Submitted by Apprehensive-Oil-914 t3_115t5k7 in nosleep
It wasn't too long after moving into this house that I began to notice something strange. You see, a few months ago, I was offered a position with the company I work for as the new general manager of a branch opening up in a somewhat remote area of West Virginia. It might not sound that appealing to some of you, but a general manager's salary in Appalachia goes a lot further than a general employee's salary does in downtown Chicago. My one-bedroom apartment in Illinois was costing me more than three times the cost of the mortgage on my three-bedroom house here in Harper's Ferry. Regardless, I didn't have any personal ties keeping me in Chicago that were holding me back. No wife, no kids, no family in the area. I had been feeling a little claustrophobic being caught up in the rat race of the big city, and the idea of relocating to somewhere quieter with more space to myself sounded refreshing. Not to mention the nice promotion and salary increase that I was getting out of the deal.
The house isn't a mansion or anything, just a little two-story house on a small plot of land. There are other houses around, but they're quite spaced out a bit along a winding gravel back road that I live on. My nearest neighbors are the ones directly across from me, or at least, their driveway is directly across from mine. Their house actually sits back off the road quite a way, and I could just barely make out the shape of it past the trees that line their side of the street. They had come over to greet me on the day that I moved in, a sweet elderly couple with adult children that lived out of state. Both of them are retired and wanted to settle down somewhere that they could enjoy the peace and quiet of the mountains. And let me tell you, it is plenty quiet out here. Aside from the occasional car driving down the road or pack of roaming dogs meandering around, for the most part, there is almost no noise pollution whatsoever.
My first night here, after I had unloaded the rest of the boxes from my pickup truck, I just stood on my front porch and took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air. The only sound I could hear was the sound of the light wind rustling through the leaves high above me in the hundreds of trees surrounding the road in my property. I had never experienced something so peaceful and quiet living in the city, not even living in the suburbs as a kid with my parents decades ago. But there was also an unsettling quality to it. I guess for a city boy like me, the idea of the nearest person being at least half a mile away from you had put me on edge a bit. There's a comfort in knowing that if you needed help, you could just run outside your apartment and bang on your neighbor's door, or if you needed emergency services, there would probably be a station within a few city blocks of your location. The thought that if something happened to me, no one would likely find out about it for weeks always sat stewing in the back of my mind.
I made a mental note at the time that I wanted to get a dog or a cat to keep me company. Now that I owned my place, I wasn't bound to the restrictions of pet deposits or leash laws anymore. I figured that it would be nice to have a little fluffy creature waiting for me when I got home from work every evening, or at least it would certainly break up the solitude of living by myself out in the countryside. Regardless, I settled in pretty quickly and was beginning to adjust to my new way of life faster than I first intended to. The opening of my job's new location went smoothly, and I was getting along pretty well with my new co-workers.
(I put the rest of the story in the comment section.)
Apprehensive-Oil-914 OP t1_j935qci wrote
Here’s the rest of the story as it was to long to make an entire post:
Everything was going great for the first couple of weeks, so much so that I jokingly thought to myself that maybe it had been my calling to live out in the countryside my entire life. But earlier this week, early one evening, I noticed something a little strange as I pulled into my dirt driveway. My usually clear front lawn and the grass beside my house had a surprising number of branches strewn about it. The tree line around my house is a couple of hundred feet away on all sides so even if a wild weather system or wind storm had passed through while I was at work, the branches would have had to be carried hundreds of feet away from the trees that they came off of.
But that wasn't the only thing odd about it; the branches were also specifically only near the outside of the house, not spread across the rest of the property. It almost seemed as if someone had put them around my house intentionally. Though I'm not sure what would possess someone to do such a thing, I picked up a few of them and moved them away from my house. As I picked them up, I grimaced and noticed a black sap-like substance coating the bark and stems. There was a distinct sour smell coming from the branches as well, not something that I was experienced in dealing with as a previous full-time city dweller. I only moved a few of them before giving up and going into the house to wash my hands. I ran the kitchen faucet and scrubbed away the black slime before taking a second to look out of the window above my kitchen sink. I was taken aback for a moment at the beautiful scenery in front of me. Soft yellow sunbeams broke through the branches of the trees at the back of my property, backed by the red and orange sky of a beautiful sunset. For a moment, I forgot all about the weird branches and just took in the beauty of my new home.
When I left for work yesterday, I felt a strange pit form in my stomach as I noticed that not only had the branches that I had moved the day before returned to their positions around my house, but also that there were dozens of new branches mixed amongst them. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if maybe the fog and mountain air might be playing tricks on my barely awake weekday brain, but to no avail. The branches were definitely there again. I tried to rationalize in my head what reason there might be for this occurrence but had to cut it short as I was already running late for work. When I returned that evening, I was greeted by a yard full of branches yet again. It had been a particularly long day at work training the new staff, and my mind and body were exhausted. Without engaging with the branches, I dragged myself inside and began to rummage through my fridge to make myself some dinner.
After setting a container of leftovers on the kitchen counter, I paused, remembering that lovely sunset that I had seen through my window the day before. I smiled to myself and made my way over to the sink to take in the reds and yellows that I enjoyed the previous day, but was puzzled by what I saw. Perhaps it was my eyes playing tricks on me or the work of my imagination, but it seemed to me that the trees were a little closer to my house than they had been before. Not only this, but they were so much closer that I could no longer see the red and orange sky that I had previously enjoyed. The beams no longer peaked through the branches, and instead, the light from the sun was completely blotted out by the thick rustling leaves.
It was at that point that I began to question my own sanity. Had I just imagined the sunset from the day before? were the trees in my backyard actually closer to the back of my house than they had been previously? I had never really walked to the back of my property after moving in.
Had I misremembered how far back the trees were from the back of my house? All of these questions reeled through my head as I tossed my food in the microwave and poured myself a glass of water. I chalked it up to a stressful day and went about the rest of my evening with a creeping feeling in the back of my mind. I called it an early night and crawled into bed shortly after eating dinner. Maybe my head would be clearer in the morning when I woke up.
That brings us to today. I woke up and headed out to my truck to go to work, and my stomach dropped at what I saw. There, in the middle of my front yard, as clear as day, a tree roughly 20 to 30 feet tall and two feet around was standing only a few feet away from my truck.
Now, my mind had betrayed me before, but I'm not crazy enough to forget about a huge tree in the middle of my previously empty front lawn. I approached it slowly, immediately noticing the thin black film along the edges of the bark and the acrid smell that I had encountered once before.
While clearing away the branches, I touched my hand very carefully to the tree, questioning whether or not I was imagining it. I felt the gross, slimy texture beneath my fingertips as I pressed my fingers against it, but more importantly, I could swear I felt something moving slightly, so very slightly. I would have sworn that I could have felt the tree breathing beneath my fingertips. I recoiled and quickly wiped the grime onto my jacket. I panicked and hurried into my truck, contemplating for a moment what I was going to do. What could I do? Call someone? Tell them that a weird, sticky tree appeared in my yard overnight? Of course not. So, I did the only thing I could think of doing. I got in my car and went to work.
I tried to busy myself by throwing myself completely into my job and came home that evening just like everything was normal. A cold shiver ran down my spine as I avoided looking at the new tree in my yard entirely. I paid no mind to the new branches in my yard as well. I kept my eyes forward and went straight into my house. I made my way into the kitchen to retrieve a frozen dinner from the freezer and tossed it into the microwave. I felt a bead of sweat roll down the back of my neck as I contemplated looking out of the window beside me. In the back of my mind, I knew what I would see if I looked out of that window. Dread filled my insides at the thought of facing the kitchen sink and seeing hundreds of trees much closer than they had been before. So, I didn't look. I kept my eyes focused on the microwave in front of me.
When the timer of the microwave beeped, I removed my food, grabbed my knife and fork, and bee-lined it straight upstairs to eat it in the comfort of my bed. After wolfing down the subpar frozen meal, I tossed the plastic dish onto the nightstand and turned out the light to go to bed.
Sleepless hours have now gone by, and I find myself lying here, paralyzed with fear, watching the shadows and listening to the sounds of multiple branches tapping against my window, echoing in my bedroom.