Secrets of Eden

Eden is a small town located in the solitary country side of Italy. It is a small town; are peaceful and wholesome as the town is old looking just as its name sounds; a paradise in the busy and angry world of today. The road is still the original cobble stone through the buildings have all changed materials into modern day dry wall and stone with very few refusing to go mainstream. The cars are even in small numbers, only reserved to those who owning the businesses relying on some of their products being shipped in from the bigger cities or other countries. There are no big restaurants, only small diners and sidewalk café’s and only one 24 hour café located in the center of town. There are two hotels, only one of them reaching more then three stories, though many town locals say having two hotels was a waist of the towns money since the only visitors come every few years usually because they got lost on their way to some other more touristy destination. But even the visitors who do come by accident feel a pull to Eden they don’t feel in other towns. The visitors credit this mysterious feeling to the towns small size and old ways. They don’t see markets on the streets, or women selling the quilts and sweaters they made last week in their own home cities. Eden has a charm other cities seem to come up short with, but along with this gentlemen like charm comes something much darker lurking in the simple coble stone streets.

Eden’s secrets do not lie in the town itself, unlike many western stories of haunted houses and schools, the town is actually unscathed. Far north of the town visible barely over the horizon lay, what the locals refer to as the ‘Howling Hills’. The hills are dark and ominous looking compared the sunny and friendly streets of the small town and at night during the winter winds before the snow fall they howl a sound some say sounds like that part of the earth is dying. There is a large black forest that surrounds the hills and has calmed many lives since Eden’s founding.

Local legend tells of creatures and forest animals that defend their home and do not take kindly to visitors of any kind. The founders believed the animals guarded a palace, a palace that lay deep in the dark depths of the hills never seeing the light of day. Many of the locals believe this palace is evil, ruled by demons of the underworld, servants to the devil himself sent here to keep watch on the earth’s human inhabitants. To tourists the Howling Hills are intriguing, they are of forbidden place that only fuels the curiosity of the foolish and is the foolish who decide to take on the black forest legends.

The existence of the demon palace has never been proven, not because everyone fears to search it out but because those who have tried always failed. Some stories say the victims found the palace but the animals guarding their masters tore them to pieces so they would not return to spill their secrets. Others say the demons got them when they got to close and ate them alive which is why you hear the screams and howls which are not the wind at all but the actual screams of human being fed to the devils beasts. Whatever the real story was Eden began to refuse to tell the story to locals afraid of never seeing them again. The black forests have been blocked off to the public by a large brick wall separating the forest from the rest of the world.

Every town has its secrets and legends. Legends which turn into stories and soon myths until no one really believes them, but there is something in a legend and a myth that makes you think. There is some lingering fact in every story that is true, which is why we stay away from the graveyard at night, or why we try to ignore the cold shiver coming up our back when we walk down the street on a very dark and quiet night. You know there is something in the darkness and shadow’s you can not see, noises you can not explain. There is something out there, something everywhere just beyond the human reach.