Tom Carlini

Thomas Neil Carlini is the primary protagonist in The Woods. Roughly modeled after Hazel's own experience growing up in Colorado and Texas, Tom grew up in the wilderness in California and, as an adult, had to settle into a more modern, urban lifestyle. Tom is the second son of Nathan and Alice Carlini, and the brother of Jason and Harmony.

## Character biography

Tom was born on September 2, 1981 to Nathan and Alice Carlini in their apartment in Portland, Oregon. He was the second of their three children, with an older brother named Jason and a younger sister named Harmony. The family moved to rural northern California in the Klamanth Mountains in 1982. As a child, all three Carlini children loved the outdoors, and played a game they referred to as Kingdoms, where each would select a portion of the woods surrounding the family's house and wage war against each other, inspired by their love for The Chronicles of Narnia.

When Tom was ten years old in 1992, his sister Harmony disappeared out of the driveway of the family property. Tom aided the police in their search for his sister, and then later searched for her independently with his older brother, Jason. During this independent search, they encountered a monster who chased them back out of the woods, though not before they recovered one of Harmony's light-up sneakers she was wearing when she disappeared. Tom and Jason have long believed this monster to have killed Harmony.

The recovery of the sneaker prompted a refreshed search for Harmony's remains in and around the gully on the property, but no further remains were uncovered.

In the fall of 1998, Tom was accepted to the Kansas City Art Institute to study graphic design and relocated to Kansas City, Missouri. While studying, he met Isabel Lawrence and began dating her. The two were married two years later in 2000, when Tom was 19. The two rented an apartment together in midtown Kansas City, until they bought themselves a home in the Blue Ridge neighborhood of Kansas City in 2002.

In 2001, Tom received the news of his father's passing over the phone. He and Isabel traveled to the Klamanth Mountains to attend Nathan's funeral. During this time, Tom, Isabel, Jason, and Jason's girlfriend Elise stayed in the hunting cabin about a hundred yards from the main house, and were harassed by something that threw rocks at the cabin's walls throughout the night.

Tom and Isabel were both primarily focused on their work for most of their 20s. Tom became an acclaimed designer and started his own firm out of Kansas City, Carlini & Co. Isabel worked as a middle school art teacher. In 2010, Tom and Isabel had their first daughter, Emma Lee Carlini. They had a second daughter in 2014, and named her Natalie Marie "Nat" Carlini, after her late grandfather.

In 2020, with Alice's health failing, Tom and Jason gathered their families and traveled to California to visit her over Mother's Day. They drove her back up to the family property from her assisted living facility in Sacramento, accompanied by her personal physician Samuel.

## Personality

Tom is an artistic person who loves the outdoors has a deep respect for nature. He has used nature as inspiration for much of his creative work over the years, and struggles with living in a more suburban environment. His love of nature is damaged by the disappearance of his sister and death of his father, but he still makes the effort to spend some time in nature every day.

As a child, Tom had an overactive imagination, which follows him into adulthood. Tom is passionate, and even bullheaded to a fault. He often lets his imagination get the best of him, and can be easily frightened. His primary priority in life is caring for his family. Though he is not religious himself, he has a respect for the religious beliefs that both Jason and Alice gain later in life.

## Trivia

* Tom shares his birthday, September 2, with author Hazel Baumgartner, though she was born much later in 1995.