Unearthly Neighbors by Chad Oliver

another step closer.
    Instantly, without any warning, the man bolted.
    He lunged out of his shelter, very fast despite his age, and ran awkwardly, his long arms pumping the air. He came so close that Monte actually touched him as he passed. He scrambled up a tree with amazing agility, wrapping his arms around the trunk and pushing with his feet on the wet bark. When he got up to where the limbs were strong, he threw one questioning glance back down at the two strangers and then leaped gracefully from one limb to another. He used his hands almost like hooks, swinging his body on his long arms in breath-taking arcs. The rain didn’t seem to bother him at all; he moved so fast that he was practically a blur.
    In seconds, he was gone—lost on the roof of the world.
    “Well, Tarzan?”
    Monte stood there in the pouring rain. He was beginning to get a trifle impatient with this interminable game of hide-and-seek.
    “I’m going inside,” he said, taking out his pocket flashlight.
    Charlie eyed the dark cave in the hollow tree. “That thing may not be empty, you know.”
    “I hope it isn’t.”
    “After you, my friend—and watch out for Rover.”
    Monte walked steadily over to the opening in the tree and stepped inside.

5
    There was a heavy animal smell inside the chamber in the hollow tree, but Monte knew at once that the place was empty. He flashed the light around to make certain, but his eyes only confirmed the evidence of an older, subtler sense. The room—if that was the word for it—felt empty and was empty.
    In fact, it was the emptiest place Monte had ever seen.
    He moved on in, making room for Charlie, and the two men stood there in the welcome dryness, trying to understand what they saw—and what they didn’t see.
    The interior of the trunk of the great tree was hollow, forming a dry chamber some twelve feet in diameter. About ten feet above their heads, smooth wood plugged the tubular shaft, forming a ceiling that reflected their lights.
    The place was a featureless vault made entirely from the living wood of the tree. Even the floor was wood—a worn, brownish wood that was porous enough so that the water that dripped from their clothes seeped away before it had a chance to collect in puddles. The curving walls were a lighter color, almost that of yellow pine, and they were spotlessly clean.
    There was a kind of shelf set into one wall; it was little more than an indentation in the wood. The piece of raw meat that the wolf-thing had taken was on the shelf, and so was the cluster of red berries.
    That was all.
    There was no furniture of any kind. There were no beds, no chairs, no tables. There were no decorations on the walls, no art-work of any sort. There were no tools, no weapons. There were no pots, no bowls, no baskets.
    The place was absolutely barren. There were no clues as to what sort of a man might live there.
    It was just a big hole in a tree: simple, crude, unimpressive.
    And yet…
    Monte looked closely at the walls. “No sign of chopping or cutting.”
    “No. It’s smooth as glass. No trace of charring, either.”
    “How the devil did he make this place?”
    “Like Topsy,” Charlie said, “it just growed.”
    Monte shook his head. “I doubt that. I never saw a hollow tree that looked like this on the inside, did you?”
    “Nope—but then I haven’t been in just a whole hell of a lot of them.”
    Outside, the rain poured down around the tree and the wind moaned through a faraway sky. It was not unpleasant to be in the hollow tree; there was something secure and enduring about the place, as though it had weathered many seasons and many storms.
    But how could a man have lived here and left so few traces of his existence?
    “Maybe he doesn’t live here,” Monte said slowly. “Maybe this is just a sort of temporary camp—a shelter of some kind.”
    Charlie shrugged. There were dark circles around his eyes and he looked very tired. “I’d say that these people have no material