A Small Town

Chapter Twenty-Eight\ Roots

The thing that called itself Teddy had methodically searched the forest...it's forest... in an expanding circle until it was sure that the humans had not simply outpaced it. Then it turned back and searched a grid pattern until it located the entrance to the tunnel.

By that point Bax, Lisa and Sarah had more than an hour head-start but no matter. It would catch them.

It jumped down into the hole and pulled a flashlight out of the pocket of its bib overalls, then ran down the slanting shaft in pursuit.

It had not guessed at the existence of the tunnel but now it allowed itself to 'feel' the root system around it and instantly it could 'see' the winding corridors and straight man-made shafts that zig-zagged underneath almost the entirety of Primacy.

The question of where they were going was of utmost importance to it, but its best guess turned out to be incorrect. It arrived at the wooden door and smashed through as if it were made of paper mache only to find the church empty, save for the cold corpse of the Pastor. Teddy's scream of frustration tore throughout the length and breadth of the immense underground maze echoing madly and sending rats and bats skittering and flapping in terror.

A horrible wet smile full of malice slowly bloomed across the Teddy creatures mangled face as he strode heavily back through the splintered doorway and into the tunnel beneath the church. It raised its arm and grasped the end of a thick root that had curved out of a long jagged crack in the rock wall and sighed heavily.

Its fingers seemed to twitch and then began to change colour. The change ran quickly down its arm as flesh turned to wood, skin to bark and then the thing that had called itself Teddy was gone and in its place stood a man-sized tree joined to the root by a branch with a fist.

This joining was ecstasy to the Teddy-thing. The separation was necessary but painful. The forest was Teddy and he was the forest, a forest like no other in the world. Over one hundred thousand years ago the giant male quaking aspen had been a single tree with its roots spreading out beneath it, but unlike other trees, the aspen did not drop seeds to create new saplings. Instead, from its roots shot up stems that reached the surface to grow up into new trees that were still part of the original. The entire forest in and around Primacy was actually one tree, the oldest and largest living entity on the planet.

Growing and changing over thousands of years like a sleeping giant, the forest was awakened by the LeTourneau families prayers and Teddy was born. It was Agathe's love that freed him from within the trees but still, he was trapped able only to go where the roots of the forest lay.

Agathe's pregnancy offered the solution as he saw the opportunity to meld himself with the child and escape into the world. When the townspeople murdered her and ruined his chance at freedom he took his revenge by imprisoning them within the town just as he was imprisoned.

Now the chance had come again in the form of Lisa Turner and her unborn child, a direct descendant of his beloved Agathe, and Teddy would not be denied.

Racing through the root system of the forest like electrical impulses through a giant brain Teddy searched for the humans and found... nothing. He searched again to no avail and then a root in an inky black section of tunnel seemed to explode and his body burst forth landing wetly on the ground. He writhed in the agony of separation for a moment and then climbed shakily to his feet, a pliable mass of rubbery wood and sap. He waited patiently in the darkness as his form took on the look and feel of his human camouflage once again and then began to run. He had no idea why he couldn't see them but he would search every inch of these tunnels and all of Primacy until he found them.

Authors note - The quaking aspen itself is not fiction. If you are interested here is a link to more info: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)