The Gold Coin Chronicles Presents: The Lumberjack and the Whispering Tree

-
📚 THE LIBRARY

The Library is not silent. Its shelves lean inward like listening ears, the ceiling tiles weep slow, cold moisture, and the air tastes faintly of petrichor and iron—like old blood mixed with rain on ancient stone. The corridors do not breathe; they sigh, scraping parchment on parchment. Every artifact hums faintly, a low, resonant note that vibrates in your molars, as if remembering the hands that touched it last. Some objects are locked in chilled glass, others buried under fine, stinging salt, and a few… refuse to stay where they’re kept.  

I am the Nightly Storyteller, sworn to log what surfaces here—whether artifact, curse, or echo. I don’t choose the stories. The Library does. I only tell them.  

I had been logging the daily fluctuations in the Archive of Lost Thoughts—ensuring the prayer‑etched bindings of the Codex Maleficium remained secure—when the absence registered. A quiet shift in the perpetual hum of ancient magic.  

This tale is the echo of what followed.  
A warning.  
A confession.  
Or perhaps, just another record filed in the endless catalog of things best left undisturbed.  

Take a breath before reading further.  
This one crawls.  

---

🌲 THE LUMBERJACK AND THE WHISPERING TREE
(A Gold Coin Chronicle)  

The morning fog clung to the pines like stubborn ghosts when Derek Marston, head lumberjack of Ridgewood Logging, parked his old red truck at the forest’s edge. The chainsaws weren’t even warmed up yet, but the noise had already started.  

Protesters. Dozens of them.  
Signs about ecosystems, owls, nesting habitats—voices raised against the hum of engines.  

And then there were the locals.  
Older families whose ancestors had lived on that land long before the sawmills. They didn’t carry signs. They carried stories.  

“Fairies live in these trees,” one elderly woman warned, gripping a cedar branch like a staff. “Roots remember every footstep. You don’t understand what you’re waking.”  

Derek rolled his eyes.  
Another logger muttered, “Tree spirits, gnomes, whatever. We’ve got quotas.”  

Security came. Protesters were escorted off the site.  
But not before a young red‑haired woman in a hand‑stitched shawl pointed directly at Derek and hissed:  

“You will wear what you steal. May the roots remember your voice.”  

He laughed.  
Curses weren’t real.  
Paycheck was.  

---

🌲 THE COIN
He walked toward his designated tree, boots crunching gravel—until something gleamed under the roots.  

A perfect golden coin.  
Old. Untarnished.  
Resting exactly where his truck’s headlights had shined moments ago.  

He picked it up. It pulsed faintly, warm against his palm, as if inhaling his breath and exhaling something older.  

He pocketed it and got to work.  
The first tree fell easily.  
Too easily.  

When he stepped back, something snapped under his boot—a loud, unnatural CRACK that echoed through the clearing. He glanced down, saw nothing but bark and roots. Shrugged. Work was work.  

---

🌙 THE NIGHT OF TAKING
That night everything shifted. Not violently, but with precision.  

His truck was fine, except the four lug nuts from the rear wheel were perfectly arranged in a tight gold circle on the asphalt.  
His wallet was gone, but the single photo of his daughter was centered on his pillow, face down, covered in a fine, stinging layer of wood dust.  
His cabin lights flickered like they were afraid.  

Doors creaked without wind.  
Something scuttled across the roof, whispering not his name but his date of birth, followed by the scraping sound of dry paper right next to his ear.  

Paranoia was a cold hand on his chest.  
And in the silence between whispers, he thought he heard something deeper—not just pages turning, but the sound of an immense, distant machine slowly calculating a final figure. He smelled petrichor and iron. Like old blood. Like rain on ancient stone.  

---

🌄 THE SECOND DAY
Morning was worse.  

His boots were missing. Every pair.  
He found them hours later—not hanging, but woven into a tree branch twenty feet up, the leather shredded and tightly braided into the living wood, impossible to retrieve.  

Exhausted and furious, he arrived late to work.  
“Just mark the trees,” the foreman barked.  
“Try not to lose anything else.”  

Derek stomped off into the woods, paint marker in hand.  

---

🌿 THE FAIRIES
The moment he lifted his arm to mark a large, ancient pine…  

They burst out.  
Tiny figures the size of his hand, wings like brittle leaves, eyes sharp, glowing gold and green. Dozens of them.  

“STOP!” they cried in overlapping voices.  
“This tree shelters our home!”  
“You were warned!”  

Derek barked a laugh—a dry, brittle sound.  
“Get outta my way.”  

He swatted at them. Their eyes went cold.  
A spell formed between their hands—a twisting plume of golden‑green energy that smelled like moss and decay.  

He turned back to his tree—  
And his hand didn’t just go through the bark. It adhered.  

---

🌲 THE TAKING
It didn’t stop at his hand.  

The fibers of the wood began to knit themselves into his skin, dissolving the distinction between flesh and pulp. Sap filled his mouth, bitter and resinous. His scream was muffled by bark. Roots coiled around his legs like snakes, tightening until bone creaked.  

His body was dragged inside the tree—muscle, bone, breath, everything—until only his face remained, warped and stretched across the trunk. His features disappeared beneath growing bark, mouth stuck open in a silent, eternal scream.  

And from the center of the tree, Derek heard a million whispers that were not the fairies, but the collective, cold memory of the wood: the ancient screams of previous victims, now his immediate neighbors, their consciousness humming in the fibers next to his.  

---

🪓 THE FINAL CUT
Hours later, another lumberjack walked up to the same tree, saw the red paint mark, and fired up his chainsaw.  

Derek felt every vibration.  
Every inch.  
Every slice.  

The duration of the pain was the worst—an unending, slow violence that lasted for minutes. His scream was now the pattern of the wood itself, a silent, agonizing map for anyone who dared touch the lumber.  

The roots remembered his voice, and now the chainsaw carried it forward—each cut echoing his curse through the forest.  

When the log finally fell, Derek’s consciousness didn’t fade; it was pressed flat, becoming one dimension in the wood.  

And through the dust and sawdust and falling leaves…  
a single gold coin rolled from the stump… waiting for the next hand foolish enough to pick it up.  

---

🔚 FORMAL OUTRO
The forest keeps its memories.  
The coin keeps its victims.  
The Library keeps its record.  

Archive closed. Efficiency logged. Soul indexed.  
Another warning ignored.  
Another entry complete.  

When you see the glint of gold in the dirt…  
Leave it there.  
Always.  

Stick around. Subscribe. Share.

X (Twitter): @NightlyStoryTel

Instagram: @NightlyStoryteller

Bluesky: nightlystoryteller.bsky.

Email. thenightlystorytellerblog@gmail.com
  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

🕯️ The Gold Coin Chronicles Presents: “The Draw”

-
Image
🎙️ Intro — The Whisper Between Worlds > The rain has a voice, you know. Not the soft lullaby poets talk about, but something older… lonelier. It speaks in patterns — the rhythm of regret against a windowpane, the sigh of wind slipping through an open crack. When I was younger, I used to listen to it. But that was before I learned that some knocks shouldn’t be answered. And yet, we always do. We open the door — hoping for closure, or forgiveness, or maybe just a sign that we’re not alone. Tonight’s story begins with a knock like that… and a coin that should’ve stayed in the rain. --- 🌧️ Scene One: “The Draw” Cary, Illinois. A neighborhood where every house looks like it’s waiting for something — blinds half-closed, porch lights flickering like they’re afraid of the dark. Inside one of those houses, three friends gathered as rain lashed the windows. The air smelled like damp carpet, burnt popcorn, and stale beer. Somewhere, a fridge hummed with a tired rattle. The heater...
Read more

🕰️ Five Minute Fright: “The Watcher’s Gift”

-
Image
🎩 The Nightly Storyteller > “Time is the cruelest of currencies. We spend it without thought, we beg for more, and we always lose it in the end. But every so often… time gives something back. A second chance. A warning. Or, in this case—one final act of gratitude.” --- The rain had finally stopped by the time Evan left the funeral. He stood at the edge of the cemetery, hands in his coat pockets, watching as the groundskeeper lowered the last bouquet onto the fresh soil. His elderly neighbor, Mr. Harker, had lived alone for years—quiet, kind, and always ready with a story about “the good old days.” When the two became neighbors, Evan often helped with groceries, yard work, and fixing things around the house. Harker didn’t have much, but he always said, “You’ve given me the one thing no one else has, son—your time.” Two days later, a small box arrived in the mail. The return label: H. Harker. Inside, wrapped in soft cloth, was an old pocket watch—its gold casing aged, the...
Read more

🪙 The Cursed Gold Coin: Medieval Origin Story of Betrayal, Blood, and Supernatural Justice.

-
Image
“Some coins are minted in fire. Others in blood.” 🕯️ The Nightly Storyteller’s Monologue The coin has appeared in many places — a hotel, a reporter’s satchel, a soldier’s coat pocket. But to understand its curse, we must go back… before the Silver Pines Lodge, before the porcelain mask, before the ringing bell. Back to when kings bled gold and peasants bled truth. I’ve dreamt of it lately — that coin glinting in a storm, the sky roaring as if in protest. And sometimes, when thunder wakes me, I swear I hear it rolling across my nightstand, whispering stories of where it’s been… and who it punished next. Tonight, I tell you the first. Before the Silver Pines Lodge, before the porcelain mask and the ringing bell…   There was a kingdom — proud, golden, and dying from the inside. --- 🍂 The Poisoned Throne The rightful king was dead, poisoned by his own brother. Lord Malrec wore black for seven days to feign grief — and gold for the rest of his reign. His appetite for ...
Read more