Your life is the chapel, and the thousand small details in the painting are the events of your life.

July 21

I’m not in a hurry to write this, as you can tell. It needs to be told accurately, in its own time. The events I’m describing at the retreat were ultimately not as significant as what happened afterward—to the others and to me. It’s a kind of remarkable tapestry, terrifying to behold, with its woven images of demons and the vast dark unknown, that has to be viewed patiently. Imagine yourself standing fifty feet beneath a painting at the top of a chapel you might see in Rome.  Your life is the chapel, and the thousand small details in the painting are the events of your life. Past, present, and  future.

You cannot comprehend its whole without examining each small part. I am, ultimately, a small part of it all, as is everyone who was there, with the possible exception of Philip. He was more than just a storyteller. He was a bridge from what came before … to me. I am what you’ll find on the other side of it all, should you survive the journey. An ending that begins, and a beginning that will eventually end, but not yet.

Dinner was waiting for us later as promised. But first I wanted to shower and change my clothes. The summer was hot, and the drive from New Jersey had taken longer than expected. The traffic gods were either determined to trouble me, or to try and stop what was coming. They could be cursed in either case, for their success and their failure.

The cabin was small but solidly built, with dark log walls sealed by tar, and small windows cut into each wall. There were five beds, two on one side and three on the other, each with a plain quilt and a rough wooden frame that looked hand-built. The three men who’d gotten there before me had already claimed their beds. I saw suitcases on two beds, one with a duffle bag beside it as if the guest had planned to stay longer. A third suitcase was under another bed, leaving me two to choose from.

We are, in the end, drops of water from on ocean that awaits our return. Until then, we seek.

July 18

I had not expected to spend a sleepless night. Ghost stories told around a fire, which is what this at first appeared to be, are the stuff of childhoods and the easily frightened. We were adults—three women and four men, one of whom had done his best to scare us all with a preposterous tale.

I didn’t know any of them. The retreat had been arranged for seekers, such as we were, not for a group who knew each other. And while I place myself firmly in the agnostic category, I will admit now that I belong more in the believer column, though it’s not a belief that comforts. It’s a belief in the malevolence of things we don’t understand and are better off not examining. The whole experience has confirmed my conclusion that the human species is not the pinnacle of evolution, but it’s most tragic mistake.

What you are about to read are the entries of a journal found in an abandoned cabin somewhere in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. The location remains undisclosed, for reasons that will become clear in the writing. Nothing in this journal has been changed. Only you can decide if these are based on fact or fiction. The answer may ultimately be found in the Devil’s Wood. Be prepared to believe the unbelievable.

July 14

You don’t need to know my name. For your own safety, it’s better that you don’t. By the time this tale is finished, you may wish you’d never met me, so let’s pretend you didn’t.

I was told this story on a spiritual retreat—a group of like-minded seekers spending a weekend in the Pennsylvania countryside at a campground that shall remain nameless for obvious reasons. People like to visit gravesites, and though this wasn’t one, not technically, the woods we were told about weren’t far way. The last thing I want is for them to be discovered.

I assumed the story wasn’t real. There were no tree worshippers in Pennsylvania, no ghost houses, no skeletons in a place called Devil’s Wood. But I was wrong. What I’m about to tell you is all true. There’s a walking stick in my closet that proves it. I want to be rid of it, but it’s not yet ready to be rid of me.

I have to be honest about how little I understood that first night. Retreats like this one are full of people telling stories they need someone else to believe. It was a spiritual retreat, after all. Some of us believed in God, some of us believed in nothing, and a few were convinced the Devil had stopped by a time or two. I’d learned to nod, to make a sympathetic face, to let people have their delusions. Someone always has a ghost story. Usually it’s a dead relative who visited them, or a past life intruding on the present, or a version of themselves they buried a long time ago and haven’t stopped digging up. Ghosts are often reflections in that way.