Sorrow's Blight (Sorrow's Forest)

There's a hole in Mackie King's memories. It's ugly and sore, like a wound gone septic.

He's overwhelmed with the anxiety that he's doomed to be like his father, memories riddled with gaps where important people and places used to live until he dies, small and alone, either strapped to a hospital bed or wandering the wilds of Lakeview's forest, never to be found again.

Desperate to keep encroaching reality at bay, he fills his time with work, toiling in the car shop he's managing for the summer before his final semester of college, or helping Sam and Dora fix up the old house Dora bought.

It's here in this house that feels like a threat that Mackie sees something he can't explain—a beast in the basement that tries to take his life. It flees before any serious damage is done, but now Mackie is looking in the dark corners wherever he goes, and what he finds is unsettling: creatures with long mouths and longer teeth lurk in the shadows of the trees, waiting for him to misstep. Flowers open intelligent eyes and nip at him with sharp teeth. Long-clawed beasts bait him under the forest canopy, and—worse yet—something prowls the depths of the river, promising him answers if he'll just come into the water.

As Mackie tries to make sense of this hidden world, bits, and pieces of his fragmented memories form like blood clots, each one more deadly and inescapable than the last.