“Be careful,” she said. She always said it as he left.

He was forty years old, six foot two, covered in tattoos, and sported a razor-bald head; what she expected was going to happen to him was a constant source of amusement. As he had remarked to her on more than one occasion, the percentage of adult men—white men at that—murdered by complete strangers for absolutely no discernible reason was shockingly, laughably, low. Even serial killers like Dahmer or Nilsen usually had a personal or sexual motive for slaying other men.

Yes, the Crime Channel was their go-to for dark nights in front of the television. Upon this dark night, however, Jonathan was on his way back from the gym. He had finished work bang on five thirty and his finger hovered over the mouse as he watched the clock tick down.

17:29 and 57 seconds.

Fifty-eight

Fifty-nine.

Click! Log off. Fuck off. Outta here. 

With a shout of “bye!” he left the house (oh, the unbridled joy of working from home) and set off to the gym. Thirty-five to forty-minute walk there—his warm up, as he liked to rationalise it—a decent session with his earphones in to drown out the incessant thud, thud, thud of shitty commercial dance music, and another thirty-five to forty-minute walk back.

It was coming toward the end of winter; the days were cold, but no longer tinged with that razor edge of chill that nipped and pinched every inch of exposed skin. It was cold, but tolerably cold. And it was the darkness which drew in as early as five in the evening that had been the source of it and of Becky’s warnings.

“Be careful,” she would say, “it’ll be dark on your way back.”

And it was dark, very fucking dark. Still, Jonathan did not feel the same fear others undoubtedly would at walking down the long, seemingly endless country lane. It was winter-wet. Not boggy, just that annoying muddiness which serves no other purpose than to cake your shoes and ruin your carpets. That smiling, vindictive muddiness. Smiling mud? Anyway, we’ll just move on.

The trees on either side of the narrow country lane were imposing and thick with virtually no breaks. A lazy mist shrouded the foliage beyond the trees and had started to creep inexorably over the narrow lane. It looked for all intents and purposes like something out of a seventies or eighties horror movie, but still Jonathan was unfazed. 

After his gym session, he began his walk home; legs aching from his workout, but in that weird feelgood way. On he continued to walk—the lane was fucking long, that’s why it took nearly forty minutes to get home.

His head nodded up and down in time to the “Gym Mix” he was listening to, which realistically was all Slipknot and System of a Down. His thoughts, such as they were, floated in and out of vague musings about what he could eat when he got home (make sure it’s packed with protein, boyo) and random, unbidden images of television shows and movie scenes. His brain was hyper-stimulated but he would surely crash when he got home.

Snap.

Jonathan spun on his heel, whipping out his right earbud in the same motion. His eyes had long since become accustomed to the winter dark, and he felt a mild wave of relief to see that there was nothing there. Still, he definitely thought he’d heard something, but just as readily dismissed the thought. Earbud back in, he continued on.

Man, this lane is long. Like, proper long. So anyway. Food. What have we actually got in? Did I eat the last of the-

Snap.

Okay, this time he definitely heard it, even over his music which he tapped his smartwatch to pause. He stood stock still, looking around; there was nothing. Well, nothing but trees. There were loads of those big wooden fuckers. Yet nothing which could have made the sound he was certain he heard. It was like a twig or a branch snapping—cliche, yes—but what other sounds are you going to hear on a narrow country lane, jazz trumpet? Not fucking likely.

Again, he stood still, looking, listening. Now that he had stopped moving, the cold crept in. And somewhere in the back of his mind, in some deep, dark recess of his psyche, he knew that this cold was not of winter’s making.

Certain that he had heard a noise, but equally certain that he could not see any culprit, he moved forward again toward home, quickening his pace. He did not resume the music, instead he slid his phone out of the arm-sleeve-running-pocket-thingy it had been secured inside, and turned on the torch.

Trees. (Not sure what you were expecting.)

Only this time, they were weakly-illuminated trees. He held his phone out as he walked, and his arm swayed as he gained speed. Ahead of him stood an archway of trees, their canopies leaning toward each other at irregular angles as they raced toward the sky. His arm went high, low, high, low as he walked.

Light trees, dark trees. Light trees, dark trees. Light trees, creepy face, dark trees… 

Jonathan froze with his phone light pointed down toward his feet which he dared not move. Terrified by the horrific sight he (thought he) saw in the trees.

It was his imagination, surely.

Slowly, tentatively, he raised his arm, noting how the beam shook in his quivering hand. He tilted the torch by degrees, illuminating the mud at his feet, then the trunk of the closest tree, and then…just trees. Nothing more.

Right, that’s it. Fuck this. Head down and onwards. You’re getting spooked, old man.

Jonathan needed to get home, and now. His rational mind was sure it was just an animal, unseen and scuttling around in the undergrowth. His irrational mind, however, was convinced that there were vampires in this small, sleepy, northern village. Or werewolves, that was another option. Maybe fucking demons or some other random and entirely implausible nonsense. It was probably a night squirrel. 

Night squirrels, you see, are preferable to vampires, even though Jonathan was pretty sure neither actually existed.

He moved forward. No choice really, this lane was long, but this time it was something else which caught his eye. Or should that be many things?

Small, shrivelled, halfway between pink and white. They hung from the branches of every tree he hurried past.

Wide-eyed, though he didn’t dare look (which is ironic). The glimpse he had caught, quite by accident in the torchlight, revealed the things to be quite like human skin. A lot like human skin. Arguably too much like human skin, if that was possible. Fucking Ed Gein’s family Christmas level of skin hanging from trees.

Whatever they were, they absolutely, positively, no word of a lie, were not there earlier.

Jonathan’s stomach lurched, and he started to run. He ran and ran, and ran, and still the lane stretched on. Still the pale shrivelled things hung from the trees, suspended in mid-air as the torchlight caught them at intervals.

He was panicking now, and quite certain that he should have been home a while ago. The lane was far longer tonight than it usually was. Something was wrong; very, very wrong.

Thud, pant, thud, pant, thud, pant.

Jonathan ran without looking up, without turning his head.

Thud, pant, thud, pant, thud, pant.

Snap.

He froze in spite of himself, wanting nothing more than to press ahead, to move forward, to get the fuck off this weird, creepy-ass lane; he couldn’t. His feet froze in place under the weight of his terror. Or maybe it was something else, some unearthly hand which reached out from beyond the veil and gripped him by the very heart.

Maybe it was night squirrels.

He turned his head, left, right.

Nothing.

He looked over his shoulder.

Nothing.

He turned back around…

Nothing.

Snap.

This time he didn’t have a chance to look back again.

As a species, they were quick. Of them, she was the quickest. Jonathan never saw the deathly pale face as it swept up, wraith-like, behind him. He never saw the bloodshot eyes which peered not at him, but through him. And he never saw the fangs. He definitely did not see the fangs.

It was over in seconds, and the world rebalanced itself; subtly, almost imperceptibly it shifted back into place, only without Jonathan.

Oh well. Another one for the trees.

***

Christopher Joyce is a Middlesbrough-born Horror/Fantasy author, and freelance content creator. When not busy crafting tales of weirdness and wonder, Christopher's main passions are retro video gaming, superhero comics, and tabletop strategy games.