He Who Looks Through the Trees

originally published in Cosmic Horror Monthly Issue #19

June 7th, 1917: A letter from the Front, to a dear childhood friend, over whose memory no cloud hangs, though it has been years. Of a certain matter, which I have written of within, I think he shall understand the most. But do bring it to his door, as he is confined by chronic illness to his bed, and finds it difficult to get to the letter-box.

Dear Arthur Hanson,

I regret that I must relate the strange things that befell me that night (was it a month ago, already?) in such haste, and under such circumstances. But as I find it unlikely I will survive this war, I must send you what recollection I have, though human words are poor vessels for such as I have encountered. I delayed only because I know too well my insufficiency to express it -- you, I thought, might understand it, though my spirit is slow, and my words weak.

It was in the midst of a terrible, slow time, among the bloody furrows, the littered bullet casings, the slumped bodies half-alive, the decay-fed mud. Other, better men will tell you of the hells and glories of war -- will relate to you either a black hole of horror or a crucible that transforms men to heroes -- but at that time, all I felt was my weariness, and that I wanted badly to be home. I looked upon the mashed faces and spattered innards and saw neither a Satanic, all-devouring mouth of despair, nor a grotesque backdrop that is the back of all glory. I saw something merely unpleasant, like a toothache. You would think me insensitive, and you would be right. I was utterly insensible -- almost animal -- in my care for nothing but my own comfort or discomfort. I had been a churchgoer, but only as one goes to a social club. What use has man for God? I often wondered. For when he is happy, he has no need for him, and when he is not, he has no desire, but only wants his pains alleviated. Such was my attitude then.

There was but one streak of real wonder in my life (no man, I think, is utterly devoid of it). It was a memory, from before I moved and began school -- a time in late spring when the ivy was green on the houses, and I walked below the elm trees' arms, through a tunnel of green, into the forest. When the moon rose I did not see her, the leaves were so thick, but her light came blooming and creeping through the foliage and the flowers, as active as if she was alive. I remember that green tunnel like a twilight cathedral, its arched roof woven in slim, trembling leaves, leading to the very heart of the forest. But I did not follow it all the way -- perhaps my mother called. The memory often burst upon me suddenly, with the thought that if I could only get back to the forest, I would understand everything. But I rejected it as mere nostalgia.

The strange things began in the late evening of that day, one month ago. The moon had risen above the meridian. I raised my head, and saw what they call the Man in the Moon. I had seen it before, when others prompted, but never had I felt that I was really looking into a face -- and such a face! What terrible truth, what awful vision passed before its eyes, could freeze one in an expression of such perpetual astonishment! Was it terror? Oh yes, awful terror, a kind so great it is touched in ecstasy. And yet she (for she is she, Woman and not Man) spreads light in lucid gentleness, on the shut eyes of sleep. Scared to death? No, if anything, she was scared to life, and more alive than I. Thinking these thoughts, I was struck with unnamed fear -- what was at the back of the world, that frightened her so? What did she see that I did not?

I slept in the shadow of the trench wall, horrid with its cold mud, but I was glad for it, because it hid her from my sight. I told myself it was my mental state, I was breaking down, the nerves, a million things. Afraid of the moon? It was so childish. I had the horrible thought that she would come down, all crimson and gold, and look me in the face with her terrible empty eyes, and from her wailing mouth would pour forth words I could not understand.

But, after all, it was not really the moon I was afraid of. It was what the moon saw. And, horror of horrors, what she saw must be upon the earth! -- perhaps it was the earth. For that expression was turned upon our own green woods and running rivers and black mountains.

I woke from my sleep in the middle of that night, the unnamable fear still upon me. But with it was a compulsion, a compulsion that was almost sweet, that I must get up and go somewhere. At any time, for a man such as I was, this would have been strange, but how stranger for a man in the midst of a warzone, to leave the safety of his hole? Nevertheless, I rose. I walked for miles. The shell-bursts that roared nightly seemed very far away from me. I felt, oddly, that this was because it was a sacred time, a kind of Sabbath, but could not remember what day it was. I could only remember that it was spring.

I walked until I came to one of those makeshift graveyards, such as are always made in war. Thousands of men under but a thin shell of earth, with the crude wooden crosses sticking out haphazardly, like a weary army on its crawling march. And all over those mounds the grass grew, all too green -- and here and there the buds of poppies opening crimson red. I went on. I did not want to walk upon the bodies, but I knew it was the way -- where, and why? I did not know. And as I went the poppies grew more numerous, and impossibly tall, waving their red hair like the nymphs of Hesperides.

It was all so green -- and growing greener. The leaves, the stems, the winding roots -- they twined their way through the fetid bones and crushed skulls, they prickled along the cold skin and peeped green heads through the black earth. The poppies were now taller than me, and more like trees than anything else. Growing, growing, I could see the growing now, it was so fast -- they transformed from death, life, and breathed and swayed in the heavy air of sacrifice. Oughtn't the smell of the dead men have been rotten and horrible? But it wasn't. It was sweet as flowers burned in fire.

And then I could go no further, the forest around me was so terribly thick. It was claustrophobic as a tomb, but nothing was less like a tomb. I thought I would faint from the myhrrs of the flowers. And then a light came glittering through the green.

I saw a clearing, lit by the moon. She was so large, and terrible, filling half the sky. I saw that same look of astonishment, and shuddered. And now there came a sound. I thought it was a drumbeat, but it was more like a heart -- and out of there forest there came, whirling and dancing and writhing -- the trees.

The trees! They were so like people, and yet so unlike; I thought they must be in the moon's family, for they shared her same expression. Look! Look! they seemed to say -- and perhaps they did. Sing, more like, though their singing was strange to me. They danced wildly, in a mad circle, yet their faces were always turning back towards that inexpressible Thing which made them gape in terror and awe.

The poppies joined the dance, and their hair red as martyr's blood roared and whirled in the midst of all the green. Look! Look! They clapped their hands and raised the cry. Look! Look!

But I could not look, because it was behind me. It had always been behind me.

Or, only there when my back was turned, in the corner of my eye, at the edge of my vision. Was it mocking me? Did it intend to taunt me, only to devour me in the end, like a cat? No, for all its horrors, all these green and growing things at least did not see it that way. For a strange peace was in that look, too, upon the face of the moon. I would say it was the peace of love; it was more like the peace of being loved. I remembered I had thought this was a Sabbath, and a Sabbath was rest.

Now there came the thing I cannot describe. It was a feeling, at first, of being looked at, examined, and found -- what? Wanting, yes, but also wanted. But that was me; what, what can I say to describe It? It was awful beyond imagining, beautiful beyond hope. Ah, curse it, curse it! These fallible folds of language, so insufficient to catch the rain of glory. Everything was green and red and gold, but what is color to that Thing? The moon had come down upon the earth, but she was of no consequence. She had only come to worship. Here, the heart of the forest, which I had sought so unknowingly, opened up, and it was only another tunnel, but a tunnel that spread forever in a million directions, for how could that green, close temple, though unbuilt and old as earth, have space for He Who Looks Through the Trees? And his gaze -- oh, terrible, joyous, truth -- was upon me. I fell to the earth and wept.

When I rose I stood upon the graveyard with the poppies all around. I thought I was dead -- how could one see such things, and live? I trembled all over. I returned, was reprimanded by my commander, and told no one.

And now you know as much as I, for though I am changed, I cannot say I understand. I think often of that green tunnel that I saw in my childhood, and each day I feel I have walked farther down it, and the trembling light at the end is ever nearer.

I had asked what use man has for God -- you may ask, more rightly, what use He has for us! And yet, the incomprehensible humility, that he should stoop to peer through that glittering foliage, that I should catch even a sideways glance of him -- I am destroyed! I am destroyed! I am changed utterly, and this beauty born from terror, like the poppies on the graves, is only one shot of light from that inexpressible center -- ah, I know, I know, why He is always behind us: if he were before us, what should we do? How can I bear the day when the leaves shall clear away and the forest spread open, and we shall meet face to face?

Yours Faithfully,

Chester Morris