My Crimson Maple

Have you ever recalled a memory differently from when you remembered it before?
This is a drawing made by 7 year old me, taken from a childhood journal which my mom discovered buried in her so-called “memory box” – and let me tell you, this uncovered some deep and buried memories.
The drawing in question is of me and my best friend at the time. Yeah, I know, being friends with a tree is questionable and most would chalk it up to an imaginary friend, but reading the journal opened the floodgate to those locked-away memories. I remember that tree the same as I always did, but recently the memories of what we did together have started to change, somehow.
I was always a quiet kid, preferring to keep to himself, while the other kids in the neighbourhood would be out playing and having a good time. It never really bothered me though, my toys and crayons were all I needed. I was bullied in school a little, but I never understood why I was bullied for the things I got bullied for. My fiery ginger hair, freckles… I just didn’t really get why the other kids saw those features in the way they did.
While I had a few friends who I seldom met up with, my best friend by far was the maple tree in my backyard. We would chat, sometimes for hours, while I admired her vibrant red and orange, five-pronged leaves.
I say ‘her’ because the voice that spoke to me from within the hole in its trunk was that of a young woman, though she never told me her name – maybe she was too hesitant to tell me, or perhaps she didn’t have one. I never really felt the need to know anyway, we shared a strong enough connection as it was. Still, I gave her a name of my own, Maple.
I remember she would tell me the most beautiful stories my small mind could possibly imagine. They were entrancing, and I would just sit there and listen, all the infantile worries washing away.
She’d ask me how my day went, and I’d tell her.
She’d ask if I wanted to play a game, and I’d agree without hesitation.
And when it started to get dark, and my parents would call me in for bedtime, I never wanted to leave her presence. She was a friend, mother and sister all in one.
My dad would frequently tell me how the tree was blessed, or minor variations of such. He told me that she was a Sugar Maple, not a Red Maple as he and my mother had thought when they first viewed the house; the fact that her strikingly coloured leaves never once fell, not during Fall, not during Winter, was a marvel in and of itself.
She was the most constant of constants in my childhood, and I wouldn’t have changed that for the world.
But sometimes, after she’d been telling me wondrous stories of love, happiness and adventure, she would tell me she didn’t have the energy to tell another, and would ask me to bring her something to eat.
“Why?” I would always ask, “you’re a tree. Other trees don’t eat food!”
In response, she would say,
“because I am not like the other trees. I am special, you know that. How do you think I’m able to have these leaves, all year round, so you can look at me out of your window on cold winter days, and sit in their shade on hot summer afternoons?”
Who was I to question it. She was right, I was grateful for her constant presence, one of my three cornerstones along with my parents. So, without her telling me what to bring, I’d go and fetch fruit, honey, berries, birdseed, you name it, and feed it to her, into the hole in her trunk.
I distinctly remember that after I fed her, she would tell the most beautiful stories of all. So beautiful that without fail, my cheeks would be wet with tears of happiness throughout. It’s too long ago to remember the stories in much detail, though. I wish I could have, at least, before those memories started to change.
I never knew why, but the town grew a subdued resentment for me and my family over time. Kids at school would avoid me, and neighbours would shun any attempt from my parents to make conversation. It hurt me, deep inside, but Maple always had a way to make all of it just… go away.
That’s why when my parents told me we were moving house, I wailed and cried, tears of sorrow at the notion of never again being able to see my best friend in the whole wide world. I doubted the new owners would let me go and talk to the tree in their garden.
Even then, she soothed my soul, saying “don’t worry Joey, we will see each other again. Don’t be sad because we’re parting, be happy because we met!” But, I could tell she felt the same way, to some extent, her voice tinged with lament.
I moved on after a while. I never forgot about her, but I learned to live in her stead.
But, recently, after reviving those joyous memories, I noticed that they’d… started to change. Not in any significant way, not at first. I would think back to certain days I could still recall in sufficient detail, but each time would be slightly different.
Instead of apples, I’d bring her red berries.
Instead of honey, I’d bring her milk.
It’s such a bizarre feeling, recalling a memory that you know was different the last time you thought about it, over and over again.
After some months, the changes had become much more significant. Sometimes I’d remember having a friend over, who’d sit with me while we listened to her tales, and other times I recall her talking to forest critters who climbed on her elegant branches and circled around her trunk in excitement.
The differences made me start to question my own mind, if I could even trust my memories at all… if the voice in the tree had even existed in the first place.
This feeling never really left me, and it reached a point where it interfered with my daily life, phasing out in the middle of conversations, forgetting grocery items and things I needed to do during the day.
So, I decided I would drive back to my childhood home in hopes to reconcile my memories, using the three day holiday I’d reserved from work. My beat-up Chevy was as reliable as always during the 8 hour drive to reunite with my long-lost friend – or to instead learn that it was indeed my imagination.
My hopes were dampened when I finally passed the town’s welcome sign, age made apparent by the partial covering of green stains and cracked paint. The place wasn’t abandoned, but it may as well have been. Many houses I passed appeared to be derelict, unused for years, birthing a sombre dread in my gut.
Thank the stars for satnav, I honestly don’t think I would’ve been able to find my old house with how unrecognisable the town had become. But I made it without a wrong turn, and immediately recognised my street halfway through turning onto it.
The sight of my abandoned childhood home stirred an emotion in me I didn’t know existed. Rotten woodwork framed its features, and its dirtied window panels gave me the impression of a dead body, eyes glazed over. No longer could I see into the heart of what I once knew, standing in front of this overgrown grave of memories passed.
The door was locked tight, as was the side-door to the garden. This dilemma was easily solved by a bit of strained climbing, though. I walked down the house-side alley with morbid anticipation of what I would see when I emerged into the yard.
Already I could see the terrible state of it, brambles and nettles exploding from the earth and swallowing up those plants unfortunate enough to be in their way.
I came round the corner and was temporarily relieved upon not seeing the withered husk I’d expected. The tree was still alive, but it looked tired, old… starved. The sight of its frail branches and its beige and yellow leaves tainted those childhood memories with a bitter sorrow.
Yet, despite its wizened state, I couldn’t help but still admire its beauty.
I worked my way around the hostile thorns and spiteful nettles, and was surprised to emerge into a relatively clear area around the maple. I took out my phone and snapped a picture of it in its entirety, then put it away and made my way over.
To my disappointment, nothing I did helped me to correct my ever-changing memories. I stared up at the leaves, felt the bark, smelled the aura… nothing. Nothing could bring my mind to settle on what really happened.
Finding myself standing at its front, I was about to speak in hopes it would have some effect, but before a syllable could escape my lips, something shot out of the gaping hole and wrapped around my body.
I lost balance and fell hard on my back, before I felt the grass beneath start to slide away from me, and I was dragged up and into the tree. I was yanked violently into the hollow, and my forehead smacked the upper rim with such force that I immediately felt warm blood trickle down my face.
Weightlessness was my existence for a fleeting period, until my fall was broken by a hard, bumpy surface. The impact winded me, and pain flared up in my lower back.
I lay there for a moment, struggling to regain control of my lungs and gritting my teeth from the zaps of pain rattling my spine. I was definitely confused from the head trauma, but I wasn’t hallucinating. Above me was a dome composed of gnarled roots with a small hole at its very top, where light leaked through and provided a dim illumination.
I pushed myself up once, then dropped back down, my body still recovering. My second attempt was a success though, and I scrambled to find my phone. Luckily, it was still in my pocket, but the screen had splintered apart in one corner so that the electronics were exposed. I fumbled with it clumsily until I opened the toolbar and found the flashlight. I switched it on, and looked up at my surroundings.
I almost dropped the phone and cracked it even further when a dry skull stared back at me, nestled on top of a heap of bones. I stumbled backward, only to land ass-first in yet another totem of remains.
I couldn’t move. Utterly paralysed in the most mind-numbing fear I had ever experienced. The skull that gazed vacantly down at me was a human skull. A small, mottled, human skull.
It goes without saying I purged my stomach after absorbing the situation. I looked around frantically, for something that could help me get out of this hellhole, but all I saw were twisted roots, coiling and intertwining up the dome-shaped chamber. I’d say it was about 30 feet at least, and considering how the walls arched inward, there was no way I could climb up and into the opening at the top, especially in my current state.
The sound of something sliding jolted me out of my investigation and I froze up. It took some time to determine which direction the noise came from, but it was quick to once again make its presence known. I turned around to find myself staring into one of a few dark tunnels which grew away from the base of the chamber, like great, hollow roots.
I heard it again, closer, followed by a soft thump, like something had come to rest.
“J- Jo… ey?”
My eyes widened in terrified recognition.
Unmistakeable. It was her.
My childhood friend, my muse, my cross-species sister. She was real.
But she sounded weak. Frail, like the shaky voice of an elderly woman, yet still sounding young at the same time. She spoke again.
“I- I’m sorry… I thought you were someone here to hurt me. I never thought you’d come back.”
Her voice broke with those last words, a sadness that begot joy. Still, I remained silent, completely overwhelmed with emotions. Stuttered consonants and vowels came out of my mouth as I struggled for the words to address her.
“You- I- I didn’t know if you were real. I, uh… I’m sorry. My memory’s been cloudy lately.”
“That’s okay Joey. I’m just glad you’re here, I’m- I’m so happy to see you!”
I paused for a moment, reminding myself of the fact I had fallen into a literal boneyard. Clarity struck me and I realised the small opening above must have led to the hollow tree trunk. My emotions were ping-ponging between abject horror and deep-rooted comfort.
“Me too, yeah, I… what are all- all these bones, Maple?”
“Don’t worry about them, Joey. They are all my friends. What matters now is that we are together once more, and no one will ever bring us apart, never, ever again!”
I inhaled sharply at that, and held that breath for longer than necessary.
“Maple, wh- what do you mean? You’re gonna help me leave, right?”
Silence entailed my question. A long and thoughtful silence. I wasn’t even sure if she was there anymore, until her shuddered breaths pierced through the darkness, and she said,
“I don’t know how to do that. I’m sorry.”
That cold feeling of adrenaline travelled from my scalp to my toes in that moment. Maple had essentially sealed my fate, because of a simple mistake. All because I couldn’t speak fast enough above the ground.
I didn’t reply, so I just sat there instead, trying to acclimatise myself to the countless remains who I shared the room with, smelling like the remnants of old, dusty death; how I imagined a centuries-old tomb would smell when it is inevitably reopened. Maple shared my feeling and held her tongue as well.
For what must have been a day, I didn’t speak once. The memories continued to crumble, revealing the truth underneath. Maple never asked me to bring the foods I remember bringing her, no, she only asked that I invited friends over, so she could spread her stories of wisdom and wonder. But… I still couldn’t envision the whole truth. That was yet to come.
After another day or two, I’m not really sure since my phone had long since died, the groaning of my stomach grew loud enough to make me jump. Maple must have heard too, because, wordlessly, a thin, twig-like structure emerged from between the roots and moved closer to me. At first, I twisted my head away, not trusting this wooden snake in front of me. But it stopped, and remained motionless, waiting for me to do something.
“Drink, Joey.”
And so I did. What other choice did I have? I could’ve tried eating the fibrous bark, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t sit so well with Maple. I brought my lips to the straw-like twig and began to suckle.
The taste… god, I’d have rather gnawed off the dried remains of skin and flesh left on the bones down there, but each and every one was stripped perfectly clean. It tasted bitter, and it stuck to the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat. A revolting cocktail that tasted like turpentine, with a strong coppery flavour mixed in.
“Don’t you worry, little Joey. I’ll take care of you as long as I live.”
She never told me any more stories. Perhaps she simply didn’t have the energy, given that she was sharing some vital part of her with me, so that I wouldn’t starve or die of dehydration.
When it came time to relieve myself, I wasn’t really sure what to do. I mean, I was inside Maple, so I didn’t really feel comfortable at first. She didn’t seem to mind when I took a piss though, seeing how quickly the liquid got absorbed by the roots.
The only thing she asked was that if I needed a crap, to do it at the mouth of one of the root tunnels. I complied, but was a little shocked to see an appendage whip out from the darkness and steal away the steaming hot pile, followed by a disgusting squishing sound. That’s how it went every time, so I got used to it after a while. She was too fast for me to make out many details, but the only way I can describe the things that sprung out of the darkness is like the dry and torn shed skin of a snake.
Other than the bone-cairns and roots, there wasn’t much else to look at. There were some boulder-sized rocks that emerged slightly from underneath the floor, and some other smaller loose stones, but that was about it.
After steeling myself, I explored the oversized stacks of remains, seeing if I could find anything else other than dry, hollow bones. There were some scraps of old clothing, unsurprisingly, and a couple of old possessions which had certainly not withstood the test of time, including a worn leather satchel, fragments of oxidised jewellery and what appeared to be a weathered pamphlet, the words and pictures of which had long since faded.
Feeling disheartened at the lack of, well, anything useful whatsoever, I saw a small, tube-like object glint from somewhere underneath tangled femurs and ribs. I reached in with a grimace and pulled it out, to see it was an old ballpoint pen. One that looked fancy but was probably cheap.
That wasn’t what drew me in about this pen, though. There was a paper sticker wrapped around it, on which was written in nigh-indiscernible ink:
Jamie Kilpe
Some letters were gone, but I remembered that name well enough to understand… Jamie was one of my few real friends back then, helping me with homework when I couldn’t understand the questions, among other things.
I didn’t bother thinking it over, I knew as soon as I saw that name. I knew that somewhere, under these cursed piles, laid my friend. Missing and despaired over, then forgotten. The whole time, he was under the grass of my yard, right beneath where Maple and I talked with such joy and compassion.
And with the physical discovery, came the cognitive. It came back to me so clearly, it was as if that was how I’d always remembered it. Visions of Jamie’s little body, hoisted up into the air, bones being stripped of flesh and blood by countless branch-like appendages. Marrow, scraped out from the insides of his bones, all while he was alive. Not even a droplet remained when Maple was finished, every last one sucked up into those little straws.
Fear evolved into horrified anger, and I shouted,
“What the FUCK Maple? You’re a fucking MONSTER! How could you do those things!?! What did you do to my memory?”
She took a moment to respond, and said,
“Joey! No curse words please! That wasn’t very nice.”
“YOU ATE MY FRIEND YOU-”
“Please, listen, I must do these things so I can live. They become a part of me. In this way, they never truly die, because I will always remember them and cherish what they gave to me. I only gave you those memories to protect you. ”
I already felt the churning in my stomach as she said that, and yet again a steaming jet of vomit erupted from my throat. That’s why it had tasted coppery, masked by the bitter sap.
“Y- you, no, hah, you… you made me eat what’s left of all these people?”
“As well as my own blood, yes. I have nothing else to give you, Joey. Please understand I am no evil being. To feed you is to weaken myself, and shorten my life.”
I didn’t bother to reply, and simply collapsed in a shaky mess of snot and tears. Disgust, hatred, utter misery.
All my life consisted of now, would be drinking a vile mixture of blood, flesh and sap, fuelling a miserable existence motivated purely by that loathsome survival instinct.
I rarely spoke with Maple after that, though she sometimes made attempts. I couldn’t bear to even think about her. Without anything else to do, I took up doing the only thing I could to keep myself from going completely insane: carving.
I used a small rock to smash and splinter the old bones on top of a boulder in the floor, then scraped them against the stone to sand and sharpen them. I never really thought I had the hand or eye for craftmanship, but with nothing else to do, I compulsively carved, shaped and built various different tools and objects.
I used fibrous, strand-like roots to bind them together, or to wrap around handles for an easier grip. I also used the sap fluid as glue, siphoning it into a broken cranium and allowing it to evaporate and become thicker and stickier.
I turned a rib into a rudimentary knife, winding the fibres around its handle and sharpening it on the boulder. I used a small animal bone and a canine from what seemed to be the skull of a domestic cat, scraping out a divet and using the sap to glue the tooth inside, to make a smaller, scalpel-like blade.
With these, I built sculptures.
A pelvic bone turned into a butterfly, sporting finely carved patterns.
Finger bones glued together as antlers, driven into the top of a skull, with teeth glued into its vacant eye sockets.
Yet another skull, that of a child with an enlarged cranium, binding together vertebrae and attaching them to its underside to birth an octopus.
Even attempted scrimshaw to an extent, though with bone instead of ivory, polishing shoulder blades with rags that were once clothes and pushing the sap into the fine etchings, scraping any away that dried on the surface. I’d carve my memories, in hopes it would prevent me losing them as the days, weeks, and months went by.
As time passed, Maple seemed less and less able to just keep quiet, and her kind, loving demeanour faded too. Her voice, from the dark, would say things like,
“Why did you have to leave me, Joseph? Did you want me to wither away?”
or,
“I’m hungry… so, so hungry... it hurts.”
All the while her voice coming closer, louder, deeper.
I was so scared. The one who I’d thought to be inseparable from as a kid had morphed into a depraved monster who couldn’t or wouldn’t even acknowledge the things they’d done.
That is until one day, after likely months, maybe a year – time turned to a fluid in that place – I heard the most peculiar sounds. Something other than the coarse scraping of bone on rock, or Maple’s sickly, wasting voice. It came from somewhere above me, loud crashes and thuds, rumbling and crunching.
I had no idea what was going on, but simply hearing something else brought a hope I never thought was again possible. My senses heightened and adrenaline pumped through my muscles.
Maybe Maple could sense this, I don’t know, but she started sobbing then. Pained, subdued cries and hics which occasionally gave way to less-than-human noises.
“I love you Joey. Please don’t leave, please, please, I don’t want to die here all alone, please Joey…”
Still, I ignored her and set my ears to maximum awareness. There was definitely something going on above, but I couldn’t make out anything distinct.
And then, I heard a whirring, no, buzzing, much louder than the rest. I smelled something vaguely crude and oily, before the sound suddenly grew much louder, and clouds of sawdust poured down onto my head.
At the same time, I heard Maple – no, I wouldn’t have referred to her as that anymore, because the most unholy shriek echoed throughout the dark tunnels around me, screams of anguished pain and desperate pleas. Even in imitation, a human voice box couldn’t produce those sounds.
The voice made me realise what I had to do, and I shouted at the top of my lungs,
“HELP! HELP ME! I’M DOWN HERE, FUCK, PLEASE HELP ME!!”
Light poured in from the top of the chamber as a loud splintering vibrated throughout the roots, followed by a booming thud from above. The voice spat, screamed and howled unrelentingly, as I stared up through the hole above. Sawdust coated my eyeballs, but I didn’t care, because peering down at me from above were the helmeted heads of two men.
“Holy shi- don’t worry son, we’re gonna get you out of there! Mack, go get a rope. Yeah, a rope! GO!”
Mack was quick to return, and they dropped the length of rope down into the chamber. No hesitation, I wrapped my fingers tightly around it, and they began to hoist me up. It was then that the voice, barely maintaining the last resemblance of Maple, cried its last words.
“Y- you’re leaving me again? Why? I thought you loved me, I thought you cared, no, no, please, don’t leave me all alone! Not again!”
Halfway up, a twisted root shot out from the wall nearest me and coiled tightly around my right leg. I pulled desperately but it wouldn’t budge. I kept yanking, it felt like my hip would dislocate but I kept going.
My movements revealed to me that something was moving around in my pocket. My hand shot in and pulled out… my bone knife. Oh, my bone knife. With animalistic ferocity I slashed and sawed away at my wooden constrictor. My muscles burned, but I didn’t care.
With a roar I severed the root entirely, and it flopped back down into the pit below. I felt myself rising, up and up, like I was finally going to heaven, and the blinding light that greeted me almost made me think as such.
On my way out, I witnessed the chamber shrivel and rot away, dirt pouring in and filling the chamber like a tipped hourglass. The appendages of that awful thing finally started to reveal themselves, shedding the cloak of dark, but I didn’t want to know. I never want to know. All I saw was shredded, translucent skin, and organic, jutting spikes, leaking an orange fluid from where they sprung.
My retinas burned, and it took a good minute or two for them to adjust and allow me to see anything other than dazzling whiteness. I made out vague silhouettes above, crowding around me, and the only other thing I can recall are the words, “burn it, burn it, burn it”, unaware they were my own. Then, as the adrenaline lost its course, I blacked out from near total exhaustion.
After what I later came to learn was a full 24 hours, my crusty eyelids slowly parted and the sleep fell away as dust. My mom was sitting in an armchair next to my hospital bed, and exploded in tears of relief and happiness when she saw me awake. My dad was on a business trip but I was told he had dropped everything to fly back and see me.
Apparently, I had been missing for 11 months, and since I hadn’t told anyone of my plans to revisit my childhood home, there wasn’t much of anything for the police to go on. I’d only been found because the neighbourhood was commissioned to be torn down to make way for a new development, which the dying sugar maple would have obstructed.
I was interviewed, and I told the truth for the most part, but I never told them about Maple, or the true nature of that tree. I said they’d find the skeletal remains of dozens of people and animals buried under the garden, but they didn’t end up finding anything at all. The only evidence would have been my bone knife, which I had dropped on my way out.
Coming up empty-handed, they brushed off my insistence as psychosis or delirium as a result of being trapped down there, isolated for so long. Maybe the bones are still there, just buried too deep. Or, maybe… no, I don’t want to consider that. She’s gone. I watched her die.
But, just in case, if you ever come to learn of a red-leafed tree which never loses a single leaf – stay well away from it. Cut it down and burn it, regardless of property laws.
And don’t ever allow yourself to be befriended by it.
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Category:Nature