The gentle lap of waves against the reef was the island's heartbeat, a sound Hemi had known since birth. He sat on the worn wooden steps of his porch in Alofi, watching the slow dance of palm fronds against a sky deepening towards twilight.
The humid air carried the scent of damp earth and frangipani, familiar comforts on Niue. At twenty-six, Hemi felt the familiar pull of the ocean, the certainty of the land beneath his feet. Life moved at its own pace here, unhurried, rooted.
He swatted absently at a mosquito whining near his ear. Inside, the low murmur of the radio drifted out – news from New Zealand, usually a mix of politics and distant concerns.
Tonight, however, the announcer's tone was different, strained beneath the usual professionalism. Hemi leaned closer to the open doorway, catching fragments about strange occurrences in major cities. Disturbances. Odd accidents involving household items. It sounded like nonsense, the kind of vague reporting that filled time before the weather forecast.
His cousin, Maka, strolled up the path, kicking off his sandals before reaching the steps. "Anything interesting?" Maka asked, nodding towards the radio. He dropped onto the step below Hemi with a sigh.
"Just weird stuff from overseas," Hemi replied, shrugging. "Cities going crazy, I guess. Something about… accidents." He didn't want to repeat the part about household items; it sounded ridiculous.
Maka chuckled. "Palagi cities are always crazy. Too many people, not enough space." He stretched, yawning. "Went fishing down by Tamakautoga. Nothing biting today. The sea felt… quiet."
They sat in companionable silence for a while, watching geckos skitter across the porch railing. The radio inside transitioned to music, a local station playing island reggae. The strange news faded from Hemi's thoughts, dismissed as the background static of a world far removed from their shores.
He couldn't imagine the solid, dependable things in his own home turning dangerous. His grandmother's rocking chair, the heavy table his father built, the bed he slept in – they were just objects, silent witnesses to life.
A few days later, the strange news wasn't just background static anymore. It dominated the shortwave broadcasts, grainy images flickered on the community television at the market. Reports poured in from Australia, Fiji, Samoa.
People were being injured, killed, by furniture. Chairs suddenly lunging. Wardrobes toppling with unnatural force. Beds snapping shut like monstrous jaws. It was insane, unbelievable, yet the reports were consistent, growing more frequent and horrific.
Fear, cold and unfamiliar, began to coil in Hemi's stomach. He looked at the simple wooden bench across the road, suddenly seeing not weathered timber but potential menace. He glanced inside his house, at the sturdy dining chairs tucked neatly under the table. Were they listening? Waiting? The thought felt like a fever breaking.
"It's rubbish," Maka insisted, though his voice lacked its usual certainty. They were helping old Manui load coconuts onto his truck. "Mass hysteria. Something in the water over there."
Manui, his face etched with the wisdom of eighty years, spat betel nut juice onto the dusty ground. "Things change," he said cryptically, securing a rope over the green husks. "The world is bigger than Niue. And sometimes, the big world's troubles wash up on our shores, invited or not."
Hemi didn't sleep well that night. Every creak of the house sounded intentional. The wardrobe in the corner seemed taller, darker. He kept picturing its doors swinging open, not revealing clothes, but a maw.
He imagined the legs of his bed frame scraping against the floor, inching closer. He eventually dragged his mattress onto the porch, sleeping under the stars, the open air feeling safer than the enclosed space with its silent, watchful objects.
The first incident on Niue happened a week later. A tourist staying at one of the resorts near Avatele was found dead in her room. The official story was vague – a fall, a tragic accident.
But whispers spread like wildfire through the villages. Her husband, incoherent with grief and terror, claimed her armchair had attacked her. Crushed her. He'd fought it off, he sobbed, seeing it drag her. Nobody believed him, not officially. But Hemi saw the fear in people's eyes. They started looking at their own belongings differently.
Hemi found himself avoiding sitting on chairs, preferring the floor or the porch steps. He ate standing up in the kitchen. His house felt alien, hostile. He started spending more time outdoors, working in the taro patch, fishing, anything to keep away from the inanimate objects that now seemed to hold a predatory stillness.
He saw Maka doing the same. They met down by the shore, neither mentioning their shared aversion to indoor comforts. They talked about fishing, about the coming rains, about anything but the growing dread.
"People are getting spooked," Maka said finally, staring out at the reef. "Someone threw their sofa off the cliff near Hakupu yesterday."
"Did it help?" Hemi asked quietly.
Maka shook his head. "Don't know. Just… gone." He picked up a piece of driftwood, examining its smooth surface. "It's wood, Hemi. Just wood. How can it…?" He trailed off, unable to articulate the impossible horror.
The answer came with terrifying speed. It wasn't just isolated incidents anymore. It was coordinated.
One evening, as Hemi walked back towards Alofi near dusk, he heard screams from a neighboring house. He ran, his heart pounding. Peering through the window, he saw a scene of utter pandemonium.
A dining table, heavy and thick-legged, was ramming itself against the wall where a family cowered. Two chairs scuttled across the floor like grotesque crabs, wooden legs clicking, trying to corner a crying child. The sofa bucked and slammed against the floorboards.
Hemi felt frozen, bile rising in his throat. This wasn't random violence. This was hunting. He saw the father grab a machete, swinging wildly at a chair. The wood splintered, but the chair kept coming, joined by another. It was a nightmare given form.
He backed away from the window, stumbling, needing to warn others, needing to get away.
Panic gripped Alofi. Families dragged their furniture out into the open, setting bonfires. The night air filled with the acrid smoke of burning varnish, fabric, and wood.
But it wasn't enough. Some pieces seemed resistant to the flames, writhing in the heat. Others, consumed by fire, left behind scorched earth where nothing grew. And for every piece destroyed, another seemed to awaken. Floorboards buckled. Doors slammed shut on their own, trapping people inside. Roof beams groaned with malevolent awareness.
Hemi and Maka found themselves huddled with a small group in the open space near the central green. They had nothing but the clothes they wore and a few tools. The night was filled with distant crashes, splintering wood, and terrified cries.
"What do we do?" a young woman wept, clutching her baby.
"We stay away from it," Maka said grimly. "Anything made. Anything… shaped."
But where was safe? Their homes were death traps. Even simple structures, fences, fishing boats pulled ashore – were they compromised? The very fabric of their lives, built and furnished, had turned against them.
Hemi thought of the caves, natural shelters carved by the sea and time. "The caves," he said aloud. "Anapala. Talava. They're just rock."
It seemed the only option. Gathering the few people brave enough to move, they started a cautious trek away from the village lights, sticking to paths, avoiding anything that looked remotely manufactured.
The journey was fraught. A wooden fence post suddenly swung outwards, narrowly missing Maka. A discarded crate tumbled down a slope towards them, forcing them to scatter. The inanimate world was a minefield.
They reached the entrance to Talava Arches as dawn painted the sky pale grey. The cave mouth yawned, promising refuge. Inside, the air was cool, damp, smelling only of stone and sea salt carried on the breeze. There were no chairs, no tables, only limestone formations sculpted by nature.
They huddled together, exhausted and terrified, listening to the distant sounds of destruction from the villages. For a few days, the caves offered sanctuary. They scavenged for food along the coast, collected rainwater in hollowed rocks. Hope began to tentatively return. Perhaps they could wait it out. Perhaps whatever madness had seized the manufactured world would pass.
Hemi explored deeper into the cave system during daylight, looking for other resources, other escape routes. He found passages leading further inland, dry and dusty.
In one chamber, illuminated by a narrow shaft of light from above, he saw something that made his blood run cold. Lying on the stone floor were several pieces of crudely fashioned furniture. A stool made of lashed-together driftwood. A low platform resembling a bed, woven from vines and branches. They hadn't been there before.
He backed away slowly. It wasn't just factory-made objects. It was anything shaped by human hands with the intent of comfort or utility. The horror had followed them, adapted. Or perhaps, it had always been latent in the raw materials themselves.
He ran back to the main chamber, shouting a warning. "We have to get out! It's here! The wood, the vines, they're making things!"
Panic erupted anew. Where could they go? The island itself felt compromised. Maka grabbed Hemi's arm. "The sea. We need a boat. Not a wooden one. An inflatable, maybe? There were some at the resort."
It was a desperate gamble. The resort was miles away, back through the dangerous territory. But staying meant waiting for the inevitable convergence of crudely formed, hostile shapes in the dark.
They decided to risk it, moving only at night, travelling in small groups. Hemi, Maka, and three others formed the lead scout party. They moved silently along the reef flats during low tide, the water cool around their ankles. The island loomed beside them, unnaturally quiet except for the occasional crash or splintering sound carried on the wind.
They found the resort utterly devastated. Buildings were collapsed, furniture strewn across the grounds like broken bodies. Some pieces lay inert, others twitched occasionally. They scavenged desperately, finding punctured rafts, ruined supplies.
In a maintenance shed, almost miraculously untouched, they discovered a small aluminum dinghy, meant for emergency use. It had no motor, only oars.
"It's something," Maka breathed, relief washing over his face. "We can paddle. Get away from the coast. Maybe signal a ship."
Getting the dinghy to the water was agonizingly slow. Every shadow seemed to hold menace. A wicker sun lounger suddenly scuttled towards them from the poolside debris, forcing them to drop the boat and scramble back, hearts hammering. Hemi threw a heavy rock, smashing one of its legs. It collapsed, twitching.
They finally launched the dinghy into the calm lagoon waters. The five of them piled in, cramped and low in the water. Hemi and Maka took the oars, pulling away from the cursed shore. Looking back, Hemi could see shapes moving amidst the ruins of the resort, silhouetted against the rising moon. Wooden legs dragging, upholstered forms lumbering.
They rowed for hours, the island receding behind them, becoming a dark smudge on the horizon. The vast, empty ocean felt like salvation. They were exhausted, thirsty, but alive. Hope, fragile but persistent, flickered among them.
"We made it," one of the women whispered, tears streaming down her face.
Hemi didn't reply. He kept rowing, his gaze fixed on the endless water ahead. He felt a strange vibration through the aluminum hull. Not from the waves. Something else.
He looked down at his oar. It was wooden. Smooth, worn timber in his hands. He hadn't even thought about it. A faint tremor ran through the wood. He felt it in his palms, a low thrum, like a deep, malevolent purr.
He looked at Maka, whose eyes widened in horror as he stared at his own oar. The wood began to warp.
Splinters, impossibly long and sharp, erupted from the surface of Hemi's oar, piercing his gloves, his skin. He cried out, trying to let go, but the wood seemed to constrict, holding his hands fast. The oar thrashed in his grip, alive, pulling him towards the side of the dinghy.
Maka yelled, dropping his own transforming oar, trying to help Hemi. But the other oar writhed on the floor of the boat, its shaft thickening, twisting into grotesque knots. The wood groaned.
Hemi felt an agonizing pressure as the oar in his hands pulsed, the splinters digging deeper, burrowing into muscle and bone. It wasn't just attacking him; it felt like it was trying to merge with him. He saw the grain of the wood swirling, darkening, mirroring the terror in his own eyes.
The dinghy lurched as the second oar slammed against its thin metal side, trying to breach the hull. The other passengers screamed, scrambling away from the possessed lengths of timber.
Hemi looked at Maka, his cousin's face a mask of disbelief and terror. There was no escape. The material itself, wood, shaped or raw, carried the contagion. They hadn't escaped the island; they had brought its curse with them in the most mundane of tools.
With a final, desperate surge of strength born of horror, Hemi ripped his impaled hands away from the oar. Skin tore, blood flowed freely, but he was momentarily free. The oar, now a writhing mass of splintered wood, lashed out, striking one of the other men, sending him overboard with a choked scream.
The second oar continued its assault on the dinghy. Water began to spray through a small rupture. They were sinking.
Maka grabbed the emergency flare gun they'd salvaged. "Signal!" he yelled, fumbling with the cartridge.
But Hemi knew it was too late. He looked down at his bleeding hands. The wood splinters embedded in his flesh weren't just dead wood. He could feel them pulsing faintly, a sickening echo of the oar's life. He felt a coldness spreading up his arms, a stiffness in his joints.
He looked back towards the distant, dark shape of Niue. His home. Lost. He thought of the rocking chair, the dining table, objects that had once meant family, stability. Now, symbols of a monstrous betrayal.
The flare shot into the night sky, a brief, desperate star. Below, the dinghy filled rapidly. The thrashing oars subsided, seeming to wait. Maka was trying to plug the leak, shouting encouragement, but his voice sounded distant to Hemi.
Hemi touched his own face. His skin felt rough, strangely textured. He looked at his hands again. The areas around the embedded splinters were darkening, hardening, taking on the appearance of wood grain.
The transformation wasn't just external. It was inside him. The cannibalistic hunger of the wood, the urge to consume, to merge, was seeping into his very being. He was becoming one of them.
He looked at Maka, at the terrified faces of the others struggling in the rapidly sinking boat. A new, terrifying instinct surfaced within him, overriding fear, overriding pain. Hunger.
With a choked sob that sounded more like the creak of stressed timber, Hemi lunged not away from the water, but towards his cousin. The last vestiges of his humanity screamed in silent protest as his stiffening fingers closed around Maka's arm.
The emerging wood grain of his own flesh scraped against his cousin's skin. The brutally sad, unique horror wasn't just being consumed by furniture; it was becoming the monster himself, adrift on an endless ocean.
The ultimate betrayal echoed in the wooden shell he was becoming. The flare died overhead, leaving them in darkness.