The Marked Ones

A Cedar Heights story

The chainsaw's scream died, and in the sudden silence, Wes knew the forest listening.

"Hear that?" he asked.

His crew exchanged uneasy glances. No one spoke. Thirty yards deep into the western expansion of the Cedar Heights logging operation, they stood in a loose circle, surrounded by trees older than America itself. Dappled light filtered through the dense canopy, casting strange patterns on the forest floor.

"Hear what?" Donny asked, though his white-knuckled grip on his chainsaw betrayed him.

"Exactly," said Wes. "Nothing."

For twenty years, Wes Holcomb worked these woods. He knew every bird call, every rustle of undergrowth, the particular way wind sounded through different species of trees. But here, in this ancient stand they breached yesterday, the natural symphony had ceased.

---

Cedar Heights had always been a logging town. Four generations of families carved their living from the forest. The sawmill employed half the town; the other half worked auxiliary businesses. When the recession hit and timber prices plummeted, town council approved the controversial expansion into the western old-growth; a section locals called the Dark Heart.

People in town talked about the Dark Heart in hushed tones. They said the trees grew from soil soaked in blood. They whispered about native tribes who'd refused to enter. Settler children who wandered in and never wandered out.

Wes, a third-generation logger, had dismissed these stories his entire life. Now, standing in the strange, oppressive silence, he wasn't so certain.

---

"Mark that one," Wes pointed to a towering Douglas fir. Its trunk wider than a truck. "We'll start there tomorrow."

Donny nodded and reached for the can of blue spray paint. The forest held its breath as he approached the ancient tree, paint can extended. The moment the blue paint touched the bark, a sound rippled through the woods. Not quite a moan. Not quite a whisper.

"Jesus," Donny stumbled backward. "You all heard that, right?"

No one replied.

That night, Donny developed a fever. By morning, blue veins stood out starkly against his pallid skin, tracing patterns like tree branches across his chest and neck.

---

Three more crew members fell ill that week. Each had marked trees in the Dark Heart. Each developed the same branching blue veins. Same fevered mutterings about roots that whispered and trees that watched.

The local doctor was baffled. "I've never seen anything like it," she told Wes. His voice low so Donny's wife couldn't hear from the waiting room. "It's like their blood is... changing."

Donny died on Friday. His blue veins spiraled to his eyes, turning the whites a deep indigo. Work in the western expansion ground to a halt. The county medical examiner was called. Environmental inspectors were dispatched to test for toxins.

---

"It's watching us," Lisa Harper, the town's newest environmental scientist, told Wes as they stood at the edge of the Dark Heart. A week had passed since they'd stopped cutting. Two more loggers died. Their skin marbled blue. "This forest... it's not just old. It's something else."

"Forests don't watch people," Wes said. His voice lacked conviction.

"Don't they?" Lisa's eyes were fixed on the shadowy spaces between trees. "The oldest organisms on Earth are forest systems. Thousands of years of growth, all connected underground by mycorrhizal networks. Who's to say what kind of consciousness emerges from something that ancient?"

That night, Wes dreamed of roots creeping into his bedroom. They curled around his ankles & pulled him into soil that smelled of copper.

---

Mayor Gertrude Fleming called an emergency town meeting. The high school gymnasium was packed. The air thick with fear and anger.

"We can't just shut down operations!" shouted Walter Phillips, the mill owner. "Half the town will be out of work by month's end!"

"My husband is DEAD!" Donny's widow screamed. Two small children clung to her legs.

Outside as the wind picked up, the gymnasium windows rattled with unusual force. The lights flickered once, twice, then held.

Wes stood, hands shaking. "There's something wrong with those woods," he said. His voice carried across the quiet room. "I've worked timber my whole life. Whatever's in the Dark Heart... it ain't natural."

Mayor Fleming's face turned gray. "The preliminary tests show no environmental toxins. No fungal spores. Nothing to explain what's happening."

"Then explain why only men who marked trees are dead." Wes challenged.

No one could.

---

That night, as Wes drove home along the winding road that skirted the western forest, his headlights caught a figure standing among the trees. He slammed on his brakes.

Donny. The silhouette was too tall. The proportions distorted. As Wes stared his heart thundered in his ears. He realized with dawning horror that what he'd mistaken for arms were actually branches, what he'd thought was a head was a knot in a trunk.

Yet it had Donny's stance. His particular way of holding himself. And in the brief illumination of headlights, Wes could swear he saw eyes gleaming from the bark. It watched him with recognition.

His headlights flickered and the figure was gone. Just another tree in an endless forest.

---

They tried cutting again a month later. A new crew brought in from three counties over, men who hadn't heard all the stories. Wes refused to return. He watched as trucks rolled toward the Dark Heart.

By sunset, three men were hospitalized. By midnight, blue veins mapped their skin.

---

Cedar Heights began to empty. Families packed up and left. The sawmill closed. Businesses shuttered. Only the old-timers and those too poor to move remained. They adapted.

They told visitors that the trees in the Dark Heart were protected, part of a conservation effort. They didn't mention how, on still nights, people sometimes heard voices in the rustling leaves, familiar voices calling names they recognized.

They didn't talk about the blue flowers that now grew in the cemetery. Their petals veined like human eyes, sprouting only on the graves of loggers.

They didn't discuss the fact that whenever developers showed interest in the abandoned western land, those developers soon suffered mysterious accidents. Their skin bruised with patterns like growth rings.

They certainly never spoke of the figures glimpsed at forest's edge. Not quite men, not quite trees, standing sentinel. Ensuring the Dark Heart remained undisturbed.

Cedar Heights became a quaint, dying town surrounded by unusually pristine old-growth forest. Environmentalists celebrated the preservation. Tourists took pictures of the massive, unmarked trees.

Only the locals understood the truth. They hadn't saved the forest.

The forest had claimed them.