The world around you has a history of its own, beyond the perspective of your existence. Just like you, the things around you have their glorious moments and their deep, dark secrets. Victors and the vanquished share something in common: the bloody, brutal war that led up to their definitive title. Your surroundings are both witness and participants to these confrontations.

Centuries ago, there was an old tree in central Europe, on the outskirts of a town, whose name is now lost to time. For years, the tree grew tall and broad, its branches sprawling into the sky, while its roots drove deep into the earth. It was a landmark to the people, showing wayward travelers the direction to hospitality and a warm hearth.

A simple change in the wind and the people went mad.

The next caravan of merchants came upon the town in flames, and bodies hanging from every branch that would hold the weight. They cursed the Devil and hurried along to the next town, hoping to escape the curse that overtook that land. They spread word of the tragedy and Rumor, with its many mouths and ears, ran rampant with the people.

Long enough time had passed that the story became a myth, a moral story about the sins of man. People returned to the area, the town’s ruins erased by time, and the bodies of the tree decayed and returned to the soil long ago. Again, the people prospered, and the tree, still growing strong, became a landmark yet again.

This time, it was witchcraft.

The town witnessed several deaths and horrific occurrences that led the people to execute two whole families, children and all. One of the fathers was the last to hang, his punishment compounded by having to watch his beloved wife and kids dangle from ropes as they strangled to death, suffocating slowly. After sunset, under torchlight, his finals words were a curse upon the people who murdered his family, the lands they thrive, and the very tree were their souls would be forever bound. Invoking the spirits of the damned from years past, the people dropped him from the stand, breaking his neck and interrupting his calling.

The spirits came anyway. Such is the power of a dying man’s last breath.

Over time, the people became isolated, distrusting of outsiders and merchants. Soon enough, they became distrusting of each other. As this trust decayed, so, too, did the land. The great tree where the families hanged for days began to lose its leaves, and its branches began to twist and curl, while the bark grew darker, harder. The people shunned outsiders and the lands grew barren. When they turned away merchants, the livestock began to die all too suddenly. As the distrust turned towards their neighbors, the people themselves began to go missing.

Another town fell to ruin and the sole survivor wearily walked towards the tree. With a piece of wrought metal, he carved the word “guilty” into his skin and hanged himself from one of the branches.

Decades passed, and people in other lands heard stories of a cursed tree, but never thought themselves that it may be closer than they had feared. Yet, somehow, they all narrowly missed it, day by day, week by week.

Some people finally returned to the land, fresh with ideas on repurposing the soil, working the earth to make it livable. Woodworkers among the people took a special interest in the cursed tree, unable to decide whether to use it or leave it be. As they continued to develop the town, necessity required the tree to taken down and used for furnishings, even ripping out the trunk and roots to do what they could with the land.

Hacking down the limbs with saws, breaking the brittle ones with their bare hands. Once it was in manageable pieces, the workers took them into the shop and began the carving. Peeling off the bark, they shaped the meat of the tree with a series of specialty tools. Blades and edgers that chip away and shape the material, sculpting the wood into something so far removed from its original visage. The wood itself was durable, almost resisting the workers’ efforts to change it. But like any human being, given enough time and torture, it succumbed to the twisting knives.

Out of all the usable wood, the workers managed a simple dining table, four chairs and a bench. The rest of the scraps were used as kindling for fires. The created set went to a wealthy family. Not nobility, but simply rich enough to have slightly more luxurious things than others.

That family kept six souls. Mother, Father, and four children. They were all found dead in their beds, seemingly strangled to death, but there was no other disturbance in the house. All their possessions handed down or sold off, the wood-carved furniture was picked up by a couple that lived nearby. The wife coveted the pieces and managed to get a good deal with some small amount of blackmail. Gradually, their relationship fell apart. One day, the husband took one of the wood chairs out to a nearby orchard and hanged himself from one of the trees. Later that night, the widow, mad from despair, locked herself inside the house and burned everything to the ground. As the story goes, she did not wail as she died. She laughed.

The abandoned chair in the orchard was picked up and sold off at a flea market.

There were other families, other couples. All ended in tragedy. Decades passed, and more fell victim to the spirits.

Just as the world changes you, you change the world with your daily life. The history of this tree, the lives that it has taken, all lost and forgotten in time. Long ago, it was feared. Then the world around it reshaped it, changed it, gave it “purpose”. The stories fell into myth, and the tree was rendered another inanimate object for the use of the people it would eventually slay. Whole families hanged from the branches of the original tree. The only thing anyone ever says anymore is, “It’s a solid chair, I think it’s oak, maybe.” Never mind the countless souls bound inside the grain.

Now it sits in a dimly lit aisle at pawn shop disguised as an antique market.

A reliquary of the damned on sale for $3.50.