Syth and Axe (part 2) : Bunyan vs. the Tree Walker

Read part 1 here: https://parallaxrealms.blogspot.com/2024/04/bunyan-went-down-to-jersey-part-1.html


 1873

“Joe, help a brotha out over here.”

The broad man looked up from the stump and gazed across at his friend. “What d’ya need, John?”

The man wiped the sweat off his dark brow and pointed at the map. “Twenty-four miles of tunnels. Can you believe it? An’ our crew’s helpin do the entire job. Read that section.”

“Still haven’t learned the readin’ and writin’, eh, John?”

“Oh, ol’ habits die hard ya know. Wassn’ able to learn on the homestead, and never saw the need after.”

“And how will you know if you’re being cheated?”

“Well, tha’s what I got you for.”

“I won’t be around forever, John.”

“Hah,” the man laughed, pointing at the map again. “You’ll be aroun’ long aftah ah’m gone, I think. Now, this section here.”

Paul leaned over his friend’s shoulder and stared at the scrawl on the contract. “Seems it gives you twice normal wages, with bonuses for every mile completed before deadline. And every day over deadline results in docked wages or no pay.”

“Neva’ missed a deadline before. Don’t know why they’re worried about it now.”

“What’s a ‘steam shovel’?” Paul asked, pointing at the strange shape in the corner. “

John looked down and shook his head. “Not sure.” He said, his thick accent creeping out.

Paul laid a broad hand on the burly man’s shoulder. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Looks like it’ll be helping you out on this adventure.”

John stood, hefting his hammer over his shoulder. “Heh, like I need it.”

1945

Paul stepped off the boat. It wasn’t the first war he had joined, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last. He shivered and pulled his jacket tighter. The cold had begun to settle over the land.

A truck pulled up “Where to, boss?”

“Just out of the city, please.” He responded.

“North or South.”

“Toward Jersey, far as you can take me.”

“Heh. Gotcha.”

A few hours later, Paul stood at the edge of an old forest - one he hadn’t seen since he’d left it a decade earlier..

“Well, let’s see if you’re still around, ol’ Syth.”

He thanked the driver, hoisted up his traveling pack, and stepped into the soothing darkness of the forest, his hand resting on his old splitting axe, just itching to take a swipe at some of these old boughs - for old time’s sake. 

“Don’t think about it,” came a dark whisper in the back of his mind.

He chuckled. “Are you trying to tempt me to evil, Devil? A lumberjack’s hand must be to the thicket”

There was a light chuckle in his mind. “It’s been what, five years since you were last here?”

“Closer to ten, but who’s counting?” Paul responded.

“Actually, I was.”

Paul’s brow pursed in confusion. “Now you’ve got me confused. I was in the war.”

A cloaked figure touched down beside him. “Keep your secrets, then. Speaking of which, how was the war?”

Secrets? Paul didn’t understand, but responded anyway. “Brutal.”

Syth didn’t respond.

“I’ve seen war.” Paul continued, “That wasn’t just a war… parts of that were just a bloodbath.”

“Quite the change from the good ol’ days.”

“You mean when one bullet meant one kill, if you were lucky? Yeah. There was something to be said about that. Though I guess it wasn’t exactly civilized either. Though you never did seem bothered by a little bloodshed.”

Syth bristled slightly.

“Did you hear about the Japs?”

“Japs?”

“The Japanese. Island off the coast of Asia.”

Syth shrugged beneath his cloak-like wings. “I know the Pine Barrens, maybe a little of the lands around here. That’s all.”

“Some of us call it the land of the Yokai.”

Syth nodded. “Ah, them. Yes. I’ve heard of them. What happened to their homeland?”

“A blast was unleashed that destroyed an entire city in one go.”

“Magic?”

“Science.”

“How? That doesn’t seem real.”

“Well,” Paul paused. “Truthfully, I don’t know. It ended the war, though.”

Syth sat in silence for a moment. “And the yokai?”

Paul shook his head. “No word. I imagine they found a place to hide. Perhaps they returned to whatever realm they came from.”

“Have you thought any more about what I said?”

“You really believe there’s another world? I was joking.”

Syth looked off into the darkness of the forest. “I do. In thinking it over, it’s the only explanation for all of this that even sort of makes sense.”

Paul had conversed with Syth before, and rarely had the devil ever used his real voice to speak, choosing to communicate by a sort of hollow whisper in the back of Paul’s mind. This wasn’t the first creature Paul had met that did this - his own ox had communicated in a similar way - but, it still unnerved him, though he was slowly growing more used to it as time passed. He stared ahead. Were there any other explanations? Could there be anything else to explain the mysteries of this world? 

The things he’s seen. The creatures, the monstrous beings on all the continents he’d visited, could they be from another world entirely?

Some of those creatures had actually helped him survive the war. Some called them fae, yokai, demons, monsters - he didn’t know what to call them, but after meeting the Jersey Devil himself after hearing legends, Paul knew there was something deeper - some strange weirdness running through the core of this world. But was that weirdness sprung from another place altogether?

Something shuffled in the darkness.

Syth raised his head.

“What is it?”

A look of concern passed over his face. “I’m not sensing anything.”

“You heard that, though. Right?”

Syth nodded, slowly rising to his feet and pulling his broad wings tightly around himself. His roughly humanoid shape still hunched slightly as he gazed this way and that, a look of confusion and worry passing over his face as he did.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I know of everything that enters these forests…” he stated. “And yet…” His head jerked to the side and he pointed. “There!”

Like a bolt, his wings exploded out to the side and with a mighty thrust, and he vanished up into the canopy with barely a noise. Paul lost sight of him.

“Syth!”

“Wait here. I need to find this thing that dares intrude into my realm.”

And then Paul’s brain went silent, save for his own thoughts.

The noises of the forest slowly crept back, like someone turning the volume on a radio. But the smell… an odor of rot and death.

A small tendril writhed up from the soil. It nudged Paul’s combat boot. He squinted and crouched slightly to watch it, and as he did, it coiled like a small snake. “And what are you?”

The snake-like vine raised up its “head” and regarded him.

Paul poked at it with the bit of his axe. “Syth?”

The “head” gently explored his blade, giving it a light poke back before gliding up along the mirror-like surface along the edge.

“Syth?”

He was a lumberjack. Trees were his natural environment, but he’d grown to respect the power and majesty bound up in those plants. And in all his time, he’d never seen one move like this…

The tendril grew larger now, slowly manipulating its way up the blade. Paul pulled the axe away, popping small holds the vine had attempted to use to seize upon it the blade’s edge. He took another slight step backward. But, another tendril awaited him. Before he could respond, he felt the thick vine ensnare his foot, then his ankle, calf and knee. With a gasp, he fell back, landing heavily on his butt, the axe bouncing free of his grip.

The tendril that had been exploring the blade quickly engulfed it, growing at supernatural speed, coiling up the blade and around the haft. It jerked erratically, then swept it back off into the woods.

“H-hey!” Paul felt his ankle wrench painfully to the side as the other tendril began to stretch and coil, attempting to pull him into the darkness.

He gritted his teeth and drew his hand axe from its scabbard.

“You… don’t… know… who you’re… messing with!” He grunted, swinging the axe blade down, severing the vine in one smooth stroke.

A hissing whine filled his head, and the severed writhing bit flopped across the ground. Then, with a strange pulse, it swelled slightly before bursting into hundreds of small fibrous strands, which dissolved into the underbrush with a faint whiff of rotten meat. Paul paused momentarily, struggling against recent memories. The smell… it brought back thoughts… unpleasant ones. Ones that would haunt him longer than he cared to think.

A dark shape dropped from above, and with a whiplike sound, a nearby tendril burst and vanished.

“Paul! Paul!”

He felt strong, wiry hands, clench his shoulders tightly. He jerked awake.

“Get yourself together! Something’s coming!”

Then the trees moved.

Wait. That’s not right. 

The trees… moved out of the way. A dark silhouette, flanked by… something - a dark cloud against the barren forest - Paul couldn’t tell. It was a large, black shape. It strode toward them, its mottled green, gray, and brown skin flexing and pulsing as tendril-like muscles - or muscle-like tendrils - moved in a human like shuffle toward them.

Syth raised himself to full height and flared his wings. “You come into my realm, Tree Walker. Turn back.”

The answer came to Paul’s mind, grinding like a log across stone. He could almost feel fragments of bark falling free as the voice growled. “Your realm is mine. We shall have it all.”

Syth shook like a wet dog and seemed to grow even larger. A long whip appeared in his hand.

“Get back, or I will scourge you.”

“Little Devil, I do not fear you.” The large form strode forward again. Small tendrils tickled around the edge of Paul’s boots. Syth’s whip shot out, sending the strands dissolving back into the ground with a puff of rottenness. Paul fought the urge of whatever feeling it was that sought to overwhelm him.

The large tree-like creature paused.

Syth growled deep in the back of his throat - this was audible, not the mental communication Paul was growing familiar with. This was guttural and primal - animalistic. His face contorted with menace, sharp fangs visible under the normally serene snout. Hair bristled along his body, his long neck standing out and wings spread like a massive muscular kangaroo-bat-thing.

The Tree Walker paused.

1873. Nearly 75 years earlier.

Paul stood at the face of a massive cliff.

“Yo, Saginaw, come up in’ here.”

Paul looked up. The large black man shouldered a hammer that would have looked massive to any other man. In his hand, it looked relatively normal, perhaps a little small. He clambered up the rock face and joined his friend. “What’s goin’ on?”

“This is the tunnel right here. We’s gonna bore straight on through the mountain.”

“That steam engine’ll be nice.”

John nodded. “Sure will be. We’ll burrow through this mountain in half the time. We’ll all get t’ bonuses. My family an’ I’ll be able t’ settle down…”

“I have money,” Paul replied.

“I know, Joe.”

“I mean it. You don’t have to do this.”

John’s fist clenched around his hammer. “No. The men need this. I need to do ma’ part. We need to bore through this mountain an’ lay the track, even if we gotta do it with our fists.”

Paul laid a broad palm on the stone. “Lotta work.”

“I’s what I’m made t’ do.” John replied.

1945

Syth’s hands dug into Paul’s shoulders.

“Wake… up!”

Paul blinked several times. His hand reached for his axe. It was gone.

“Here.”

Syth held something in his narrow hands. Paul’s axe.

“Thanks.” He tried to rise. “What happened?”

“Tree Walker retreated. For now.”

“What is it?”

“The Tree Walker is an ancient being. I’ve never seen it around this area, but I’ve heard of it.”

“What’s it want?”

“To take over the Barrens.”

“Why? How?”

Syth pointed at the trees. A trail remained from where the trees had actually moved out of the way of the giant. “It commands. The trees obey.”

“So, it’s basically a tree itself?”

Syth nodded. “I most manners of speaking.”

“And if it’s a tree, it can be chopped down.”

Syth stared at him, unblinking.

He pushed himself to his feet and secured the axe across his broad back, then secured his smaller axe against his hip. “A tree-man. Right?”

“We struggled to clear a village of spiders. You do remember that, right?”

Paul chuckled. “I’m old, but yes, I do remember. Spiders and trees are different.”

“Yes, and walking trees and normal trees are different.”

“Maybe,” Paul replied. “But you’ll never know until you try.”

“Yes, indeed.” Syth replied, dryly. “Not every foe can be beaten by hitting it harder.”

A faint whiff of decay drifted across the clearing.

“What is that?” Paul wondered, covering his nose.

Syth looked about. “Those tendrils. They are the advanced scouts of the Tree Walker.”

“But why the smell of death? It’s like facing…” Paul trailed off again. “It reminds me of the war.”

Syth nodded. “I can imagine. It was the same smell the village had before you arrived. All those dead - lying to rot. I had to bury them.”

“Yes, you did.” Paul responded, coldly.

“I imagine your hands are not clean either.” It wasn’t a question. It didn’t need an answer. “So let’s do away with the innuendo.”

Paul’s hand rested tensely against the broad head of his hand axe. “No one’s hands are clean. But some are more soiled than others.”

Syth nodded with a scowl. “We can argue about methods later. We need to fall back.” He vanished up into the canopy.

Paul growled at the encroaching tendrils and rushed off into the forest as well.

Snippet from Syth’s Journal under the entry of Indrid Cole: The dead of New Jersey rarely stay in their graves. This is a fact known from colonial days, when the cannonball took off the first head of the unluckiest Hessian. The “first head” because he found another. Between blade, pistol, and many other means, this Hessian, unknown by all, gained many more heads over the generations that followed, replacing them when too much damage, too much decay, or too much boredom caused him to swap out features.

And thus, a man simply known as Indrid Cole came to haunt the East Coast of the once-colonies, exploring from as far north as Portland in Maine to the warmth of St. Augustine in Florida. Legends arose of a strange man, dressed in strange garb, with a strange rictus smile plastered on his pale face. In Tarrytown, legends arose of a Headless Hessian with a pumpkin for a head. Elsewhere, ghosts and spirits haunted the wastelands. Almost every legend traced back to the roaming of Indrid Cole.

What he sought, at that time, no one knew. Maybe he was just cursed to roam the land, ever looking for his original head. But that would turn out to be too convenient an answer. Could death simply seek its own?

1873. West Virginia.

Paul watched as the men roared and began to chip away at the mountain. John’s words rang in his head. “I was made for this.”

Then John raised his mighty hammer and began to crash into the mountain. As he pummeled the hammer, dirt and debris blasting through the air. And all before them, chugging and belching steam, came that amazing engine.

“You get ‘em, John.”

He listened to the methodical hammering and grinding as the each plowed ahead, boring their way through miles of solid stone. 

“Lead those boys. Get that bonus.”

1945. On the northeastern edge of the Pine Barrens

“What brings you to the Barrens, Cole.”

The hammering ceased for a moment, and the man, up until this moment stooped over the blacksmithing anvil, rose to full height. His duster flared out behind him, dark and ominous, carried with a nonexistent wind. A high collar rose up around his face and neck, a bandana covering his mouth.

He removed his hat and pulled down the bandana.

Paul sneered at the sight. He’d seen his share of ghastly sights through the years, and this didn’t compare with some of them, but a lesser man would have retched.

A gaunt face stared back, flesh clinging tightly to the shapeless remains of what had once been high cheekbones, but that had somehow worn thin from years of use. Paul didn’t want to think of what that meant. Had this man really been wearing the rotting face of his victim for so long that it had become a shapeless mess atop his shoulders?

A light green glow flickered from inside the hollow sockets, and the rictus grin cricked into place.

“Ah, ol’ Saginaw Joe. So good to see you again.”

“What’re you doing here, Cole? I don’t like to repeat myself.”

“No, I don’t reckon’ ya do, with all these trees around, I don’t think ya have much need.” Slurred the Hessian. He sighed. “I’m passin’ through.”

“Just when a new spirit enters the forest? Are you involved?”

The Hessian’s jaw hung freely for a moment. He reached a hand to his chin, stroked the stubble that had remained from the previous owner, and cracked it back into socket. “These ol’ bones just don’t work like they used to.” The jaw cracked free again. Cole chuckled, then stroked his chin again.

Paul watched in muted disgust.

“Hold a moment…” Cole grasped the chin with a broad hand and wrenched sideways. Muscle, dry skin, and sinew ripped free, popping and tearing - it reminded him of the harshness of torn paper. Then the jaw was gone. Cole chuckled, his dried out tongue hanging from his mouth like a strip of jerky. He tossed the jaw aside.

“We thingth of unnature thon’th neeth thith…” he muttered, his tongue attempting to make up for the lack of jaw movement. His cheek rose in a macabre mockery of a grin. Then he reached up his gloved hands and fished around the collar of his jacket.

“Hold jutht a thecond.”

And with that, his fingers prised back the desiccated, puckered skin around his scarred neck and with a tearing, shredding, popping snap, he wrenched his head free and tossed it aside.

“Much better,” came the hissing voice from where his head had been.

“Always with the theatrics, Cole.”

“Live a little, Joe.”

“I have. We both know that. What’s it been, seventy-five years?”

The spectral voice chuckled, “maybe. You vanished and left me all alone…” he said with mock accusation. “And just when we were becoming friends.” The headless body turned. “I’m not with that walking tree, if you must know. I tend to work more… delicately.”

“Dropping off colonies of spiders to isolated villages?”

Cole chuckled. “Still trying to pin that one on me? Research as much as you will, you’ll never be able to.” He dusted his hands on his dark pants and rose. “All right. I’m about done here.” With that, the anvil and hammer disintegrated, vanishing into a sac nearby. The fingers raised to an invisible mouth and he gave a shrill whistle.

“So sorry to hear about your ox. Heard you had to put down his angry spirit.”

“What are you talking about, Cole?”

“Getting forgetful in your old age, eh, Joe?”

Paul scowled again as a glorious black charger appeared from somewhere deep in the forest. Cole plucked the sac from the ground as if it were empty, placed it into the saddlebags, and mounted. “Til we meet again.”

And away he rode, passing through the trees with no resistance.

The head remained behind, sightless eyes staring blankly into the sky, tongue resting against the ground.

Paul stepped closer and took a knee. “Sorry, whoever you were.” He took a long look toward where Cole had vanished, the Headless Hessian once more. “And sorry to whatever meets him in these dark woods.”

A short while later, Syth dropped from the trees to find Paul crouching over a mound.

“Small grave. Child?”

“No. A head.”

“I’m sure you had your reasons.”

“I saw Cole.”

“He hasn’t been seen in years. What’s he doing over here?”

“He wouldn’t say. He claims he’s not associated with Tree Walker.”

“Do you believe him?” asked the hooded figure.

Paul leaned up from the grave and wiped his brow. “I don’t know. I doesn’t seem to be something he’s have a reason to lie about. Either way, he was here for a reason. We’d best be on our guard.”

Weeks passed without incident and without any appearance from the Headless Hessian. Whatever Cole wanted, he seemingly wasn’t interested in making it known. Small fairy lights glinted in the darkness, will o’ wisps or something similar.

“When we met ten years ago, you didn’t know what we are. Have you made any progress?”

Paul stroked his chin. Syth had come and gone a few times for the last few days. No sightings of the Treewalker. The conversation had lulled, but it always seemed to cycle back around to this nagging question.

“I can’t put it into words - at least not well.” Paul replied. “I think we’re a blip in reality, if that makes sense?”

“A blip?”

“When I was in Japan, there were dozens of strange creatures - some friendly, some not. They live in a…” he gestured with his broad hands, as if conjuring up the words. “... a sort of pocket dimension, I guess you could call it. They come and go from other realities.” He paused again. “I’m not sure that’s right. That’s the best I can explain it.”

Syth remained silent. “Then you now believe there are other realities?”

“Take the Hessian, he can exist without a head, can travel straight through trees, all sorts of other weird things.” Paul replied. “How’s he exist both inside and outside our reality? Perhaps it’s just a ‘spirit realm.’ I don’t know.”

Something creaked in the darkness. 

Paul readied his axe. “Guess our friend’s coming back.”

The devil turned toward the shadows with a curse. “I can sense everything in these woods. Why not it?”

“Perhaps it’s not entirely in these woods…”

Syth’s wings erupted from his back.

“Little Devil…” came the sibilant hiss from the forest.

“These are my trees,” Syth threatened.

“These are my trees…” echoed the voice. It was a correction, a mockery.

Syth bristled. “You will leave this forest, demon.”

“You will leave this forest, demon…”

Then the trees erupted, shrieking sideways as if tossed, leaving deep channels in the dirt. A large form strode confidently from the darkness. Syth spun to meet it, his whip manifesting as he did. Paul hefted his axe, his eye casting about for the inevitable bundles of snake-like tendrils he knew would appear any moment.

With a thunderous roar, the Tree Walker crashed toward them, snakes coiling and writhing as it came. The tendrils seemed to explode from everywhere - the soil, the trees, above and below.

Paul was ready this time. He stomped a steel-toed boot down onto the first coiling vine, crushing it into the dirt, then spun, severing another before looping around and burying the bit into an encroaching root. The Tree Walker paused, as if waiting for them to act against it.

The smell came again, rolling over them like a wave.

“Death.”

“Death…” repeated the being.

Paul chuckled. “Well, I was hoping not to use this…” He pulled out a small stick. It was wrapped in paper, with a long wick hanging off the end. Paul shrugged, then let it. “Catch!”

The wrapped package sailed through the air, landing at the Tree Walker’s feet.

Paul and Syth dropped back, fleeing off into the darkness, leaving the large being, confused, staring down at the object.

The explosion rocked the forest, shivering trees and sending whatever remained as heaps of splinters. Paul and Syth huddled behind whatever trees and protection they could find.

“You set my forest on fire.” 

Paul nodded. “That or let that being take over. Which would you prefer?”

“It won’t kill him.”

“Next one will.” He patted his jacket. “It’s gone! I dropped it.”

“You probably already used it!” exclaimed Syth. “No time anyway, smell the air.”

Paul did. “The smell of burning, of rot. Burning flesh…”

1873. West Virginia. Deep inside a new tunnel.

John lay in a pool of blood. 

Paul rushed to his side. The team had just exited one part of the hillside and were about to begin another burrow when the steam engine had burst, catching several men in its blast.

Two men were dead, one other was lying in a heap, breathing shallowly as blood sprayed from a severed arm. And then there was John. Burns covered his face, already puckering in unsightly blisters as the man attempted to rise, blood gushing from a deep wound on his shoulder. His hammer lay nearby.

“For the men… have to finish it.”

Paul sat him down. “The money doesn’t matter. You need help.”

“I was made for this. It’s just a little farther.” The man coughed, then wiped a bit of blood from the side of his mouth. “Come on. Help me stand.”

“We need to get help for you and these men.”

“Get the men help. I’ll keep going. I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding; your burns…”

John shook his head. “It’s fine. I can’t stop…”

1945. Deep in the Forest of the Pine Barrens

Syth waved a thin hand in front of Paul’s face. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry. Old memories.”

“Been facing those more frequently.”

Paul nodded. “Yah… when you live long enough… you forget more than most people ever know.”

Syth nodded. “I’ve never left the forest, but I know what you mean.”

Paul smelled the air. “That rot…”

Syth nodded again. “Whatever this Tree Walker is, it’s not a product of life.”

The wind shifted.

“We’d best get those fires put out.”

“Already done.”

“How long was I out?”

Syth pointed at the sky. “Few hours. You froze up and I thought something had caught you in the head or something.”

Paul sighed and buried his face in his hands. He pushed his thick locks back from his damp forehead. “I kinda feel like I’m losing it a little…”

Syth crouched nearby.  “The war or something else?”

Paul gazed off into the darkening forest. “Not sure. I keep having flashbacks of an old friend.”

“You were close?”

“A lifetime ago, but ya. He died shortly after…” Paul paused. “I guess shortly after the war between the states.”

“Heard rumors of that. Never saw any of the action.”

Paul nodded. “I stayed out of it mostly, but befriended an old tunneler - strength of a mule. Stubbornness to match.”

Syth remained silent.

Paul sighed. “I’d given up my name - he knew me as Joe. All he ever knew me as… he was given the brutal task of tunneling through a cliffside with a small crew and a steampowered machine to help with the diggin.”

Paul’s gaze vanished into the distance as he recounted the end of Henry’s tale.

John lay in sweat and blood, his face scarred and disfigured by dirt and burns, scrapes and blisters raising along his jaw and forehead. But he pressed on. Paul stood nearby, watching helplessly. Every time he tried to step in to help, John held out a broad, calloused hand. “I got this, brother. You care for the men. I’ll finish the job for them.”

“No bonus is worth your life.”

“This? Dis won’t be the end.” He responded. “I be bloodied; I’ll be fine.”

The man nearly beamed, then coughed, wiped a slaver of blood from the side of his mouth, and continued his work.

Paul sighed. “I don’t know if it was days he pounded away… or weeks. The men were carted off, and a small crew stood trying to help, but John wouldn’t hear of it. In his mind, he’d beaten the need for the steam engine, and he’d show he was man enough to finish the job. Heh, man enough to finish the job. Kept telling me ‘Was made for this.’ And with every foot he carved his way through the mountain, I believed him. He was built for it. It was his calling - to chisel and cause the unyielding stone to break.”

“But which was stone… and which broke?”

Paul nodded. “That’s the tale, ain’t it?” a moment of silence, then “We should go.” He stood, brushing the soot and debris from his clothes. He plucked up his axe. “We need to find this thing and finish this.”

Syth rose as well. “You can’t just hit this one with an axe.”

“It’s a tree monster. Like I said, it was made for me.”

“What happened to John?”

Paul glared up at the devil. “He overextended himself.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Replied Paul. “He refused to take a single break and his heart gave out. I’m immortal, as far as I’ve been able to test. I don’t think my heart will give out.”

“Suffer a serious enough injury, and even the immortal can die.”

“You know from experience?” Paul replied.

Syth nodded. “Many strange things come through these forests.”

“But never whatever this Tree Walker thing is?”

Syth shook his head. “Never.”

“But it escapes your detection, so it could have been here for a while?”

Syth nodded. “Yes, but there are other ways to sense the presence of things in my Barrens… I just can’t detect it as precisely as other things.”

“Did you detect Cole?”

“He has always eluded me.”

“Have you ever met him?”

Syth shook his head. “Not to my knowledge. Weird things come and go through these woods, and I keep to myself. Cole wouldn’t even see me unless he were trying to find me and knew exactly where to look, anyway.”

“I found you.”

“You’re… different.”

The forest noises began to still.

“Again?” Paul groaned.

A rumble in the trees.

Syth vanished into the trees.

Paul readied his axe. “What’s happening?”

Syth reappeared, his wings billowing around him, dark against the evening sky. “Something is ablaze.”

“The forest? Did the dynamite rekindle?”

“No.” Syth replied. “It’s like the aurora settled down on the ground.”

Paul scowled. “The aurora doesn’t come this far south.”

“And it never settles along the ground. Thanks, I didn’t know that.”

“Don’t get snippy with me.”

Syth growled. “Smell that?”

Paul did. “Death.”

“It’s back.”

Paul’s axe glistened in the evening moonlight. “I’ll give it a taste of what a lumberjack can do.” He could feel the muscles bulging in his arms as the forest before him shivered. The trees were moving. Usually they only did that when he cut them down.

Syth was gone again. The dark silhouette of the Tree Walker appeared. Tendrils draped down its face, forming a strange approximation of a beard. Two glowing coal-like eyes stared out from him in a rough approximation of where a man’s face would be. Several arms, coated in bark in the facade of skin, swung out from each side, and where the feet would be was a large trunk and several massive, squirming root systems that dragged it forward.

“Ah, crap…” muttered Paul.

He could hear the hammering. The relentless spark of metal on stone. Human flesh and sinew, muscle and blood hammering away, making the unyielding stone yield.

Paul gave his axe a playful toss, then rushed forward.

WIth a deceptive agility for one his size, Paul dove forward. He felt a tendril sweep over his head, gagged at the blast of rot that filled his nose, and struck out at the nearest section of trunk. His axe bit deep, spraying blood-like sap. Chunks of bark split free, and the smell! The smell rolled across him. He choked but struck again. Another spray. 

One of the massive trunk-like arms swung low, catching him in the shoulder. Vines and roots burst from around him. But he was ready this time. Wielding his axe like a strange machete, his bit deep into the bark of one and wrenched free, spinning around with another axe, severing it.

He smelled blood. He smelled the musty, sickly-sweet smell of rot. The dampness of the swamp. Something tingled in the air. He struck the soil. It smelled of pine and lighting.

A root burst up from underneath him. His body flew into the air, weightless for a time, then he began his descent. But he stopped.

The Tree Walker had him in its grip. 

“Heh,” he choked, “Never lost a fight to a tree before.”

The vine tightened around him. He could feel something cracking as strong cables looped around his neck, his chest, his arms. His fist clenched tighter around the axe, but he could feel his grip, strengthened as it was, loosening. He choked.

Maybe an immortal could die.

Red flashed. He was losing consciousness. Any moment and his memory would turn off. He’d wake up, if he woke up at all, with absolutely no idea how much time had passed. And he would have lost. He’d die. His lungs screamed for air. Something else cracked and pain shot through is chest.

This… his heart…

1873. End of the Line…

John stood at the edge of the cliff. Before him stretched a freshly-built trestle and a waiting crowd, gathered aboard a new train to celebrate the completion of a new tunnel. The dignitaries were already applauding, and the owner of the company had just stepped down to congratulate John on a job well done.

“My good man, you have earned more than your bonus this day! It is my honor to –!”

A scream rose up from the crowd.

John staggered forward, a hammer toppling from his outstretched hand as his knees bit into the metal of the trestle. He coughed. Paul watched his hands twitch, the hammer spasming out of his reach.

Paul rushed to his side.

“Joe! Joe!” John croaked. “Joe!”

Paul gripped the man’s calloused hands. New blisters had formed and broken, slicking his hands with blood and pus. “I’m here, John. I’m here.”

“Did it… Did it for ma men… ma family… maself.”

“You did it,” Paul nodded, tears welling. “You did it.”

Henry choked again and tried to sit up.

“Rest, John. Rest.”

The man leaned back with a pained sigh. “I did it. No steam engine. No un else beat me. Ah did it.” He coughed, bloody spittle spraying up.

“You did it,” Paul responded. “All by yourself. No one else gets this honor.”

Blood trickled down the side of John’s mouth. He coughed again. Paul cradled his head.

John Henry’s hands twitched. “H-ham-...”

Paul reached for the hammer, its face was chipped and marred. He placed it in John’s hands. “Here.”

“I… wid… in… hands…” he croaked, then coughed. His body winced with the pain. “Wen’ down swingin’…” A bubble of blood popped, and his head lolled backwards.

Paul sat for a long moment. He placed his hands over John’s dark forehead and gently closed the poor man’s eyes. Hands went limp around the old sledgehammer, and John Henry faded into legend.

After a long moment, the owner stammered. “My apologies ladies and gentlemen. Such a loss is always tragic, but to be expected on ventures such as this. We shall honor this brave man for all he attempted to do.”

Paul stood, holding the scarred, bleeding body in his arms, cradling his old friend like a father would hold a sleeping child. “What’s his name?”

The owner paused, hands still tucked into the lapels of his suitcoat, his body poised and primed to continue a dramatic and no-doubt eloquent speech that would rouse so many more investors. He turned. “I’m sorry?”

Paul looked down at the body in his arms, the work-ravaged skin, the blood lightly dripping to the ground. “What was his name?”

“Why, he was the most prized member of our team! He did what others can only dream.”

Rage boiled up, a kettle of anger and froth - a broken steam shovel. Paul grimaced. “You simpering fools! This man’s worth more than all of you by half! And you don’t even know his name! Scum, the lot of you! Living with your gilded purses like it’ll buy you the slightest hour of life.” His piercing gaze met each of them in turn.

One woman, with a flowery peacock feather in her hair and the most obnoxious parasol possible, sputtered and turned to her husband. “Why, how dare he speak to us that way!”

“Shut up!”

Gasps.

Paul’s mouth became a rictus of rage. “You count out your pennies to the boatman when he comes for your black souls. See if any of them buy you any peace, any grace, in that hell you’re heading for.”

Another woman’s hand rose to a cross-shaped pendant on her neck, her mouth agape at his brazenness.

Paul turned his back on the crowd. “And his name was Henry. John Henry. Remember the name. More people will know his story that will know about the lot of you combined.”

And with that, he carried his friend back through his tunnel, past the broken remains of the steam shovel, and into a place where he could bury the body. And he did. There, hidden away from the world, the body of John Henry lay, and still lies to this day.

Paul carved an epitaph over his old friend, then seated the sledgehammer in place over the impromptu mausoleum. “Rest well, old friend. You earned it for your team. You earned it for yourself.”

Crack.

A rib, some other bone, who knew at this point. Paul could feel the pain rippling through his body. He could feel the splintered of wood digging into his flesh. He could smell the rot, like a corpse’s breath, rolling across his form.

“You’re dead.” He groaned. “Nothing about you is alive.”

His muscles tightened, his arms swelled. His axe vanished toylike into his meaty grip.

“And I’m going to return you to the soil.”

“You tried once… that’s why I’m here…” Came a dark, malevolent voice.

He wrenched his hand free, tendrils and vines snapping and whipping as his arm burst from its restrains, cords flapping as their anchors tore. Paul clenched his mighty fist, and he drove it straight into the monstrosity’s face.

There was a crunch as bark and wood splintered, then the pressure released.

Paul dropped free, and the creature fell back with a blast of rot.

He hit the ground, hard.

“We did it, John. We beat them.”

Creaking.

He looked up.

Whatever stun the beast had suffered had passed, and the cracked face, now sporting one glowing eye instead of two, stared down at him. It creaked and groaned in anger - at least what he assumed must be anger.

“Run.”

Paul didn’t know what had spurred him to, but he obeyed as fast as his feet could carry him. He snatched up his axes and rushed away, body screaming with pain and blood dripping freely from a dozen wounds, both externally and probably internally. He ran.

Beaten by a tree…

It was Cole. 

“You.”

“Yes, me.”

“I see you haven’t found a head yet.”

The Hessian raised a gloved hand to the nub where his head should be. “I think this look suits me,” the voice hissed. “You seem to be having issues.”

Bunyan nodded, rubbing an injured side.

“I can restore those broken bones for you,” Cole hissed.

“No, thanks,” Paul spat. “I’d sooner drink a snake’s venom that accept your cure.”

“Suit yourself. Now, where’s your wayward tree spirit gotten off to?”

“Got me,” Paul replied, rising and leaning against a tree. He winced. “Why are you here, Cole.”

“I guess you could say that something about this forest has piqued my interest. Have you heard of the legend of the Jersey Devil.”

“You could say I’m intimately aware of it.”

The Hessian chuckled - cold and mirthless - the gloved hand rose again, in an almost overly-dramatic stage gesture. “This forest has been the hotbed for sightings for centuries - ever since our time began.”

“I’m aware,” Paul grimaced through clenched teeth. “What do you want?”

“I thought you didn’t like repeating yourself?”

“I’m tired of your dramatics. Get to the point. Why’d you save me and what’s your angle?”

A long jacket’s broad shoulders shrugged. Paul saw a glint of ethereal glow above the shoulders, as if the phantom of a head still hovered, but other than that, the drooping collar of a crisp white shirt and the raised collar of the rider’s coat were all that signified where the head and neck should be.

“You win, Joe. There’s something in these woods tethering our not-so-friendly tree spirit to this region. You saw the glow of the aurora, yes?”

Paul nodded. “Yes.”

“That was the Tree Walker absorbing the energies in the area. If it succeeds, then this place will be drained and that creature will be the undisputed master of the region. I don’t think I need to tell you what happens when a being of that power gains even more? You’ve heard of the giants in Lake Baikal.”

Paul nodded again. “Yes.”

“Trapped for all eternity - veritable batteries of power held at bay by more water than even they could move.” Cole gestured dramatically at the sky. “Why, with the power they possess, one could…” he paused, and a finger rose to invisible lips. “Ah, I tell too much.” He hissed. “It is good they remain trapped under the waves. Do you know what it took to contain them?”

Paul shook his head.

“It’s said that a man opened a rift into another world and flooded the valley, trapping them beneath the waves, turning them to stone as he did. That entire lake exists because he cracked open another dimension and froze them in place.” Cole began to pace. “Can you imagine it? The power it would take to tear open our plane of existence? And why? Because he had no other option.”

Cole stopped pacing, his shoulders pivoting toward where Paul stood.

“You know me. You know I’ll do whatever I can for power and knowledge. Ask yourself this question, Joe. If I’m willing to release this level of power to keep this creature at bay… what danger do we face? This Tree Walker isn’t just some shrub you can cut down with an axe, and if you don’t stop it, then what will it take to freeze it in place… lava? A flood? Ice?”

“Then you do it,” grimaced Paul.

“I would, in a heartbeat, though those are few and far between these days…” chuckled Cole. “However, there are places even I can’t go… nature of being…” he paused, waving his hands down his form, “... not quite alive.”

Paul mirrored him, mockingly. “I’m not quite alive, either.”

“You contain excess life. I’m the lack. We are not so different, save for being completely opposite. Will you work with me, Joe?”

“You won’t try to rip off my head?”

“Too big. Wouldn’t fit. Besides, your excess vitality would probably burn me away, or bring me back to life. Who knows?”

“Show me this power source, then.”

“Ah, I can’t completely,” replied Cole. “There’s a barrier - that aurora - that keeps me out. But I can…” he paused, “point you in the right direction, if you know what I mean.”

“I never know what you mean, Cole.”

He imagined a smile on the non-existent lips of the Hessian. “Ah, you sell yourself short, my stocky friend.”

Snippet from Syth’s Journal on the events leading up to the final confrontation with Tree Walker: No one knows when the Horseman shed that mantle and took on that of Indrid Cole. With his ability to take on whatever form he can steal, it made little sense to take on another persona, but ever the man of enigma, the Headless Hessian made his way through the world as a new man - a new man with an ever-changing face.

Possessing immortal life, a negative mockery of mortality, he was limited in his range to those predefined “less-holy” sites. He could pass freely through the world, but living water, churchyards, and certain places of “cultic importance” as the ancients would have labeled them, barred his entry - burial mounds, fae circles, abandoned ruins, dolmens, standing stones, to name a few.

And it was to one of these that Cole brought Bunyan.

“There.”

“A window of sticks.” Paul chuckled.

“A portal.” corrected the Hessian, his voice hissing as the morning sun burned away the night mist. 

“Made of sticks.”

“It’s your kind of portal.” chuckled the Horseman. He gestured. “The power you seek is on the other side of that window. Open it, go through, and see what you find.”

“And what will I find?”

Cole’s voice smiled. “That, you’ll have to see. But remember… you must not allow him to absorb the power.”

Paul took a step toward the portal, his axe clenched in a tight fist.

“Joe.”

He turned. Something bounced off his broad chest and softly padded to the ground.

“A rune?”

“A fairy cross.” Replied Cole. “Place it on the pedestal inside and you’ll be able to absorb the energy, weakening it enough so that the Tree Walker cannot claim it.”

Paul bent to pluck the amulet from the soil.

“But a warning,” hissed Cole.

“What is that?”

“Remove it after fourteen seconds or it will absorb too much of the power and shatter, dissipating the field entirely - it will be lost.”

Cole produced another set of dice-like crosses and tossed them gently before replacing them in his bag. He turned and began to walk away.

“Best of luck, lumberjack.”

Then he vanished.

Paul turned back to the circle - a nondescript bank of sticks that had been swirled into a strange round shape. Nothing but the forest on the other side of the clearing showed beyond its eye. He approached, noting a small circle of toadstools that seemed to surround the small opening.

“A fairy ring? Are you messing with me?”

He examined the small cross in his palm. Some sort of strange stone arranged in a weird approximation of a cross - completely stone, was it a hexagon crystal? He tossed it lightly. It had some heft to it. He closed his fist around the item and stepped up to the portal.

His gaze traced the edge of the sticks. Was it some kid playing at building a fort? Was this all a joke played by Cole to get him away from another part of the forest altogether?

He eyed the toadstools. They formed a perfect ring around this opening.

He followed them around, eyeing this strange structure from all sides, his fist clenching and unclenching. This was a trick.

He was on the far side of the opening now, looking through the “portal” toward where Cole had vanished. This was a trap. A trick.

He ducked through the opening and strode across the clearing. He’d find that Horseman and rip off whatever other head he’d found. But he couldn’t.

His feet refused to move.

He gazed down. He was inside the ring of toadstools, on the other side of the opening he’d just stepped through. But his body refused to go any farther. He eased his weight back, and he found himself settling back toward the portal. But he was unable to step beyond the ring of toadstools.

“What the devil…?” he muttered.

He spun to climb back through the opening. But the entire portal structure was gone!

“Cole? What are you doing?”

No response.

Paul looked around him. A simple ring of toadstools - a clearing beyond - an uninterrupted forest beyond that. He raised his axe. “Always raised not to mess with the fae folk,” he muttered, “but desperate times…”

He brought his axe crashing down on the fungal ring.

There was no smoosh of mushroom, no crush as it flattened into the ground. The toadstool seemed to stand for a moment, realize it had been cut, and almost comedically dropped sideways into the soil, where it promptly vanished into ash.

Nothing spectacular happened. There was no trill of energy dissipating. There was to thrum of power. He just suddenly began to move again. It was as if he’d been trapped in molasses and then suddenly was in air again.

A scream rang out deep in the forest.

Paul stepped back. The noise wasn’t coming toward him. Was it moving away?

He came to the invisible wall formed by the fairy ring. He had to escape.

Then he saw it. A slight shimmer - like a distortion of heat rising off a desert road -  all around him, except for where he’d cut the toadstool. Could it be? He wondered. 

He stepped closer and reached out a hand, hovering it in the air until it met resistance. He slid along the invisible wall and then, just as he reached the breach in the fairy ring, his hand passed through. Cold air struck his fingers as he felt, rather than saw, the crystals of snow biting at his outstretched hand.

He drew it back and tried to step through, but it was as if a solid wall kept him in everywhere but the fairy ring’s breach. Dreading the attention he’d draw, he stepped back, drew his axe again, and brought it down on another toadstool, then another.

All told, he destroyed just about five before he found he could prise his bulk through the barrier. Each time a roar answered from the forest. Something was out there. Something wasn’t happy with his decision.

He stepped forward, and the icy blast of the new world striking him. He could feel ice crusting on his face and eyebrows. But from behind, the warmth of the forest rose up, generating a strange fog that rolled in around him.

“Why have you come?” the voice was airy, wraithlike. Paul could see no one.

“I need to stop a spirit from intruding into my world.”

“So you grant him entrance to ours? You are a fool!”

“A…” he paused, trying to find the words to describe Cole. “Spirit introduced me to your gateway and gave me the key.”

“You have the stone? Only the masters have the stones!” the voice gasped, fog billowing in a tight circle where he assumed the entity to be. “You have ruptured the circle and passed through the door. Do you know what you’ve done?”

“I don’t,” he replied.

Gutterral muttering began from all around him - the sound of someone gargling with stone. His hair began to tingle, standing on end despite the cold and now damp fog rolling in all around.

“Your world is not ready for what you’ve unleashed.” The voice whispered, “We can do little to hold them back.”

More guttural language.

Something sparkled in the distance. Paul couldn’t make it out.

Then a squat, one-armed man stepped into view, drew a small orb from his waistcoat, and casually tossed it behind him. It exploded with no sound, but filled the air with colored sparks. The man shuffled across the clearing, his long beard nearly dragging the ground as he did. He paused before Paul. “A man of my time,” he muttered, examining Paul’s clothes.

“I’m sorry?”

“Year of the good Lord 1700s, no later than early-1800s, or so?”

“1945.” Paul replied, without thinking.

The squat man chuckled. “I knew time passed differently in here… but two hundred years…” he paused, and tossed another bomb over his shoulder at the shadows. “Did I hear right that you have one of the masters’ stones?”

Paul nodded, opening his broad fist to display the small stone.

“Fairy cross,” the old man muttered. He paused. “Never thought I’d see one of the masters sending an agent like this. Where’s that portal lead?” he said, nodding toward the fairy ring.

“New Jersey.”

“Still around, I see.”

Paul nodded. “Part of the United States.”

“The United what now? You know what, never mind. I’ll take you to the pedestal. Put that stone in and you’ll be able to access your land again. What’s your name, boy?”

Paul chuckled. He hadn’t been called boy in… well… in forever. He followed after the bearded man. “Name’s Paul. And you?”

The old man drew another bomb from his jacket and tossed it off into the forest. Things scattered. “Only way to keep them away. A bit of a glamor bomb. Mixed it myself - crystals and a bit of alcohol. The Masters’ Folk are fond of the stuff, but the darker things are driven away by it.”

As a rule, Paul wasn’t tremendously inquisitive most of the time, but a million thoughts buzzed through his head. One finally left the hive. “When did you enter this realm?”

“ Probably 1750 or so… Not sure, to be honest. Last thing I remember, I was in the mountains outside my home, drinking with some strange Dutchmen. Apparently I took a little too much of the stuff, and the next thing I know, I’m here.”

“Two hundred years ago.”

It was like meeting something from your home town a million miles away. Here was another man from the seventeen hundreds. A man trapped in the fairy realm with no concept of the passage of time in the outside world. A man of a totally different world, even more foreign to him than it was to Paul. At least Paul had lived the changes.

“So is Britain still lording over us?”

Paul chuckled. “How do I even explain? We fought them in a war, and won… then in a war again a few years later… and won again.”

“So they’re a territory now?”

Paul shook his head. “Not exactly. We’re more allies now…”

The old man guffawed. “Guess I’ll have to see this world of yours again. Sounds ridiculous.”

“I never got your name.” Paul probed.

The old man shrugged. “It’s a faint memory. But I’ve gone by many names. When I passed through my own portal, I met one called ‘Sune.’ He called me Kneelength. I’m not sure if it’s a slight at my height or a jab at the size of my beard.”

“So you forgot your earth name?”

The old man shrugged. “I think so. Memories of that realm are fleeting these days.”

Paul nodded. He’d personally lived the equivalent of several mortal lives - with probably as many fake identities. He’d most likely forgotten more than most had ever learned.

Kneelength sniffed the air. “This area always reminds me of home. I wonder if the realms bleed together here somehow.”

“Is that possible?”

The old man nodded. “Oh yah. There are several places of power in this realm that leech over into earth. I think the builders of this world hammered in those node pedestals to hold it all together.  I’m not really sure why, but I can look through into earth from those places. Brings back memories.”

“Can people see you?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. If they can, it’s just a shadow. Maybe if the veil is particularly thin some of my features show, but normally people are running away screaming by that point. Most other humans don’t even notice though.”

“Most aren’t accepting of the strange, and so try to come up with another explanation.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” the old man replied. “I think it’s something about this realm.”

“What do you mean?”

“This realm oozes the unnatural. So much so I doubt anyone would fail to believe if left alone.”

“Then what, something dampens their belief, or… what?”

“Exactly.”

“Belief dampeners?”

Kneelength shrugged. “I’ve seen the guardians of this place working at these pedestals. They talk about something called a tulpic field.”

“Tulpic field?”

Kneelength nodded, then pointed at the large stone nearby. “I can’t read the markings, but look at this stone. It’s a pedestal containing or securing some sort of power source, as best I can tell. This is an anchor of some sort. I think it creates a weakness between the realms - at least these are the places I can see through sometimes..”

“Okay…”

Before them, lined on both sides by a dirt trail that arced off in either direction, was a carved monolith. It stood nearly five feet tall, with three smooth sides rising to a triangular top. Paul looked at Kneelength. 

The old man shrugged and pointed. “I think that little fairy stone you have will fit inside. Not sure what it will do when you insert it.”

“What do I do?”

“Stick the stone into the slot at the top of the pedestal.”

“What will it do?”

“I assume it will reopen the way.”

“Back to New Jersey?”

“Sounds a lot less magical when you say it like that. But, yes. It will take us back to New Jersey.”

“Us? You’re coming back with me?”

“Anything in a certain range of the stone will drop through the weakness in the veil when you activate the pedestal. Not that I really want to keep staying here anyway. Always wanted to go back, but never had one of those little charms of yours. Go ahead and weaken the barrier.”

Paul shook his head, eyeing the smooth stone before him. He could feel the energy radiating off of it, no doubt having been absorbed for countless ages. Was it an anchor of some sort, a barrier? He marveled at it. How could something so small hold so much raw power?

“What’s the barrier for?

“The protective bubble around our world.”

“What’s it protecting us from?”

“There are thousands of worlds, my young lad,” Kneelength said with a shrug, “not all of them are friendly.”

“You’ve been to them?”

“Not as such.”

The stone seemed to pulse. 

“It’s been great to stand and chat with someone who speaks my language,” the man continued, “But we’ve got company, and I’m out of bombs. Stick that stone in and let’s get out of here.”

As if on cue, dark shapes began to form in the shadows of the forest trees. Gangly humanoids with glowing eyes. stared at him from the darkness. 

“All outta glamor,” muttered Kneelength, patting his bomb pouch. “And I’ve already lost an arm to these buggers. Stick the stone in the pedestal and let’s go.”

Paul hesitated. The forms stared at him. Daring him to act.

What was the deeper risk here - allowing the Tree Walker to gain more power or breaking the barrier between realms?

“Sonny, you gonna act, or no? Just need to know so I can plan accordingly.” The man was already pulling up the edges of his beard and tamping his feet slightly. 

Paul held the small stone in his hand. Such an innocuous piece of stone. He looked back at the strange forms. They watched him, their eyes bulbous and slightly glowing in the darkening gloam that was settling in around them. Then it struck him. He didn’t trust Cole enough to let any of his little stones so much as touch this pedestal. Something was off about this whole ordeal, and he would not let Cole gain control of these anchors. They’d be better off destroyed.

His mind decided, he heaved his axe and with a blow of finality, struck the pedestal. It splintered under his blow. He drew the blade back and struck again, biting deep into the wood-like surface. He drew back a third time, and this time, the entire monolith splintered into crystalline bits. He reared around, fists clenched around his blade, ready to fend off an attack, but the forms were gone, retreating back into the forest from which they had come.

But it wasn’t the forest anymore… Where there had once been fanciful trees of all shapes and hues now stood the ageless pines. He was back in the Barrens.

“Kneeheight?” He asked.

The man stepped from behind a tall tree. “That’s Kneelength.” He tugged at his beard. “I’m pretty sure I said to insert the item, not destroy the pillar.”

“So did someone else… but I can’t risk him gaining the power either.”

“That’s fair,” Kneelength muttered, dusting off his pants. “Best be keeping that cross handy, then. It may start reabsorbing power in place of the pillar, at least on till the pillar reforms.” Then he gazed around. “Wow… Back in the real world… it’s been too long…”

“The pillar will reform?”

Kneelength nodded. “Those are Lemurian crystals, if I understand right.” He yawned loudly, then continued. “Ol’ Ger’maine made sure they can’t be broken permanently. You just…” he trailed off, stroking his long beard thoughtfully. “I guess you just spread out the power for the moment. Dispersed it.”

“For how long?”

“Oh, boy… in earth years? No idea.” the old man shrugged. “The crystal hasn’t been broken like that in all my years, so we’re in new territory now.”

Something dropped down beside him, wings splaying out to the side like a broad shadow.

“By all that’s holy!”

Syth rose to full height. His wings pulled away from his body, large, broad, and batlike. “I’ve never felt this before…” he whispered, his voice tickling away at their mind.

“What do you mean?”

Syth flexed his narrow hands. “Whatever you just did - it’s like a tension binding across my chest was released. I feel like I can breathe for the first time.”

Paul turned to Kneelength. “What happened?”

“You destroyed the barrier.”

“Barrier?” Syth asked.

“Yes.” replied Kneelength. “Your large friend decided it would be better to shatter the anchor than to reroute the power.”

“Why would you have to do any of that?” Syth replied.

“Cole said the Tree Walker would absorb the power of that realm, so he gave me a way to absorb it first.”

“Cole.”

“I know…” Paul responded. “I didn’t have much other option. He saved me from Tree Walker and when he explained what was happening, it made sense.”

“Sorry to interrupt all this,” Kneelength interjected, holding a long section of his beard in his hand. “But what are you?”

“This is Syth.” 

“Appropriately ominous, I suppose. I’ve seen weird things in the fairy realm. But that’s a ‘who.’ ‘What,’ pray tell, are you?”

Syth shrugged. “I guess I’m called the Jersey Devil.”

“Never heard of something like you, and I’ve met a lot of weird things.”

“Most haven’t. And those who have don’t believe it.”

Paul looked at Syth. “Listen. If I didn’t use the stone to weaken the barrier, the Tree Walker would have absorbed it and become unstoppable. That’s what the aurora was”

“And did Cole tell you this?”

“Cole?”

Paul ignored Kneelength, and shrugged at Syth. “Yes.”

“You trust that old snake in the grass?”

“What choice did I have? He was right - and his stone took down the barrier.”

“I haven’t heard of Cole doing anything for the benefit of others.”

“It benefited us, too, you know.”

Syth nodded. “Perhaps. But at what cost.”

“We don’t know. But we had no choice.”

Syth shrugged in passive agreement. “I had no choice at that village, but you seemed to think I should have found another way.”

“Hold on,” Kneelength interrupted again, “who is Cole?”

“A spirit that haunts his way up and down the coast. We’re not sure what he’s looking for.”

“Spirit? Like fairy spirit or ghost spirit?”

Paul shrugged. “Not sure I know the difference.”

Syth interrupted this time. “Do you know of this Cole?”

“Heard a name. Spirit being - horseman. That Cole?”

They both nodded.

“Bad news, that one. You probably made the right choice destroying that pillar rather than placing anything he gave you on it. Probably hoping to draw off the power himself.”

“And those creatures I released?”

Kneelength shrugged.

“Not encouraging,” Paul retorted.

“I’m not going to worry about tomorrow’s problems today.” The old man yawned. “Though, I guess that’s what got me drunk in the mountains in the first place.”

“Old habits, and all that,” Paul replied.

“Old habits what?” asked Kneelength.

Paul sighed. “They die hard.”

“I’ve never heard that expression.”

“I think this will be an interesting adjustment for you.” Chuckled Paul.

“Speaking of dying hard… what do we do about this Tree Walker?”

Paul patted his traveling bag. “I still have some more dynamite.”

“You used your last stick.”

“I lost my last stick,” Paul corrected.

Kneelength yawned again and settled down against the base of a nearby tree. “Ach… can barely keep my eyes open. I feel drained.”

Three days passed, with no sign of the monstrous tree. It was as if the being had vanished in its entirety. Syth dropped from the sky and landed next to the two men. “Anything?”

Paul shook his head. “No.”

Kneelength snoozed against a nearby tree.

“He’s been like this most of the day.”

Syth knelt near the man and held out a single finger, placing it against the side of the man’s neck. “Still alive. Could he be sick?”

Paul shook his head. “Healthy as I’ve seen a man.”

“Then why can’t he stay awake?”

Paul shrugged. “He lived in the fairy realm for decades of his time. Maybe it changed how his body works?”

“Canna sleep with you mother hens clucking away at me.” Kneelength groaned, gathering up his voluminous beard in his remaining hand and setting it off to the side as he got to his feet. “Wife never let me hear the end of it. Heh,” he chuckled, “guess that’s one good end to being trapped for two hundred years.”

The man pushed himself up to full height. He stretched his right arm, flexing his fingers.

“Ach,” he groaned. “Hand fell asleep again.” He flexed his fingers repeatedly, trying to get the blood flowing again. “And this useless stump,” he muttered, waving the small nub of an arm that stuck out of his left shoulder. It had been severed about halfway down the humerus bone, and a swollen little nub showed where the skin had healed back on itself, creating what Kneelength referred to as his “arm bellybutton.” An strange, yet oddly descriptive, term.

“How’d you lose the arm?”

Kneelength wiggled his arm bellybutton. “This? Ya know those Pale Crawler things you unleashed on the world?”

Paul nodded. “Don’t remind me,” he muttered in response.

“Woke up one night with one of ‘em gnawing away at me. Managed to beat its face in until it let me go. Then, managed to stumble my way to a small colony of those kind guardian folk. Tall things they are… They patched me up and taught me how to make those glamor bombs.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Every now and then I feel it tingling, but no. Not anymore. Sometimes I think I can ‘feel’ it.”

Paul nodded. “Several friends who lost limbs in the war said the same.”

Kneelength looked down at the nub. “This feels… different. There are times I almost feel like it’s still there.”

“Like a phantom limbs?”

“Yah, something like that.” replied Kneelength. And for the slightest moment, Paul saw a shimmer - the slight ripple in the air like head over a desert road.

“What’s that?”

Kneelength shook his head. “Not sure.” 

The length shimmered again. 

The old man lowered himself to the ground, his skin taking on a pale sheen. “I think I need t’ lie down for a might. Wake me if anything exciting happens.”

Paul gestured to Syth, and they strolled to the edge of the clearing, giving Kneelength space to rest, though the strange shimmer seemed to emanate from around his dozing form.

“Any sign of Tree Walker at all?”

“Paths through the forest, but they’re all old. I don’t think he’sbeen patrolling or moving at all.”

“Big forest, maybe the barrier freed it?”

Syth shook his head. “No. I think he’s drawn somewhere else. He wanted to take over the forest, not be free from it.”

“What about you? Did the barrier dropping let you leave the forest?”

Syth’s wings rose and fell in an approximation of a shrug. “I haven’t gotten the chance to try.”

Paul sighed. “Well, we can’t leave until we remove him from the forest… yet if we can’t find him…”

“We’ll have to lure him out.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Do you still have that fairy cross?”

Paul fingered the small stone around his neck. “Yah.”

“Set it up as bait. Kneelength said it’s gathering power from the fairy realm?”

“Yes. But it’s been three days. How much energy could it have collected?”

“Maybe enough to draw the creature in. And I think I might know of one other thing that might help with the bait. You remember the smell of death?”

“I’m not desecrating another graveyard.” Paul responded flatly.

And so, two days later, in a clearing near the eastern edge of the forest, Paul hung his small stone from the broken lower branches of an ancient tree. “It’s been here recently,” observed Syth, pointing to a swath of trees that were missing. “Gathering troops?”

“I’m not sure if it’s deja vu…” Paul muttered, half to himself.

“What?”

“Something familiar about this place.”

Syth shrugged.

“Man’s a lumberjack. It’s kinda in his nature, i’n it?” Kneelength replied, leaning against a long walking stick. His eyes drooped heavily, as if he were going to fall asleep standing up. “It’s what you were made to do, wasn’t it? Fight trees and recognize forests?”

Paul gazed around again. “I’ve been here before.” Then his gaze fell to a small mound of dirt. “Ah…” His gaze rose to Syth. “I might have that one grave you wanted to desecrate.”

He stared down, his mouth mimicking Henry’s manager of speech. “One mo’ job.”

In his mind’s eye, Paul watched Henry as he pulled on his beaten up old shirt and fastened the buttons, his large, dark fingers, calloused though they were, deftly moving down the once-white shirt, now yellowed with age.

“One more. Sure, I believe that.” Paul had laughed.

“C’mon, ol’ Joe. I’ll do this here job an’ with the bonus, I’ll retire fo good.”

Paul leaned over the grave. “One last job, eh, brother? Well, I don’t think I can afford for this to be my last job…”

Syth stood silently, gazing down at the small grave.

Paul looked up apologetically. “Don’t look at me like that. Just thinking about an old friend. Surely you understand.”

Syth shook his head. “Never had any friends. Never really had a conversation with a human untilI met you.”

Kneelength chuckled. “Been trapped for a good chunk of my life where no humans tread, and the thing what ate my arm don’t tend t’ be too conversational.” 

Paul nodded. “I’ve had a few. They’ve all died on me.”

“Comes with the territory, I’d imagine.”

Paul rose from the grave and brushed off the dirt. He looked up at the amulet, then across at Syth and Kneelength. The devil bristled with anticipation. Kneelength looked about as alert as Paul had seen him, though he did stifle a yawn. The air shimmered around his left side. He clutched a gnarled old stick in one hand, leaning his weight on it to keep himself upright.

Something rumbled in the forest.

Paul looked up. “Get ready.”

“It’s coming,” agreed Syth. A slender hand slipped into the folds of his clothing, pulling free a long, dangerous-looking whip. Now, he looked every bit the classical demon, his ears pulled back, long horns sweeping back from his forehead, nostrils flared, his dog-like face split into a strange grimace. Long wings rose up and off his back, small barbs protruding from their surface.

Kneelength stood, appearing for all the world like a short, old wizard, leaning on his staff, weary of this world and the other. The shimmer grew stronger. It was responding to something.

Then the trees parted and a looming figure strode onto the path.

“Tree Walker.”

The large being, tendrils flailing, mighty arms - nearly six now, coated in a thick armor of bark - menacing, strode forward.

Then it struck him.

“Joe…”

“What’s going on?” Kneelength asked.

“He’s not here for the amulet…”

He looked around.

“The fairy cross is a lure… but the real prize is this! Syth, you were right. But he wasn’t coming for just a body. He was wanting this!”

Paul plunged his hand into the soil and wrenched the severed head from the ground.

“This is what you wanted the whole time? A piece of your master?”

The Tree Walker seemed to groan, and all the trees in the area began to sway and lean. It was becoming an angled circle of bowing trees - and they were all leaning toward him!

Paul tossed the head aside, causing the trees to follow. The smell of death wafted over him.

“It’s a collector, and this is the prize it’s been seeking!”

“The amulet amplified it.” Syth responded, watching the trees seemingly follow the severed head as it landed on the edge of the clearing.

Tree Walker strode forward.

Paul readied his axe. “Now!”

Kneelength let out a cry, and the shimmering aura coalesced around him.

Something flashed blue. An explosion of light burst out in all directions, and a massive tentacle, glowing blue and pulsing brightly, burst on the scene, smashed into the side of the Tree Walker, and sent it spiraling to the ground.

Paul gaped. Kneelength stood, staff in his right hand, and gazed in shock at the massive tentacle bursting from his left side.

“What on earth!”

“I don’t think this is from earth!” replied Kneelength as the arm reeled and pulsed, acting almost as if it had a mind of its own.

Tree Walker pushed at the tentacle, trying to dislodge. It wouldn’t budge. The Tree Walker roared in anger and rushed toward them. Paul lunged forward on the ensnared monster. His hand clenched around the axe and he felt it, as if also an extension of his arm, swinging forward. Branches and tendrils split and broke free under his blows. 

He was Henry, swinging his mighty hammer, beating away at the indomitable stone - an unbreakable force pushing the unstoppable to yield. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest. His gaze filled with red as his arms swung and chopped. He could feel his muscles tensing with each blow, the rage and strain pushing him to greater and greater heights of strength.

Spittle flecked the edges of his beard, sap sprayed heavily down his body, dripping like blood from a fresh kill.

Then Tree Walker broke free of its restraints, and with a resounding explosion, a might branch crashed into him, and he felt himself being bodily tossed back.

A tree cracked underneath him as it stopped his fall.

He’d been launched by the power of a tree before - it was part of the perils of the trade after all. A fallen tree landing sideways had killed more men than the agropelter had ever dreamed. One heavy blast from a log could launch a grown man through the forest, and that sudden stop at the end, or the tree collapsing onto him afterward, had taken more lives that most would wish to admit.

But in all his years, Paul had never had a tree underneath him. Bushes and brambles, shrubs and the like, yah… but never a tree.

Confused, he pulled himself out of the wreckage and tried to rise. His axe was gone. No matter. He clenched his fist and rose to his feet, trying to shake the fog out of his skull from the blow. His eyes met the Tree Walker’s. He was on the same level as the monster, its small glowing eyes staring back from a bark-like shell.

He had no idea why the creature had shrunk, but he wasn’t about to let it return to its normal size before he could do as much damage as possible. His fist closed around the flesh of one of the eye lids, his fingers slipping - forcing their way - underneath.

Tree Walker raged.

He ripped, tearing free the protection around one of those eyes. Tendrils attempted to repair the damage, to reattach the protections, but he bound them up in a mighty hand and heaved, snapping them free, tossing chunks of the Tree Walker’s face free before it could recover.

He would do this! He was made for this!

An eye tore free, and with a spray of green-yellow ichor, Tree Walker fell back, one of its hands instinctively rising to the level of its wound.

“Paul!”

The voice sounded so far away. Muffled.

He rushed forward, fist clenched to strike again with a mighty blow.

Then a shadow fell over him, and a small moth flitted. It was large for a moth, he supposed. That wasn’t a moth. It was a bat… why was there a bat on a day like…

His gaze shifted again. “Syth?” His voice came slow - deep - sluggish.

“Get ahold of yourself. If you keep this up, there won’t be a forest to save!”

“Why are you so small?”

Then he realized what had happened. Syth wasn’t small… Syth was normally sized.

Paul was gigantic!

Tree Walker had grown in response, the smaller minions and even several trees had withered to barren heaps to compensate for the growth. Rivers of sap gushed from the face-region of the monster, pouring down onto the ground.

Paul held the eye in his hand. It was a skull. He’d ripped a human skull from the face of Tree Walker! And that sap leaking free… he didn’t want to think what it might be.

Syth landed on the ground. “Paul!”

He was normally-sized again.

“Yeah, I’m here.” Paul pulled himself to stand. Tree Walker had shrunk in size as well, but the trees around the clearing were already dead or dying, and very few of its allies were able to recover.

“Your axe.”

“Thanks.”

The Jersey Devil and Paul stood side by side.

“Kneelength?”

“Passed out after Tree Walker broke free of whatever that tentacle thing was.”

Paul nodded. “What do we do?”

“Hit it with your axe.”

In spite of himself, Paul chuckled. “And here you specifically said I can’t solve all my problems by just hitting it with an axe.”

“Yes, but this is one,” Syth replied. “You hit it with the axe and then we burn it.”

“Tried that, remember?”

“From the inside.”

“You got any more dynamite? I’m out, remember?”

Syth produced a stick. “Regretfully, I have a confession. I stole this one. Couldn’t have you destroying my forest. Would’ve taken the other if I’d found it before you used it.”

Paul scowled, “Okay, so what’s the plan?”

The trees shrank away from him, soon becoming shoulder height. And the tree monstrosity did the same, blossoming up to match him beat for beat. Trees withered in a growing circle around them. A needed sacrifice. They were giants battling over a hill of ants, and now, a slight mosquito was buzzing up toward the massive eye hole where the collection of skulls had been.

Paul tried to keep the creature’s attention, but its gaze shifted, and it saw Syth’s small form rushing up toward it.

Then the eye closed. It completely sealed off. 

Then Syth did something Paul never imagined he’d see. With the momentum of flight, the creature tucked its wings close against its body before giving one final pulse. Syth launched high into the air above the tree-like monster, then used the arc of flight to whip his bladed wings together, making the spines protruding from the leading edge a long spiked blade. The only thing Paul could compare it to was when he’d seen men close their fist into a straight line and stabbed it at someone like a hand-spear thing. In unison, the barbs on the ends of the wings - like claws on the ends of tightly bunched fingers - probed deep into the now-shrinking face of Tree Walker and, with superhuman speed and strength, split its face wide open.

A membrane of new growth started sealing over the gaping hole. Fibers stretched and knitted faster than any normal plant could grow.

Syth struck again, his bladed wings lancing neatly through the fresh growth, wrenching it free, spraying ichor and sap as he went. Tree Walker struck out at the troublesome beast, but it was of no avail, at this size and with the energy required to sustain this amount of bulk, it couldn’t respond.

It began to shrink, but Paul latched onto it. “Don’t forget about me!”

He smashed his fist into the facelike portion of the creature’s mass. The head snapped back with a sickening crunch, and the monster’s body flexed and writhed in response, growing to match Paul’s size, but also his slowness.

Paul fought back a grin and grasped a portion of the creature’s face again.

Six arms, some shattered from Kneelength’s attack, others withered and abandoned by Tree Walker’s sudden growth, attempted to strike at Paul’s unprotected sides. Once. Twice. A third blow landed, but Paul wouldn’t release the monstrosity. He prised back the bark-like armor covering the chest.

A chunk cracked free.

Several other weak blows struck at his sides.

“You… can’t… sustain… yourself…” Paul mocked through gritted teeth, his muscles tensed and straining.

Another piece of armor split.

A paper-thin layer coursed from each side, attempting to knit the wound. But the creature was too big. His fist crashed against the thin membrane, splitting it down the middle, finally revealing the core of the monstrosity.

A collection of grinning skulls stared back at him.

Strong arms clenched on his. The Tree Walker had apparently sent all strength into these to hold back Paul’s assault one last time. Paul attempted to wrench free, but he couldn’t. The core of the monster began to seal back over as the creature shrank in size.

Then something swooped over Paul’s shoulder and stabbed at the recovering expanse of plant-like flesh. Barbed wings bit deep, then wrenched sideways, shredding tendrils and spraying sap. The pressure released as the arms with one mind closed on Syth’s location.

Syth smiled menacingly and pressed the dynamite deep into the soft interior of the monster’s core. Then, using his real voice rather than his normal mode, he leaned in an hissed. “Get out of my forest!”

And it was done.

Paul shrunk, dropping in size so fast that he almost went lightheaded. Then he ran, snagging Kneelength by his beard as he passed, and dove behind the nearest tree, Syth in close pursuit.

The explosion rippled across the span, sending widowmakers down upon them. A lumberjack with a quick wit and the foresight to grow a single arm to inhuman proportions was all that protected the group from the dangerous shrapnel raining from above.

Then it was silent.

A branch toppled free from overhead and clattered into the pile.

Paul coughed and rose up, shoving branches and shattered wood free. When he was content, he returned to the others, dislodging the loose logs and brambles.

He groaned.

“Is that blood?”

Paul looked at his arm - the one he’d used to shield them during the explosion. Long welts stretched across its whole expanse. Blood flowed freely. “Yah, I think so. I’ve been healing faster than normal.” His hand absently touched his sides, where he’d had broken ribs just a week earlier.

“I’ll live.”

“Me too,” came the voice in their mind.

Kneelength seemed to be recharged at this turn. He stood, his skin a little more flushed than normal. “I’ll be find, too.”

But not the Tree Walker.

Its face was split open, all the way down its middle. Two trunk-like legs still stood, and a mass of frozen tendrils stretched back away from its split body like long hair blown in the wind. From anyone else’s perspective, it was a statue - a petrified monument to what it had been. And it was, in all respects he could measure, thoroughly dead. Lifeless and motionless.

Nothing moved, but something shimmered slightly, shifted in the light - a familiar presence - something Paul had sought once before. He recognized it - the presence of an old friend. He stepped up to it and reached out a hand. But it vanished upward, a will o’ the wisp, an orb, and was gone.

Paul stepped closer. In one of its broken hands, it held what looked to be the Horseman’s severed head. It hadn’t been able to absorb it into the mass of its body. Why it even sought that particular part, and why it couldn’t find it without Paul’s assistance, was beyond him right now. All he knew was the Tree Walker was frozen in time - and dead. Thoroughly dead.

Something glinted in another one of its hands.

The fairy cross.

Paul retrieved the cord, untwisting it from the petrified grip, and looped it back around his neck.

Syth stood nearby, stretching his wings.

“Guess we both learned something new.”

Paul nodded, looking at the splintered old pine where his massive body had been thrown. 

“I was that big?”

Syth nodded. “I knew you had unbelievable strength… but I didn’t know you could grow to the size of trees. You said those stories about you were just legends.”

Paul looked up at the massive broken trees. “They were…”

A week passed. No sign of life had ever sprung up in the Tree Walker. In fact, any foliage and growth around its corpse at all had withered and drained away as well. The place was cursed now. Having grown in size to match Paul, the Tree Walker had drained all the surrounding trees, creating a vast swatch of dead forest. Oddly enough, Kneelength insisted he could see through to the other world when he was near the old tree.

Kneelength had been asleep for two solid days, waking only to stare at his arm’s belly button and groan. “I can still feel it.”

And the way he said it, Paul believed him. Somewhere, on the other side of the veil, was an arm that Kneelength could, in a literal sense, feel. He was a man of two worlds.

Syth stood at the edge of the forest.

“Your friend would be proud of you.”

Paul looked over. “What?”

“Henry, that friend of yours. He’d be proud of you for what you did.”

“What I did? You took down the Tree Walker.”

“Exactly. But we did it together.”

Kneelength leaned on his staff. “Agh… that feeling is so gross.”

Syth looked to Paul. “You gave me the opening.”

“And you stole my supplies.”

“It turned out for the best.” Syth responded. “I’m not sorry.”

“I wasn’t asking for an apology.”

The two stood in silence while Kneelength groaned, rubbing at his stub.

“Ready to take the step?”

Syth had been staring at this boundary line for the last few days, as if working up the nerve to make the attempt.

“I’ve never been able to pass this boundary. But, something feels different this time.”

And with that, Syth billowed his wings and burst from the protective undergrowth of the Pine Barrens. He was free.

Paul’s hand closed around the fairy cross. He took a single look over his shoulder and stepped from the dark confines of the forest. He’d thought long and hard about what he’d felt when Tree Walker had died. An old familiar feeling. The anger… the resentment… it was so foreign, yet a twisted version of something he had known - a love… 

This too he’d thought about for the last few days. Since seeing that orb float out from the corpse of the Tree Walker, he’d wracked his brain for any other solution. But none had come. He knew why that burning chapel had felt familiar, and he knew who the angered spirit had been.

“Babe, whatever I did, I’m sorry. Know that I’m comin’ for you, ol’ boy.”