The path down to the valley floor took Catskill and Amanita right up to the remains of a decorative gate into town, flanked by a decaying fence. A sign was hanging from the top of the gate’s arch, but one of the chains had snapped a while ago and the sign creaked as it twisted slowly in the wind. If anything, Mystic looked worse up close; distance had hid the subtler, more personal signs of decay. The cheery paint of a motel’s sign, advertising room for weary travelers, had worn away. Intricately decorated street signs had been blown over. Coarse grass pushed through the paved roads. Snow spilled from the broken front window of a toy store. One wall of the post office had caved in. And when they crossed the fast-running river in the center of Mystic, the lower half of a mill’s waterwheel had rotted away and been destroyed by the rapids. Everything that could move away had done so.