Her Cape is Red

Prologue

Do you see her? In the trees? Beneath the shadows? Of course not, no one does.

I know her. Better than you think, actually.

And she wasn't always like this.

No one ever comes to the dark woods. Parents tell their children stories of campers who went missing in the shadows, of whispers coming from the crooked trees, of monsters that come awake and hunt under the moon, the stories of the things that dwell in the forest.

"Don't ever go to the forest." Parents warn their children, "you do not know what you'll find there."

So the kids pass the stories onto their children (before they get visited by me of course), which gets handed down to their grandchildren, and that is the reason humans never set foot in the woods.

Until tonight.

She used to be one of them. One of the innocent, small-minded humans that feared the forest. But she is not now. She has grown into one of the monsters her parents said to stay away from. She is the woods and the woods are her. She is the creature in the shadows, the attacker waiting to strike.

So when she sees the dark silhouettes stalking through the trees, and hears the laughter of the brave people who dared to come here, she knows her house will be the last thing those humans see.

People will go missing tonight.

These are the things that happen in the woods.