his skin, trying to scrub the marks away. But the colors wouldn't budge. They were permanently inked into his flesh.
It was a tattoo.
He stared at his arm in shock. Since when? his mind raced. When did I get a tattoo? He was completely and utterly confused.
If this was a dream, it was too vivid.
The biting cold of the air, the smell of rotting leaves, the sharp prickle of goosebumps on his arms—it all felt way too… real.
But how? How could he have gone from sitting in his bright classroom to... wherever this was?
Cr-r-ruck… cr-r-ruck…
The sound snapped from somewhere to his right.
He frantically glanced around, squinting through the thick mist. But whatever made that sound remained completely hidden in the shadows.
"God, god, god," he whispered, a desperate prayer escaping his lips.
"Wait..." Darren froze as something suddenly caught his eye.
Through the shifting fog, he finally spotted it. It was just a bird. A massive black crow perched on the gnarled branch of an ancient, towering tree.
"Phew." Darren let out a heavy sigh of relief, his tense shoulders instantly dropping.
But as he stared at the bird, he noticed something strange. The crow's sleek, black feathers seemed to be reflecting a faint glow—a chilling, cold blue light.
He looked closer at the tree itself. It was massive, towering far above the rest of the dark forest. Its unusually wide trunk was riddled with dozens of small, natural holes, like perfect little pockets carved directly into the bark.
Darren squinted, leaning in slightly. Was that eerie blue light actually coming from deep inside the tree?
The mist was too thick, and his terrified mind was already playing tricks on him. He couldn't really tell for sure.
But before he could think about it any longer, the sound multiplied.
Cr-r-ruck… cr-r-ruck… CR-r-ruck… cR-r-ruck!
More of them. The guttural cawing grew louder, heavier, and frantic. Dozens of black-feathered heads began poking out of the countless small holes scattered across the trunk.
They were scrambling, flapping against the bark to get out.
Cruck… cruck… Cruck! Cruck!
It wasn't just noise anymore. They were shrieking. Panicking. They were terrified of…. something.
A sudden memory flashed through his mind—two years ago, when he was sixteen. He remembered being out with his dad when a scattered flock of crows had shrieked at them exactly like this. Back then, it had just been animal instinct. Pure, blind fear.
Hoping that was all this was, he slowly raised his hands in the air and took a cautious step back. "It's okay," he whispered, trying to keep his voice steady. "I'm not gonna hurt you…"
But the frantic cawing didn't stop. In fact, it escalated into pure chaos.
Cruck… cruck… Cruck! Cruck!
Alright, Darren thought to himself, his heart hammering against his ribs. Crows can never understand English, huh?
But then, the temperature plummeted.
Darren felt it before he heard it. A freezing, unnatural wind brushed violently against his back. A heavy, suffocating pressure settled onto the base of his neck, making his spine lock up.
The crows weren't looking at him. They weren't afraid of him at all.
They were screaming at whatever was standing right behind him.
Darren instinctively whipped around, his eyes darting frantically left and right through the fog. Where? Where? Where? his mind screamed. What is it?
But the heavy mist obscured everything. There was nothing to see, only that suffocating, freezing pressure pressing down on his spine, growing stronger by the second.
Darren clenched his hands into tight fists down at his sides. He didn't raise them, but his muscles coiled, bracing himself to fight whatever was about to emerge from the shadows.
Then, he heard it. Just a few yards away, hidden in the thick, underbrush between the ancient trunk.
A heavy, sickening rustle. Something massive was shifting through the leaves.
Darren's chest tightened, the air completely vanishing from his lungs. His heart slammed against his ribs. Every alarm bell in his head was ringing with a single, deafening command: Run.
SCREEE-CHUUUK—AGGHH!
The shriek violently tore through the dead silence of the forest. He was right—something was in those bushes. But the sound... it was agonizing.
Goosebumps instantly rose all over his body, and something deep inside him screamed.
It was so overwhelmingly loud and piercingly high-pitched that Darren instantly clamped his hands over his ears, feeling a sharp pressure that threatened to burst his eardrums.
It wasn't the roar of an animal you'd hear in a zoo. It was a distorted, metallic screech straight out of a nightmare.
The crows behind him completely lost their minds. An explosion of frantic wings echoed through the air.
Darren turned just in time to see the entire flock erupting from the hollows of the tree, swarming into the sky in a chaotic black cloud.
They were abandoning the forest, desperate to escape whatever the hell was hiding in the brush.
There was no time left to think. Even as his brain struggled to process it, his survival instinct completely took over.
Darren spun around and bolted in the opposite direction. His boots pounded against the freezing earth, kicking up clumps of damp dirt as he pushed his legs faster than he ever had in his life.
He wasn't a runner, but right now, his body operated on pure, unadulterated adrenaline. It was either run, or die.
His breath tore in and out of his throat in ragged, burning gasps. His racing mind scrambled for a logical explanation. A bear? A mountain lion?
No. No animal on Earth sounded like that.
Unable to stop himself, Darren risked a terrified glance over his shoulder to see if it was chasing him.
Through the darkness and the heavy mist, he saw nothing but empty trees.
But looking back was his fatal mistake.
Oh no.
His boot slammed squarely into a thick, twisted tree root jutting out of the earth. His momentum was moving way too fast. He had zero time to correct his footing.
"No! No! No!" Darren screamed, his head snapping forward as the ground violently rushed up to meet him. He desperately threw his hands out to brace against the brutal impact.
"ARGH!"
Gasping for air, Darren jolted upright. A strangled cry tore from his throat.
His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. A cold sweat clung to his skin—leftovers from the frantic running, or perhaps just the sheer, paralyzing fear.
But as his mind slowly clawed its way back to consciousness, the terrifying landscape began to fade. The suffocating darkness and the grotesque, twisting trees dissolved.
They were replaced by the sterile hum of his classroom and the warm midday sun streaming through the windows.
The oppressive shadows, the echoing screams, and the biting, unnatural chill of the air were entirely gone.
It was just a dream. A nightmare.
Darren blinked against the sudden brightness. He glanced to his right and then surveyed the room. The silence was deafening.
Every single pair of eyes was locked onto him. His classmates, his best friend Charlie, and even the teacher had frozen mid-sentence at the whiteboard, watching him with genuine concern.
Right. He had actually screamed out loud. The whole room must have heard it.
"Dude, are you okay?" Charlie whispered from the next desk over, his eyes wide. Darren had never had an outburst like this before. It was completely out of character.
It took Darren a moment to find his voice. He offered Charlie a tight, quiet nod before looking up at the teacher.
"I'm okay," he croaked, his throat still dry from the phantom cold. "It was just... a nightmare."
Instantly, a wave of low whispers and stifled giggles broke out across the room. Darren felt the heat of embarrassment rush to his cheeks.
The teacher sighed in relief. She shot the class a quick, warning look to quiet them down before offering Darren a sympathetic smile.
"Alright," she said gently, turning back to the lesson on the board.
Darren slumped back in his chair. It was just a dream, he repeated to himself. But why did it feel so incredibly real?
Normal dreams were hazy, slipping away the moment you opened your eyes. You didn't retain full control of your body, and you certainly didn't feel the physical environment so vividly.
But this dream? It was as if he had physically crossed into another place.
The icy sting of the air, the agonizing sound of the screams, the texture of the dead bark—they were all seared into his memory.
Even now, his pulse was racing, and a fresh bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. Aside from the lingering adrenaline, however, he was perfectly safe.
He let out a quiet sigh, trying to shake off the heavy embarrassment weighing on him. Phew.
But as he relaxed his arms on his desk, his fingers brushed against something unexpected. It wasn't the smooth, empty texture of a blank page.
It felt thick and grainy, like the heavy drag of dark graphite against paper. Frowning, he glanced down.
Darren gasped. His blood ran cold.
There, spanning the pages of his open sketchbook, was a tree.
It was the tree. The massive, hulking oak from his nightmare, complete with the jagged, cavernous holes in its trunk and the shadowy silhouettes of crows perched in its branches.
The perspective was perfect, capturing the exact way the gnarled roots clawed into the earth.
Except, he hadn't drawn it.
His sketchbook had been blank before he dozed off, and there was no way he could have sketched something this meticulously detailed while asleep.
His heart began to race all over again. Frantic, he scrubbed the palm of his hand across the page, checking to see if it was just a hallucination.
But no matter how hard he rubbed, the heavy strokes of graphite wouldn't fade from the paper.
The drawing was undeniably real. But how? And who could've drawn it?
As he stared at the twisted branches, his mind raced with impossible thoughts.
Am I still dreaming? What?
He quickly touched himself on the arm and face.
Warm flesh. This is real. Just like that dream.
Darren let out a heavy breath, but his eyes stayed glued to the impossible graphite sketch on his desk. He was awake.. he had probably just woken up.
But if that was true... who drew the tree?