The Rhythm in the Pines

I never told anyone about the drums. Not my parents, not my friends, not even my brother, though we’d both stop dead in the middle of a game of catch, listening. The sound would roll out of the dense pine forest that bordered our meadow, a deep, rhythmic pulse that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It wasn’t the frantic beat of a modern drum set, but something older, more deliberate—a pattern that felt like a heartbeat, a pulse of the earth itself. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom-boom. It would begin without warning, sometimes at dusk, sometimes in the dead of night, and it would linger for minutes, sometimes hours, before fading into the sigh of the wind.

The farm had been in my mother’s family for generations, a sprawling piece of land that had been carved out of the wilderness by pioneers. The house itself was a rambling Victorian, with peeling paint and a wraparound porch that groaned underfoot. My brother and I would spend our summers exploring the property, but we never ventured into the pines. There was something about them, a stillness that felt watchful, and the drums always seemed to emanate from that darkness. I tried to rationalize it—maybe it was a distant construction site, or a military exercise from the nearby base, or even a Native American powwow that I hadn’t heard about. But the rhythm was too precise, too organic, and it never matched any sound I knew.

The first time I heard it up close was on a summer afternoon when I was twelve. I had wandered to the edge of the pines, chasing a rabbit, and as I stood among the towering trunks, the drumming began overhead, like the trees themselves were the instrument. It wasn’t coming from a single direction. It was all around me, vibrating through the ground, through my chest. I felt a primal fear, the kind that makes your legs want to run, but I was rooted to the spot. The pattern changed—instead of the steady heartbeat, it became a sharp, staccato rhythm, like a warning. And then, just as suddenly, it stopped.

I didn’t tell anyone, but I started to keep a journal. I noted the times, the weather, and any other details. I noticed that the drums only occurred when there was no wind—on perfectly still days or nights, when the air was so quiet you could hear your own heartbeat. And I noticed that they always came from the pines. Sometimes, if I listened closely, I could hear a faint secondary sound, like the rustle of feathers and the snap of twigs, as if something was moving through the underbrush in time with the rhythm.

Years passed. I grew up and moved away, but my father stayed on the farm. When I visited, the drums would come, and my father would just shrug and say it was the ‘old folks’ playing their music, a nod to the Lenape who once inhabited the land. But his eyes would flicker to the pines, and I knew he felt it too. Then, after I had been gone for a decade, I received a letter from him, written in a shaky hand, saying that a woman had come to the farm—a psychic, a medium—and she had told him that the pines were a gateway, a thin place where the veil between worlds was weak. She said there was a presence there, something ancient, and it was trying to communicate.

I drove back the next weekend. The pines seemed darker, more foreboding than I remembered. My father met me on the porch, looking older, his eyes hollow. He said the drums had been relentless since the psychic left, sometimes starting at dawn and continuing until late night. He played me a recording he had made on his phone. It was the same rhythm, but now it was faster, more insistent, and there was another sound underneath it—a low, guttural chanting that sounded almost human, but not quite. We sat in silence as he played it, and when it ended, I felt a chill run down my spine. It was then that I noticed the tree line. The pines seemed to be closing in, their branches reaching toward the house like skeletal fingers.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my old bed, listening to the silence, and then it started. The drums, louder than ever, pounding through the walls, through the floor. I got up and walked to the window, and there, at the edge of the pines, I saw a shape. It was tall, impossibly thin, with long arms that hung almost to the ground, and it was moving in a slow, deliberate dance, keeping time with the drums. Its skin was smooth and dark, like bark, and its eyes glowed with an amber light. I felt a pull, a compulsion to walk toward it, to join the dance. But I forced myself to look away, to pull the curtains shut, and I pressed my hands over my ears until the rhythm finally stopped.

In the morning, I told my father we had to leave, that the land was cursed. He just stared at me, and then he said, ‘It’s not a curse. It’s a summons. They’ve been calling for years, and now they’re getting impatient.’ He walked to the edge of the pines and placed his palm against a trunk. For a moment, I thought I saw the tree breathe. Then he turned and said, ‘They want someone to stay. They’ve chosen you.’ I laughed, but it was hollow. And then the drums started up again, close, so close that I could feel the vibration in my teeth. I turned to run, but I saw that the pines were no longer a border. They had swallowed the path back to the main road. I was trapped, and the rhythm was all around me, a living thing, eager and hungry.

That was three months ago. I’ve been living in the farmhouse, alone now, because my father vanished into the pines one night during a rainstorm. The drums have become my constant companion. They accompany me as I tend the overgrown garden, as I cook meals, as I lie in bed. And gradually, I’ve begun to understand them. They’re not just a sound—they’re a language, a pulse that speaks of a world hidden beneath the soil, where the roots of the pines intertwine with something vast and patient. I’ve stopped trying to escape. The pines have grown so thick around the house that no sunlight reaches the windows, and the air is thick with the smell of damp earth and ozone.

Tonight, for the first time, I went to the edge of the pines and stepped among them. The drums were a deafening heartbeat, and I felt a strange sense of peace. I could see the shapes moving between the trees, dozens of them, their eyes like fireflies. They were waiting for me. I knew I could turn back, but the rhythm had gotten into my bones, and it beat in time with my own pulse. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was no longer in the woods. I was in a clearing, bathed in a cold light, and the drums had stopped. A voice, low and guttural, spoke in a language I somehow understood. It said: ‘You are the keeper now. The rhythm will sustain you.’ And I realized, with a clarity that was both terrifying and exhilarating, that I had become part of the drum—a heartbeat in the pines, forever calling to the next one who would listen.