The Lumberjack

The Lumberjack - Part Six

You see, when the people argued whether or not I was a "man" or a "monster", they were really both correct. I had been a man, long ago, in the days of my youth, and I had a real knack for exploring the woods around the remote village where I grew up. One day, however, I went too far, too deep. I was afraid that I would be lost forever, and that even when I died they would never find me. It was then that I came across the thing. It must have been the site of some great evil, long before the time of man. Something survived there, weak, invisible, unknowable, and above all else, hungry. It attached itself to me, although I really didn't understand what had happened at the time. I quickly found my way back home. It turned out that I hadn't really been that lost after all. Just a little turned around. Something had changed, though. At first it was weak, like a little hum in the back of my head. As the years went on, it grew stronger as I grew weaker. Not physically; I was in the best shape of my life, and I found good and honest work as a lumberjack, but I was more tired than I had ever been, an affliction which no amount of rest seemed to remedy. My very sense of self began to dissolve. That was roughly when the changes began. They started out small. I was suddenly able to work for more hours a day than any of my fellow laborers. Then, seemingly out of the blue, I became stronger and faster than I thought was possible. I became a local legend for my endurance, much in the vein of Paul Bunyan. Most of the tales weren't true, but I enjoyed all of them.

But what the others couldn't see, when they were gathered round the campfire, swapping stories about the mighty lumberjack between pints of beer, was the growing darkness that lay just beneath the surface. Sometimes, when I gazed at my reflection, something else stared back. I began to hear whispers from the woods, telling me to do awful, unspeakable things. Whenever I went to bed at night, I dreamt that I lured my loved ones out into the woods, and then grabbed my mighty axe and hacked away until what was left was almost unrecognizable, just so that I could sacrifice them to the thing inside my head. But I never for a second thought that my dreams would ever make the leap to reality, especially not as soon as they did.

I began to enter these trances at random, and I would come to my senses just as abruptly. At first, I just found myself in the middle of the woods in a different part of the day, and it would be easy to find my way home. Later, it got to be a bit more serious. I once woke up to find myself washing blood from my hands, and I had no idea where it had come from. What was worse, people started disappearing. My standing in the community was very high, so I was not one of the primary suspects, those titles going to the town's lead drunk and adulterer, Arney Krandler. The doubt was soon cast upon me.I started to say weird things, things about a great fog washing over the lend to grant us everlasting life. Or at least that was the impression I got afterwards. I was never really myself when I said those things.

More and more people began to suspect that I might be capable of such things, and in those days they were not too averse to taking matters into their own hands. My best friend since childhood, Edison Atwell, was able to assuage the doubts of the villagers by saying that he would take me into the woods and try to talk some sense into me. I suppose the general consensus was that if anyone could calm me down, it was him. In case you haven't picked up on it yet, that was his body I was standing over in the woods, and that blonde woman was his wife, er, widow. I'm very sorry for her loss.

Anyway, while my poor body was going up in flames, the monster in me was perfectly fine. Unearthly hellspawn tends to do well in fire. My earthly self, however, the side capable of feeling such petty trifles as compassion and empathy, was currently melting off of my own bones. As I stood there, letting out one last choked breath, I saw the god of the forest, the presence in my mind, in all of its unearthly glory, and it told me that I need not be afraid, for this was not the end, but a mere transformation, and that I would soon be turned into a vessel worthy of its majesty. What was more, I would be worshiped as a deity by all who fell to its power, and that I would be granted eternal life. So I laughed, and laughed, and laughed, as my mortal body perished, and my metamorphosis neared its end.