After a lot of thought I just decided to keep the notebook with me, I didn't see how it could help the cops at all, and I wanted to take a closer look at it, even if it had freaked me out a little bit before. I took it home, put it on my dresser and mostly forgot about it. Every now and then I would see it, and tell myself I would look at it later, but mostly I just let it gather dust. Over the course of less than a week the entire incident was mostly gone from my mind, just another mundane event in my uninteresting life. The notebook would probably have sat there for weeks or months before I looked at it, realized I wasn't ever going to read it, and just threw it away. But then I had a dream.
I was walking through the park where I found the journal. It was at night and I was lost, there wasn't a moon or any stars, but somehow there was just enough light to see the trees all around me. The trees were different, several were burned, the branches were all knotted and tangled, and they were all so close to the path. For some reason I felt scared, like someone was watching me, like I was intruding and someone didn't want me there. I was running, but I couldn't see where I was going, I kept running into tree branches and getting cut or scrapped, it was like the branches were reaching out for me. I don't know why but I couldn't stop running, I knew it hurt, I knew it kept throwing me running into these branches, I knew that I had no idea where I was going, but I just couldn't stop running. Somehow I felt that if I stopped something even worse would happen. It felt like I was running for hours, but suddenly I broke through the trees into a small clearing, The trees were still all around me, but I could stop running. In the very middle of the clearing was the notebook, partially buried under leaves like it had been when I first found it, only this time the leaves were pitch black. I cautiously picked it up and started flipping through the pages again.
It was like someone had taken the book and chosen one thing about each page and then removed everything else. Each page only contained one of the things it held before, I noticed it first on the pages where there had been math problems. Before the page had been filled with work and equations, but now there were just those strings of numbers I didn't understand, exactly where they had been before, only surrounded by the emptiness of a blank page. Then I came to the first drawing of the large tree, where before there had been an intensly complex aray of branches, now there was only the trunk, the tree somehow seemed even more intimidating with all its limbs removed. Then when I got to the second drawing the tall bussnisse man was gone, and only his tie remained, the bottom half of it still obscured by the suit that was no longer there. All the drawings were like this, everything gone, except one thing, usually something in the center of the page, but sometimes something off to the side. When I finally got to the last page I found something unexpected: a map of the woods, a way out.
I laughed with excitment, but the woods swollowed the sound before it even reached my ears, I looked up to see the trees closer than before, bearing down on me. I took a close look at the map, and then I started running again, I knew where I was now, I knew were to go. The trees cut and scrapped me more voilently now, trying to stop me, trying to keep me trapped. Blood started dripping down my head and arms, the trees cuts finally breaking skin, but I didn't care, I could finally escape, I could be free of these woods. In the distance I saw a light, an opening through which I could escape. I was almost there, I almost made it, but then the roots uprooted themselves from beneath my feet throwing me forward. I landed on my chest, inches away from my freedom, and as I reached out I felt smooth oily coils bind my body and legs, and drag me back into the waiting trees.
I woke up terrified for my life, and it took several moments before I realized it was all just a dream. I tried to relax, to go back to sleep, but I just couldn't make myself sleep, the dream kept me from being able to so much as close my eyes without feeling all those trees reaching out towards me. I finally decided to look at that notebook, as long as I wasn't sleeping I might as well look at the thing keeping me awake.
