However, the short distance between town and the sea had its own side effects. Although the town did not become the direct witness of such a disruption, the sound of the cruelty reached from far.
People had closed themselves inside their houses.
They could hear the noise of the waves violently hitting each other, the loud thundering of clouds, the pitter patter of the heaviest rainfall, the trees falling down one after another...they could hear all the noise which bore the responsibility of being as destructive as it could.
And because it was so near, consequently, even the town couldn't be saved from such merciless treatment.
It was the grace of goodness that all the people of the town were not harmed.
However, prior to this unforeseen, devastating environmental destruction, the day had begun with beautiful weather.
With how great the weather had been these past few days, nobody could've predicted that it was merely a silence before the storm!
The life of humans living so near the sea resulted in every household in the town having at least one person working as a fisherman.
For these fishermen, the day normally started with going to catch the fish from the sea and then returning by the evening to clean them properly before sending them to the city the next day.
As these townsmen were permanently dependent upon the fish, they were already accustomed to making a ten-kilometre trip every single day.
Due to the rules and regulations laid down by the government, they couldn't bring back every marine animal they caught.
Endangered marine animals were strictly prohibited from being sold. Although they were witheld by such certain limits, these fishermen still gained more than enough profit to carry on a comfortable lifestyle.
The people of this town, except for a few, were still richer than the working-class educated people of the city.
Just like this, similar to other normal days, fishermen had set out with their boats early in the morning to catch fish.
And providentially, almost all of them returned by the time it was afternoon. It was only two hours later that they were informed of the warning and couldn't help but express their gratitude towards the god for the favourable timing.
A few hours had passed since the warning was issued in the area. The megaphones put over the poles, which had not been used in years, were finally brought into use today so that the warning could reach each person.
Yet, it could not reach a certain boat which had gone to another island in the morning. There was not a single trace of bad weather there. In pure contrast, the sun was still shining its mesmerising rays.
Feeling the waves getting stronger and the clouds slowly hovering their heads while returning, the captain of the boat perceived the bad weather and simply directed the boat to the back side of the southeast region.
He had aged with experience and could tell just by the feel in the air whether everything was good near the port or not.
The back side of the beach contained nothing but a sea joined with the part of forest, the densest of the entire region, that had formed a habitat for the venomous reptiles and insects.
By the time the boatman brought the boat to the sand, the sky had already turned dark. It was evening when they set off from the other island.
The weather on this side was much better than the opposite side, with no sign of any violence by nature, and the intensity of the crazy wind and waves was much less here.
There were a total of three people in the boat: two middle-aged men and one boy who hit the mark of twenty just a few days back.
The two elders jumped off the boat first and secured it tightly with one of the huge rocks there. "Let's leave it here for now. We will come tomorrow to take it."
"Wh-what do you mean keep it here?" a scared voice stuttered through the boat. "Dad, how will we go back then?" The boy's tight hold onto the railings depicted his reluctance to come out in the dark.
"Come on, boy! We gotta go." The owner of the boat, as well as the father of that boy,, called out nonchalantly.
The morning had offered a great mood, and it being Sunday on top enabled him to ask his son to tag along.
Not that he regretted doing it now, the middle-aged man seemed in fact happier as he thought of the adventure that they were surprisingly set up for, an adventure which he was familiar with but was going to be new for his son.
The boy unwillingly peeked through the railings; all he saw was an unending darkness and the silhouette of thick trees in a forest, which terrified him,, and he instantly cowered back. "Dad?" He called out. "Are you sure about staying the night here?" He asked with a fear that bore an underlying hope for an answer in denial to come
Oh, but was the hope shattered? Absolutely.
The forest had several wild animals roaming around, but that wasn't the scariest part.
As complicated the description of this geographical area was, more complex the series of incidents filling up the pages of history of this place was!
If one area was arranged to be a tourist space, the other part was mostly covered in the darkness provided by thick trees and lying beneath those soils were the corpses of all the unknown people.
It was a battlefield turned into a cemetery.
"Are we fools? Why will we spend the night here?" The boy sighed as he was reprimanded by his father.
That's great as long as they wouldn't have to stay the night here. It was horrifying out here to stay in the open and wait till morning.
"We'll only be walking through this forest to get back to the town."
Just when his father finished the pending sentence, the jaw of Jacob stretched in its full capacity to reach the ground. "W-what do yo-you mean? Dad, are you kidding?"
He panicked while his body shivered, and the beads of cold sweat appeared on his back, recalling the legends of this forest.