Excerpt from ‘The Unnatural Hole:

“Look-up there!” cried an elderly woman, dropping a pile of nets full of fish from the sea.
John started, and struggled to see what everyone in the crowded street had suddenly
begun staring at. Blocked by the mass of people gathering to see the spectacle, John’s
eyes roved around the village. All he could see were the great trees of the Sharrwoods,
standing dead-still as if awaiting something. Looking back at the stricken face of the lady,
he craned his neck even further upwards, his eyes probing the darkening sky.
A man at the fringe of the crowd suddenly cried out, dropping the bundles of leather
from his listless arms and ran, his feet thundering away from what the old woman was
pointing at.
The crowd was growing now, and John was growing steadily more filled with dread. He
was still unable to see what everyone was looking at, blocked by the mass of bodies in
front of him. Looking around for a clear place from which to see, he saw a woman
collapse upon the ground. He hurried to the spot, looked up, and froze.
In profound silence, an enormous mass of pulsing red was rapidly rising in the sky,
enshrouded in specks of black that sped in all directions. A deepening cloud of billowing
black and red expanded above the mass, boiling and speeding upwards. The stars
disappeared, as the unnatural cloud loomed over them. It began to glow a deep orange,
and light flooded the village.
“RUN!” yelled someone nearby. But no-one moved.
The mountain visibly shuddered. Then, a mass of red began flowing from its summit.
This flowing red mass swallowed everything in its path, destroying entire forests in
seconds. Ahead of the liquid fire was a shimmer in the air, like a ripple upon a lake,
speeding along the ground and heading straight for the village.
Just then, a wall of air crashed upon John, along with a roar from the very bowels of the
Earth. The wall of sound enveloped the village, filling it with sounds of grating anger and
roaring pain, and all hell broke loose.
John tore his eyes from the mountain, and the glowing shadowed sky. Turning from it,
he ran. He had to get away, anywhere. People scattered in all directions, avoiding debris
from collapsing buildings and the hooves of panic stricken livestock. He made for the
path that would lead him home, to his father… and to certain doom. Looking back at the
advancing wall of flames, he knew that his house’s sturdy walls would offer no protection
from such a force. He must find shelter, from the flames and from the dark masses falling
from the glowing sky.
A blast of heat suddenly pummeled him in a wild wind, so strong he fell to the quaking
ground. He covered his face, feeling his eyes burn, blocking out the sight of people
tearing at the ground, and lost children crying into the sodden earth. Lifting his head, he
watched as a house nearest to the mountain burst into flames, a huge fireball crashing
through the roof. A thick cloud of smoke rushed forwards, the sky claiming the land.
John heaved himself up and ran again, his eyes searing and lungs burning. His feet
struggled to keep pace on the restless earth. Everything shook, houses collapsing; the air
itself shuddered. Everything but the trees. The great trees of the Sharrwoods did not move
at all, untouched by the chaos claiming the village. It was as if the trees did not share the
same earth as the village did with the mountain, unaffected and everlasting.
 John watched as a plummeting rock, glowing a deep red, impacted upon one of the
great trees bordering the village. It simply vanished, as dust rained upon the forest floor.
No, the rock had definitely hit the tree. Another rock fell-nothing happened. The trees
were dead-still, as if the whole forest were bracing itself.
John suddenly noticed the trees shimmering. Was this the heat, twisting his vision? No,
John somehow knew it was emanating from the trees themselves. The Sharrwoods were
safe from the chaos ripping the village.
Revived from his trance, John broke into a run towards those trees that had always
called to him. Those trees that were still and restless, safe and yet foreboding. Despite
himself, he stopped just before the border between the trees and the village.
A hand gripped John’s arm, causing him to whirl around- his father!
“No! John don’t go in there! Come with us-head for the sea. We’ll be safe from the fire
there!” yelled his father, choking on his words.
“Look dad- the trees are the shelter we need-they cannot be touched by fire. Follow
me!” cried John, above the thundering land and sky.
And with that, John broke free and ran into the Sharrwoods, as many had done before,
many who had never been seen again. As John stepped over the border of the world he
knew and into his heralded future, he felt as if he were passing through a bubble. He
passed through the surface, leaving no trace behind of his existence. He passed through it
effortlessly, and yet passing over this threshold seemed to drain something…something
that irrefutably defined him.
He stopped moving, and looked forwards into the deep woods. Despite it being evening
last time he had been able to look at the sky, an emerald light was casted upon everything
he saw. Perhaps it originated from the light of the molten rocks plunging from the sky,
turned green by the vibrant tree leaves above. But the light seemed to be an elixir,
expelled and received by every particle of the Sharrwoods, sustaining itself indefinitely.
Beyond the mysterious barrier, John’s village was unrecognizable. Slowly, he watched
a molten rock plunge from the sky, in every respect a falling comet of a different world. It
inched downwards, and in time twisted by the Sharrwoods, he watched the rock obliterate
the entire village, everyone he had ever known.
John collapsed to the pine-needle coated floor of the Sharrwoods in a wretched mixture
of despair and exhaustion. Never again would he see the village, so full of purpose and
life. Never again would he see his friends’ faces. His past had been wiped clean off the
face of the Earth.
Through eyes whose vision was warped by remorse, he saw the wave of lava finally
reach the decimated village. It surged through the ruins and extinguished all forms of life
that had ever existed there. As the lava crashed against the Sharrwoods, feet from where
John lay, it suddenly hardened, singing only the outer-most pine needles on the forest
floor.
Seconds before, he had been looking at where his house had once stood, over his
desperate father’s shoulder. Now, before him stood a thick wall of stone, cutting him off
from the world he had once known. Sealing him within the everlasting, deep and
mysterious forest, all alone.