Garden Grove: 1 Vandalism – The Watcher in the Woods by LV Gaudet

The last of the woods that once bordered this small town which my home has become are disappearing; those beautifully twisted old oak trees that filled this little piece of the world with their mangled skeletal fingers, clacking in the winds of the dark fall nights and offering protection from the strong prairie winds.

They are being ruthlessly knocked down by the big monstrosities of metal clearing sections of land to make room for more houses.  Day by day, they are taking away those trees which once surrounded me and watched me with their stoic wooden faces, always watching while I can only helplessly stare back.

Their ruination is my salvation, their obliteration my release from their bony prison.

This land was once a mixture of woods and prairie, open land with farms and pastures surrounded by grassy plains and scattered woods on the edge of a scattering of new settlements that grew to call themselves towns.  It did not take much to call a handful of buildings a town back then when the land was first being settled.  And before that, it was a wild land of buffalo-filled plains and forests, home to a few indigenous tribes whose land had been taken over and colonized by the people of Europe, beginning the slow conquering of the indigenous people.

Now, generations later, those towns that started more than a hundred years ago as a scattering of farms and a small timber-walled fort has become a city surrounded by farm fields and cozy little bedroom communities only a short drive outside the city’s borders.  Bedroom communities like this one, that city people love to hate for daring to flaunt their small community lifestyle and yet continues to grow because city people move out to these little communities.

They assume I don’t know all this because I am ancient by their standards.  They think I sleep when I am really awake.

I think, perhaps, they have even forgotten I am here.

People think that somehow those little rural communities feel friendlier and safer than the suburbs within the city do.

They think the evils borne of crime and overcrowding are confined within the city limits.

Sometimes, in these sleepy little communities, evil just waits a little deeper.

GARDEN GROVE IS AVAILABLE ON KINDLE AND IN PAPERBACK ON AMAZON

Available on Kindle and in paperback on Amazon:

The McAllister Series

Where the Bodies Are

The McAllister Farm

Hunting Michael Underwood

And  for the teens and middle years kids who like middle years/teen drama and monsters, a fantasy psychological thriller.

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