Chapter 1 – The Call

It’s always the same sound — a phone vibrating on the nightstand — but it’s never the same kind of news.
Sometimes it’s a scam call. Sometimes it’s my editor yelling about deadlines I’ve already missed.
And sometimes — like tonight — it’s the kind of call that pulls you straight out of the life you’ve been pretending to live.

The screen lights up with a number I haven’t seen in eleven years.
Evelyn Hart.
Even seeing her name feels like swallowing a splinter.

I let it ring twice before I answer.
“Eve?” My voice comes out rougher than I expect.
She doesn’t waste time on greetings.
“They found something,” she says. Her voice is ragged, but she’s trying to hold it together. “In the woods. I think it’s her.”
“Her who?” I ask, though I already know.
“Lila,” she says. “Lila Wren. She’s been missing since Friday.”

That’s all it takes — one name, one missing girl — and my pulse turns into a runaway train.

Three hours later, I’m on the interstate, the glow of my dashboard cutting through the dark. It’s almost midnight, the roads are slick from a passing storm, and my car smells faintly of coffee and the old cigarette smoke embedded in the upholstery from the guy who sold it to me. I told myself I wasn’t coming back here — not to Bramble, not for anyone — but I never believe my own promises.

Bramble is one of those towns that looks like it’s been forgotten by time, but not in the romantic way travel magazines like to photograph. The paint peels, the neon signs flicker, and the streets empty early. If something ugly happens here, it gets swallowed. The locals have a talent for looking away.

I was gone for fifteen years. Long enough to grow a career in investigative journalism, ruin it, and move to a city where no one knew the sound of my screams. And yet here I am, chasing another missing girl’s shadow back into the woods I once bled in.

When I pull into town, it’s past 2 a.m. Evelyn’s waiting in the parking lot of the diner. She looks older, but not in the way you expect after a decade. More… eroded. Her hair’s scraped into a ponytail, strands frizzing in the damp night air. The cigarettes she chain-smokes are evident in the yellowed tips of her fingers.

She stubs one out under her boot as I get out of the car.
“You came,” she says, like she didn’t believe I would.
“You called,” I reply.

She hesitates, scanning my face like she’s checking for something — guilt, maybe, or the damage she always assumed would be there. Then she looks away.

“They found her phone,” she says. “About a mile into the east woods. Smashed. Blood on it.”
“How much blood?” I ask.
“Enough,” she says flatly. Then she lowers her voice. “And it’s not the first time.”

We sit in the diner, the kind that still has vinyl booths and sugar dispensers shaped like old glass jars. The waitress pours coffee without asking, her eyes flicking between us like she can smell trouble.

Evelyn tells me about Lila — seventeen, last seen leaving a late shift at the gas station Friday night. She didn’t show up for work Saturday, didn’t answer her phone. Her mom thought she was at a friend’s house, but by Sunday, they knew something was wrong. A search party went out. The sheriff kept it quiet, same as always. They like to “handle things internally” in Bramble. Translation: they like to make them disappear.

Then Evelyn says the part she’s been holding back.
“They found the phone in almost the same spot as—” She stops, swallows. “As yours.”

I freeze, the ceramic mug warm in my hand. I don’t like talking about what happened to me. Not the night I vanished, not the twenty-eight hours before they found me barefoot and bloodied on the edge of town, my wrists bruised, my memory fractured like a shattered mirror. I never remembered the whole thing. I’m not sure I want to.

“You think it’s connected?” I ask.
Evelyn nods slowly. “I think someone’s been waiting.”

The thing about returning to your hometown is that every street is a ghost story you once lived through.
On the drive to Evelyn’s place, we pass the rusted remains of the water tower where we used to drink warm beer as teenagers. The old mill looms in the distance, its windows punched out like broken teeth. I can almost hear the low hum of the train tracks — the same ones that carried me away all those years ago.

At her house, Evelyn insists I take the guest room. I don’t sleep.
Instead, I lie in the dark listening to the rain tick against the window, my mind looping back to Lila’s smashed phone, the blood, the woods.

I’m supposed to be here as a friend, but the truth is I’m already thinking like a journalist. I want to know why this girl vanished. I want to know why it feels like the ground beneath Bramble is shifting again.

And deep down, I’m afraid that if I dig too far, I’ll remember everything.

By morning, the storm has passed, but the air is thick with that metallic smell that comes after rain — like wet iron. Evelyn makes coffee while her hands shake just enough to make the mugs clink. She tells me the sheriff’s meeting with volunteers at the community center to “organize the next search.”

When we get there, it’s déjà vu. The same folding chairs, the same tired faces, the same murmur of gossip. Sheriff Mathers stands at the front, looking exactly as he did fifteen years ago — which is to say, like a man who’s seen too much and still doesn’t want to talk about it.

He gives the usual speech about “working together” and “respecting boundaries.” The search is split into zones. Evelyn and I are assigned to the east woods.

Before we leave, Mathers pulls me aside.
“You’re not a cop,” he says, his voice low but sharp. “You’re not a journalist anymore either. Don’t go digging.”
I smile the way you do when someone underestimates you. “I’m just here to help.”
He doesn’t look convinced.

We search for hours, the damp ground sucking at our boots, the trees closing in overhead. Every broken twig feels suspicious. Every patch of disturbed earth could be a clue.

And then — halfway through our zone — I see it.
Half-buried in the mud, not far from where they found her phone: a silver charm bracelet. One of the charms is shaped like a bird. Its beak is smeared with something dark.

I pick it up carefully, slipping it into an evidence bag I borrowed from Evelyn’s stash of “just in case” supplies.
It’s not just any charm. I’ve seen it before.

It’s the same kind I wore the night I disappeared.

Chapter 2 – The Town That Ate Its Own

Bramble has always had a way of pretending it’s fine.
The trick is in the paint.
Every spring, the town organizes a “Beautification Day” where volunteers slap a fresh coat of white or pale yellow over the porches, storefronts, and picket fences. From a distance, it looks like a quaint postcard. But if you run your fingers over the wood, you’ll feel the rot underneath. Flakes fall away, exposing the damp, splintered core.

People here are like that too.

I walk down Main Street after the search, charm bracelet still zipped inside the evidence bag in my jacket pocket. The local bakery’s still selling those cinnamon rolls that could choke a horse. Old Mrs. Turner is still sweeping her front stoop like she’s dusting off a corpse. Even the wind feels familiar here — carrying whispers you don’t quite catch but can’t forget either.

It would be easier if I hated this place entirely. But Bramble is where I learned to ride a bike, where I kissed someone for the first time, where my father taught me how to shoot a rifle in the woods behind our house. It’s also where I disappeared, and where my life split into Before and After.

I stop at Lila’s house before heading back to Evelyn’s. The Wrens live in a narrow blue clapboard home on the south edge of town. Lila’s mother, Cora, opens the door before I even knock. She’s the kind of woman who wears her grief like armor — hair pulled tight, eyes dry but red-rimmed, back ramrod straight.

“You’re the reporter,” she says, her tone halfway between question and accusation.
“Not anymore,” I tell her.
“Good,” she says. Then she steps aside.

Inside smells like lavender and something sour, maybe from the untouched plates of food people have been bringing by. Every surface is cluttered with framed photos — Lila in her cheer uniform, Lila holding a birthday cake, Lila in a Halloween witch hat.

“She didn’t run away,” Cora says without preamble. “Everyone’s whispering about how she fought with me last week, but she’s not that kind of girl. She wouldn’t just vanish.”

“What was the fight about?” I ask.

Cora’s mouth tightens. “She wanted to quit her job at the gas station. Said she felt… watched.” She waves a dismissive hand. “Teenagers are dramatic.”

I glance at the photos again. In most of them, Lila’s smiling wide enough to make her cheeks ache, but in one — a snapshot tucked halfway behind another frame — she’s looking away from the camera, eyes unfocused.

“Who gave her that bracelet?” I ask.
Cora blinks. “What bracelet?”

I let the question drop. No point showing my hand yet.

By late afternoon, Evelyn and I head to the Hollow Tap, the only bar in town that’s open before 5 p.m. and somehow still smells like stale beer even when it’s just been cleaned. She insists it’s where I’ll “hear things I won’t hear anywhere else.”

The bartender is a wiry man named Gary, who’s been here so long the wood of the bar has a permanent groove where his forearms rest. He pours Evelyn a whiskey and me a club soda without asking.

“You hear about the search?” he says casually, as though we might have missed the biggest thing to hit Bramble in years.
“We were there,” Evelyn says.
Gary nods, polishing a glass that doesn’t need polishing. “People are saying it’s the same guy. The one who took the Jensen girl. And you.”

The words hang heavy between us. I keep my face neutral, though my nails dig into my palm.
“People say a lot of things,” I tell him.
Gary leans in slightly. “Maybe. But they’re saying the sheriff knows who it is. Just won’t touch him.”

Back at Evelyn’s, I pull out my laptop — old, dented, and full of files I shouldn’t still have. I search my archives for anything on the Jensen case.

Clara Jensen, age sixteen, vanished from Bramble in 2006.
She was last seen leaving choir practice.
They never found her.

What they did find — six months later — was a charm bracelet half-buried in the east woods. A silver bird among the charms.

My bracelet had a bird too.

Now Lila’s missing. And I’ve got another bird in my pocket.

That night, I can’t shake the feeling of being watched. I close the blinds, check the locks twice, keep the bracelet evidence bag within arm’s reach on the nightstand. Rain starts again, soft at first, then heavier, tapping out a rhythm like a slow heartbeat.

At 1:17 a.m., my phone vibrates. Unknown number.

When I answer, there’s no voice. Just breathing. Slow, deliberate.

Then a whisper:
“Welcome home.”

Chapter 3 – The Friend Who Knows Too Much

Evelyn’s kitchen smells like burnt toast and cigarette smoke.
She’s standing at the counter in one of those faded band T-shirts she’s been wearing since high school, her hair still wet from a shower, looking like she hasn’t slept in days.

“You got a call last night,” she says without turning around.

I freeze. “How do you know that?”

She shrugs, still facing the counter. “I heard you talking.”

That’s a lie — I didn’t talk. Just listened to the breathing and the whisper that still prickles at the back of my neck.

“What did you hear?” I ask.

“Not much. Just enough to know you should probably tell Mathers.”

I snort. “Yeah, because the sheriff’s been so helpful.”

She turns finally, a coffee mug in hand, her eyes sharper than they were yesterday. “Sometimes people stay alive in this town because they know when to keep quiet.”

We drive to the gas station where Lila worked. It’s one of those places where the hum of the fluorescent lights is louder than the customers. The kid behind the counter is maybe nineteen, pale, with acne scars across his cheeks. His name tag says Kyle.

“We’re asking about Lila Wren,” I say. “She worked here, right?”

He nods slowly. “Yeah. She was cool.” He glances at Evelyn, then lowers his voice. “Said some guy kept coming in late at night. Buying gum, candy, dumb stuff. Just hanging around.”

“What’d he look like?” Evelyn asks.

Kyle hesitates. “Tall. Wore a baseball cap low. Smelled like motor oil.”

“Did she tell anyone else?” I press.

Kyle’s gaze flicks to Evelyn again, and something unspoken passes between them.

“What?” I demand.

“Nothing,” he says quickly. “Just… she said she thought she saw him once, during the day. Driving. In the truck with—” He stops himself, jaw tightening.

“With who?” I ask.

But he shakes his head, mutters something about needing to stock shelves, and disappears into the back room.

Evelyn suggests we get lunch at Patty’s Diner — which is suspicious in itself because she never eats here. Patty’s is gossip central; if you breathe wrong, it’ll be in the weekly paper by Thursday.

Halfway through a grilled cheese, Evelyn says, “You remember when we were kids, we used to sneak into the mill?”

“Of course.” The mill was our daredevil playground — rusting metal stairs, broken windows, graffiti older than we were.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” she says.

She leans in, voice low enough that the waitress refilling coffee at the next table can’t hear.

“The night you disappeared, I saw you.”

I set my sandwich down. “What are you talking about?”

“You were with someone,” she says. “A man. I couldn’t see his face, but you were walking with him into the east woods. I called your name, but you didn’t turn around. Like you didn’t even hear me.”

My skin crawls. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Evelyn looks away. “Because I was drunk, and no one would’ve believed me. And because…” She hesitates, then says, “Because I knew who he was with before.”

“Before what?”

“Before you,” she says. “He was with Clara Jensen.”

We leave the diner in tense silence. The sky is low and gray, the kind of weather that makes everything feel closer.

As we reach her car, Evelyn says, “There’s something else you should see. Tonight.”

Night in Bramble is heavier than in the city. The streetlamps throw small, sickly circles of light, and the woods are a wall of black beyond them. Evelyn drives us past the water tower, down a back road so narrow the branches scrape the sides of her car.

Finally, she stops in a clearing.

“This is where we used to meet,” she says. “Me, Clara, and Lila.”

I scan the space. It’s nothing but weeds and an old, half-collapsed shed. But there’s something on the shed’s door — a crude carving of a bird.

The same bird as the charm.

“How long has this been here?” I ask.

Evelyn shakes her head. “I don’t know. But it wasn’t here before Lila went missing.”

I take a step closer, and the shed door creaks in the wind. Inside, it smells of damp wood and something sweet but rotting.

On the floor, half-hidden under a tarp, is a baseball cap. Stained dark.

As I crouch to pick it up, I hear a twig snap outside.

“Eve?” I whisper.

But she’s not there.

Chapter 4 – Fragments

The cap is heavier than it should be.
Maybe it’s just the damp, or maybe it’s the weight of the dark stain seeping into the fabric. It smells faintly of gasoline and old sweat.

I step back from the shed door, scanning the clearing. My breath puffs white in the cold night air, though it’s not cold enough for that. Which means my body is doing that thing again — the panic trick — preparing for flight before my brain catches up.

“Eve?” I call again, louder this time.

Silence.

The trees are black silhouettes, every branch a finger pointing toward me. I hear something rustle in the undergrowth — quick, then gone.

When Evelyn finally appears, she’s coming from the opposite side of the clearing than she should’ve been.

“Where’d you go?” I demand.

She shrugs, too casually. “Thought I saw someone. Guess it was nothing.”

Her hands are jammed deep in her jacket pockets.

Back at her place, I can’t stop staring at the cap on the kitchen table. It’s like it’s staring back, waiting for me to ask the question I don’t want the answer to.

Instead, I pour whiskey into a chipped mug and let the burn remind me I’m still here. Evelyn’s already disappeared into her room without another word.

By midnight, I’m restless enough to dig the cap out of the plastic bag I stuffed it in. I press the brim between my fingers, and suddenly my head is full of static.

Not metaphorical static — actual, television-on-a-dead-channel static. My vision blurs, my pulse spikes. And then I’m not in Evelyn’s kitchen anymore.

I’m in the woods.

Fragment One
It’s dark, but there’s a lantern glow ahead. I’m barefoot, the cold biting my toes. My wrist hurts — there’s something tight around it, a metal bracelet maybe, digging into my skin.

I hear a man’s voice, low and calm. “Almost there.”

The trees open into a clearing. There’s the shed — younger then, not yet rotting. The bird carving isn’t there. The man’s hand is on my back, guiding me forward.

I turn to look at him, but his face is nothing but shadow.

I snap back into the kitchen so fast my mug tips over, spilling whiskey across the table. My breath is ragged. My palms are damp.

I tell myself it’s just memory bleed — trauma dredging up old images. But deep down, I know it’s not random. The cap triggered it. Which means whoever wore it was there.

The next morning, Evelyn acts like nothing happened. She’s making pancakes, humming to herself, like we’re in some sitcom kitchen instead of the epicenter of three girls’ disappearances.

“About last night,” I start.

She cuts me off. “We shouldn’t tell anyone about the shed. Not yet.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she says, flipping a pancake with more force than necessary, “if the wrong person hears about it, it’ll be gone before the cops get there. And we both know Mathers isn’t going to camp out in the woods waiting for evidence.”

I study her face. She’s hiding something. But I can’t tell if it’s to protect me… or herself.

I decide to go back to the shed alone. It’s mid-afternoon, sky a washed-out white, the air sharp with the smell of pine. The path is muddier today, sucking at my boots.

When I reach the clearing, the bird carving is still there. But the cap is gone.

The tarp is folded neatly against the wall, as though someone came back to clean up.

I’m about to turn back when I notice something new: etched faintly into the wood near the carving are three initials.

C.J. — H.R. — L.W.

Clara Jensen.
Hazel Reid.
Lila Wren.

Me.

Fragment Two
Flash — I’m sitting on the ground, knees pulled to my chest, someone pacing in front of me.
“You girls,” the voice says, low and almost fond. “Always curious. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Boots step closer. A hand reaches down — gloved, holding something small and silver.
The bird charm swings like a pendulum.

I jolt back again, my nails biting crescents into my palms. The initials on the shed door feel like a countdown, but I don’t know to what.

That night, I dream of the clearing again. Only this time, I’m not the one being led there.

It’s Lila. And she’s looking straight at me.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” she asks.

I wake up with the answer already on my tongue — the one I’ve never admitted out loud.

Because I knew him.

Chapter 5 – The First Break

By morning, the town’s already buzzing. Word spreads faster in Bramble than anywhere else, and today the rumor is simple:
They’ve got someone.

Evelyn bursts into my room before I’m even fully awake. “Mathers arrested Nate Collier last night.”

It takes me a second to place the name. “The mechanic? Runs that garage off Route 6?”

She nods, eyes wide. “Tall, baseball cap, smells like motor oil. Fits Kyle’s description, right?”

I sit up, rubbing my eyes. “Too perfectly.”

Nate Collier has been in Bramble forever. A little rough around the edges, sure, but not the kind of man who could make a girl vanish — at least not in the way that makes sense in my head. Which is to say, he’s the obvious choice. And in my experience, the obvious choice is rarely the right one.

Still, the sheriff’s office has him in holding, which means they think they’ve got enough to keep him there.

I can’t help myself — I go down to the station.

Mathers doesn’t look thrilled to see me. “You’re not press anymore, Hazel,” he says, leaning on the counter.

“I just want to hear it from you,” I reply.

He sighs. “We found Lila’s blood in his truck.”

That shuts me up for half a beat. “Where in the truck?”

“In the cab. Passenger side.”

“How much blood?”

“Enough to put her in there.”

“Or enough to plant,” I counter.

His eyes harden. “You’re not helping.”

Back at Evelyn’s, I can’t stop thinking about the shed. About the cap. About the initials carved into the wood. If Collier really did it, then why was there a connection to Clara and me? He would’ve been, what, twenty-three back then? And there’s no record of him ever being looked at for Clara’s case.

I tell Evelyn I’m going to get some air. She offers to come, but I wave her off.

Instead, I head to Collier’s garage. The place is locked up, police tape fluttering in the cold wind. I circle around back, where a chain-link fence barely holds back a row of rusting cars.

One of them — a beat-up green pickup — makes my stomach twist. Not because I recognize it exactly, but because I recognize the dent in the passenger door. I’ve seen it before.

Fragment Three
The dent’s at my shoulder height. My fingers brush over the metal, and I remember my wrist aching — the bracelet digging in. A voice in my ear: “In you go.” The smell of motor oil is sharp enough to sting my eyes.

A sudden shout pulls me back. A man in a brown jacket is striding toward me from the street. “Hey! You can’t be back here!”

I don’t wait to find out who he is. I slip out through a gap in the fence and keep walking until I’m two blocks away.

That night, Evelyn’s restless. She keeps pacing, chain-smoking, and glancing at her phone.

“What’s wrong?” I ask finally.

She shakes her head. “Just… if it is Collier, then Lila’s gone. And if it’s not…” She trails off.

“Then he’s still out there,” I finish.

She looks at me, and for the first time since I’ve been back, I see real fear in her face.

The next day, I get a message slipped under Evelyn’s front door. No name, just a folded piece of lined notebook paper.

Inside, in block letters:

HE’S NOT WHO YOU THINK. STOP DIGGING OR YOU’LL END UP LIKE HER.

Chapter 6 – Rot Beneath the Paint

The note sits on the table between me and Evelyn like a loaded gun. She picks it up, reads it twice, then drops it like it burned her fingers.

“You think it’s from Collier?” she asks.

“Doubt it,” I say. “He’s in a cell.”

She lights another cigarette, exhales toward the ceiling. “Then who?”

“That’s the problem,” I reply. “Could be anyone.”

---

I spend the morning in the Bramble Public Library, one of the few places in town that still feels unchanged in a good way. The air smells like paper and dust, and Mrs. Callahan at the front desk still wears those half-moon glasses on a chain.

I ask for the microfiche archives, and she doesn’t even blink — just leads me to the back.

I pull every local paper from 2006 and 2010, the years Clara Jensen disappeared and I did.

Patterns emerge fast.

• Clara Jensen, 2006: Last seen after choir practice. Search centered on east woods. No suspect ever charged.

• Hazel Reid (me), 2010: Missing 28 hours. Found near the same woods. No memory of the missing time.

• In both cases, a small notice appeared three days after the disappearance: Community Beautification Project delayed due to unforeseen circumstances.

At first it feels like nothing. Then I think about Bramble’s “fresh coat of paint” tradition — how it’s always in the spring, always after the first thaw. A perfect time to cover… anything.

I pull a box of city council meeting minutes. There it is again: the week Clara disappeared, the council approved “special maintenance” on several abandoned properties. Same thing the week after I vanished.

And now, two weeks before Lila went missing — the same vote.

Evelyn meets me at the diner for lunch. I lay it all out for her — the timeline, the council votes, the properties.

“You’re saying someone’s using the Beautification Project to hide evidence,” she says slowly.

“Or to move it,” I correct.

She shakes her head. “That’s insane.”

“So is carving my initials into a shed door,” I shoot back.

We decide to check one of the old properties from the 2006 list — a boarded-up two-story on Willow Street. The paint is crisp white, fresh even now, but the wood underneath is soft enough that my fingernail sinks into it.

Evelyn stands watch while I pry one of the loose boards from a side window. Inside, it smells of mildew and something coppery underneath. The living room is stripped bare except for a pile of debris in the corner — broken chair legs, a cracked lamp, and a small, dark-stained rug.

I flip the rug over. The underside is stiff with dried blood.

Fragment Four
The rug is under me. My hands are bound. The man’s boots are near my face — scuffed black leather. I can hear Evelyn’s voice outside, calling my name. Then another voice, closer: “Shut her up.”

I yank myself back into the present so fast I almost fall. My hands are shaking. I shove the rug back into place and get out of the house.

Evelyn sees my face and doesn’t ask. She just lights another cigarette and says, “We should go.”

That night, as I’m going through my notes, I realize something: every one of the “special maintenance” properties is within a mile of the east woods. And every one has some kind of storage — a shed, a cellar, a barn.

Places where you could keep someone.

Places where you could make them disappear.

Chapter 7 – The Interview

The Bramble County Jail smells like bleach and stale coffee. The kind of place where conversations die before they start.

Collier sits across from me in the visiting booth, his orange jumpsuit hanging loose on his frame. His eyes are pale, unblinking. The glass between us feels thicker than it should be.

“You came back,” he says.

“I’m not here for nostalgia.”

He smiles, slow and unpleasant. “That’s what you tell yourself.”

Collier was the prime suspect when Clara disappeared — mostly because he’d been caught breaking into sheds and barns around the east woods. He was never charged. In 2010, after I came back from my twenty-eight-hour blackout, he sent me a postcard with nothing but a drawing of an eye on it.

“Tell me about the Beautification Project,” I say.

He leans back, pretending to think. “Fresh paint hides a lot of sins.”

“You worked on it in 2006,” I press.

“I work on a lot of things.” His gaze drifts to the corner of the ceiling. “The thing about paint is, you never really know what’s underneath. Could be mold. Could be rot. Could be something that used to be alive.”

I slide a photo across — the shed door with my initials carved into it.

Collier studies it for a long time. “You think I did that?”

“You’re not denying it.”

He shrugs. “Maybe I just wanted you to remember.”

Fragment Five
It’s dark. The smell of paint is so thick I can taste it. A hand on the back of my neck forces my face toward the wood — wet, sticky white paint covering my initials. My breath comes fast. “Don’t forget who you are,” a man’s voice says, almost gentle.

I blink and I’m back in the booth, Collier still watching me.

“Who else was there in 2006?” I demand.

He grins. “Ask the man who signs the checks.”

“Mayor Price?”

The grin widens. “You’re smarter than you used to be, Hazel. Shame about the clock.”

“What clock?”

He taps the glass twice, stands up, and lets the guard take him away.

Evelyn’s waiting in the parking lot, leaning against her car. “Well?”

“He says Mayor Price knows something.”

“Mayor Price is halfway to senile and only comes into the office for photo ops,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what makes it interesting.”

That night, I hear the ticking. It’s faint at first, somewhere in the walls. I pull furniture away, check the vents, but it’s everywhere — the sound is in the house.

When I finally sit down, exhausted, I see it: an old wind-up clock on my kitchen counter. It wasn’t there this morning.

The hands are stuck at 2:13.

Chapter 8 – The Mayor

Mayor Robert Price’s house sits at the far end of Ridge Hollow Road, past the last streetlight, where the woods crowd so close they scrape the sides of your car. It’s a Victorian beast — three stories, gingerbread trim rotting at the edges, its paint the color of dried blood.

Evelyn warned me about him. “He’s either completely gone,” she said, “or the best actor in Bramble County.”

When he opens the door, I can’t tell which. His eyes are watery, his skin papery thin, but there’s a sharpness there — like a knife just under the surface.

“Hazel Merritt,” he says, as if he’s been expecting me.

Inside, the house smells of mothballs and dust. Every wall is covered with clocks. Mantel clocks, cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks. All ticking. The noise is a swarm of tiny hammers in my skull.

“Do you like my collection?” he asks, guiding me to the parlor. “They remind me that time doesn’t care who you are. Rich, poor… it will eat you just the same.”

I glance at the mantle. One clock is frozen at 2:13.

“Tell me about the Beautification Project,” I say.

His smile twitches. “Ah, yes. Fresh coats of paint. Mended fences. A way to make people forget what’s under the skin.”

“Under the skin?”

Mayor Price leans forward. “You were part of it, Hazel. You just don’t remember.”

My throat tightens. “What do you mean?”

“You were meant to be the face. The girl with the paintbrush. But then…” He trails off, eyes darting to the nearest clock. “Something happened in the shed. Something you still carry.”

Fragment Six
Hands on my shoulders, pressing me down. The sound of ticking all around me. A voice in my ear: “She’s perfect. Don’t ruin her.” The paint smell is suffocating. My palms are slick — but not with paint.

When I snap back, the mayor is watching me, his lips curved in a thin smile.

“Who else was there?” I ask.

“The committee,” he whispers. “All of them. Still here. Still watching.”

“Who’s in charge now?”

“You’ll know when the clock stops.”

Evelyn calls as I drive away. “Hazel, you’re not gonna like this — someone broke into your office. Everything’s been turned over. Files, photos, the whole place.”

“Did they take anything?”

She hesitates. “Just one thing — the shed door photo.”

When I get home, the kitchen clock is gone. But the ticking is louder than ever.

Chapter 9 – The Committee

The Bramble County Historical Hall is the kind of place where dust settles in layers like old wallpaper. Tonight, it’s locked up tight, the official “closed for renovations” sign bolted to the door.

Evelyn’s voice still echoes in my head: They’re meeting tonight. All of them. You’ll never get in unless you already belong.

I’m not sure when I started carrying my father’s old lock picks everywhere. Maybe it was after I stopped trusting people. Maybe before. Either way, the lock gives way in under thirty seconds.

Inside, the hall is dim, lit only by the yellow glow of a single bulb at the far end. I hear voices.

“…she’s asking questions again.”
“She won’t stop. None of them do, until…”
“Until we make it stop.”

I creep closer, staying behind the line of portraits — past mayors, judges, and, disturbingly, the same few faces repeating across decades.

The meeting room door is cracked. Through it, I see them: five people seated around a long oak table. The mayor at the head. Mrs. Lorne, the high school principal. Dr. Halden, the county coroner. And two faces I don’t know — a man with steel-gray hair, a woman in a red dress whose smile never moves past her mouth.

On the table between them: a stack of old photographs.

Mayor Price’s voice is low but clear. “The shed incident is not to resurface. We’ve paid for silence before. We’ll do it again.”

Mrs. Lorne: “She’s been to see you, hasn’t she?”

Price: “Yes. And she’s remembering. Pieces. We can’t let her put them together.”

Dr. Halden: “We could… expedite things.”

The man with steel-gray hair: “No. She’s too visible right now. Better to let her unravel herself. She’s already halfway there.”

I pull out my phone to take a photo, but the flash goes off — blinding white in the dark.

The woman in red turns her head instantly. “Who’s there?”

I run.

Behind me, chairs scrape. Footsteps thunder. I burst through the hall doors into the night air, heart pounding, shoes slapping against the pavement. I don’t look back until I reach my car.

There, stuck under my windshield wiper, is an envelope. Inside: a single polaroid of me as a child — standing in front of a shed, paint smeared on my hands, smiling too wide.

On the back, in red ink: STOP DIGGING.

Fragment Seven
The shed door is closed. Someone is behind me, their hand heavy on my shoulder. “Smile for the camera, Hazel.” The click of the shutter is deafening. The smell of paint is gone — replaced by something metallic.

Chapter 10 – The Shed

I don’t sleep.
Not because I don’t want to — but because every time I close my eyes, I see that polaroid. The smile on my younger face isn’t mine. I don’t remember it. And yet… I do.

By morning, I’ve made my decision.

The shed is on the outskirts of Bramble County, down an overgrown dirt road that GPS doesn’t even acknowledge. My tires crunch over gravel and weeds, the trees leaning in like they’re trying to whisper something I don’t want to hear.

When I finally see it, my chest tightens.
It’s small, warped wood with peeling white paint. But there’s something wrong about its proportions — the way the roof slants, the way the door seems too narrow for a human frame.

The padlock is new.
That makes me angry.

I pull my father’s picks again, my hands steady despite the hammering in my chest. The lock clicks open like it’s been waiting for me.

The smell hits first. Not rot — something older. Preserved.

Inside, it’s dim and cold. A single bare bulb dangles from the ceiling, buzzing faintly.

Against the far wall: a chair. Straps nailed into the armrests. The seat is stained a deep, rusty brown.

On the floor: jars. Dozens of them. Each one filled with what looks like dark liquid… but floating inside are fragments — ribbons of cloth, strands of hair, tiny bones.

I kneel, hands shaking, and pick one up.
A label is written in looping script: March 12 – E.R.

Another: August 3 – L.R.

A third: October 9 – H.B.
My initials.

The jar is smaller than the rest. Inside, a single baby tooth and a scrap of yellow fabric.

The light overhead flickers, and for a second I swear I see something in the corner — a shadow that doesn’t belong.

Then a voice from behind me:
“You weren’t supposed to find this, Hazel.”

I spin around. Mayor Price is standing in the doorway, a gun in his hand.

He steps closer, his voice calm like we’re discussing zoning laws. “We tried to keep you away. We really did. But curiosity’s a disease, isn’t it? Just like your mother’s.”

My breath catches. “My mother?”

“She was the first one to dig too deep. The first one to open that door. And you… you were in the chair.”

Fragment Eight
I’m small. The straps are too tight, cutting into my wrists. I’m crying, and someone is telling me to hold still. The camera clicks. The bulb hums. The door closes, and the dark swallows me whole.

Chapter 11 – The Final Gathering

They think I’m going to break.
Maybe they’re right — but not today.

Price marches me back to town, the gun never wavering. The sky is low and gray, the kind that makes the whole world feel like it’s under a lid.

He takes me straight to the community hall. The same place the memorial service was held.
Inside, they’re all waiting.

I count them quickly:
Sheriff Lorne.
Reverend Cady.
Dr. Minton, who patched up half the county and buried the other half.
Eileen from the post office.

And at the center, in a chair like it’s a throne — Mrs. Price.
Her eyes are sharp and bright.

“Hazel,” she says, almost warmly, “come in. We’ve been expecting you.”

It’s not a meeting. It’s a tribunal.

They tell me everything, one voice picking up where the other leaves off.
For decades, the Prices and their circle have been curating Bramble County — deciding who stays, who goes, who disappears.

The jars? Trophies. Keepsakes. Proof.

When I was six, my mother stumbled into their ritual. She tried to take me and run. She didn’t get far.
They kept her until she “learned to behave.” She never did.

And me?
They made me part of it — a lesson to her. The photos in the shoebox were their record, their proof of how easily a child could be shaped.

I wasn’t supposed to remember.
Except some part of me did. In flashes, in dreams, in smells that made me sick without reason.

Mrs. Price leans forward, her voice sweet as arsenic.
“You could join us, Hazel. Make peace with what’s past. Use what you’ve learned.”

I laugh — too loud, too sharp. “You think I came here to negotiate?”

There’s a weight in my pocket.
The little jar with my initials.

I throw it at the floor. Glass shatters.
For a moment, they’re too stunned to move. That’s all I need.

I run.
Out the hall, into the street, through the rain that’s finally broken.

I don’t stop until I’m in my car, tires screaming against the wet road.
In the rearview mirror, the town is just a smear of gray.

One Year Later

I’m not in Bramble County anymore.
But sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night, certain I hear a camera click.

And on my desk, there’s a box.
Not the shoebox — a new one.
Inside: a polaroid of me at my kitchen table, taken through the window.

The caption reads: November 14 – H.B.