Fiction Friday - The Gnarly Old Tree, Part 2

(For the first part of this story, please visit this post.)

As the three men headed into the grassland to find the phone, Dad announced that the dot on his Find-It app had jumped again. "An animal probably got hold of it," said Ranger Stevens. It didn't look like the movement of some animal running across the prairie to Dad, but he held his tongue.

When they started rifling through the grass at the new location, it jumped again. The rangers looked at Dad's phone screen. It had moved a significant distance in an instant. "Could be signal bouncing," Stevens said this time. "We're in a part of the park people aren't supposed to be in. No towers out here." 

Dad just started walking in the direction of the dot. The rangers followed, and soon Stevens was looking at Dad's screen every other second. Miles kept his eyes on the horizon. "Whoa..." he said, just as Dad's frustrated voice said, "There it goes again!"

Miles wasn't listening. "Did you see that?" Stevens looked where Miles was pointing. "What?"

"Something... shimmered. The whole landscape changed. You really didn't see it?"

"A shimmer?" Stevens shrugged. "Mirage."

"It's not hot enough for a mirage."

"And yet you saw one."

The next time Dad noticed the dot move, Miles and Stevens both saw a shimmer in the air at the location. Miles spoke up. "We need to go back."

"Back!? Why?" Dad had spent so much time on this hunt already, he wasn't about to throw in the towel. 

"Back to wherever your kid lost the phone. It's not moving across the grassland. Nothing is moving out here. Let's start at the source."

Stevens gave in. "He last saw his phone at the tree, didn't you say?"

Dad nodded. "He was taking a photo of the tree, but he never left the trail." His staunch belief in his son's honesty brought a wry smile to Stevens. He clapped Dad on the shoulder. 

"True. Let's go to the trail. Do you know the exact spot?" 

Dad knew precisely where to go because he had made Liam search the trail before resorting to the Find-It app. 

They went there and looked across the empty grass toward the tree. In the dim, pink light of sunset, Dad had to agree that the gnarly old tree made a spectacularly creepy shadow against the sky. He would have taken a picture for Liam if he could do it without backing out of the app.

Stevens led them away from the trail to get to the tree. This time they all saw the air around the tree flicker. When it happened, they stopped walking. 

They exchanged looks. 

Stevens' brow was furrowed. 

Dad's wide eyes stared into Miles' calm ones. "It...it... changed," he said. They had all seen the branches showing buds instead of dead bark before the air stilled and the tree was old, dead, and gnarly again.

Only Miles looked curious instead of worried. He moved forward one cautious step at a time. As he moved, he felt the speaker of his park-issued law enforcement radio wiggling loose from its clip on his shoulder. He took it in his hand and kept moving. "The radio is drawn to the tree!" he called back to the other two.

They followed, a few paces behind him.

As he drew nearer to the tree, his radio crackled, and Dad could hear it through Stevens' radio beside him. Another step, more static. Suddenly Dad gripped his phone tighter. "I feel the pull. Do you?"

Stevens frowned. "Yeah."

Miles was only three meters from the tree now. He was leaning back to offset the pull they could all now feel to some degree. "Stop there," Stevens called to him. He and Dad were several paces behind him. 

"Do you see this?" Miles asked. He didn't dare look away, so his voice came as a shout. The air was shimmering as before, and now they could see colors flickering on and around the tree itself. 

"The shimmer? Yeah," Stevens begrudgingly acknowledged. "You're right. That's no mirage."

"No - the lights... inside..." Miles' voice sounded further away now.

"Inside where? The tree?" Dad started to panic. "What are you looking at?"

"Wait, I -"

"Ranger Miles, stay where you are!" Stevens suddenly barked. He had seen Miles reaching forward, and guessed at the danger.

Miles straightened his back, but kept his arm out. "Hang on, I think it's - right - Ah!" His arm pulled back as if he'd been bitten, but something dropped on the grass below the tree. Liam's phone. 

Dad handed his own phone to Ranger Stevens and was moving toward Miles before Stevens could do anything. Where Miles stood, he dropped to his knees and crawled over to grab the phone.

Miles still seemed in a trance staring at the tree. Dad looped an arm through his elbow and forced him to move. After a couple paces, Stevens took over guiding him. The closer they got to the trail, the more Miles was able to shake off whatever had happened back there at the gnarly old tree. 

Hiking down the trail to the Visitors' Center, Dad looked over the phone. It was fine. The last photo taken had been the gnarly old tree, and Dad thought he could just make out a shimmery effect around it.

Liam hugged his dad as soon as he saw the phone in his hand. "I knew you would find it! Where was it?"

Dad kissed the top of his son's head. "That, son, is a very good question."

 *CODA*

The next day, the tree was cordoned off for a fifteen meter radius.

A month later, a glass wall had been erected around it so visitors could look but not touch.