Creatures From The Tree Line

On a night of fun, full of laughter and colorful lights, Aaron and his girlfriend, Anna, walk through all the displays at the circus. Their best friend, Brandon, was tagging along and being the comedian of the trio. The autumn air carries the scent of caramel apples and cotton candy, mixing with the distant sound of carnival music that drifts through the crowd. Aaron’s hand finds Anna’s as they weave between families and couples, all mesmerized by the spectacle before them. Fire breathers cast dancing shadows across their faces while jugglers toss pins high into the star-scattered sky.

Brandon cracks jokes about the fortune teller’s booth, mimicking her dramatic gestures and predicting that Aaron will “find great fortune in his future” with exaggerated mystical hand movements. Anna laughs so hard she nearly spills her funnel cake, powdered sugar dusting her dark sweater. It’s a pleasant night for the friends to catch up, talking about anything they can think of. Aaron feels the small velvet box in his jacket pocket, the engagement ring he’d been carrying for weeks, waiting for the perfect moment.
The circus grounds sprawl before them like a wonderland of wonder and whimsy. Striped tents house acrobats and clowns, while game booths promise oversized stuffed animals to anyone skilled enough to knock down milk bottles or toss rings around bottles. The Ferris wheel turns slowly against the midnight sky, its lights creating a kaleidoscope of colors that reflect in Anna’s eyes. Aaron thinks this might be the moment, maybe at the top of the wheel, where they can see the entire world spread out below them.

Anna strays off from the group to find a bathroom while Brandon and Aaron take a seat at the tables that litter the place, waiting for her to get back. Brandon continues his comedic commentary, pointing out particularly ridiculous carnival patrons and making Aaron forget his nervousness about the proposal. The wooden picnic table feels rough beneath their elbows as they lean forward, watching the crowd ebb and flow around them like a river of humanity.

As they sit and talk, they hear a few screams off in the direction where Anna went. At first, Aaron thinks it might be someone on one of the rides, maybe the haunted house that sits near the restrooms. But something about the sound makes his blood run cold. It’s not the playful shriek of someone enjoying a scare, but something deeper, more primal. More real. No one else seems to hear the commotion, so the pair decides to investigate.

Brandon stands first, his usual jovial expression replaced by something more serious. “That didn’t sound right,” he says, and Aaron nods, his hand instinctively moving to his pocket where the ring box sits. They push through the crowd, excusing themselves as they make their way toward the bathrooms, both of them feeling an inexplicable dread settling in their stomachs like lead.

An uproar of chaos and fear stops them within five feet of their seats. The transformation happens so suddenly that Aaron’s mind struggles to process what his eyes are seeing. One moment, families are laughing and children are begging for one more ride, and the next, hundreds of strangers are running and fleeing from the masses that tumble from the treeline. A horror no God has the power to withhold.

They emerge from the darkness beyond the carnival lights like a nightmare given form. They all run on backwards joints, seven feet tall and colored an awful gray. Their limbs bend in ways that defy nature, clicking and cracking with each movement as they pour from the shadows between the trees. The face is what’s worst, though. A blank, scratched-up blank void with no eyes. Only empty bleeding sockets, and a gaping mouth filled with rows of broken and jagged teeth. The smell of rot emanates from their bodies as they tear through any flesh that comes in contact with their hands.

The creatures move with a terrible purpose, their clawed fingers reaching for anyone within their grasp. Aaron watches in horror as a father tries to shield his young daughter, only to have those black talons slice through his chest like paper. A creature attacks the girl, silencing her scream. Aaron feels his stomach lurch, realizing this is real, this is happening, and Anna is somewhere in the chaos.

The friends don’t have time to react as a group of them lunge at the bathrooms, just as Anna steps out to see what all the noise is. She appears in the doorway, her face confused and concerned, still wiping her hands on a paper towel. For a brief moment, Aaron sees her clearly in the carnival lights, beautiful and alive, and then the creature’s hand is moving, faster than anything should be able to move. She doesn’t have time to scream as a long, slender, and black clawed hand slashes across her throat. Spraying dark and thick blood across the white wall of the building, onto Aaron’s feet.

Aaron’s world shatters in that instant. The ring box falls from his nerveless fingers, hitting the ground with a soft thud that he somehow hears over the screaming. Anna’s body crumples to the ground, her eyes wide with surprise and something that might have been an apology. He tries to move toward her, but his legs won’t respond, and the creature that killed her is already turning its eyeless face toward him.

With Brandon being the one to take action, he drags his friend into a run from the terror, despite his cries of pain and sorrow of losing his only love. Aaron fights against his friend’s grip, screaming Anna’s name until his voice cracks and breaks. But Brandon is stronger, and he pulls Aaron away from the carnage, away from the woman he’d planned to marry, away from the life he’d imagined they would build together.

The two shelter in a storage shed, just feet away from the creatures that feast upon the littering bodies that pile up by the second. Through the gaps in the wooden walls, they can see the massacre continuing. The creatures work methodically, tearing through the crowd with an efficiency that suggests intelligence, purpose. Aaron watches through his tears as the Ferris wheel stops turning, its lights flickering and dying one by one. The cotton candy machine overturns, pink sugar spilling across the ground like blood.

Brandon presses his hand over Aaron’s mouth when he starts to sob loudly, and they both freeze as one creature passes near their hiding spot. Its backward feet make wet squelching sounds in the grass, and Aaron can smell the rot emanating from its body even through the shed walls. Hours pass like years as they listen to the sounds of death and destruction outside.

It feels like hours that the two spend huddled up in the back of the shed, desperately trying to keep silent to avoid getting caught by the things. Aaron’s mind replays Anna’s death over and over, each time hoping for a different outcome, watching her fall again. Brandon keeps checking his watch, but time seems to have stopped, frozen in this moment of horror. They take turns watching through the cracks, witnessing scenes that will haunt them forever.
Then, the sun comes up, peeking in through the cracks in the shed. The first rays of dawn filter through the wooden slats, painting golden stripes across their faces. And it goes silent, not a single scream or cry of anguish from the circus. The sudden quiet is almost more terrifying than the chaos had been. Aaron and Brandon exchange looks, neither wanting to be the first to suggest they leave their sanctuary.

Once they leave the shed, they peek out from the door only to see that everything was… normal. No blood or guts, no monsters, or the smell of rot. It was all gone, like it was all a dream. People walk through the circus just enjoying the day, not remembering a single horror that took place just hours ago. The same families from the night before stroll past, laughing and holding hands. The cotton candy machine stands upright, serving up pink clouds of sugar to delighted children.

Aaron runs to the spot where Anna died, where he’d seen her blood spray across the white wall. But the wall is clean, pristine, as if nothing had ever touched it. He gets down on his hands and knees, searching for the ring box he’d dropped, but finds only grass and dirt. Brandon pulls him up, both of them looking around in confusion and growing dread.

But Aaron and Brandon remember, they can still see the grotesque and mutilated bodies in their mind as they walk home. They spend days, weeks, months, even years, trying to figure things out. Aaron searches for Anna’s apartment, but the address he remembers doesn’t exist. He calls her phone, but he finds the number disconnected. He drives to her workplace, but no one there has ever heard of her. But every person they say dies, it’s like they never were alive. No family nor place of residence knows of them. Just erased from existence.
Aaron visits the cemetery containing Anna’s grandmother’s grave, the same cemetery where Anna used to place flowers every Sunday. But when he finds the grave, it’s empty of the flowers Anna would have left, and the groundskeeper insists no one by Anna’s name has ever visited. He shows Aaron the records, and there’s no mention of Anna anywhere. It’s as if she never existed at all.

The two friends grow apart in their shared madness. Brandon throws himself into work, trying to forget what he’d seen, while Aaron becomes obsessed with finding proof that Anna had been real. He fills notebooks with everything he can remember about her, afraid that if he stops writing, she’ll disappear from his mind entirely. But even as he writes, the details become fuzzy, uncertain.

For whatever God sits up in the heavens, peeking down upon the horrific madness that lies before them, spawned from the leading and deadly flames from hell. A punishment from the devil himself. Aaron finds himself questioning his faith, wondering what kind of god would allow such cruelty to exist. He stops going to church, stops praying, stops believing in anything beyond the darkness that consumed the woman he loved.

The nightmares come every night without fail. Aaron wakes up screaming, his sheets soaked with sweat, the taste of copper in his mouth. He sees Anna’s face in crowds, turns to follow her, only to find strangers who look nothing like her. He hears her laugh in coffee shops and turns around to find empty air. His friends and family grow concerned, but how can he explain that he’s grieving for someone who never existed?

Aaron’s one love, the woman he was going to ask to be his wife that night. Slowly fading from his memory like a wave in the water. Dissipating slowly into just a gray fog in the back of his mind. He struggles to remember the sound of her voice, the way her hand felt in his, the plans they’d made for their future. Each day, another detail slips away, and he realizes with growing horror that soon, he might not remember her at all.

The circus returns the following year, as if nothing had ever happened. Aaron and Brandon stand at the edge of the grounds, watching families enter with the same excited anticipation they’d felt a year ago. The same striped tents, the same Ferris wheel, the same cotton candy machine. But they don’t go in. They can’t. Because somewhere in the back of their minds, they know that if they do, they might not come out again. Or worse, they might come out with no memory of why they were afraid in the first place.

And in the deepest part of the night, when Aaron lies alone in his bed, he sometimes wonders if Anna had been real at all, or if she’d been just another victim of whatever evil had taken hold of that place. The only proof he has of her existence is the hole in his heart that grows a little smaller each day, and the terrible knowledge that someday, even that will be gone.

Credit: A. may

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