If Marci and the kids had been here, I would have teased them, scared them. But now it was I who was terrified. I got up and brushed myself off. I looked around, certain no one could see me in that wooded tomb, yet feeling silly. Nick Seagrave was no coward.

I’d walked another fifty feet when something groped me. I ran. Something grabbed my foot, and I tripped and fell at the base of one of the trees, caught in a root. I felt something cold and slimy on my face. I peered into the darkness, barely able to make out a grayish green moss covering a tree stem. It was covered with slimy, shaggy growths, some of them now attached to my face. I wiped and spit and stood up, drawing up my shirt and burying my face in it. I stopped suddenly when I heard windy whispers.

“Who’s there?” I shouted, trying to sound brave. “Show yourself!” Silence.

I walked cautiously, tempted to force my way through the trees on one side or the other to find another way. Instead, bent low to keep my face from the boughs, I walked forward, shivering and cursing, poising my hands in front of me, ready to engage in martial arts or at least a good fistfight. I found myself wishing not for my shotgun as much as a blowtorch. I pictured myself scorching the trees to keep them off me and get some revenge.

I vowed if I ever got out I’d never go into a place like that again, not alone.

Finally the trees began to thin, and a welcome red glow peeked through the wooden roof. It appeared to be late afternoon. Now I could see the road again under me. I ran the last hundred yards out into the open, pulling off my shirt and falling into the soft plush grass beside the road. A curious hedgehoglike creature with overbig eyes stared at me and cocked his head as I rolled in his grass. I laughed and made a face, and he ran from me.

I’d never felt so relieved to come out of the darkness and into the light. I laughed some more, then looked back at the trees. I stopped laughing. It hadn’t been my imagination. There had been something else, something invisible, something sinister, something more than trees. I’d felt it as surely as I now felt the sun on my face.

Hours later, still headed what I’d defined as west, I crested a slope and saw another group of travelers in front of me. I nearly shouted, pausing only to straighten and tuck in my grimy, smelly shirt and try to comb my hair, at least to get the remaining needles and debris out of it. Then I ran to catch them. They heard me, and at the same time all turned and looked. I stopped running and smiled. Friendliness might buy me some information.