The Blood Oak

I didn’t want to go.
It wasn’t the trip itself, I perform deliveries for my poppa all the time. He’s even allowed me to travel for up to four days to a location and back without accompaniment. It’s just, having to use the wagon for the cargo forced me to take the main roads past the ravine. The place where Redwater used to be.
The fork in the road where the Blood Oak grows.

A Monument to Think Again

At the place where you turn to Redwater or continue north to regular folk, there’s a tree. Massive it is — stretched out like arms waving to get yer attention, the height of thirty men. It’s unlike anything you’ll see, its bark red as the blood it drank from the poor souls caught in its embrace.
Best not look upon it at all, but if you do, make sure it's in plain daylight. That way yer mind can come up with some other excuse for what it might be. Either way, make sure you keep yer eyes low and move right along. ‘Cause hanging from every branch are the bodies of sixty two men, each screaming for a release they ain’t never gonna get.
Some say they was bandits. Others say they were the ones who harmed the good folk of the settlement, but no one could figure out why. Backs arched, hands contorted like gardening rakes, every face is frozen in terror from whatever they saw or maybe felt before they died.
You’d think their flesh would fall from their bones, but I’ve thrown rocks when passin’ — and they ain’t flesh no more. Something made ‘em hard, so it don’t matter what comes, rain or snow, sun or hail.
The Blood Oak is a warning.
At the base of the great tree is a piece of slate. It’s jammed into the roots, like it was put there on purpose, but how the tree grew around it, I don’t know.
It says, ‘Choose Again’.

Type

Tree