Where the Trees Watch – Chapter 25
The Thing Sitting in Ryan’s Chair
Ryan stopped breathing for a moment.
The figure sitting at the center table inside Tower Four looked completely human now. No stretched smile. No pale distorted skin. No obvious wrongness hiding beneath the lantern light.
It was simply him.
The same tired eyes. Same dark hair damp from the rain earlier. Same scar near the chin from a bicycle accident when he was fourteen.
Even the voice sounded natural.
Comfortable.
Ryan Mercer slowly stepped inside the watch room while cold dread crawled through his chest. Behind him, Blackwood stretched endlessly beyond the tower windows beneath drifting fog and distant lantern lights moving through the forest below.
The copy calmly closed the notebook in front of it.
“You should lock the door,” it said quietly. “The others are getting close.”
Ryan didn’t move.
The thing tilted its head slightly.
Then, for the first time since entering Blackwood, Ryan realized something truly horrifying.
The copy wasn’t trying to scare him anymore.
It was trying to replace him completely.
And it was almost finished.
Ryan stared at the notebook lying near the lantern. Handwriting filled dozens of pages across it.
His handwriting.
“What are you?”
The copy smiled faintly.
“A memory.”
Ryan’s pulse quickened.
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“It’s the only answer that matters here.”
Wind brushed softly against the tower walls outside while the record player crackled quietly in the corner. Ryan noticed old photographs covering the watch room now too — hundreds pinned across every wall surrounding the room.
Missing hikers.
Forest rangers.
Campers.
And beside each scratched-out face—
a replacement smiling calmly toward the camera.
The same person copied twice.
One fading.
One remaining.
Ryan slowly understood.
Blackwood didn’t kill people.
It erased them.
The copy watched realization spread across his face.
“Most people fight it too long,” it said softly. “That’s why the forest becomes messy with them.”
Ryan’s stomach tightened.
The mannequins.
The voices.
The wandering figures.
Failed replacements.
The copy stood up slowly from the chair.
And Ryan physically recoiled.
Not because the thing looked monstrous.
Because it moved perfectly now.
Every gesture natural.
Every blink correct.
No visible flaw remained.
It stepped toward the window overlooking Blackwood below where lantern lights drifted slowly through the trees.
“The forest remembers everything that enters it,” the copy whispered. “People think memory belongs to them.” It smiled faintly. “But memory belongs to places too.”
Ryan’s thoughts raced violently while trying to keep control of his fear.
“If you’re me,” he said carefully, “then why am I still here?”
The copy looked toward him again.
And for the first time—
its expression became sad.
“Because you haven’t been forgotten yet.”
Cold silence settled inside the watch room.
Ryan suddenly remembered Claire hesitating earlier when saying his name.
The photographs without him.
The growing uncertainty in everyone’s memory.
Blackwood wasn’t replacing his body first.
It was removing him from people’s minds.
Once nobody remembered him—
the copy would become the only Ryan left.
The thing stepped closer.
“You feel it already, don’t you?”
Ryan hated that he did.
Small pieces slipping.
Certain memories feeling distant suddenly.
The sound of his mother’s voice.
The layout of his apartment.
His own face becoming strangely harder to picture clearly inside his head.
Panic surged through him instantly.
The copy noticed.
And smiled gently.
“You can stop fighting now.”
Then, downstairs beneath the tower—
Claire screamed.