Alone in the forest, I have always found transcendence.

Since I was young, I belonged to a loose circle that gathered each year along these wooded rivers. On the equinox, those who shared memories of the same schools, towns, and hunting grounds returned here to mark the change of seasons.

By tradition, the week belonged to hedonistic freedom among the trees. We came to be simple again and enjoy things best done in secret. We crossed one another’s paths from time to time, though many pursued their purposes alone.

This year I arrived late. I drove the last miles through the hills after nightfall. I assumed the others had already gathered somewhere deeper along the river.

The roads were strangely empty. I passed residents who seemed unfocused, their eyes following sounds I could not hear.

No one was friendly where they sold supplies along the highway. The town held panhandlers and sickly strays in conspicuous numbers. Desperation showed in the eyes of children, and loathing in their parents. Disturbed, I wasted no more time there and sought solitude in the wild.

Arriving, I found no sign of campfire, and none of the usual offerings our coven left to acknowledge the wood save for the white ribbons we use to mark trees. The land itself felt neglected and distressed.

I searched for others.

I slept.

Among thorns and ivy, winter’s still bare trees chafed in a cold wind that threatened hail. A faint droning passed through the breeze and vanished before I was certain it had been real. Dead animals lay along the trail, and the branches held no songbirds. The smell of mushrooms rose from the earth. The river showed no promising fishing, its pools thick with algae blooms.

I expected to stumble across one of the camps at any moment but found only a stillness like death. No fires burned along the river. No movement drifted through the trees.

That night the unearthly noise began.

Still in my sleeping bag, my eyes widened as I strained to listen.

Motionless, breath held, I felt myself fully rejoin the waking world. Certain the disturbance was real, I pulled on warmer clothes and stared through the open mouth of the canvas tent into the dark woods surrounding the campsite.

There was no mistaking the horror of the sound.

It held the harmony of a ghostly choir, the groaning of a dairy herd, and the hiss of steel being quenched in cold water. I could not discern its direction or distance.

I armed myself.

My camp stood in the center of a round meadow, finger-painted yellow, purple, and white in daylight. These clearings were the scabbed wounds of another generation’s logging. My canvas tent stood in the middle, giving a clear view in all directions.

My favorite situation for camping.

Safe.

Peaceful.

The wailing was no longer floating without direction. Now it rang somewhere in the hills to the south. I moved toward the old trail while still concealed in darkness.

Two forces now moved toward one another beneath a predawn sky bruised blue and purple.

Crouched in pampas grass and bleeding hearts, I watched a vaguely human shape shambling along the hillside. A drum hung upon its back and sounded with each step by some clever stringed rigging. Strapped against it was a hurdy gurdy whose resin coated strings hissed and droned without end.

Clad in a soaked cloak and shawl ornamented with strange metallic charms that caught the moonlight, the hunched figure appeared ancient.

A dark storm of wings gathered in the trees overhead.

Raccoons and whitetails followed her.

Songbirds preceded her.

A hollow chasm in the hillside was her destination.

The rhythm of the music drove the animals onward. They walked toward the edge and stepped without hesitation into the open wound in the earth. Still grinding the endless tune, the old woman beckoned to others streaming from the thickets.

Moving closer, I came upon the first signs of others camping: a clean hiking pack abandoned and left open in the grass beside a broken whiskey bottle. White ribbons lay scattered like rubbish.

Each wavering note pushed outward into the woods behind her, rising and falling with intention. As she moved along the mouth of the hollow, sound itself seemed to distort.

In that storm of noise, I forgot myself and was no longer present.

So complete was the sudden silence that nausea rose in my stomach.

In all directions a disturbance began to gather among hidden boulders and hollows.

Branches cracked like gunfire. Stones tumbled downhill. A vast stampede surged through the deeper forest.

With dawn beginning to break, I watched the trees themselves begin to move.

Shapes emerged from the shadows between trunks. Pale forms rushed forward, repellant in their motion, like animals whose joints bent the wrong way. Grass flattened in long sweeping lines as they passed.

The ground carried the dull rushing pressure of a distant herd moving through deep brush.

The herd had no fixed shape.

Their forms shifted constantly.

They appeared only as ripples, dark flashes of shadow. Like molten glass they flowed, and like smoke they bent in the wind. In one instant I saw forms like breaking waves full of heads and limbs. In another they resembled a herd of black shining oil melting together as they ran.

Closer now the shapes shimmered like flames as they entered my clearing.

Mixed among them I heard screaming that froze my blood.

For a moment the rising light revealed faces.

I recognized one.

Then another.

The old crone had begun playing again and directed the throng past me. I stood undisturbed in a rushing torrent of elemental forms.

Men and women I had known my whole life.

In terror I saw how their bodies were twisted into bestial shapes, running on limbs that bent wrong, their voices joining the terrible animal chorus as they were driven toward the chasm.

The hurdy gurdy shrieked through the cold morning air as she moved along the rim of the pit, her music turning the herd toward the hollow.

One by one the shapes hurled themselves into the darkness below.

Shining eyes watched mine from beneath her dripping shawl that hid her features. I felt held in her gaze while the last screams faded and the forest fell utterly still.

Though we stood far apart, I heard her clearly as if she whispered directly into my ear.

“You came late.”

I was already backing away as those words found me. The creature watched as I fled before turning away and being swallowed by the forest. Now out of sight, the dreadful instrument sounded again. Its song faded slowly among the trees.

I did not follow it that morning.

When winter next gives way to spring, I will be in the forest for the equinox’s culling.