A paintball game so early in the morning in the middle of nowhere hadn't exactly thrilled me. For me, Sunday was reserved for rest. But Sacha had insisted so much that I'd said yes. However, to avoid having to get up, I told him I'd prefer we camp there, meaning in the forest, so we could have a campfire and, I confess, party while waiting for the other participants the next morning. To be honest, I didn't know this forest at all. It was further away from where we usually played paintball in the afternoon, I should point out…
I didn’t take long to ask my friend the question. He didn’t really understand the situation either, I could see it on his puzzled face.
- Have you noticed how everything is… I stammered, as we were on a trail for barely 10 minutes. I didn’t have the words to describe this place that was both sensational and, in a way, frightening.
- Yes, I know what you mean… My friend murmured in turn, his eyes turned towards the sun. Even the sun is more…Brighter than elsewhere.
- Yes, you said it… He was even shielding his eyes with his hands to protect them.
I didn’t need to do that, but it was, let’s say, borderline. It’s as if everything we had experienced until now hadn’t been real, hadn’t really existed…
- What can we do ? Everything is strange here… Vibrant, but strange.
- Maybe it's simply because we've never been here before, to this forest… You know, a bit like when you arrive in another country. Even the most ordinary things seem strange because you're unsettled by the difference.
- So you think it's safe to continue ? I was asking him the question indirectly. In fact, I felt like I was asking more to reassure myself than anything else.
- Yes, I think this forest isn't any different from any other. We're just a little overwhelmed to be in a different place, and at a different time than usual…
Something in his gaze betrayed a certain circumspection. He himself didn't seem entirely convinced by his argument, but it was as if I wanted to believe him. Nevertheless, I followed Sacha, as I had always done ever since we started playing paintball. I confess I hadn't known my friend to be so philosophical… He, who was always so pragmatic, seemed to be in a kind of observational state, even a little hypnotic one. So we decided to continue. A decision all the more incoherent as night was well beginning to fall. The shadows of the trees, which already seemed to me to be of a height I couldn't quite grasp, stretched across the clearing, making their size even more impressive. And the setting sun was casting its last golden halos on their trunks. It was both grandiose and terrifying, simply because it heralded… Night.
Perhaps it was simply curiosity that guided our steps, after all, both fascinated and in a certain denial of the strangeness of the situation… I don't know. In any case, as we advanced into the forest, our smartphones in hand, I swore the landscape had begun to change. Yes, change. So much so that after a good hour's walk, I had to admit it.
- Sacha, don't you see that the vegetation seems to be… different? I stopped abruptly to speak to him, my voice firm.
- Different from what ? I don't really know what you're talking about !
- But come on, you can see that we've had to use knives to clear a path this whole time, can't you ? There are vines everywhere, you just don't realize it because I'm the one cutting them ! I raised my voice even more, irritated by his nonchalance.
- Well, sorry I didn't bring a Swiss Army knife like you, I didn't think that… He snapped.
- What ? I cut him off mid-outburst to make him face his responsibilities.
- That it would be such a hassle to get there…
- There you go, you're finally saying it ! After struggling for over an hour…
- What ?
- That it wasn't a good idea to go there!
- Look, it’s not the right time to split up… He looked at me with that slightly serious expression he always had before starting a game. Because he didn't just organize them… He led them too.
- Still, I shouldn't have listened to you, I said under my breath, just to make a point.
Actually, we'd be better off using our energy to figure out how to get back. Because the noise I heard earlier was unlike anything I've ever heard…
- But what do you mean ? I haven't heard a thing...
- Well, nothing I know about the animal world, you know...
- Damn it, Sacha, why didn't you tell me anything ? And how long ago was that ?
- I don't know, about ten minutes, I'd say… It sounded like a neigh, but with some kind of machine noise over it…
- Oh, damn… Well, you're the one with the map, you know. You're the organizer. Look where we are now… And where's the paintball field where we're meeting tomorrow?
Yes, that's what I'm going to do… But take responsibility anyway ! I didn't force you to come with me, you know… You're the one who agreed to what I said about that goddamn forest !
He was completely contradicting himself now, and I could hear the stress in his voice, him, who was usually so calm and level-headed. He was kind of our guide at this paintball club… He took out his smartphone to check the map. And I could see through the light of his headlamp that my friend was fainting. Seeing his bewildered expression, I asked him what was wrong.
- I don't understand. Just a little while ago, everything seemed to indicate that we were heading straight to that field, along the main path that leads there…
- And now, what ? Well, nothing. I mean, I don't recognize anything on the map anymore. And on top of that, look at the names that appear on the map… He handed me his smartphone, his eyes now horrified.
- But, these aren't English names !
- Well no… I could now see his hands trembling, trembling so much that he dropped his smartphone. I was the one who quickly picked it up, trying as best as I could to regain control of this damn situation.
- Well, anyway, the question isn't even about where we are, but about getting back to where we came from.
- Yes, you're right… So we just need to turn back. Luckily, the path we've been following from the start still went straight ahead…
- You're forgetting something, my dear friend… I said to him, handing him a vine I had cut myself. His eyes widened in fear, and distress was clearly visible in his pupils. It was as if the vines I had been cutting for an hour had all regrown, completely blocking the path we had taken. I was the one who had to take matters into my own hands now.
- But the vines…
- Seem to regrow. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have any trouble turning back ! I retorted.
We looked at each other through the pale beams of our headlamps. Clearly, we were doomed. And as if our fear had been heard, we heard a beastly noise coming from the bushes, or rather from the tangle of vines that now surrounded us and seemed to move slowly in front of our eyes, making a rustling sound that resembled a kind of hissing. But this roar had something mechanical about it that made it anything but… animal. What to do now ? Now that we were right in the middle of this forest and isolated from the path we had taken an hour earlier ?
The vines seemed to be gaining ground… They were slowly but surely advancing in our direction. And as they reached the tree in front of us, without thinking further, I leapt toward it—leaving on the ground, like surrendering arms, the heaviest items, namely ammunition and sleeping bag—and began to grab its bark, which was thick enough for me to catch the surface of the tree, quickly enough with my sneakers to avoid falling into the abyss along the way… It was as if I had transformed into some sort of squirrel or cat that, fierce, would take on the challenge of running with such ease. Yet I had no claws, and so after two endless minutes of literally doing everything I could not to fall, I finally managed to reach a first branch. Except that this one, too thin, snapped under my weight and I momentarily lost my balance before grabbing onto another, at the last moment. My headlamp, fortunately, had illuminated it… as well as a spider, calmly settled between two trees, whose body was perhaps five times the size of the tarantulas I had seen on television shows. It had an elongated, spectral body, whose white glowed under the beam of my lamp.
A shiver ran down my spine, but it was certainly not the time to falter, so I grabbed that branch, which had seemed much thicker than the other one, and went all out : I hoisted myself up with all my weight to reach it and literally rested on it, like a roast on a spit ! To be honest, I was out of breath and frozen with fear, which didn’t help, to be honest. I needed to regain my composure. But it seemed that this branch could hold… It seemed sturdier than I had thought. So I allowed myself a brief pause, and a smell of blood caught my attention. Reflexively, I lowered my head, and that’s when my lamp illuminated my hands : They were literally in tatters. Flesh was hanging, the scratches left by the bark were so deep. A sharp, piercing pain also stung me. No matter; at that exact moment, it was indeed the survival instinct that took over. So I decided to keep going before it got the better of me. I was still very close to the ground, and I still had a long way to go to the top of the tree where perhaps… I would find shelter.
However, something else caught my attention this time. A swallowing sound, as if someone were greedily chewing something very hard, with a ferocity that one could have compared to... voracity. The sound came from just below me, a few meters away. But where was my friend, after all, where was Sacha ? Now that I was regaining my senses a little, and momentarily out of danger, I began to seriously wonder. It was clear that he hadn't followed me on this crazy adventure, the one of climbing this seemingly endless tree...
I finally looked at the ground -or rather I dared- and the violence of the spectacle I saw was forever embedded in my retina. My friend was being devoured alive in front of me by black and shiny things whose shape I did not recognize. Sort of shadows with not very well-defined contours that slowly activated on him, making him disappear piece by piece. All that remained was the bust, to tell the truth. As for the head... I hardly recognized it. Not because I was too high to see her, no, but because it was distorted; as if it had been pre-digested before being ingested by these things. Certainly too busy saving my skin, I hadn't even heard him scream, shame on me !
Instinctively, I resumed the climb toward the sky, undoubtedly my only salvation. And the fact that every finger pressed into the bark, as painful as it could be, moved me a little further away from those things, was reason enough to keep going, again and again, ignoring the pain, which gradually and almost completely faded under the intense stress, and above all, behind the one thing that mattered at that moment : life.
This tree seemed to rise all the way to the moon, which that night was bathed in a kind of thick mist I had never seen before… Yes, the moon was in the water and cast its pale blue light on the foliage, whose mass was gigantic. What kind of tree on Earth could plunge so deeply into the sky ? It simply wasn't possible, and I increasingly wondered if all of this was simply the product of my imagination.
Sometimes, I would get lost in this foliage because it was so dense, and there were times I could feel creatures entering my sealed suit through the neck. I could feel them crawling along my spine, but I didn’t have time to chase them away. Sometimes also, I would get stung by one of them. The pain could be quite sharp, but I concluded that if I was still alive, it meant they must be harmless in some ways. Still, I was starting to feel weakened, and my vision would sometimes become blurry… And then, to make things worse, as I gained altitude, the air became colder and drier, and the oxygen seemed to thin, making it hard for me to catch my breath. Luckily, the clothes I was wearing protected me, as did the hot sweat now coursing through my body, dripping everywhere… After a while—I couldn't say exactly how long, because it seemed endless to me, but let's say for sure a few hours—climbing from branch to branch, or rather, by the end, dragging myself, I reached not the top of the tree, but a spot from which I could make out the surroundings… Yes, more than my own fear, I wanted to understand where I was.
The sun was beginning to rise, and it was no different from the sun my friend and I had experienced, as we were already trapped in this nowhere place ! A sun more vibrant and brighter than the hottest sun in the tropics. A sun whose intensity was already starting to become overwhelming. This tree towered far above most of those around it, so much so that I could see stretches of this environment that, surely, could not belong to anything earthly : before me, another world stood. A world where, certainly, everything was amplified in size, color, and intensity, colors of which some, upon closer inspection, had until now been unknown to humankind. And I could also make out, in the distance, dwellings, right in the heart of this forest that seemed to stretch endlessly toward the horizon. They were like beehives, which even though they were at some distance from me, must have been a good hundred meters high. The fields surrounding them swirled in spirals near their edges, with sometimes signs of complex geometry that I could make out here and there… It reminded me of the crop circles I had seen in some movies.
It was hard to see clearly because of the blinding light already pouring into my eyes, but I had the presence of mind to keep my backpack with me, in which there was a pair of binoculars for our paintball game. For sure, that would take place without me, and even less so that of my friend. Like a squirrel among many others on its branch, perched on this bridge between sky and earth, I scanned this new world of giants, both majestic and inhospitable, which I had not chosen. I who sometimes already struggled to feel my existence in the world, felt myself becoming a mere signifier. So small, and with no reason to be. More than physical pain, it was the pain of uncertainty that gripped my heart. That night, I had not slept with my friend under the tent about thirty miles from home; and even less in my bed, which perhaps, in this other dimension, did not even exist anymore ? Last night, I hadn’t slept at all, and I didn’t even know where I was. I no longer had a past, in this world far too big for me, this world to which I didn’t belong, and even less a future.