The Maple Tree
The Old Maple bark chipped away, exposing more of the rotten skull and torso that protruded from it's core. Officer Frenge heaved his lunch onto the forest below the ladder he was balancing on. He glanced back at Detective Moore.
"Don't we have someone who's more qualified to do this shit? It smells fucking disgusting."
Det. Moore flicked his cigarette away into the cool October morning.
"Who? Tell me who that might be; and I'll call them. Who the fuck is qualified to cut a body out of a frozen, living, tree? How it even got in there is the bigger problem."
Frenge groaned and picked up his claw hammer again. Starting to chip away at the wooden cocoon. A green puss oozed like sap from the wound and smelt more of death than the corpse within.
He gagged.
"It doesn't smell that bad, it's the rain."
Moore put out another cigarette with his now muddied black boot reached into his grey trench coat's inner pocket and produced another, lit and continued.
"The air? It's wet. Holds scent better; my guess is that the smells just being amplified. Adds to the morbid state of things though."
The cold downpour had sarted the night prior and with it came a saturated set of flooded backroads and grey skies that blanketed an already cold month.
Frenge heaved once more and threw his hat to his mouth to block the onslaught of odor but instead projected his own bile into it making a mess on his shirt.
"Well get up here and say that because I'm fucking done with this shit."
__
The call to Detective Robert Michael Moore's office came in around 4am. The farmers seventeen year old son Eli and his friend were hiking up to a game trail. With it being hunting season and the town of Ripley being somewhat of a rural collage of farms and dirt roads, most of the teens partook in hunting season.
According to the initial call. The boys had stopped to drink some coffee from Eli's thermos and smelt what they assumed was a deer carcus. Assuming a poacher let an animal die on his dad's land and just took the antlers they followed the smell where they had stumbled upon the decayed remains of a corpse.
The call said nothing about the tree. Most likely the boys thought they would've been hung up on if they'd given all the details because the situation was in fact extraordinary.
It took an additional two days to retrieve the body.
With luck on their side however the week grew even colder breaking record temperatures so the fear of additional decay (and any potential evidence) was minimized. The body was being stored in the basement of Sister Marianne's an old hospital that had been put of service for 3 years but was still used for cadaver research and surgical training by the nearby medical students from West Corning University.
__
"You're serious about filing this report huh?"
Sheriff Phillips Andrews stared at the paper on his desk utterly perplexed.
Moore leaned back in his seat.
"Why would I? It's just like it says. A body was found inside that farmer's tree. The tree literally grew around it. Now I'm calling in a botanist from Chicago for an explanation on that piece of information but from what your counties coroner says that body? The guys only been dead maybe a month."
Andrews groaned, "I know you guys with the state police like telling it like it is but the people in my town. Well they're simple. I can't just file this shit. The herald'll have a fucking field day as soon as it hits public records."
"Well tough shit Phil, it's what happened and im sorry if that'll interfere with next year's election. Look at the bright side though."
Moore stood and stepped to leave, lighting a cigarette and exhaling.
"In this Podunk town, nobody will be running against you anyway."
Andrews scowled, "you think that shit's funny?"
Moore checked his phone and read the text to himself
Storms getting worse. Better come down here and see what this bodies doing before the roads are ice.
Bodies are giving me the freaks anyway.
-Frenge
He turned to his back to Andrews and walked out of the office. With a quick remark.
"No Phil, it's not funny. It's job security."
__
The hospital was eerily quiet a muffled hum could be heard with the sleet blanketing the roof outside. The windows were a flat grey. The parking lot disappeared into the vast nothingness outside.
Moore turned from the window and clicked the elevator button and waited for his ride to the basement.
Chdcking his pocket he groaned at the broken lone Marlboro in his pack.
"Jesus its like I'm in a John Carpenter film."
The elevator doors hummed to life and separated welcoming its last and second passenger of the day. First being Frenge.
__
Moore stepped out of the elevator and into the hall that led to the makeshift morgue. The white tiled floors smudged with dust left little in the way of imagination if tracking someone. A lone set of footprints led down tge hall and stopped abruptly at the edge of a darkness. Moore looked up at the dead flourescent lights and groaned.
"I hate hospitals.."
As he made his way down the hall and through the doors he was met with a foul odor. Not unfamiliar to him. Frenge was dry heaving in the wash sink to the right of the body.
After a few moments the deputy wiped the remnants of beef jerky and cheddar fries on his sleeve and turned to address Moore whom he'd heard enter the sway doors.
"Hey man, uhm I'm glad you came."
Moore groaned, "have you been upstairs? There's a white out; we should leave before that shit elevator decides to clock out."
Frenge waved him off.
"St. Marianne's has a back up generator."
Moore removed his coat and placed it at a cracked leather desk chair.
"I didn't think the town could afford something that standard to be honest."
"Yeah well, we got one about 10 years ago. Maintenance still keeps it operational for the students that pass through. Ya know? Power goes out we just wait 90 seconds and boom, got us our way out."
The conversation faded out when the mound underneath the white sheet in the center of the room gurgled and a piece of old maple and infection dropped onto the floor with a sloppy smash.
Moore reached for his holster instinctively.
"What the fuck was that?!"
Frenge put his sleeve to his mouth and walked to the side of the sheet.
"That's what I called you down here for. This guy? Ive been watching him all day with the coroner ya know? Well we couldn't get him out of all that tree. Roots and bark grown all up n around his limbs and into his mouth and eye sockets and shit. Coroner did three runs on this guy; and everytime he'd find something new."
"What do you mean something new? Like new evidence?"
Frenge shook his head and gripped the sheet.
He leaned into the light, "new organs and shit Moore. Guy didn't have a tongue, doc removed a root from his mouth right? On the second exam the tongue was there."
Moore cocked an eyebrow.
"You sure he didn't just miss it?"
Frenge frowned.
"Yeah see, I thought that at first. Until it kept happening.. Guy was missing two fingers, clean off. I know that because I'm the one that knicked em with my hammer and broke em away during the extraction."
Frenge nodded to an examination table with a few fingers, toes and pieces of wood on a blue sheet to the left of the room and continued.
"But Moore... They're fucking back. Tongue, fingers, toes, wood; dude's got himself a cataract eye even."
Frenge ripped the sheet aside and exposed the corpse. Only looking days old now instead of months. Hair had began to spot around the scalp and pus oozed from the opened jaw. Living roots that previously didn't exist wrapped the now exposed legs of the body and bark that was previously removed covered what was once decayed-open areas of exposed muscle.
Moore slid a piece of gum into his mouth as another piece of old bark slid to the floor. Frenge heaved and ran back to the sink.
"Doesn't help with the smell does it?"
Moore leaned in and examined the man's eye. He stared intently into the milky white nothingness that presented itself.
"Who were you.."
A low rumble from above the basement started to grow louder.
As he gazed deeper into the lifeless sockets, his peripheral caught movement by the body's chest.
Frenge gasped.
"Did that Fucker just take a breath?"
The lights slammed off.
__
"90 seconds and boom, Got our way out. Isn't that what you told me?"
Frenge repeatedly tapped the elevator's call button.
"Well fuck me, that's what they told me when it was put in alright?"
The rumble from above the elevator shaft gave life once again.
More reached for his inner coat pocket to retrieve his broken Marlboro. When he remembered he wasn't wearing it and had left it on the cracked leather desk chair in the exam room.
With a sigh he looked down the dead black hallway toward where the sway doors would be if there was a light source. Producing his phone, the detective switched on it's flashlight and started back toward the exam room.
"H-hey where the fuck are you going?!"
Moore waved Frenge's nervous question off.
"Be right back, just hold the elevator when the power kicks on."
Frenge yelled back to him.
"Yeah I don't think that shits happening, you can stay down here with the creepy dead dude in the dark."
Moore stopped at the sway doors and answered Frenge to put his mind at ease.
"He didn't breathe Frenge, probably some kind of plant growth or some shit in his abdomen. We've got a botanist coming in a couple of days to sort all of this out."
A moment of silence followed before Frenge replied.
"Is that some sort of priest or somethin? Because that thing needs a fuckin priest."
Moore pushed the sway doors wide and strolled through.
"No dumbass its a fucking plant expert."
As the doors slammed to a stop behind him the emergency power kicked on as well as the light above the examination table. Moore gasped when he saw the empty table before him.
He pulled his firearm and kicked the sway doors wide open screaming back to the deputy.
"Frenge get in the fucking elevator and lock this place down now! The fucking bodies go-"
The elevator doors opened with a soft "Bing" and the light exposed the horrific scene. Holding Frenge by the open jaw was the corpse. More tree than man. Long spindly winding roots wrapped around each other from the floor to the things waste, up it's spine and plunged through rotten back muscle and launched from the chest upward and around the neck; all the while glistening with the foul pus and infected skim that coated the being. It stood nearly 9 feet tall. Almost hitting the 10ft ceiling of the hall. Frenge couldn't move. He gurgled and reached for his gun. He managed to put a finger on the holster but as he did the being ripped his arm clean off and slammed his body to the ground repetitively; cracking the tile and killing him instantly.
Moore screamed and unloaded his clip as he approached the monster before him.
"Fuck you mother Fucker!"
As he came within feet he reached for another clip when the beast snatches him by his throat and slammed him into the wall next to the elevator door opening. Shattering his ribs.
Moore began to cough up blood and struggle, feeling the bone saw into his perferrated lung. With low gurgle he asked the abomination before him.
"What the fuck.. Are.. You?"
The corpse replied
"God"
And as the elevator doors started to close moore was thrown through them just in time, where he passed out immediately upon impact. The Doors shut with a soft "Bing"..
__
"Are you sure you wanna file this?"
Sheriff Andrews looked over the hastily written and vague report of the corpse found in the Ripley farmland.
"Yes, its what happened right?"
Andrews cocked an eyebrow.
"If you do this, nobody will ever understand what happened here."
Moore coughed and the nurse entered the room to introduce more painkillers to his IV.
"That's what you wanted right?"
Andrews leaned back in his visitors chair.
"I didnt come all the way to Chicago to ask about the report, I want to know what happened to my deputy Det. Moore"
Moore reached for the trench coat pocket on the table next to his bed where he used to keep his cigarettes and produced a necklace with a Y shaped twig and put it around his neck. He could feel it almost embrace his skin as it laid on his chest.
"Phil I don't know where Frenge is, I didn't make it to the hospital before the storm. When I finally did hear something back Frenge and that body was gone."
Andrews nodded and stood, as he reached the door he apologized.
"Sorry Moore; just worried bout him. Known him since he was a boy."
Moore clasped his necklace and smiled.
"Dont worry Phil, I'm sure God's by his side wherever he is."
Weekly Power Status
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-- Power
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