1.17

Once Monty is out of eyesight, Austin proceeds into the woods, setting out on a different path than before. The forest is too big to comb by himself, and looking for the resting place of a spirit without any real leads is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Still, he does his best, trying to follow his gut at every fork, willing his powers to lead him where he needs to go. He can’t shake the feeling that he’s walking in circles, but maybe it will draw the dog-thing back out if he keeps at it long enough.

Sure enough, as the sun starts to rise even higher in the sky, Austin hears footsteps underscoring his, the same way he heard the buck following him and Mac before it attacked them. The sound is too soft to pinpoint where it’s coming from. Austin begins walking in abrupt starts and stops, aiming to trip up whatever is following him and make it reveal itself. It seems to be working - he sees a scrap of green disappearing behind a tree, hears a muffled curse the next time he stops mid-step.

“Walker?” Austin asks, hesitantly, testing a theory. “Why the fuck are you following me?”

There’s a long moment of silence, only bolstered by the strange stillness of the woods, before Walker steps out from behind a nearby tree. He looks surprised to be caught, and opens his mouth - probably to make some kind of excuse - but he doesn’t get that far. Another, larger figure comes suddenly crashing through the woods, barreling into him and knocking Walker to the ground.

It’s the dog-thing. Austin can see it spraying spittle from its mouth as it stands over Walker, snarling, black lips peeled back to reveal a mouthful of huge, bloody teeth. In daylight, Austin can see that it’s clearly some kind of wolf, but its body still bulges oddly, like it’s trying to contain something that’s too big to fit inside. Its fur bristles, and it opens its mouth, presumably to bite Walker, and -

And then its head abruptly twists around on its neck, with the loud crack of a broken bone, and the wolf goes limp. Austin blinks, unsure of what exactly he just saw. Did the spirit do that? Did Walker?

“Go,” Walker says, struggling out from under the body of the wolf. He’s holding something in one hand, and he tosses it to Austin. As it lands in the ground at Austin’s feet, Austin can see it’s a fire axe, bright red, probably stolen from the motel.

“Take this and get out of here, okay?” Walker shouts. “Stop trying to play Hardy Boy and just go home!”

“Fuck you,” Austin says, picking up the axe, though he can’t really feel the weight of it in his hands. His own voice feels like it’s coming from miles away, somewhere outside of his body. The wolf that killed Mac is dead, but the forest spirit is still in these woods somewhere, probably looking for something else to possess, to kill Walker, or even Austin. Maybe it’s even strong enough to possess them now, and force them to kill each other.

Walker says something else, but Austin isn’t listening anymore. His legs are moving practically on their own, carrying him farther and farther into the forest, without him putting any real thought into where he’s running. Every muscle in his body aches, a searing pain that burns deep into his bones, and every swath of forest looks the same as it whips past. Austin can’t be sure if he’s going farther into the woods, or back towards the motel, and he doesn’t know at this point if it really matters.

He runs until he’s completely out of breath, his chest feeling strangely empty, his legs unsteady, shaking underneath of him every time he tries to take another step. Looking around to get his bearings, he finds himself at the foot of a tree unlike any other in the forest. It’s tall and gnarled, clearly older than most of the trees around it, with a trunk that’s a vivid shade of red right down to its roots. Like it’s soaked up blood through the earth, and absorbed the color.

“It’s you,” Austin says out loud, his voice hoarse and breathless. A part of him can sense something inside the tree, like he could cleave the trunk in half with the fire axe to reveal centuries of rot, or maybe the true form of the spirit.

You found me, the tree says, its voice strangely soft inside of Austin’s mind. He wants to recoil at the feeling, but it sounds almost gentle, like it doesn’t mean to be causing him any discomfort. Are you going to hurt me, like you hurt those animals?

“What?” Austin asks. Not that he doesn’t want to hurt the spirit, for what it did to Mac, but he gets the impression that it wouldn’t solve much. “I mean, no. Probably not.”

The tree is silent for a long time.

You can hear me, it says, finally, still hesitant at probing inside of Austin’s mind. It sounds surprised.

“Yeah, I can hear you,” Austin says, equally surprised. He’d just assumed that the tree knew he was a medium - but, then again, how would it know? It’s only been watching him from afar.

“You killed my friend,” he adds, because he wants to hear what the spirit has to say for itself.

I know, the tree says. It doesn’t sound proud - in fact, it sounds a bit like a child who’s been scolded. I’ve killed lots of people. But all of the noise those men are making with their machines...it hurts me. And the way your friend killed that buck hurt me, too. I just don’t want to hurt anymore. I hurt all the time, and it makes me so angry. And the only way to make it stop is to make all the people go away, because they’re scared.

Austin considers this for a long time. It all tracks with what he was expecting, though he hadn’t thought that the forest spirit would be this remorseful. He wonders, not for the first time, how long it’s been here, being disturbed over and over throughout the years. Otter’s advice not to kill it resurfaces to his thoughts, and Austin chews his bottom lip.

“What are you?” he asks, figuring it prudent.

I don’t remember, the spirit says, simply. I think I was a girl. They put me here, in the tree.

Austin blinks, feeling blindsided by the answer. He had never stopped to consider that the spirit might have been human once - it felt too baselessly malevolent for that, too chaotic and out-of-control. But even humans can become that way, if they live for too long, he supposes. Anything can become angry if it’s in pain for centuries. Especially if it was murdered, with no proper burial.

“Your body is in the tree?” he asks, just to be sure.

Yes. My bones are here. The spirit sounds unaffected, like it’s rattling off a fact it’s known for years.

Austin looks down at the axe in his hands. “What if I could get you out? Would that hurt you? I could take your bones and bury them somewhere else - in the graveyard, I mean, or just somewhere quiet.”

He doesn’t know if it will work, exactly, but sometimes a proper burial helps put a spirit to rest. Maybe this spirit is too old and angry to rest properly, but to Austin, it sounds tired. Tired of being woken up by more noise and pain. Tired of people infringing on its territory, its body. Austin can understand that, even if it did kill so, so many other people.

Will it hurt? the spirit asks. Austin is starting to realize just how childish it sounds, the longer it talks to him, and he wonders if maybe it was a child when it was killed. He pushes the thought to the back of his mind, refusing to think about it for too long, like a hot stove burner he can’t help but be tempted to touch. Children being hurt makes him angry like nothing else does.

“Maybe a little,” he says, finally. “But once I get you out, you won’t have to be in pain ever again. I promise.”

Why are you helping me? the spirit asks. I killed your friend. I tried to kill you, too.

“I know,” Austin says, the memory of Mac’s body in the leaves still fresh in his mind, tears stinging at his eyelids. He tightens his grip around the axe, swallows, and continues. “But you were scared, and hurting, and you wanted us to go away. I hate that you killed my friend, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to help you.” 

He pauses again, thinking. He’s always felt like he’s understood spirits more than he does humans, like he can see even the ones who do terrible things in a more sympathetic light. Almost like he’s obligated to, because he’s the only one some of them can rely on. Some of them deserve disgust, of course, but some are just scared, or afraid, or in pain. Some don’t want to believe that they’re really dead. And they lash out. As someone with a lot of experience lashing out at people, Austin can relate.

“If I don’t,” he says, “nothing’s going to change. People are going to keep hurting you, and you’re going to keep hurting them.”

Oh, the spirit says, simply.

“Yeah,” Austin says. He swings the axe back onto his shoulder, steadying it. “Are you ready?”

No, the spirit says. But I can try to be.

It’s as good an answer as any, Austin thinks. He swings the axe, chopping into the base of the red tree once, then again, then a third time, pain radiating up his arms and through his back with every swing. After the third swing, the rest is just muscle memory.