Devil’s Wood Chapter 2: Going, Going, Gone (AUDIO)

Devil’s Wood begins when two boys wander into the woods outside Lambertville, New Jersey, and uncover a strange walking stick buried in the soil. One boy feels an immediate, nameless dread and keeps his distance; the other is drawn to it, pulling it free and revealing a grim truth beneath the earth—a human skull buried alongside the object. The discovery hints at an old, unfinished wrong, and a wood that has long remembered what was done there, waiting patiently for someone to find it.

The stick first surfaces in the life of Peter Brightly, a forty-two-year-old antique dealer struggling to hold together the fragments of his life after a painful divorce. As Peter becomes increasingly attached to the object, his health, judgment, and moral center begin to erode. The wood exerts a quiet pull, the past presses closer, and Peter is forced to confront how far he is willing to go to protect his own sanity.