D.K. joins "the village" to protect the forests and escape the system in an off-the-grid community of alternative thinkers. At first, the village is perfect - he finds love amidst a handful of undefinable relationships, smokes a lot of pot, and lives in the most sustainable way he can. But then Deuce begins to interfere. The owner of the many acres the village lies at the center of, Deuce shares radical views about social structure and the police that almost seem dangerous. When people begin to go missing, Deuce refuses to get the police involved. D.K. begins to keep watch for the village overnight. On his long and lonely watch duties, he hears his lost friends screaming underground, but when he tells people about it, nobody believes him. D.K. starts to wonder if the village isn't a sustainability project at all, but a farming ground of people law enforcement won't protect. Many of the villagers leave until there are only a few dozen left. D.K. is smoking with Pandora, one of the villagers he's fallen in love with, when the camp descends into chaos. Ancient forest creatures Deuce calls the Ancestors descend, killing and kidnapping villagers. D.K. and Pandora watch in horror as Deuce speaks the language of the creatures, urging them on. Pandora is grabbed by one of them, and D.K. escapes into the woods, the only one from the village to make it out alive. He's found by police a few days later, babbling and incoherent, and must rebuild his mind and life from nothing. Eventually, he becomes a successful author, but acknowledges he's never fully regained his sanity after that night - or his heart.