Nightjar

Deep within a densely fog laden forest, in a secluded area even advanced hikers dare not enter, nestled deep within the mountains, a Nightjar was perched on a branch, inquisitively observing the world below. Despite the fact that it was a warm summer evening, the fog was so dense it kept most of the heat out of the area. The nightjar's sharp eyes caught sight of a happy family setting up camp near a tranquil river, and wondered why they’d choose a spot where they could barely see ten feet in front of them.

“I’m so glad we’re able to escape the summer heat,” the Nightjar heard the wife say. ‘Oh,’ the Nightjar thought before flying off, that explains it.

The Nightjar, having nothing better to do, decided to head back to the same branch and watch the human family. While he’d seen the rare human attempt to hike through these parts of the woods and get lost or die, he’d never observed a family of humans before. And he rarely even saw hikers since the humans put the danger signs up. He was now curious if they’d make it out of the woods alive. He’d wondered if the family had even seen the signs their fellow humans put up warning of the dangers of coming this far into the woods. It’s one thing for a Nightjar such as himself to meander this deep, he could easily fly out of the way of any dangers presented. But those foolish humans couldn’t fly. They couldn’t possibly be as smart as they were always claiming. How did those stupid humans ever became the dominant species on earth, the Nightjar wondered.

The campers were a family of four, consisting of a loving father, a caring mother, and their two hyper active but genius children, a spirited boy named Riley who wouldn’t stop twitching and moving and poking his annoyed sister who kept yelling at him to stop, and an adventurous girl named Izzy, who just smacked Riley on the head, causing him to cry and run to his parents. The father told them both to stop bothering each other.

After some time had passed and Riley and Izzy forgot how much they hated each other, they were able to play together, their now joyful voices permeating the once still and quiet air with giggles and laughter.

The sun eventually started going down and it seemed darker then it was because of the dense fog. They laid out there sleeping bags and prepared for a night under the stars.

As they finally got settled, a strange thing occurred. A thick, sticky ooze began seeping out from the branches of the surrounding trees. The sticky substance hung in the air momentarily, building weight and substance, before finally dripping on the daughter, who was sitting right below a thicket of oozing branches, making the perfect target. The ooze seeped through her shirt and covered her skin, before seeping into her epidermis as well, and she began to feel sick.

“Eeww, dad. The tree just dripped some sort of slime on me and it’s on my skin. I feel nauseous…” Izzy said, then threw up.

“It’s probably just tree sap, darling. Old trees like these have lots of sap,” the father explained.

“Why don’t you move away from…” the father started to say when Izzy stopped throwing up and looked up at him. Her eyes were completely changed, a greenish color, and she was now growling like a dog before it attacks.

“What… what the hell? Honey, somethings very wrong with Izzy. I might need some help,” the father shouted and slowly backed away as Izzy stood up. She was at least two feet taller then she was just a minute ago. The father got chills down his spine.

The once charming and tiny girl was growing by the second, and now towered over her father, slowly becoming a vessel for the trees, a speaker for their ancient wisdom and wrath.

Her eyes now gleamed with an emerald green glow. Her neck craned back and forth as she turned to get a look at the rest of her family, seemingly not recognizing them. Her face contorted and her mouth grew faster then her body, and thorns filled up spaces between her once human teeth.

She looked at her family again, wondering who they were.

“Who are you?” She moaned in a voice so deep and angry it was no longer human.

“Excuse me? We’re your family,” her father said.

“The trees are my family. I come from their sap. You are human. I am not related to you,” Izzy growled, what remained of her body was now pulsating.

She first looked at them with sorrow, thinking they were innocent creatures of the forest. But the creature that was once Izzy now stood twenty feet in the air with a contorted jaw, thorns for teeth and vines growing where her hair once was, could hear the whispers of the trees.

“We’re in so much pain. The humans poison our water. They cut us down. They turn us into wood for their houses, paper for their work, paper to wipe with, boats, malls and all sorts of other horrible useless products, they even burn us sometimes. Then they make axe handle’s and use the wood they get from our corpses to cut down even more of us. Humans are monsters” the trees whispered to the shell of Izzy.

The expression on Izzy’s face turned from pity to rage, the veins in her temples now pulsating as what was left of her human blood rushed to her head.

“You’re monsters,” Izzy shouted, and pounced on her mother first. Her father and brother began to scream and run, but Izzy was able to grow long vines out of her scalp and captured her brother. She then tied him to a tree.

“I’ll be back for you,” she shouted at her brother.

“Why, Izzy?” Her brother asked teary eyed, but she was now to busy hunting her father down to listen.

The father eventually ran out of breath and stopped. He knew he was the only one who managed to escape his daughter's heinous clutches, he knew he was the only one who could escape and come back with help, but he had to stop, just for a minute. He could no longer breathe, his lungs felt like they were on fire. He put his hands right above his knees and started to pant, desperate for air.

He heard a sound behind him, then he heard his daughters new, deep, eldritch and horrifying voice shout, “I have you cornered, petty human. There’s no escape.”

He was now trembling with fear and confusion, his forehead dripping with sweat, his hands shaking.

"Why are you chasing us? What did you do to your brother and mother?" he said, his voice lugubrious and desperate.

Ignoring his second question, the daughter spoke with an eerie calmness the opposite of how she previously sounded.

"I am a tree person now," she proudly announced.

“I’m sorry, what?” Izzy’s father said, his jaw hanging in shock.

"You will face our wrath. We are sick of humans destroying us, cutting us down. We have created an ooze just for your kind. This ooze will turn all humans into trees. But before humans turn, they become tree-human hybrids, spreading our ooze to others. Soon, all of humanity will be infected, becoming hybrids. Then eventually, trees. You will be one of us. One of us. One of us," Izzy said, now chanting one of us again and again.

The father's eyes widened in disbelief and horror, his heart racing faster and faster. "T-t-then what?" he managed to stammer, his voice trembling with fear.

"Then," the daughter explained, "we win! No more humans. No more tree murder. All humans will infect each other, and together, we will all turn into trees. The world will be reclaimed by the forests. You will be one of us. You will all be a tree, you will soon see. You will look like me," Izzy said and smiled menacingly.

With rage and hatred, the shell of what was once Izzy lunged at her father, attempting to infect him with the tree ooze. But to her surprise, after tackling him to the ground and biting his neck, he had the strength to knock her off.

“Izzy, please,” her father begged.

“You’ll turn soon, you human goon,” Izzy said and smiled.

They sat in place for several minutes staring at each other, both expecting him to turn into what Izzy called a hybrid tree creature.

After almost an hour, nothing happened.

“What’s happening? Why isn’t he turning,” Izzy asked the trees.

“He’s exhibiting an immunity. We expected this in some humans. Just kill him so he can’t spread his immunity to anyone else,” the trees whispered back.

The Nightjar, also able to understand the trees, felt bad for the father. Unlike the trees, the Nightjar knew the father had nothing to do with the construction and paper companies. He was not a lumberjack or logger and was not the one responsible for destructive human ways. The Nightjar decided it was time to intervene, and swooped down from the branch he was perched on. He scratched Izzy’s face and taunted her.

“Chase me,” the Nightjar whispered, then flew up to the safety of the highest tree, far out of Izzy’s monstrous reach. Izzy tried but failed to climb the tree, and kept trying to climb it and catch the Nightjar. She grew her vines in a final attempt to catch the bird, but the Nightjar just flew to another tree, and another one, and another one, causing Izzy to run farther and farther away from her father.

“Thank you, Nightjar. I hope you can stay safe,” the father said.

He figured that since he didn’t change, he must be immune to whatever strange sap the trees had created.

Although he regretfully couldn't share his immunity with his wife or son, he hoped they were fine. He went back to search for them, and while they were still tied to the trees where Izzy left them, he saw their eyes looked like Izzy’s. They had changed.

“I’ll come back for you when I have a cure,” he croaked, then ran to his camper truck and drove off into the night.

Fueled by desperation and stinking of fear, anxious to find a way to save his family, the father began his journey to find a cure. He needed a scientist who could figure out why he had his unique immunity and turn it into a cure, maybe even a vaccine. He drove far and stopped by every research center he could find, even crossing state borders and traveling through treacherous terrains, seeking out the most brilliant minds science had to offer.

He was smart enough to keep the ooze that dripped on his neck, putting it in a small plastic bag and having every scientist he found take a tiny sample.

After countless people had tried to identify the substance with failure, he finally found a botanist who who was able to help.

“I mixed a little of my blood with the sap and it changed the DNA structure. It seems to change human DNA into chlorophyll, making humans think they’re trees. Who knows was this stuff does to the brain and body. But I might have a vaccine and possibly a cure. I mixed it with your blood, and found a unique protein in your blood that seems to stop the spreading of the sap throughout the body. I just need to clone this protein and test it on someone who’s been infected, and problem possibly solved,” the botanist explained.

“Thank you,” the father said and smiled.

“Glad to help,” the botanist said, then sneezed before saying goodbye.

Days turned into weeks, and the scientist worked tirelessly to develop a vaccine and cure that could save humanity from turning into trees. He had to make synthetic proteins and mass manufacture them as well, and fast. Who knows how fast this sap was spreading and how many people were already infected.

It’s a good thing the father's blood contained the proteins, the botanist thought, and hoped he created an antidote that would save the world. Or at least the humans.

The father returned to the botanist weeks later to check on his progress.

“Good, you’ve created a cure. Or what you think is a cure. I need three vials, please. I have three family members infected who are hiding in the woods. I’ll test your cure on them,” the father said.

“And if you don’t come back,” the father asked.

“Then we failed,” the father said lugubriously and frowned.

“I see. I wish you good luck, then. And I hope you return. Don’t fail humanity, cure your family,” the botanist said.

“Gee, no pressure,” the father said.

He pocketed the cure, and with the vials in his possession, the father returned to the forest, braving the peril and the haunting melody of the trees. While he could not understand them, he heard them making very low, quiet noises, almost as if they were talking to each other, informing each other of a human prescence. His heart pumping so hard it felt like it was coming out of his chest, he hoped is friend the Nightjar was still alive and in the area.

He found his daughter, who barley looked human, her skin now the color and shape of bark, and slowly approached her, shaking. She didn’t seem to notice, and when he was close enough, he confronted Izzy, and whispered “I have a cure. I can give it to you, this is a chance for a new beginning. I’m sorry for taking you camping here. I should have listened to the signs and turned back.”

“I don’t need to be cured. I am not a disease. Humanity is a disease,” Izzy said.

Izzy knocked her father to the ground and held him down with her incredible strength.

“We have developed a stronger ooze just for you. No one will be immune,” Izzy shouted, her voice echoing through the woods.

In what he thought might be his final moments as a human, the father injected himself with the vaccine, ensuring his safety from the wrath of the trees and his daughter. As the antidote coursed through his veins and mixed with his surging levels of adrenaline, he felt a sense of bliss and purpose, hoping he was protected from the stronger sap his daughter and the trees created.

He wished he could have saved his daughter, and wished that he had fulfilled his duty as her father, but he had failed. In his last moments, he contemplated what could have been his daughters bright future. He imagined her graduating high school, then college, then becoming a successful doctor, lawyer or business woman. Then getting married and giving him grandchildren. He wished this alternative reality was his reality as tears dripped down his eyes.

Izzy shouted, “if you will not turn into a tree, you will serve as nutrition for a tree,” and used the roots now growing out of her feet to crush her father and absorb his flesh and bones.

“We are stronger now,” Izzy whispered to the other trees.

“Yes, we will now spread our ooze to all the trees in the world, and they will infect all humans,” one of the other trees whispered.

The Nightjar pecked at Izzy’s roots until she dropped what remained of her father. The Nightjar called to his friends, who all helped take the fathers body to an empty, remote location without trees, and helped cover the father in stones. The Nightjar mourned for his friend, and made it his life’s mission to protect the innocent humans.

With the exception of construction workers, lumberjacks who cut down the the forests, loggers, and anyone causing the trees harm, the Nightjars provided warnings to all the hikers of the forest, and any humans near trees with the body changing ooze, telling them in a series of chirps and tweets to avoid the forest and avoid any trees with the deadly sap.

Let the story of the Nightjar and the tree people serve as a cautionary tale, reminding humanity of the delicate balance between progress and nature. It should teach us the importance of preserving our environment, reducing our impact, and working towards sustainable practices to safeguard the world we inhabit. Or this could happen to you!