Chapter Three:
Things That Wait in the Dark
The note sat on the passenger seat like it might burn straight through the upholstery.
WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Cal had read it again after leaving Kila’s place, after brushing a kiss into Mona’s hair and telling her to be good and get some sleep. He told himself it was just another small-town scare tactic—a coward’s threat in black marker. But the air around it felt wrong—like it carried its own temperature.
It was the kind of note you didn’t crumple or toss.
It didn’t feel finished.
He drove with the windows cracked, letting in the night. The kind of night that settled low—wet, whispering, not quite cold but edging into it. The air smelled of pine needles, earth, and a faint metallic tang that reminded him, uncomfortably, of blood.
He took the long way out to the maintenance trail behind the fairgrounds. The cruiser’s headlights swept across gravel and dead brush, picking out the faded tire ruts like scars. This stretch of road didn’t get used anymore. It existed more in memory than in maps.
His boots crunched down as he stepped out. Every sound—his footfalls, the creak of the car door, the groan of branches above—felt too loud in the hush of the woods.
The trees loomed, twisted silhouettes against the dark. Beyond them, the land sloped down toward the ruins of the old barn that had half-collapsed in the fire.
And that’s when he saw it.
A single lantern, sitting on a thick wooden beam. Its frame was wrought iron, ornate in an old-fashioned way, black, and slightly rusted. Inside, a candle flickered—steadily, almost unnaturally steady. The glow wasn’t bright. It was contained. Intentional. As if someone had placed it there not to guide a path but to mark a spot.
Cal moved toward it, breath catching slightly in his throat. The air grew cooler with each step. Beneath his boots, leaves crunched—dried, brittle, forgotten by everything but time.
He crouched next to the lantern. No smell of fuel. No warmth from the glass. Just light.
Unmoving. Unnatural.
Then he saw it—carved into the bark of the tree just behind the lantern. Jagged. Deep. Angry.
TRAITOR
The letters clawed into the trunk looked old—but not weathered. Like they’d been etched long ago, then retraced. Fresh rage drawn over old wounds.
Above, the sky had turned black as ink. Not soft. Not open. Heavy.
The stars blinked like eyes refusing to look directly at him, and then—there it was. The moon.
It hung low, swollen and rusted, a copper eye staring through the limbs. A blood moon. He’d seen one before, years back—this same stretch of woods. The year Ezra Jennings left town.
He remembered the way it cast strange shadows. Made the world feel farther away. Quieter, but not calmer.
Tonight was the same.
Still—but not safe.
Back in the cruiser, Cal sat motionless for a long moment. The cabin of the car was dim except for the faint dome light, and the echo of the lantern’s glow still hovered behind his eyes.
He unfolded the note again. Edges worn soft from handling, creases going white like a bone under the skin.
And then he saw it.
Faint. Like it had been pressed into the paper without ink. Or written in something that faded with light.
A second message nearly missed.
You should’ve stopped it.
His chest tightened. His mouth tasted dry, coppery. He read it again.
You should’ve stopped it.
Not a warning.
A judgment.
He gripped the wheel but didn’t turn the key. His eyes stayed on the woods, on the ghost of the lantern’s light glowing faint in his side mirror.
There was something out there.
Not just history. Not just gossip.
Something waiting. Something remembering.
Ashwood County never forgets.
It just waits for the moonlight to make the truth look different.
Keep Following the Trail
Ashwood County doesn’t forget. Neither should you.
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