The Starting of the Mushrooms.

This was a dream I had a while ago I turned into a story... it was what marked my starting of The Mushrooms. Ever since then Ive been wicked into them.



















THE STORY:


I had no idea why it should matter to me, but it did. The urge to go outside, that is. Once the parents went to bed and all respectable houses turned off their lights; those magnetic woods were irresistible. To go to them was like scratching an itch.
It wasn't always this way, though. Only in the Summer-time when the woods were Awake. The urgency of the feeling only lasted for a few days. I had no idea why this was happening, but then again little children rarely wonder why in cases like these. This age was a magical age; one where you did not doubt what you instinctively knew, and did not care for phrases like ' psyching yourself out ' and 'my eyes are playing tricks on me'.
It started a few days ago. James, my brother came into my room on evening, after our parents had shut off the lights. He was young, younger than I. But we both heard it. sensed it. He stood in my doorway with two big blue eyes peeping out from under a tangle of fine, blond curls. And then he knew that I knew. The funny thing is neither of us really understood what we knew, but it was a burning itch inside our nervous systems.

All we understood was that we really had to go outside when the night thickened; after our parents put us to bed for the evening. Every night they remained sleeping soundly as we crept out a few hours later, scared shitless.

We really had to you see. When that itching started, a cold deep feeling of dread soaked my belly and skin. Like being dunked in a pitch black well stuck deep in the ground. Along with that came pure adrenaline and any ability to sleep was lost. I just laid there, tossing stickily on bed-sheets wondering how bad it would be to just go into the Forest. The Forest is dark and filled with trees and things you can not see, but the Forest was pleading. We were young, but we believed in everything and followed our instincts. And that's probably why we could still feel the itch, and hear the words.

The forest spoke to us, you see. And that night the trees sang for us. They wailed gracefully for the children to help them, and air took the words in every breath, and spiraled them around us. Driving it into every single thought we had. So we went.

Tonight the sky was clouded over in wispy grays, and spiraling purple; tall stalks of trees tore upwards. The pines shook wetly. They wailed to us and cried for our help. The cries were more urgent tonight; the sensation made me feel nauseous. Sure enough, past the first curtain of trees and on the ground beneath them; there was a sprinkling of perfectly shaped, fog-like mushrooms. As we neared, the mushrooms grew more solid in form. They had spread. James's stepped on one. It oozed onto the moist ground like jelly and stuck to his shoe.

"They look differant tonight." James said.

I bent over and pulled another out, trying so hard to be careful. Once the stem was broken it would rapidly shrunk and lost its shape; pouring goo everywhere. However, if you dig it out and keep the fungi whole, it remains mushroomy. The thing was quivering slightly in my hands. It throbbed. It was beating, like it was alive. I dropped it quickly and backed away.

"They're moving tonight. They never moved before. Why are they moving tonight?" I said.

I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. Something dark glided behind a gnarled pine tree behind James. "Hello?" I spoke up. My voice was high with tension.
A small boy stepped forward. He possessed bushy and kinked hair that knotted and fell into his unfamiliar face, and a scattering of freckles adorned his nose. Like us he was holding a stick, only this one had smaller, pointier ones ductaped crudely to the tip. It rose above him by a few inches. His knuckles were white, gripping the make-shift weapon firmly.

"What are these things?" He said.
"No idea." James said.
"Mushrooms." I said.
"They look like mushrooms but they aren't, you know." The boy said. "Them too weird."
"We have to kill 'm." James spoke up, his voice small. The mushrooms throbbed in the dark. Their glow cast strange shadows.
"I know that." There was a pause. And then the boy asked. "But why?"
"There's this Man, you see. If we don't kill them bad things will happen. We have to be careful though. Or The Man will catch us." I said.
"And eat us." James added in again.
"You know that, you feel it too." I said imploringly.
"The woods are full of other children, you know." The boy spoke up casually. He speared the nearest mushroom with his stick. It was the size of a sauce pan. "Some are being loud though."
"They are stupid." James said.

Other shapes moved behind the trees. I noticed that now. In the glow of the mushrooms I made out ghostly faces; all as unfamiliar as the boy we just met. Some were talking rather noisily. Others in hushed whispers. The younger ones took it the most seriously. The older ones were louder, more doubious but still compelled. The Mushroom juice soaked through layers of soil and rotting leaves. As we walked farther into the Forest's depths more scuffed up patches of soaked ground appeared. Some were only little spots were one or two were stepped on, and others were massive scrapings covering several dozen yards.

"Im scared." James looked up at me, his eyes round and skin ash white.
"Its going to be okay." I whispered. "Just keep working."

The trees rustled up very far above our heads. The sound made my skin prickle. I dropped onto my hands and knees, dirt clinging to my skin. Quickly, my hands uprooted patches of the little foggy mushrooms, leaving them discarded in a heap. Their dying glow gave the ground an eerie light. Some were big, very big for mushrooms. Some were as big as my head. Others were the size of a baby's pinkie nail. They would eat each other if close enough to do so.

My breath came in gasps. It was strange, I knew that. All of this was strange. But a young child's mind doesn't doubt what it knows, so none of us really thought twice about it. We all could sense a powerful sense of urgency that descended over the forest. Even as a young child I knew, just as the others knew. Our knees hit the dirt and our fingers scrabbled desperately at the fungi in the earth. No one said a word. There was nothing to say. I stubbed my hand against a tree root and it left a raw gash behind. I could picture it in my mind, the skin aggravated and pink. Ignore it.
Hurry, Hurry, Hurry.


Suddenly in the distance there was a piercing, wavering scream. The scream belonged to one of us. A kid, it must have been a kid its pitch and sound and soul sounded like a terrified four year old child being hurt. It shocked the silence; everyone froze, including me. A hand grabbed my arm like a cold vice. I whirled, heart racing. James was knocked to the dirt behind me; it was him. He looked dazed and confused. The trees chanted.


The black haired boy tugged on James's shirt urgently. "Come on come on, we've got to leave! It's The Man. He's come; he's come and we have to go now!" There was another scream, closer this time. To my left. Or was it right. Wind whistled through the wet, leafy branches over head. Everything screamed run. The song of the forest wailed with it. That seemed to break the spell cast over our numbers. The Forest erupted with rustling sounds; everything seemed to be moving. Even the trees waved back and forth. It was behind us, and it was coming fast.


Children squealed and ran as fast as their cold, shaky legs would carry them. James crawled in the direction everyone else seemed to be going, myself included, before getting to his feet and unevenly running. The ground felt like it was rocking, oh god, the ground wouldn't stay still under my feet.

We stumbled over rotted logs and other children who had lost there balance and fallen. I noticed for a split second one girl. She had knobby knees and pink overalls on, dirty. Muddy hands held out in front of her, keeping the balance. It seemed almost as if she were blind, the way her hands were reached out and groping. She looked to be the sort who would normally mind being that dirty. Eyes torn into a face frozen into an expression of pure terror.

Next second she is on the ground, head slammed up against a large mossy boulder protruding from the forest's gut. A mole on its skin. Dark stuff began to take over her face, and matt her hair. I knew that girl. She went to my school. I passed her in the halls. Now her limbs stuck out in odd angles on the ground, and she lay still.


Then the ground lurched again, and again we took off running, my brother and I. There were more screams I think. I couldn't hear very well; there was an awful roaring sound rushing in from all angles. It bombarded my eardrums and took over all thought I had. I just kept running, rocketing off tree trunks and then starting up again. I'd fall down. Struggle back up. Somehow this whole time I managed to keep my right hand clutched to James's firmly. Otherwise I would have lost him. Things hit our linked arms but he didn't release and so I didn't either.


Home, Home, please get me home, I remember thinking. It was a looped reel, a recording; an answering machine message in my mind. Everything else was purely animalistic, all instincts fully kicked in. It didn't matter I was a mere eight years old. That up until this week, I never went outside. And that I, like most of America, was rather pudgy and terribly out of shape. It didn't matter I didn't know how to correctly pronounce spaghetti or that I occasionally wet the bed. It was survival, I needed to get out. Every muscle burned, and I did not let go of my brother.

Crunched up mushroom ooze was stuck to my shoes, and everyone else's shoes. The glow from it lit things up at odd angles. I felt like a panicked gerbil, probably resembled one too. Towards the end of that run, I was dragging James. He felt broken. I couldn't see, too dark. The tree's darkened canopy was still over my head head, but it was thinning out now. The ceiling of purple sky shone through at spots.

Finally the tree-line broke into tall grass bathed silver in moonlight. It was safe here. I could tell. The air smelled different. It even tasted different. I kept going a few yards just to be sure though. Around me children straggled out of the woods. With faces torn and dirty, and eyes stretched into terrified circles they looked like they just lived through a nightmare. Each collapsed into dirty lumps in the grass.

My shoulders drooped from exhaustion, and my eyes traveled down James's hand clutching mine, a battered looking arm, to the limp body attached to it. He looks so small, I thought. I remember that clearly. The grass around his shape bent proving his existence. He was so small. Especially when he didn't move, he looked so small. I couldn't see his face, that was good; I didn't want to. Didn't want to see this; couldn't look away. Why didn't James move?
Then it slowly began to dawn on me, and the world, including my stomach dropped into panic and dread. No, no. His body seemed twisted in a very wrong way, a way the human anatomy wouldn't normally allow; so wrong. James resembled a limp dishrag with awkward limbs; arms and legs that stuck out uncomfortably, and elbows and knees that pointed the wrong way. He was bloody.
I crouched down in that long silver grass that entire night next to him; howls and screams erupting from the forest that eventually died away. The grass crackling as children drifted by us. I forgot about them, about the mushrooms and how my throat burned from the strain of running. All I remember was memorizing into my head the way the moonlight glazed over my five year old brother's body, and how he didn't move that entire night; not even once.






Dreams anyone?