Pastel Stains at the Treeline [Wraith]
We went out there half awake in our thrift-store Sunday best, collars crooked, hair barely brushed, eyes still gritty from too little sleep and too much life hitting all at once like overdue mail,
Jake drove us in his dying pickup, radio whispering static and half a hymn as we bumped down the dirt road toward the field behind the old church, carrying cheap plastic eggs and a faith that already felt stale,
They said sunrise services were tradition, that we should welcome the light, that Easter meant second chances, fresh starts, all those bright words printed on pastel flyers and taped to sagging doors,
We showed up mostly because there were supposed to be donuts afterward and we were too poor, too tired, and too curious to say no to free sugar and an excuse to ignore everything else clogging our cores.
The air had that pre-dawn chill that bites just deep enough to make you doubt your outfit choices and your life decisions,
Grass wet, shoes soaked through instantly, breath puffing between jokes, our little group trudging toward the ring of folding chairs set up in front of the woods like an invitation for revisions,
The church folks were already there, huddled in clusters, holding styrofoam cups with steam curling up like small ghost prayers that never reach anything but their own chapped lips,
Pastor standing near a portable speaker with a Bible open and a hopeful look, as if this year maybe the resurrection would show up on time and pay everyone’s backlogged emotional slips.
Easter decorations looked ridiculous out there in the half-dark:Cardboard bunnies staked into the mud, pink and blue ribbons hanging limp off tree branches like failed nooses,
A wooden cross dragged out from the sanctuary and propped near the tree line, draped with a white cloth that snapped small in the wind like someone tried to surrender and heaven refused it with excuses,
Plastic eggs hidden in the dewy grass, their colors dull in the gray light, little capsules of sugar and cheap toys waiting for kids still asleep in backseats, faces smeared with yesterday’s news.
Someone led a song, thin and unsteady, voices trying to hit notes that never felt like they belonged in throats that spent all week swearing at traffic and bills,
We mouthed along out of habit, eyes on the sky that stubbornly refused to brighten, clouds stacked like heavy chairs over hill after hill,
Emma nudged me and pointed quietly at the tree line where the mist sat too thick, a low gauze tangled around trunks in a way that felt less like weather and more like a curtain separating us from somebody else’s wills,
I told her it was just fog, the normal creepy kind, but the hair on my arms had already started rising like it knew we were props in something hungry’s drills.
The first figure stepped out of the trees right at the line in the song where everyone mumbled something about “grave no longer keeping,”A man in a pale suit, skin washed-out in the gray, eyes wide and hollow, bare feet blackened with mud and something darker, whole body shivering like his bones were still on the slab where he’d been sleeping,
His face carried the look of someone freshly yanked from a bad dream and dropped into a worse one, terror etched so deep into his features it looked carved in with a dull blade,
He stumbled toward us, lips working around words that wouldn’t come, one shaking hand reaching out as if he expected to find a hospital bed rail instead of kids in faded denim and a preacher with store-brand Gatorade.
Behind him the trees filled with movement,
Shapes pressing through the mist, some staggering, some gliding, a crowd parting into two currents: one of the terrified and one of the wrong,“Run,” Jake snapped, voice stripped of his usual sarcasm, harsh and bare, as more bodies emerged from between the trunks, faces split between those screaming and those smiling too wide, as if both sets had been rehearsing their roles in the same twisted song,
Some wore hospital gowns, others burial suits, dirt caked under nails; some wore bright dresses and pressed shirts like they’d just stepped out of Easter photos from twenty years ago that went very, very wrong.
Those smiling ones were the worst.
They had paint-bright irises that didn’t match the bloodshot whites, teeth slightly too long when they grinned,
Sunday hats perched on heads at perfect angles, long gloves hiding wrists where the skin looked stitched and thin,
They clapped along to the hymn in progress, on-beat, enthusiastic, like they’d been waiting all year for this number,
Each smile a little too fixed, each step a little too smooth, like mannequins that finally realized they could walk and decided to crash the slumber.
The terrified ones tried to pull back, tugged by invisible leashes that jerked them forward,
Their mouths moved soundlessly at first, then the noise hit all at once—pleas, sobs, some half-sung nursery rhymes, all scrambled, all tumbling towardOur small cluster of chairs and donuts and neatly folded bulletins,
Some of them looked straight at us, eyes begging with the full force of people who remembered being human and wanted one last favor: help us not go back into the trees with them, not again.
The pastor did what pastors do when reality cracks: he raised his Bible like it was a shield and started shouting verses,
Voice shaking but loud, his training kicking in like muscle memory from countless hospital rooms and funerals and suburban rehearses,
He called on light and life and victory and the empty tomb, tried to paste the pre-approved script over the nightmare rolling toward us on bare feet and patent leather shoes,
The smiling ones listened politely, heads tilted, eyes shining, then started mouthing the same words in perfect sync, like kids in a school play who know all the lines and don’t believe a single one they use.
Jake swore under his breath, grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise,“Enough,” he hissed, “this is wrong even by our usual standards, we are not staying for the altar call where the dead choose,”His gaze flicked to Emma, to the smaller kids still sitting, frozen, paper cups trembling in their hands,
Then to the adults, faces caught between faith and fear and something like embarrassment, as if they were ashamed to admit this was not in the program or the original plans.
The ground under our chairs throbbed once, a low pulse, like the earth itself rolled over and cracked its spine,
Cracks spidered out from the base of the cross, thin fissures glowing faintly from within, light leaking through in sickly colors that never existed on any normal spectrum line,
Easter was supposed to be about a stone rolled away, a grave opened, a man walking out into fresh air and sunrise and bewildered joy,
What we got was the ground opening just enough to let more of those figures rise, some still clutching flowers from funerals, some holding stuffed rabbits like broken toys.
Kids started crying properly now, some standing, some crawling under chairs as if cheap metal could shield them from the weight of whatever stepped out of that half-open underground,
One small boy clutched his plastic egg so tightly it cracked in his fist, candy spilling onto the wet grass, jellybeans sinking slowly into the muddy ground,
Emma’s hand slipped into mine with a grip that said don’t lie this time, don’t call this a skit, don’t pretend I’m imagining those teeth and those eyes and that bought-and-paid-for smile,
The smiling figures had reached the edge of the seating area, skirts brushing the folding chairs, patent shoes leaving no footprints in the grass, each one tilting their head in unison like they’d practiced this entrance for a while.
One of the terrified men finally broke free enough to shout,“Don’t let them sing over you,” he rasped, voice torn, eyes glassy with the knowledge that he’d tried to warn others and it hadn’t panned out,“They use the songs like hooks, like nails, they make your hope grow just so they can gut it and wear the skin,”His words cut off when one of the smiling women in a lavender dress reached back without looking and laid gloved fingers gently on his chin.
He went quiet instantly, lips pressing shut, tears drying mid-track,
His eyes froze in place, wide and glossy, then slowly mirrored her grin as if something inside his skull had been pulled out and replaced with a new, approved soundtrack,
He turned his head toward us in slow motion, that fresh smile spreading, brighter than the dawn we still hadn’t seen,
In that expression I recognized something familiar: not joy, not peace, just the brittle mask you wear when you’ve accepted a job you hate and call it “blessing” to stay on the team.
“Run,” Jake said again, louder this time, the word ripping through the hymn like a rock through stained glass,
His shout jolted a few of the teenagers out of their seat-stuck trance; they grabbed their siblings, knocked over chairs, kicked aside the pastor’s carefully stacked tracts as they bolted past,
The smiling choir pivoted smoothly to face us, voices rising in a new verse that tasted like sugar and chloroform,
Lyrics all about rebirth, fresh starts, new life, set over a melody that made my knees weaken and my lungs forget how breath is supposed to form.
Easter promise used as bait.
Hope dangled like a prize egg on a high branch you have to jump for until your ankles break,
Rebirth twisted into a subscription plan where you sign in blood and give up every question you might ask awake,
The darkness here didn’t snuff out the light; it fed on it, drank it down, turned it into fuel for more glowing eyes and plastic lilies soaking in graveyard rain,
Every “He is risen” carved into the cavern under the church like graffiti, every “Hallelujah” sharpened into a hook to drag another shaking believer into the support chain.
We ran.
My heart hammered out of rhythm with the hymn behind us, breath burning in my throat like we’d swallowed a lit match,
Branches whipped our faces as we hit the tree line anyway, trading one unknown for another because the known had turned into a snare we did not want to match,
Behind us the voices soared higher, sugary, triumphant, a twisted choir celebrating a different kind of empty tomb: the hollowness left where faith had been before fear moved in,
Someone fell nearby, swore, got yanked up by Jake with a grip that refused to let Easter claim one more win.
We didn’t stop until the song faded into the distance and the woods thinned into an ugly clearing full of trash, rusted beer cans, and last year’s discarded decorations,
Pink plastic grass tangled around uprooted saplings, cracked eggshells chewed by animals who didn’t care for holy implications,
We collapsed in a ragged circle, lungs fried, eyes wide, mud on our knees,
No angels waiting there with “fear not,” just a dead shopping cart, a broken swing, and a wind that whistled through the branches like it had better things to do than listen to our pleas.
The sun finally rose then, weak and honest, climbing up over the horizon without trumpets or fanfare,
Light hit our faces, showed the dirt, the tears, the torn shirts, the truth that we had no idea what to do next and no one coming to repair,
Emma laughed once, harsh and short, said, “Happy Easter, I guess,” then wiped her face with a sleeve striped in grass and blood,
I didn’t have anything wise to say, just sat there feeling the warmth on my skin and the chill under it, both real, both flooding my veins like a double-tide of bone-thin flood.
They’ll say we overreacted.
They’ll say trauma makes everything look darker than it really is, that we misheard the songs, misread the smiles,
They’ll bring out fresh decorations next year and talk about rebirth while ignoring the new crack in the floor under the aisle,
Yet every time someone mentions “the true meaning of Easter,” my shoulders tense, my feet itch to move, my pulse jumps like it hears that hymn again in the distance,
Because I’ve seen what happens when hope is weaponized, when resurrection is repackaged as compliance, and I’ve run through the trees with that knowledge chewing at my existence.
If there is a rebirth I’m interested in now, it’s not theirs.
It’s the moment some kid in a cheap dress turns away from the stage, drops her plastic egg, and walks out the doors with muddy shoes and unapproved prayers,
The moment someone at the back hears “He is risen” and answers “then so am I, out of this, out of you, out of your polished nightmare script,”Trading the promised light at the end of their tunnel for the raw, uneven sunrise bleeding through broken branches on a hillside where at least nobody’s smile is zipped.