The Lumberjack

The Lumberjack - Part One

I wandered throughout the dark woods, not knowing where I had come from, not knowing where I should go. I didn't know my own name, and I didn't care to find out. I think that once I wanted to escape these woods, but that desire was long gone. There was no leaving the woods. I knew that then. The woods had entwined with me, and I had become the woods. There were leaves in my mouth, and the trees were drinking my blood, and I was at peace. One foot was placed in front of the other, and then the other foot first. This deadly harmony was not to be broken. This continued.

I came upon an empty town. I knew that a long time ago this place had been filled with laughter and joy. I don't know how, but I knew. I could almost see it in the back of my head. But all that happiness was gone. This place was empty. I walked inside a house. The house had been stripped completely. It was a maze with nothing inside but dust and fog. I wandered aimlessly from room to room. After some of this, I finally found something. A dusty old pamphlet.

I picked it up. It had a picture of a big, strong lumberjack holding an axe. He looked sort of threatening. His face was affixed into a very phony smile. I don't know why, but the picture sent chills down my spine. I turned it over. There was a lot of text on the back. It read:

"Repent! The lumberjack is here! He came to Earth to bring about a new age of unimaginable wonder. Yet we burned him alive! We melted his skin! We heard his dying screams and we laughed! Yet in his infinite mercy, he has given us a second chance. However, he is not a fool. He demands sacrifice! As he suffered, we must suffer in turn! Join us in the town square tonight! At the bonfire, all will be made right..."

I stopped reading after that. That fringe-religion stuff gave me the willies. I mused that this kind of town, away from civilization, was the perfect breeding ground for this cult stuff. I walked right out of that house. I navigated from street to street, trying to leave this seemingly never-ending labyrinth of roads and empty buildings. It's funny, when I came into the village, it seemed like a small, quaint little place, but not anymore. Now everything was confusing. I looked through the window of one of the houses I passed. There was a disquieting, unflinching darkness inside. My mind began to picture what horrors might lie inside. I thought I saw something move inside. I jerked my head away and started to run. The terrible quiet was starting to infest my mind.

I went from road to road, trying to get out of that cursed town. I didn't think, I just ran. Eventually, I reached the town square. In the middle there was a giant statue of the lumberjack. It loomed above me. It looked like it was fashioned from some kind of metal, but it looked like nothing I had ever seen before. I tried to peel my eyes away, but I couldn't. It held my gaze captive. There was something perplexing about it, something so deeply wrong. It looked almost lifelike, and I was almost sure I saw it breathe. Its eyes locked with mine. I knew that I was being crazy, but those metal eyes seemed to plead with me.

I heard the telltale sound of a snapping branch, and tore my eyes from the metallic abomination before me. I looked in the direction of the sound, but saw only fog. What a dreadful fog it was! I could barely see in front of my face. I scanned my mind for a memory of any fog as demented as this, but I recalled nothing. This was truly the worst fog I had ever seen. It hid so much from me, and of course when the mind lacks information, it just makes things up. My mind had always been quite good at this devious invention. Even now I could almost see shadowy figures dancing silently in the distance, but the logical part of me knew that the town was empty, and probably had been for a long time.

I decided it was time for me to leave this dreadful town, if one could call it a town. I turned to leave, but a deep metallic groan behind me made me turn around yet again. The lumberjack statue had moved, or at least I thought it did. Not a lot, mind you, but only a little, a little twitch of the arms, perhaps, maybe the shifting of weight from one metal leg to another. For the umpteenth time in this wretched town, I felt the two halves of my brain in conflict. The logical side of things was quite angered at all these frivolous fancies, and suggested that if I was so unnerved by this silent town that I should just leave. The emotional side, the side that feels, told me that there was no leaving this wretched town, that the second I ran toward the town borders, legions of horrifying cultists would rush from the seemingly empty houses and sacrifice me to whatever dreadful god they worshiped, or perhaps the lumberjack statue would spring to life and scoop me up in its great paw and crush me to death. Maybe, I shuddered, the very town could close in around me, and envelope me in the ground and houses and paths and walkways, all squeezing tighter around my dead body, until I simply ceased to be. Perhaps all three could be true. Nevertheless, sitting at the foot of this statue would do no good either, and so, having got my bearings, I moved toward the edge of the town.