The Forest of Lost Souls

by Dean Koontz

“It is sad to say that my people, not just Cheyennes, but those of all the ancient nations, have long forgotten or ceased to care about this place. They build casinos. They TikTok and tweet and lose themselves in the forests of YouTube. They learn only what Google allows them to know, and year by year the past becomes to them less than it really was. The past was real, I think more real than the present. These days, so many are educated into ignorance, entertained by shallow amusements that drain from them the very substance of themselves, until they seem to have become ghosts long, long before their deaths. I’m only thirty-four, but out there in the world that Two Moon and I have left, I feel like a cranky granddam who has lived a century and sees the newer generations living for nothing but oblivion. Only deep in the forest do I feel young and hopeful.”