The Forest of Lost Souls

by Dean Koontz

What starts out here [in the US] as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation. —Eric Hoffer, 1967

Hope is armor against despair, and as her uncle taught her, patience is a polish that keeps that armor bright.

Have pity on those who love and are separated, on the lonely, on those who mourn, on those who fear, on all the little animals that live their lives as prey.

“So we got to go after her?” “Find her, grill her, kill her,” Vector says.

The massive lion so white as to seem radiant, the petite woman to whom a lie can’t be told, dead men deep under the front yard and riding their cars to Hell, a seer of the future, ancient myths with strange new meaning, madmen born from the current culture .