A. S. Byatt's "The Thing in the Forest" is a short story about two girls who leave London to escape Nazi bombings only to encounter a gruesome, worm-like creature in a rural English forest. Decades later, the women randomly meet again, and have difficulty processing the trauma of WWII and their encounter with the Thing.
In 1940, Penny and Primrose meet on a train taking them out of London. Neither girl's parents have explained the full danger of staying in the city, and the confused girls find comfort in agreeing to stick together during the evacuation. The girls, along with other evacuated children, are temporarily housed in a mansion house in the country. On their first day there, the...
