Nottingburg is a place where family means everything. You can take your children outside and play in the warm caress of the sun. Everyday the rain will fall for a short time while children simply keep playing. The schools will fill to the brim with learning and eager children. Ambition spreads across Nottingburg and men and women of all ages leap to the occasional town-wide event. One hundred houses, three hundred six people, fifty dogs, eighty cats, three mailmen and of course three newspaper boys resident the town. A passing stranger in the town may fancy it to be an odd town, but these people may just fancy you a stranger: peculiar in no way, particular in no fashion. Even a celebrity could find safe-haven in this town, for not many care for the delights of television…only the delights of Momma’s Sunday Breakfast Blueberry muffins. Quite a Podunk indeed. This town, though, has a most clandestine event in which the roads are blocked, the children do not play and the surrounding forests become a place where no man, woman, child or even fleeting creature can become denizen.
The trees begin to move, their roots whip around the forest and their leaves turn razor-sharp. The golden tulips grow farther out of the woods and stray near the homes of the unlucky few that live near the forest. And out of the forest music begins to resonate. Any and all who dare to listen are lulled by its melody. A voice will call out, a voice like a child’s, and those who are lulled will walk into the woods never to be seen again. Screams can be heard from the forest if you listen hard enough. You can hear them day and night, crease and fold, life and death. Then the sun will rise and the music will stop. The golden tulips will move back into the woods. For another year the town will go about its daily business without ever talking of the event, without ever thinking of such tragedy. But it wont be long, no, it wont be long until the forest spreads and it wont be long until the tulips sprawl into an open window and make those that are innocent into the treacherous.
The little town of Nottingburg has a grim story to tell, not of the melody from the woods. Not of the screams from the trees. But rather of a small boy of seven who loved to draw. Many years ago, before the towns’ local hospital was made into a simple clinic, a resident began to stay long days and nights in the starched sheets and the uncomfortable beds. His name was Charlie and his ailment was never diagnosed. As day passed into night the boy’s face grew more hideous and his mind began to twirl into darkness. Young nurses would walk into the room and shriek at the sight of him. His heart grew black, but there was always a small shred of hope. He was a wonderful artist. In his sketchbook he drew beautiful flowers and trees. The sketchbook contained animals stalking the tall grass for prey and roots grinding deep into the ancient ground. It was a large sketchbook with black leather strips covering the sheets burrowed inside.
His last day came about as a tragic day. The doctors could not treat him at all. Charlie’s heart finally gave up and ended his misery. They found him holding his sketchbook, drawing the last touches into his masterpiece. A labyrinth of petrified wood and leaves scattered across the ground. Strange creatures denoted with curious names.
No one quite knows what struck the poor boy and what happened to his marvelous sketchbook. Some say the boy rose from the grave and created his mighty labyrinth in the secrets of the forest surrounding Nottingburg. It would go a long way to explaining why the forest comes alive every November 9th. It was not the day he died nor the day he was born. It was significant only to be the day that he met his illness. His heart died dark with only the absence of light to accompany it. That type of energy does not sift from the world without leaving some sort of scar behind. We’ve tried ghost hunters and we’ve tried God, but the trees still brandish their roots and the tulips still spread their petals while gently blowing in the stiff wind. The forest is no place for life, but three young men have decided to do what no other person has done for the situation: they wish only to find Charlie and appease his wishes. No easy task awaits them, for the journey into the forest is a journey into a labyrinth filled with the foul and twisted creatures that once inhabited Charlie’s sketchbook.
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Yes, this is all of Chapter 1. Most online readings contain a lot of dialogue that makes it look long
Obviously it is explaining the chapters to come...kind of monologue..ish.
