12. A Miracle Wouldn’t Be So Bad Right about Now
Ben
A few weeks before, I’d have found a hike in the forests around Prospero something to get excited about. Peaceful even. When you get past the city limits, you’ve nothing but redwood trees as far as the eyes can see, trees that stretch so high into the sky they blot out the sun in some places. The air is clean and crisp and smells richly of pine, and every clearing where the sun shines through looks like it belongs in a nature club calendar.
That was before I knew about Prospero.
Knowing the horrors this town hid underneath its surface, even a day hike in the woods had me on edge. Every snap, every birdcall in the distance would put me on the alert. Every shadow seemed to hide a monster, and even the trees seemed wrong, like the ligh
