10-14

I WALKED THROUGH the woods last night. Slowly in the cold, under a starless sky. I walked in total darkness on a path I knew well; the unknown crowding closer with every sound or hint of sound hidden in the gloom.

There was no danger. But try to convince yourself of that at the strike of midnight, on a stark black night, miles away from anyone.

Eventually I found my car, still alive; a survivor, and drove it home.

The house was dimly lit, everyone would be asleep. A lone lamp in the window awaited my return.

As I entered into the foyer, the sight of my son stopped me cold. He was standing at the stairs, half in shadow, trembling.

"There's a ghost in my room." he said softly.

His presence frightened me, but I smiled assuringly. "It's nothing but shadows and moonlight", the words falling from a phony plastic grin... At first I thought he was a ghost, and what right did I have to assure him, conversely, of anything of the sort?

He didn't agree, but it was not the time to argue about it. Midnight, i've always felt, is neither the time, nor the place to be arguing about anything. So I held him in my arms, carried him up the stairs into my room, and laid him down on my bed.

From here the night wore on, and finally, we slept.


----------

10-15

WE DIDN'T SPEAK of the night before. No mention of ghosts or shadows or moonlight. He woke up shortly after I did; fresh and well rested, as if the incident at the stairs were nothing more than a scarcely remembered dream--all but forgotten, and certainly not important.

The rest of the morning went smoothly. We performed our daily ritual of hot showers, warm eggs, and cold toast. I inquired about the status of his studies; a question to which he secretly eagerly awaited every morning. He responded with the usual excited figures, prospective awards, and perfect scores.

He was finishing just as the school bus arrived: a honk from the bus, a flurry of school books, a quick hug goodbye, and he was off. And I was left to prepare myself for another long day at the office.

-

I returned home shortly after six with a headache. Our offices are defending a massive tort liability claim against a small public corporation that manufactures bicycles along with a short list of other related products.

Apparently, the brakes on the corporations' entire '01 line of bicycles were defective; and the company had managed to sell thousands of them late last year, during and just after the Christmas season.

The sheer number of sales was impressive, as the bike had managed to outsell all of their previous models; had in fact, managed to outsell every other bike on the market. It was a popular item, and at first this traffic nightmare appeared to the corporation to be a God-sent blessing.

Ego's grew inside the company, and so did the corporate payouts. Stocks spit once, then twice; and were shelled out to employees like candy. The future looked great... Great that is, until roughly four months ago.

And so, a large portion of this well-meaning corporations' problems, managed to find their way to my desk.

When I walked through the door my brother and son were watching jeopardy.

"The ratification of the constitution of the United States of America was held in this state," answered Alex.

I crashed onto the couch next to them. They asked about my day without turning from the TV, and I could only grunt. I was fairly tired, and there weren't enough hours between now and tomorrow when I would again be faced with the headache waiting at the office.

For sure, I would have to take it all home tomorrow, and probably for the next few weeks, to work on it here as well... It wasn't a case the corporation could afford to lose, although it was clear to everybody, including the judge, that it wasn't winnable... At least from the defendants point of view.

"What is Pennsylvania", asked a nervous girl of no more than 14. It was apparently teen week.

I was tired. The night before must've worn on me more than I realized because I kept losing my concentration. I announced my retirement and took a shower. When my head hit the bed, I knew no more.

I did not visit the woods. That night.

-----------

10-16

I AM DRAWN to these woods. They are mysterious and secretive, and never silent. They whisper and howl relentlessly; while they sway to a wind only they seem to feel.

This part of the forest constitutes the rough edge of an ancient million-acre wood, which is cascaded with two-hundred year old trees and little else. It is a forest virtually untouched by human hands. A lonely survivor in a concrete world.

The proud trees stand overhead like rigid sentries; who on their very honor, permit no sharp form of light from penetrating to the ground floor. Their trunks are thick, and their skyline is high. And here, they are masters.

They have beaten the odds and transcended time. And are of the last who have done so. Their wisdom is real and is almost tangible. It is an intelligence which has weight, and acts as an undercurrent to the strong sensations of surveillance, and observation any outsiders will feel if they stray too far from their cities, and wind up here. In this world, we are the intruders.

On any clear day in mid-Autumn, the eaves would be blazing with colorful fire under a cool shimmering sun. The birds would be singing from their aristocratic perches, with a red fox or two sniffing the ground below: Casing out holes in the birds alpine security. The countenance would be calm and life would seem normal; certainly not dangerous...

But this is not a clear day.

-

It is one o'clock in the morning and there are violent winds about. The forest is walking and talking. A stormy, relentless gale is ripping at the trees, causing a turbulent war between the eaves. The sound is deafening, and it drowns out everything.

When I shrieked into the night, I could not hear my own voice.

The storm came from nowhere. I arrived in the woods at midnight expecting a quiet walk through the darkness. The afternoon had been long, and the evening even longer: The endless case-work following my every move well into the night... And all I could think about was the forest.

Lunch with clients at noon; and all I could think about was the forest.
Case work till dinner; and the forest filled my thoughts.
Dinner with my nine year old son Kain: nothing on my mind, only the forest.

And so I found myself once again, at a ridiculous hour, driving to the forest. With no solid reason... Except for a mild yearning I cannot explain...

And now, I am lost.

-A man lost in the middle of the forest, at one o'clock in the morning, with no good excuse for being there.

-A grown man, afraid and alone at the strike of one, on a cold stormy night in the middle of October with Halloween looming just around the corner.

-A foolish grown man, now adrift deep inside an ancient million-acre wood; far from the safety of an impossible lawsuit. Far from his slumbering son and expensive car. Far from everyone and everything.

And then, I realized with death crowding my heart:

-A grown man, perhaps not as far from Everything as he'd at first thought.

Something is glowing red in the dark.

-A man without a flashlight. Without a light of any kind. Who now, wishes desperately, to be anywhere but the forest...

-----------

10-17

I AM ASLEEP and dreaming about a wooden road I once saw in New Mexico that traveled east to west across the lonely Sonoran desert, about a quarter mile north of the Mexican border.

Created on the tail end of the nineteenth century, and due in most part to the invention and evolution of the automobile; the road was dubbed "the passage to the future", and became to many a living tribute to the fantastic possibilities of life in twentieth century America.

Times were changing. The crossings of plains and deserts could now be accomplished in a few safe days, rather than the treacherous month long gambles they once were... The impossible was becoming possible. The forces of old and evil had long since been conquered, and America stood united and unchallenged--eager to march the American dream into the next century...

-

The American dream.

The passage was made of wood because the landscape of the desert is never constant, and big pieces of the road would sometimes get covered by large piles of sand; thus making the crossing impossible for primitive vehicles with limited power.

To overcome this obstacle, the road was constructed of thousands of small wooden planks which could easily be lifted out of the sand. In the event that the road became impassable, the men would simply raise the planks out of the sand, dust them off, and place them on top of it. Problem solved.

The road still exists today, and although it constitutes an important piece of American history, it has absolutely no historical markings and is scarcely remembered by anyone. It has been petrified and forgotten by time, and only those who live near it can tell you the entire story. They know it well:

-

About twenty miles to the north-east lies a small rundown airport. Populated mostly by old veterans of old wars who play checkers and drink coffee, the airport doesn't see much traffic. On a busy day, no more than twenty to thirty planes can be spotted on the tarmac or found on radar bouncing around the empty desert skies.

And all of the pilots steer well clear of the Mexican border.

But why would they? Why would seasoned piolets spend large amounts of time meticulously checking maps, compasses, and air traffic control during a joy-ride flight, just to ensure they keep their distance from the border? Why would they be so worried about staying away from it, when no law prevents them from crossing it?

The answer to that question is the point of this story. I have seen it, and I will commit suicide, long before I will ever lay my eyes on it again:

-

Fly south in the pearl darkness with a full moon overhead. Continue on until you reach the invisible line of the Mexican border. But once you cross it, do not look over your shoulder. Do not look back at the old American dream in action. Because if you do, you will see that dream for yourself:

Crossing the desert under a star-filled sky, you will see hundreds of ancient automobiles. They will form a rough chain which will stretch from one horizon to the other. And they will be real. As real as the road itself... As real as your fear.

The sight of this will peel away your sanity.

Now arc, come about, and cross the border again, this time heading north into America. And before your eyes, watch in horror, as the ghost caravan quickly vanishes into nothing.

There is no explanation.

-

As I said, the locals know it well. And here, in this obsolete forest, I wish desperately not to know it at all. But I saw it with my own eyes, and nothing can ever erase that.

I am unconscious. I fainted in the darkness when the glowing red met my memory of the American dream. I am not ready to wake up. I am not ready to face a dark forest in a world where anything can happen. And so I will sleep until tomorrow. I will wake with the sun.

---------

10-18

I FINALLY FOUND my car, but it was no longer a survivor. A tree branch of about three feet in diameter had made me a convertible, and this humble architect was now sitting awkwardly across my back seat and out my nonexistent left rear door. The tires had been unable to meet the challenge, and all four were now flat. Showers of glass were scattered everywhere.

Where had the storm come from! The forecast had been clear. Hell, the night had been clear. It didn't make sense dammit!

How long had I been unconscious? It felt like days.

What the hell was I doing out here? Why the hell had I come here to begin with?

I walked slowly around my car and pondered these questions while absorbing the full extent of the damage and instinctively ignoring the one mystery I knew would paralyze my efforts with fear (what was in the dark). When I reached the back of the car my entire body went numb.

something is glowing red in the dark
The brake lights were glowing red.

I fainted in the darkness when the glowing red...
I felt my heart stop before
met my memory of the American dream
I blacked out.

When the world swam into focus again, I found myself standing over the drivers side window, staring down through the roof, into my car. The floor was completely covered with leaves and shards of glass, and something else. Stretching haphazardly from the floor on the passenger side was a relatively small tree branch of five feet or so. It stretch across the shattered center panel, it then bent south at its elbow, and stretched onto the drivers side floor. It was leaning against the brake... Yet another unfortunate present from an unforecastable storm.

It took a minute for my brain to process what I was seeing. What did it mean? My eyes moved back and forth from the hood of my car to the small branch pressing against the brake... The hood was undamaged, and so the brakes would be working. Sure, and why not? So what?

It clicked. The knowledge came like flood, and dizziness washed over me. I began to sway. The world was going black again. I bit down hard on my tongue and drew blood. It passed.

Next, I felt silly. Overwhelmingly silly. I began to laugh, and I did not stop for quite some time. How silly indeed!

-I was staring through the space where the roof of my car was supposed to be. And the laugher began to swell.

-Indeed I was staring at nothing more than an $80,000 corpse. And the laugher was gaining speed.

-With no car, I was still stranded in the woods, miles away from anyone. My body began to ache.

-I was staring at the thing which had caused so many problems, and it was nothing more than a branch. A BRANCH had caused the brakes to glow red in the dark! A BRANCH had knocked me out, almost given me a heart attack! I was no longer standing, or laughing. I was just rolling on the ground and convulsing. A branch!

I was Tom Hanks in the Money Pit, staring through the missing floor at my shattered broken tub. I was delirious and hysterical, and was having the time of my life.

--------

10-?

MY WIFE DIED on my thirtieth birthday, and if you don't believe that, I don't blame you. It sounds made up. Like I just pulled it out of the night which now surrounds me... A perfect addition to this spooky journal and these crazy circumstances.

And boy, do I wish you were right.

It was just one of those things, you know. One day she was fine, in perfect health, and we were happy. The next she was gone, and everything was broken... One day I blinked, and lost her forever.

She didn't deserve to die, but then good people never do. They walk through life, you know, they are the type of people you wish you were.

Honest, kind, the type who are always content and happy and never have to fake it. They just are. My wife was like that.

But it was my birthday, and she was out fetching the cake and ice cream. She didn't see because she didn't have to. Her light was green. She didn't see because her mind was elsewhere. It was my birthday, and I can only imagine she must've been smiling. That's how I remember it, even though I was not there.

But the semi couldn't stop, the brake line had worn through, end of story. Chalk it up under the old cachism, "the good die young", and move on... If you can.

I could, or at least, I thought I could... But here and now, five years down the road and a hundred miles away from it, I am not so sure I can. Not anymore.

-

We had Kain five years before she died, and our lives had instantly found new meaning. The world looked different after that. Somehow more dangerous, and yet more beautiful. For the first time, I knew why I was born. I knew, beyond any doubt, why I was here. And nothing can match that feeling.

As Kain began to grow, we only got closer as a family. Those years are full of fond memories. You know the type, those memories that stand alone and unspoiled. The ones that resonate with happiness and safety and belonging. The ones that you rely on sometimes, to get you through the bad patches in life.

Sometimes they come to me in snapshot form. Little pictures that seem to capture the moment; that somehow manage to sum that entire span of time into a single feeling:

-Here's my wife pushing little Kain on a swing-set. Both of them smiling and laughing, under a perfect blue sky.

-Here's little kain playing with the sprinklers in the grass, grinning from ear to ear. The sun is high and bright and as it sparkles on the water, small rainbows are scattered everywhere.

-Here's a picture of me and Kain, a little older now, sitting on my oversized bicycle, riding down a steep hill. His hands reaching for the sky in rollercoaster style, as we speed down.

The best years of my life. Those five short years. The ones that lie between the birth of my son, and the death of my wife. The years that were too perfect to end any other way.

And then it was over, and my beautiful wife was transformed into a dream.

-

Are the stars shining quietly tonight, you ask? Yes! I can see them. The forest has gone to sleep, but I haven't. No sir.

There is a hole, you see. A hole in the eaves which was formed when the storm crashed an arm of one of its' Goliath sentries onto my car... And while it is small, it is not too small. Because I can see the stars.

They give me hope, you know. Because at some point over the past few hours it began to occur to me that perhaps no such world exists. That perhaps the past is just a dream afterall, like my lovely wife is now... A dream born from the confines of a long frightening life in this wicked, archaic, archtype of a forrest... This heinous monstrocity, which has taught me true hate for the first time in my life.

But I can see the stars! And they are real. Just as I remember them. And I am leaning against my broken car, and I KNOW that is real.

So the world exists. And I have to get back to it!

But make no mistake. This forrest is a prison... A dungeon.


I miss my son. What son? Kuh ... Kain, of course.

---------

10-??

IT IS TIME. Far too much has gone by already. The devil knows my name. And he is well on his way. Just around the next corner my friends. Hell is a big place, and it's taken him years and years to find me. But, he, has, found, me.

That old irrational world, that fairy tale which I once believed I was a part of, has finally fallen. Has finally given way to the facts of life. You remember don't you, of course you do. That merry little tune from those merry little plastic children: "you take the good, you take the bad, you put em' together, and there you have" ... and although what you have isn't exactly what you'd expect--at least not after a lifetime of illusion--it is exactly what you knew to be true from the start. That old reality! The universe sitting merrily on the back of the turtle... and what sits on the back of that turtle, you ask? Silly boy, it's forrests all the way down!

The truth is out HERE! Gentlemen! NOT OUT THERE! Not in that fairy tale of a world where boys are named Kain, and lovely wives are traded for such boys! NOT OUT THERE where stars scatter rainbows, and sprinklers scatter smiles! THE TRUTH IS HERE! Here, we're alone, in the dark, with hell on our heels, forever! With trees all around us, and convertable cars to lean on. BROKEN CARS that don't GO ANYWHERE! Here the truth lies. RIGHT HERE! And no, it isn't what you'd expect. Not one Goddamn Bit! Because it doesn't have to be! Because it isn't! Because the eternal forrest won't allow it! That damn turtle won't allow it!

Halloween is near! I can feel it! It creaks through my body like a cracked mansion. It is huge, and it is hell! And it is coming.

The countdown begins...

We will speak more tommorrow, on the eve of that dreadful nightmare. We will find a solution, or we will die together.

-----------

10-???

WHAT IS REAL? Do you know? I mean do you really know...?

The world can trick you. Or it can kill you. Or worse, it can kill the ones you love. Or, it can completely disappear. Just like that. And when that happens, you start to wonder... You start to question its existance in the first place.

Does the world exist? I really do not know. Is anything real? Yes. Fear is real. And so are the things which cause it.

"There's a ghost in my room", my son said to me. He said it softly, half in shadow, trembling. He said it softly because he was frightened and in his fright his voice took a vacation. He said it softly because his dead mother had visited him before, and this time it was not her. He was frightened because he recognized whose ghost it was.

I know all of this, because the world can trick you. I also know, because I was there...

I haven't told you everything. In my selfishness I've kept many things from you. But you've been faithful through it all, and I must repay that. So I will repay you the only way I can; I will tell you everything.

I am going to die out here. You may remember me mentioning earlier, that hell had finally found me. That hell was well on its way. So I'd better get on with it. Time, afterall, is decidedly short...

The hour groweth late, let us begin.

-

I've been here before, many years ago. My family once owned a farm at the edge of this very forest. The tree line formed the natural bounderies of the our fields.

There were five of us kids in all: myself; my two brothers, Joseph and Daniel; and my sister, Kathryn. And to five young kids with no fences in sight, the forrest proved to be a natural playground. And so we filled our days with marco polo, and hide and seek.

The short version, is that the days' game was hide and seek, and Joseph and Kathryn dissappeared. We simply couldn't find them. Our father called the local sherrif and together they formed a search party. After two days of searching to no avail, my brother and sister were pronounced dead. Just like that.

The world, afterall, can trick you... It can trick you deeper and deeper into it's grip... Deeper and deeper until there's nothing left of you but a sad memory, and a piece of stone.

We moved shortly after this tragedy, and quit farming altogether. Too many bad memories. And slowly, a piece at a time, those bad memories began to fade, until they were gone.

It wasn't until I showed up here two weeks ago, for no real reason--except, as you'll remember, for a mild yearning I couldn't understand--that this memory started to surface... And, honestly, far in the back of my mind, I began a mindless search for them.

They are dead. They've been dead for so long, that how long simply isn't important anymore. They aren't coming back, and I wasn't going to find them. But the past can be powerful, and sometimes it has its own pull. Its own gravity.

It pulled me into a nightmare, and here I will stay. Lost and alone, with hell on my heels. But not forever, no, hell will get me. It's only a matter of time... A matter of hours now.

-

Did you think it wierd, that there are gaps in the time table of this very journal? There is so much time unaccounted for. Where did it go?--There is no easy answer to that question. But I will explain. Together, we will find the truth, and explore it. Then together, we will face our new masters.

But first, the truth:

"There's a ghost in my room", my son said softly from the foot of a dark staircase... He was standing there because he knew I would be walking through the door at that precise moment. And he knew because I told him.

I died in the early morning on the eighteenth of October. A tree branch smashed my skull, while I lay unconscience.

When you're dead, the past is no different from the present. The bounderies of time are lifted, and you are free to walk through ages as you see fit.