Where the Trees Watch – Chapter 20
The Man Wearing Ryan’s Face
The figure stood half-hidden between the trees beyond the scattered photographs, motionless beneath drifting fog and weak gray light filtering through the canopy overhead. Ryan’s breath caught painfully in his throat the moment he saw the face clearly.
It was him.
Not similar.
Not close.
Exactly him.
The same dark jacket. Same backpack straps hanging from one shoulder. Same tired expression Ryan had seen in mirrors his entire adult life.
Except for the smile.
That smile stretched unnaturally wide across the figure’s face while pale eyes remained fixed directly on him from between the black pines.
Ryan Mercer physically stepped backward while cold panic spread violently through his chest. Beside him, Claire stared toward the figure with visible confusion instead of recognition.
“Who is that?” she repeated quietly.
The question hit Ryan harder than the figure itself.
Mason slowly lowered his flashlight toward the ground.
“That’s not possible…”
Ryan looked sharply toward Claire. “You seriously don’t recognize me?”
Claire’s face tightened uneasily. “Ryan, I—”
She stopped.
Like the memory physically slipped away before she could finish speaking it.
The smiling figure deeper in the forest tilted its head slightly while watching them. Then, slowly, it lifted one hand toward Claire.
And Claire instinctively took a step toward it.
Ryan grabbed her arm immediately.
“What are you doing?”
She blinked hard like waking suddenly from sleep. “I…” Her voice shook slightly. “I thought someone was calling me.”
The whistle drifted softly through the trees again.
This time Ryan realized something horrifying.
The sound came from the smiling version of himself.
The thing wearing his face was whistling calmly beneath the pines while watching the group.
Mason suddenly grabbed Claire’s shoulder and pulled her backward hard.
“Don’t look at it too long.”
Ryan turned toward the guide. “What IS that thing?”
Mason’s expression looked deeply unsettled now.
“I think Blackwood copies people after it learns them.”
The words settled heavily into the forest clearing.
Ryan stared back toward the figure wearing his face.
The longer he looked at it, the more wrong it became. Small details kept shifting unnaturally. The smile widening slightly too far. The blinking delayed by half a second. Movements too smooth, too careful.
Like something wearing humanity instead of being human.
Then the figure slowly reached into its jacket pocket.
And pulled out Ryan’s wallet.
His stomach dropped instantly.
The worn leather fold, the silver scratch across the corner — unmistakably his.
The thing opened the wallet casually and looked through the contents while standing among the trees.
Ryan instinctively checked his own pocket.
Empty.
Cold panic surged through him.
He never felt it taken.
The smiling figure looked up again.
Then, with Ryan’s own voice, it softly said:
“You dropped this.”
Claire physically flinched.
Mason immediately backed away from the tree line.
“Don’t answer it.”
The fake Ryan smiled wider.
“You already did.”
The fog around the trees suddenly thickened rapidly while whistles echoed deeper through Blackwood from multiple directions again. Ryan noticed movement everywhere now — pale figures standing silently farther between the trunks watching them through drifting mist.
More copies.
Not mannequins this time.
People.
Or things shaped like people.
Watching quietly from the forest.
Claire’s breathing became uneven beside him. “We need to leave.”
Mason nodded immediately. “Now.”
But Ryan couldn’t stop staring at the thing wearing his face.
Because deep down—
he suddenly realized the photographs weren’t wrong.
The forest wasn’t removing him.
It was replacing him.