Opening
In the prologue, Chloe Davis grows up convinced monsters lurk in the woods, watching from the treeline as she hurries home. Her father’s embrace and quiet “I’ve got you” seem to banish the darkness—until a single event at age twelve teaches her that the worst monsters wear human faces.
What Happens
Chloe remembers the walk from the school bus down a lonely gravel road, the light fading, the woods pressing in. She runs hard, her ankles twisting on uneven ground, breath rattling, heart pounding as her shadow stretches long across the dirt. Relief comes only when she bursts into the house and collapses into her father, Richard Davis, who wraps her up and murmurs, “I’ve got you.” In those moments, safety feels absolute.
Then her voice cuts that memory in half: “Or so I thought.” For most people, fear matures—imaginary creatures become real-world risks. Chloe insists the shift happens all at once. At twelve, the shadows she dreads solidify into a shape and a face. The prologue ends with her stark conclusion: monsters don’t hide in the dark; they move in plain sight.
She hints that one figure becomes the focus of her fear “above all the rest,” binding her childhood terror to a single human presence. The scene closes on that revelation, turning a comforting home into the site of unspoken danger and launching the novel’s mystery about who the monster is—and what he did.
Character Development
The prologue frames Chloe as a narrator defined by an early rupture between safety and threat. Her memories carry tenderness and dread in equal measure, and her adult voice undermines her past in real time.
- Chloe Davis: Fear shapes her childhood rituals and adult worldview. She trusts sensory alarms—footfalls, breath, the press of trees—yet distrusts her own memories, signaling possible unreliability.
- Richard Davis: First appears as a sanctuary—warm, protective, soothing. The immediate undercut (“Or so I thought”) recasts his embrace as a symbol that may conceal the very danger Chloe learns to name.
Themes & Symbols
The prologue establishes the core inquiry of the novel: what evil looks like when it isn’t cloaked in myth. Through Chloe’s realization that monsters “move in plain sight,” the story foregrounds The Nature of Evil and Monstrosity. Evil isn’t distant or supernatural; it wears the familiar and infiltrates the ordinary, which deepens the horror and stakes of recognition.
Chloe’s adult narration continually revisits the day her fear “came crashing down,” emphasizing The Lingering Trauma of the Past. The present tense voice sifts memory for truth, while Deception and Appearance vs. Reality surfaces in the reversal of the father’s embrace: what comforts the child may mislead the adult.
Symbols:
- Shadows and the woods: The diffuse dread of childhood—threat sensed but unnamed.
- The father’s embrace: A protective ritual that later reads as betrayal and concealment.
- The gravel road: The liminal space between public safety (the bus stop) and private danger (home).
Key Quotes
“I’ve got you.”
A refrain of security that anchors Chloe’s childhood. In hindsight, it becomes double-edged—both the promise she craves and the line that masks the source of danger, priming the theme of trust corrupted from within.
“Or so I thought.”
A razor-turn that reinterprets everything that comes before it. This interruption teaches readers to doubt comforting narratives and signals the novel’s investment in shifting memory and unstable testimony.
“I was twelve years old when those shadows started to form a shape, a face… When I began to realize that maybe the monsters lived among us.”
This sentence crystallizes the book’s thesis: fear becomes concrete when evil reveals a human face. It marks the end of innocence and announces that the central conflict will be intimate, not supernatural.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
The prologue sets the novel’s psychological tone and central mystery by binding Chloe’s fear to a single person and withholding the details that shattered her safety. It invites readers into a mind attuned to threat and warns that the narrative will test the reliability of memory and perception, aligning with Memory, Paranoia, and Unreliable Narration. By redefining “monster” as ordinary, it prepares the story to expose how evil hides in relationships, domestic spaces, and the stories families tell themselves.