My memories of the event, to this day, remain a hazy jumble: blinding white light issuing
from a suggestion of some mass or object above me, a silent dark-robed figure beckoning.
Paralyzed with terror, I seemed to move without volition to some other space. Alone but in
the presence of some immense, overwhelming force, as if gravity had increased a
thousandfold. A flood of words sluiced through my mind, words not my own, nor in any
language known to me, a voice metallic, ringing and bitter. This was knowledge, I sensed
through my terror, from some unknown order, of a higher vibrational quality beyond my
ability to process, uncanny, perhaps electromagnetic in nature and not in the remotest way
human.

But what was it? What was it trying to show me? Whatever I’d been sent into these woods to
find had after all this time found me first, roughing me up like a midnight dockside
beatdown. Whatever this presence might be, it possessed nothing benign or benevolent in
form or content, only a cold, crushing, calculating pressure. Time itself stood still, as if
whatever place they’d brought me stood outside it. Throughout the ordeal I clung to one
vague hope: If I survived, did this test hold some promise of revelation? I not only feared for
my life; I feared the annihilation of my soul.

I saw many things I don’t remember. I heard other voices I can’t recall. All around me colors
constantly phased through the spectrum, blue to green, red to violet, black to white. I felt
alternately like a ragged empty doll, then nothing but searing pain that rent my flesh with
sadistic ease. I saw eyes, watching, felt pressure in my mind, as if thoughts were being
forcibly inserted. I’m fairly certain I journeyed back and forth through time, watching it
unspool like some immense, omniscient recording.

Then I was back in the woods alone.