Surviving Prague Excerpt 1

The sun fell beyond the rolling peaks, bringing an early evening to rural Ukraine. The dark ridgeline above the narrow mountain pass was tinged in fading yellows and flickering golds. Dusk carried a witching wind along the Carpathian slopes from the heights of medieval legend to the bottomless bedrock of superstition’s realm.Deep wagon ruts from gypsy caravans snaked through ancient dirt down there in the canyons, forming unprotected trails where even gods tread lightly in the despair of this evening. The flat lands surrounding the mountains were a place of sobering imagination. It was a forbidden dimension where less than human creatures waited in the shadows.As the rocky formations brought an earthly darkness to hell’s valley, a blood orange moon rose above the treetops on the plains to the east and set the foothills on fire with a glowing light that shook the depths of our gravest nightmares. The inferno spread quickly over the lowlands, intensifying gloom into disparity and making it difficult to determine who, or what, may be following unsuspecting travelers.An old flatbed truck rolled along the rough road trying to find a path of less resistance. The steering wheel was in freefall. The tires sagged to the left and rose to the right, then sagged to the right and rose to the left through a minefield of distemper. At times, the wheels cut sharply around nothing at all as if avoiding imaginary bodies left from dead days past.The man driving glanced in the rearview mirror. He swore he saw dead-eyed goblins sitting among the swaying tree branches. The sight scared him more that he imagined it would, reminding him of tales his old babushka used to whisper in the quiet of firelight.“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost, or something worse,” nodded his passenger.He briefly thought about punching a hole in the man’s chest. He had already regretted asking him along in the first place. Several times. The last thing he needed right then was another idiotic observation from this imbecile.The driver concentrated on the road. His eyes didn’t waver from the incline as the old truck began its climb into the black heart of oblivion. The road crunched and popped under the weight of the three-ton Zis-5 vehicle. He prayed the bald tires would hold together long enough to reach their destination.“Shut up,” he finally answered.Full story here: https://www.thehollowmanseries.com/survivingprague1.html