[The Forest Series, Book 3] Part 24 - Metamorphosis

This currently untitled book is the the third and final installment in the Forest trilogy, the first book of which you can read for free here.

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Part One: Read Here
Previous Part: Read Here

##Part Twenty-Four

Sean-Michael Kylesworth floats in a steel and glass canister full of bubbling light-green liquid. Janet approaches. Other pods dot the path ahead, shining like lanterns in the darkness. Sean-Michael’s eyes are open. Like her, his clothes have been traded for a vaguely blueish hospital gown. His mouth hangs open. His eyes dart and roll. Convulsions ripple through his scrawny body. Bubbles rise in lazy streams through the gelatinous green liquid.

“That’s where you’d be,” says the first scientist. “Don’t worry. He’s perfectly safe. The liquid oxygenates his lungs.”

“How long will he be in there?”

“However long it takes,” says the second one.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” says Janet.

“Knock yourself out,” says the third.

When she takes the lighter and cigarettes from the crude pocket of her hospital gown, her fingers brush Mikey’s ash-vial. It takes her quaking fingers a few tries. The ignited tip turns yellow in the green light.

They proceed down the walk, passing more pods, some empty, others populated by fellow recruits or people Janet doesn’t recognize.

“It’s a psychoactive stimulant gel,” says the first scientist.

“That means they’re hallucinating,” says the second.

Katelyn looks younger with the muscles in her face all slack. Her glasses lie on a table beside her pod.

“Do you know what they see?” says Janet. She blows smoke into the darkness.

“Different for everyone,” says the third scientist.

The forest is a throbbing presence in the back of Janet’s skull. Whenever its attention shifts to her, she feels the gaze like sunlight returning after the passage of a cloud. That’s what its attention feels like: raw all-encompassing heat.

“I thought you needed an earsquid to talk to the forest,” says Janet. “Why can I hear it?”

“You’re bathed in it, here,” says the second scientist. “It’s like you’re standing in its mouth.”

They leave the final pod behind and traverse the darkness for a while. In another vision-flash, Janet sees that they’re approaching a citadel of roots, a place where the long-legged striders converge. An electric tang intensifies, crackling along the molecules of the unmoving air. The aroma of fresh-fallen rain becomes overwhelming. Beneath their feet, the moss stands on end, waving like windswept grain.

“We won’t deceive you,” says the first scientist.

“The next part is going to hurt,” says the second.

The green path ends at a black cave mouth. Except it’s not really a cave; it’s an aperture into a mass of grown-together roots. No lights inside. The scientists stop ten feet short.

“Good luck,” says the third scientist.

Janet drops her cigarette and rubs it out with her heel. The moss squeaks and recoils. Cool air rushes out of the root-cave. Clutching Mikey’s ashes in her pocket, Janet steps inside.

She feels her way through the darkness for a long time. The path slopes downward, winding, with walls that drip moisture and an uneven ceiling so low that she occasionally has to crawl to progress. Many voices assail her. The place is full of ghosts. They come fading out of the walls, imploring her to stop, to turn back. She keeps going.

Why? Why?

It grows warmer. Earlier she shivered. Now, as the rugged walls close in, sweat begins to pour. She holds Mikey’s ashes out in front of her and crawls. Worms her way through a space so narrow that she wonders if she took a wrong turn. The narrowness itself is poison. She can barely breathe. Her skin scrapes on the rough bark. Her knees cry out. And then, at the tightest point, when she can neither progress nor retreat, can’t so much as pull her arm back, the world around her sighs, and the walls envelop her.

SLEEP, commands the forest, and as the tendrils plunge into her spinal column and the back of her skull, a crackling lightning-storm of all-consuming pain, she obeys.

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