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Devil’s Wood Audiobook Now on the Fearsome Fiction Podcast Two Chapters at a Time (1 and 2)
Follow author Mark McNease deep into the Devil’s Wood.
An ancient people. A tree that has stood seemingly forever. And a walking stick that must possess anyone who possesses it.
Two chapters at a time, only on the Fearsome Fiction podcast. You can purchase the entire audiobook on Spotify and select online retailers.
Enter the Devil’s Wood. But be warned: you may never leave.
And now… fasten your headphones, and tell someone your last known location. The Devil’s Wood dotcom.
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Entry 6
Harlan had said nothing all this time, but I began to sense these people were not all strangers.
August 10
Three days have passed since I last wrote. There are things I noticed at the retreat that I’ve put off recording because they seemed so fantastical. This includes my retreat mates, if they can be called that. At least it’s how I saw them at first, until things began to change.
Remy had said little about himself. The look, and a slight South Asian accent, made him stand out from the others. I would guess India, or Pakistan, but he never verified it.
After dinner, but before Phillip’s tall tale by the fireplace, several of us were sitting outside in the cool air. The lodge had a large wraparound porch with a half dozenwicker rocking chairs in a line along the front wall. I was sitting between Remy and Harlan, with Claire to Harlan’s left. The others had all gone to wash up or change their clothes while we sat listening to nature’s orchestra, fullest at night.
Remy turned to me and said, “Trust is a choice.”
I’d asked the others on the porch if they were comfortable with this experience, believing I couldn’t be alone in my trepidation.
“What is it we’re supposed to trust?” I said.
“Beneficence,” said Harlan. “Whoever invited us all here surely has our best interests at heart.”
I looked at Claire, with her yellow pallor under the porch lights. She shrugged.
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NEW! Get Each New Entry in ‘The Devil’s Wood Journal’ Delivered to Your Inbox
I’m serializing The Devil’s Wood Journal, with a new entry each week. SUBSCRIBE HERE to have them delivered dirctly to your inbox.
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Fearsome Fiction Podcast: The Book Is Out – Devil’s Wood Unleashed, and the Devil’s Wood Mythology
The curse has been broken! Devil’s Wood is now available as an ebook and paperback on Amazon (including Kindle Unlimited), and soon through Ingram for wider distribution. Today on the Fearsome Fiction podcast I offer a short introduction on the book’s release, then treat listeners to the Devil’s Wood mythology, all part of The Devil’s Wood project. Check it out at TheDevilsWood.com for much more, and listen to this origin story and the legend behind it all.
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Entry 5
It had been a long day and I was already teetering on sleep. I hadn’t yet wondered what it would mean for me that I might be the odd man out, or why.
August 7
The dinner proceeded for some time, each guest talking casually while I made mental notes about them and watched. We reveal ourselves through our movements and expressions as much as we do our speech. Observation is a habit, perhaps a discipline, in which you stop cataloguing details and start noticing the spaces between them, the things that don’t quite line up. I want to be honest and tell you I don’t know exactly when that shift happened, only that it had happened by the time Eileen refilled my water glass without my asking.
Phillip suggested early on that we each say something about why we’d come. It wasn’t demanded, exactly. Nothing at the retreat those three days and nights was demanded, only suggested in a tone that made refusal feel like bad manners. Claire went first, unprompted, something about a divorce she hadn’t had yet but could feel coming, like bad weather forecasted with certainty. Harlan mumbled about ‘unfinished business,’ which struck me as deliberately opaque, information that was by design not informative. Benita laughed and said she was there because her therapist suggested a retreat and she’d Googled the wrong kind. Considering the nature of the online posting we’d all responded to it seemed unlikely.
Larry said almost nothing, which was its own kind of answer. Remy offered a single word—’curiosity’—delivered with such flatness that no one asked him to elaborate. We were all curious, were we not? About spiritual matters, about afterlives, about reincarnation and ghosts.
When my turn came, I gave some version of the truth: I was there because of the item on a website we’d all seen and responded to. (At least that was how I assumed they were all there, an assumption that proved incorrect and nearly fatal in the end.)