Where the Trees Watch – Chapter 35
Beneath the Black Water
The river swallowed Ryan instantly.
Freezing darkness crashed over him while violent currents dragged him downward beneath the vortex. For several horrifying seconds he lost all sense of direction entirely. Black water spun around him so hard that up and down ceased to matter.
Then the whispers began.
Thousands of voices speaking beneath the river all at once.
Names.
Fragments of memories.
Half-finished thoughts from people already forgotten by the world above.
Ryan Mercer tried fighting toward the surface, but the deeper he sank, the heavier the water became around his body. It no longer felt like ordinary river water.
It felt alive.
Watching him.
Remembering him.
Shapes drifted through the darkness nearby beneath the current. Human figures suspended deep below Blackwood with pale empty faces floating motionless in the black water. Some reached weakly toward him as he sank past them, their mouths opening silently beneath the river.
Then Ryan saw the thing beneath them.
At first his mind refused to understand its scale.
The darkness below wasn’t empty water.
It was moving.
An enormous shape stretched endlessly beneath the riverbed itself, larger than the forest above, buried deep below layers of memory and forgotten lives. Pale eyes slowly opened across its surface one by one while roots, bones, and drowned faces drifted around it beneath the current.
Ryan physically felt his thoughts recoil trying to comprehend it.
The entity beneath Blackwood was not sleeping under the river.
The river existed to contain it.
Then the thing spoke again inside his mind.
“You remember too much.”
The voice carried impossible age behind it. Ryan felt centuries moving beneath the words like ancient currents pulling through darkness older than the forest itself.
Memories exploded across his thoughts again.
He saw Blackwood before people entered it.
Endless untouched wilderness surrounding a deep black river beneath ancient skies.
Then fire.
Human settlements spreading into the forest.
People cutting paths through trees.
And beneath it all—
something awakening slowly below the water every time the world forgot someone.
The thing fed on erasure itself.
Every forgotten name strengthened it.
Every vanished memory sank into the darkness below.
Ryan finally understood why Blackwood copied people.
The forest wasn’t evil.
It was terrified.
Terrified of the thing beneath the river growing stronger every time humanity forgot its dead.
The copies.
The preserved memories.
The endless imitations.
Blackwood was desperately trying to keep people remembered.
The entity beneath him opened more eyes slowly throughout the darkness.
“All things are forgotten eventually.”
The statement carried no anger.
Only certainty.
Ryan suddenly felt memories peeling away from him faster now beneath the water.
His school.
His apartment.
His own birthday.
Gone.
The entity was feeding directly on him.
Panic surged violently through his chest as he forced himself upward through the crushing current. Pale hands drifted around him beneath the water reaching desperately through darkness while whispers echoed from every direction.
Then someone grabbed him.
Strong hands pulled Ryan violently upward through the current toward pale moonlight breaking faintly above the river surface.
Claire.
She dragged him through the freezing water desperately while the vortex roared beneath them.
Ryan burst back above the surface gasping violently.
Cold air slammed into his lungs while the river churned around them beneath thick fog. Claire held onto him tightly, terror covering her face.
“Ryan! Stay awake!”
The copy stood farther downstream watching silently while the forgotten figures continued sinking one by one into the vortex behind it.
And above the riverbank—
the trees of Blackwood had started moving again.