The tree continued to circle the house, filling the air with the sound of shifting dirt as its roots churned the ground beneath it again and again and again. It was like this every night without fails and had been like this for five months so far. It prowled around the house, never entering the slightly ajar back door and never digressing from its well worn path.
Nobody lived there anymore, not since the children of the last family had tried to run away from their cruel parents and run straight into the tree as it made its way up to the house for its seventeenth night. Neither children nor parents were seen or heard from again, just a door left slightly ajar and all their worldly belongings within arm's reach.
Occasionally someone will claim that the tree has visited their house but such claims are disproved within minutes - it leaves an unmistakable trail of fresh dirt and tiny animal bones in its wake. It's such a predictable creature that it can even be found during the day simply by tracing the path back to the source to a lone tree beside the waterfall.
Some reckon it likes the view, likes to watch over them all and plan which family it will haunt after its vigil at the abandoned home is done. Some even say the tree is possessed by the spirit of a young man who was thrown from the top of the waterfall by a spurned lover and now spends his restless nights trying to find them and exact revenge.
For all that we do and do not know about the creature, we know that hidden behind those leaves is a face that everyone calls familiar. We know it has remained on its current path for five months and there is no record of its existence before the missing family moved into that house.
We don't know what happened to the owner before them but it's been said that he was a keen gardener.
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