The Green Man - Chapter Two: The Whispering Leaves

After that night, the town changed in subtle ways. People complained of strange dreams filled with forests and damp soil. Houseplants thrived unnaturally, growing overnight, their leaves glossy and dark. Gardens choked with weeds no matter how often they were cleared. It was as if the land itself was reclaiming what it had lent us.

The Green Man became a shared secret. No one spoke of him openly, but conversations trailed off when the woods were mentioned. People avoided the marsh road and closed their curtains at dusk. A sense of being watched settled over Alderbridge, heavy and unshakable.

I began to hear whispers.

It started as a rustling sound, like leaves brushing together, even when there was no wind. At first I ignored it, attributing it to stress or imagination. But the whispers grew clearer, forming shapes that almost resembled words. They always came when I was near plants: the fern in my living room, the oak at the corner of my street, the weeds pushing through cracks in the pavement.

They were not voices as we understand them. They were impressions, urges, gentle suggestions that crept into my thoughts. Slow down. Stay. Listen.

One evening, unable to bear it any longer, I followed the sound into the forest. The path was slick with mud, the air thick with the scent of decay. The whispers guided me deeper, away from familiar trails, until the town lights vanished behind the trees.

That was when I saw him again.

The Green Man stood in a clearing, illuminated by a pale, sickly moon. Up close, he was more horrifying than I had imagined. His body was riddled with cracks, sap-like fluid seeping from them. Vines wrapped around his limbs, pulsing faintly, as if alive. When he spoke, the sound came from everywhere at once, a chorus of leaves and roots and soil.

“Remember,” he said, though his mouth barely moved.

Images flooded my mind: ancient forests stretching across the land, rivers clean and wild, humans small and fleeting. I felt an overwhelming grief, heavy and suffocating, as if I were mourning something I had never known.

When I stumbled back into town at dawn, my boots caked with mud, I found green stains on my hands that would not wash away.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model