where the forest has teeth

What can presumably be called Halloween comes and goes, and perhaps for a time things are… normal. Or close enough to it, in a haunted, possessed forest where time blends together. And then it’s cold. Frost forms on the windowpanes in the morning and dusts the grass and leaves, and soon enough it begins to snow on and off, gentle as can be. The Trader finally dismisses her turtle summon, and now the tent she keeps feels smaller and perhaps emptier, despite Goldie having been outside the entire time. As time progresses and lapses, there is a persistent aroma of chocolate in the air, intertwined with the crisp chill of late autumn and early winter. Both the Trader and the Shopkeeper keep a pot going at all times, with the thickest, creamiest hot cocoa you could imagine, always served in an almost-too large mug.

One morning, as you go about your day – maybe you’re getting some winter clothing from the general store, or out fishing — the Trader stops you.

“Come here for a moment, please? I’ve developed something for the lot of you. Hopefully it will help.”

She holds out a leather-bound book with blank pages. When you write in it, the writing also appears in the others.

“It’s for communication. Just remember, nothing is private in these, so do be careful. And polite.”

Otherwise, it’s a lovely day. You get the feeling every time you go near the fog that something actively wants you dead, but that’s… probably nothing. It’s not like you have the Golden Glasses anyway — or maybe you do. …Well, you only need one attempt to step through the cracks to know that entering the forest officially means you will be attacked immediately. Try not to die.

It starts out small. Something missing, found in another person’s room. Pinches whenever someone passes by. Something tugging at your hair while another person is behind you. It’s a little suspicious, isn’t it? But the only possible suspect always says it wasn’t them.

More things go missing. Pinches become scratches and bruising grips, gone just as quickly as they came. Hair-pulling becomes painful yanking, and more than once you may feel a harsh shove — especially by stairs or in the inn’s kitchen. Sleep is hard to come by as things get pushed off your shelf all night, or your blanket keeps falling on the floor.

You’re tempted to shout at the person — or people — next to you. Accuse them of pushing your tea onto the floor like a cat, or call them out for hiding your necklace, or slap their hand away from where there’s a scratching at your neck. Perhaps it clicks then that they might be too far away, or that they’re not the culprit. Or perhaps it doesn’t, and you’re suddenly really, really tempted to punch them square in the jaw.

As time passes, the true culprits become a little more visible, until finally you can see little shadow people, flat against the walls and floors until they reach out, laughing at you. And laughing, and laughing. Even as knives fly through the air, even as you fall to the ground, even as bone breaks.

You’re not going to know much peace this month.

Beyond the thick fog that surrounds the Grove, something is watching you. Even going inside doesn’t spare you the feeling, even if the hot chocolates provide comfort. There’s something standing in the distance, visible only out of the corner of your eye but always gone when you turn to look. Something looming behind your reflection, too distant to make out but always there until you turn. And then, it laughs.

Eventually, it shows itself. A grotesque monster built around your worst fears, all merged together. Always watching, sometimes smiling in anticipation. You see it standing outside the window from afar, or following you across the grove but vanishing before you can charge to it yourself. You hear it when you’re trying to go about your day, dealing with awful pranks and the heavy weariness that comes with the lack of sleep. Sometimes it manifests right before you, swinging at you before it vanishes again, leaving you with only your racing heartbeat and whatever injury it may have left.

As time passes, it only gets worse. For however confined the Grove is, it truly feels cramped with these monsters stalking you, chasing you, hunting you. When they’re killed, they rise again from their own shed corpse like a snake molting from its skin, stronger than ever. And they’re coming for you.

You’ve already discovered that fighting them won’t work — it’ll give you a few moments of respite, yes, but they’ll inevitably come back to you. Maybe you can wait it out. Or maybe there’s another way to stop their advance?

cw: immolation, sinkholes

When your eyes open, you’re lying in crisp, blackened grass. The sky is dreary, the world around you is still and silent. Were it not for the ash raining from the sky or the acrid tang of burnt flesh, it might almost feel peaceful. Familiar-feeling memories wash over you — a town burning, the cackling of an unknown beast, the shrill screams of friends and loved ones dying a slow, painful death—

Where did that memory even come from? You’d better shake it off and rise to your feet before the ash buries you, too. It isn’t real… right?

The town you’re in is dilapidated and charred. Something snaps under your feet, and when you look down, a bone lies pressed into the earth, perfectly broken into two neat pieces. You press on, toward the destroyed remains of houses — some missing roofs, some collapsed in on themselves, others still weathering the test of time — to where the trees are vibrant and orange, to where the grass has regrown and the buildings stand tall. You press on… and your foot catches in the mud, a hole opening up beneath your feet and dragging you in. If you’re quick enough, you might be able to escape the collapsing earth before it buries you alive in years of muck and decay. If not… perhaps you’ll be lucky, and someone from the nearby settlement will bail you out.

Hopefully you won’t have to wait long.

Somewhere on your body is an intricate, black mark that doesn’t come off no matter how hard you scrub. Perhaps there are two, or even three, or more. You don’t exactly remember getting these small, medallion-sized tattoos — it’s almost as though you woke up with them. Better make sure no one’s drawing on you in your sleep.

As the day progresses, the effects of these marks become apparent. Suddenly, everything hurts — a dull, throbbing pain as if you’ve been stabbed. Perhaps the pain is quick and sharp, like you stubbed your toe on the inn’s coffee table. Perhaps it slowly burns, like hot coffee accidentally splashed on your lap. No matter what the pain is, you feel it at less of an intensity than you would if you’d actually done these things. Later, you might meet with the person who shares a mark with you, and maybe they’ll tell you — they stubbed their toe, they spilled their coffee, someone randomly stabbed them, how weird is that?

These marks link you and your partner(s) — any pain they feel, you’ll feel, too, albeit at half the intensity they do. If you’re sharing that pain between three people, it’ll be at one third the intensity.

Negative emotions, though? Those, you get at full throttle. If those you share a mark with cry, you’ll cry, too; you feel their rage at being stuck here as though it were your own; you long for home, and you miss a mother that isn’t yours. Fight through your blurring sense of self, friend. Surely you’ll get used to it soon. After all, these will stay on your body for the rest of the month.

A week into October, a skeletal visitor comes rattling into the Grove, wearing a top hat on its bare cranium and a name tag on its ribcage: “Mr. Bone-Jangles”. Mr. Bone-Jangles cannot speak, but he’s very excited to take willing people into the burned town and lead them toward the far north of it, where a small army of fellow skeletons have put up a circus tent. Pumpkin-shaped flags decorate the scorched remnants of a street, and mysterious skull-shaped lights float in the air. Mr. Bone-Jangles joyfully motions to the tent, where a banner placed over the tent-flaps reads “MASKERADE”... you assume this is meant to be “masquerade”, but it would be rude to point out the spelling error. Skeletons don’t have brains.

Before you can even enter the tent, Mr. Bone-Jangles’ employees direct you to a smaller tent set up to the side, demanding with clacks of their jaws in morse code that you put on your costume and mask. Costumes are optional; masks are not. Luckily, all of these are free. The costume tent itself is entirely empty save for one giant mirror which, when gazed into, shows you standing in your outfit of choice. Once you exit the tent, you’ll be wearing that outfit, and the skeletons will hand you a wooden mask in any design you feel suits you, matching or not. Where did your old clothing wind up? Great question! They’ll be teleported back to your bed in a wrinkled heap, but you don’t have to worry about that until the party stops. And speaking of that mask… when you put it on between the party start at 10pm and end at 6am, it won’t come off no matter how hard you pull until 6:01am approximately.

The skeletons insist you don’t try to tug your skin off, though, and instead direct you inside the masquerade tent itself. It’s almost akin to being teleported to another dimension — a grand ballroom is decorated with classic Halloween decorations, a buffet of spooky-themed snacks is laid out on the tables, the music is almost too loud, and a lounge is set up off to the side for those who’d like to rest between dances. If you lack a dance partner, worry not — the skeletons are more than happy to waltz with you. And, if you’re of age, they’ll serve you any liquor you’d like.

Stay too late, though, and the skeletons will kick you out. They’re stronger than they look and aren’t afraid to toss you like a wet rag onto the burnt streets. Once the party ends for the night, you won’t be able to get back into the tent no matter how hard you try, so don’t leave anything behind!

Turns out, the masquerade isn’t just for one night, but for every night for the rest of the month. On the second night of the masquerade and on from there, ghosts appear in droves, gathering at the party and in the burned town for a night out. No matter how hard you try, you can’t get their attention; they’ll merely pass right through you as if you aren’t there.

Some of the ghosts look eerily familiar to you, like people you knew in the past who aren’t here now. It could be your mother, your brother, a close friend, or maybe your old neighbour or coworker. Each is dressed in masquerade attire, each intends only to party until the sun comes up, and at that point, each ghost fades from the world as if dissolving away into nothingness.

They’ll be back the next night, of course. And the next. And the one after that. Until finally, the last day of the month rolls around, and the ghosts aren’t there. If you come to the burned town at 6am, you’ll be greeted by the sight of the skeletons packing up their tents and decorations. And if you stick around until 7…

Mr. Bone-Jangles takes off his top hat and takes a bow, waves one last goodbye, and then him and his skeleton crew take a dive into the sinkhole that was, somehow, underneath the masquerade tent the whole time.

It’s a calm, misty morning. The sun is peaking over the treetops, and the air is chilled, almost like the onset of fall. How long have you been here, now? Days? Weeks? Months? Everything blurs together. But so you persist… just. Not quite yet. The day’s only just waking up and so are you! Whether you like it or not. You see, as you slept, something has crept its way into your room, and as the sun peaks through windows and closed blinds, it’s finally grabbing you and pulling.

As you meet your rude awakening, the intruder is clear to see. Or rather, it’s incredibly unclear. Mist and fog and sickly-looking vines wrap around your legs and up your body as it drags you to the woods, and attacks of all sorts slide off like water on glass. There is no escape. It’s time to play, and the air is unusually, painfully hot.

The fog of the forest grows dark and heavy as you’re pulled along against your will, and as you go something seems… different. Maybe your body seems lighter and off balanced. Maybe certain features are no longer tickling your skin. Maybe the connection to the world around you has been brutally severed — all that can be said is that as you’re eventually spat out to a metal platform, you feel incomplete somehow. Magic doesn’t come when you call. Gear doesn’t activate properly. Whatever happened, you’re a completely ordinary human, and it stings.

You and your fellow denizens of the Grove stand on a seeringly hot metal platform, and the air burns your lungs. Ash and soot float through the air, singeing wherever it lands for a split second. Towering up before you is a volcano that has no right being here — but it is. Platforms and smaller spires and rocks litter your surroundings, and scorch marks are everywhere.

The only consolation is that whatever is about to happen, you at least aren’t doing this in your pyjamas.

Eventually, as sweat builds up and the wind only burns further, a too-familiar childish voice rings out: "It’s playtime! If you win, I’ll show you something REALLY cool. …Oh, but surely I don’t have to explain ‘The Floor is Lava’, right?"

It goes silent, and there’s a loud metal grind of something. The lava beneath the platform begins to rise, and so does the hateful heat.

At least there are multiple ways out. You can attempt to hop across crumbling platforms, mysteriously and magically floating overhead — though they might break after a few footsteps. You can try climbing the burning-hot, stony surface of the surrounding cliffsides, where flows of magma get a bit too close for comfort. You can take the safer-but-risky way of running through the game area’s many mazelike paths, cut into and through the cliffs, but be careful; should the magma rise too high, those pathways will be flooded. No matter what you choose, the goal is to get to the top, out of the volcanic arena and to a designated “safe zone" waiting on an overhang at the volcano's lip. Up there, an invisible barrier prevents victors from climbing back down into the game zone, and up there is where you will wait with your fellow victors if you succeed. It’s air-conditioned, as if you’re still not trapped within a volcano.

As the first of you reaches the top of the rise, a victory fanfare plays from somewhere, but the lava begins to rise faster. Faster and faster, for each person who succeeds — or dies a horrible, fiery death. You’d better hope your success doesn’t come at the cost of someone else’s life.

As soon as there are no players remaining in the game, another chime plays from a still-mysterious location. After a cheerful voice congratulates you on your victory, the fog encircles you again, as it had done earlier in the day. When you next blink, you’re back in the Grove, standing exactly where you were when you were first taken.

Those of you who died, however, will wake up the following morning in your usual sleeping quarters, be it in your bed or outside in the forest. The good news is, you’re hale and healthy despite everything. A voice whispers to you as soon as you reawaken: "Better luck next time!"