and scarlet…trees with pendulous branches covered with fernlike leaves and threaded with slender vines
that were like serpents. The trees circled the meadow, watchful, alert…watching me…waiting for me to
move…
No, it was not the trees that were watching! There were things hidden among the trees,
lurking…malignant things…evil things…and it was they who were watching me, waiting for me to move!
But how had I gotten here? I looked down at my legs, stretched my arms…I was clad in the blue
pajamas in which I had gone to bed…gone to my bed in my New York house…in my house in New
York…how had I come here? I did not seem to be dreaming…
Now I saw that three paths led out of the shallow pit. They passed over the edge, and stretched, each in
a different direction, toward the woods. And suddenly I knew that I must take one of these paths, and