Prologue:
The man stumbled through the forest, his feet tripping over tree roots, his clothes snagged by branches. He felt an increasing sense of disorientation along with a rising panic. Nothing was as it should be. There was a strange glow in the night sky in the direction of the town of Willingdon. The very trees in the forest seemed unfamiliar. The chestnuts should still be in bloom, but they were gone, replaced by pines and oaks. Even the air smelled different.
Exhaustion forced him to stop. He sat down on a log and tried to draw a deep breath, but his lungs wouldn't fill with air. He could barely move and every joint and muscle ached unbearably. The normal nocturnal sounds of insects and birds began to fade. Something was wrong with his vision as well. It was a clear night with a full moon, but it seemed as if there were clouds in front of his eyes.
He tried to rise, but fell to the ground in agony. His last thought before everything went black was, "I should never have returned."
A solitary hiker, alerted the noises made by the man's desperate struggle, ran over to him and turned him over.
The hiker screamed.