On the other bed, a plastic Ziploc bag catches the dim light. Folded inside is a single printout from a news site, the photo slightly blurred from where I smoothed water across it.
STATE POLICE INVESTIGATE POSSIBLE CONNECTION TO PRIOR CASES.
They don’t say my name. They don’t have to. I can hear it in the way they dance around the words. “Prior incidents.” “High-profile investigation.” “Community still healing.”
They talk like any of this belongs to them.
It doesn’t.
The woman on the rocks earlier this week wasn’t special. Not to me. She was useful—right age, right size, right level of caution. Cautious enough to buy the right shoes and bring a water bottle. Not cautious enough to notice when someone stepped off the trail behind her, matched her rhythm, waited for the moment.
She screamed. Briefly.
The Falls took the rest.
Placing her was the real work. Jason always left this part to me anyway, so it was nothing new. Dragging, lifting, the strain in my muscles that made me feel alive. He would’ve called this one “a workout,” laughing while I chose my angles.
I did it alone this time.
The shelf halfway down the cascade is slick, treacherous, beautiful. People used to climb out to it, take selfies. Somebody broke their leg one year, and the town nailed up more signs.
No one took the shelf away. They just pretended that hiding the path meant the drop didn’t exist.
I like the shelf. It’s liminal space—too high to reach without commitment, too low to see without leaning. The perfect place to leave a question mark.
Was she a fall? An accident? An echo?
I laid her out with care, her arms reaching just so. Head turned toward the overlook. From above, she would look like a distant shape out of place on the smooth gray rock. It would be enough of an anomaly to itch at the back of somebody’s brain. Enough to make a hiker stop. Squint. Lean in for a closer look.
That moment between not-seeing and seeing is the closest thing to religion I have.
I timed the rest, from the first call to the sheriff’s office to the wash of lights against the trees, to the dull thunder of boots hitting dirt.
They’re faster than they were last time. Better resourced. More afraid.
I’m flattered.
The laptop pings—someone in the chat room invoking my ghost.
you think it’s him?
Nightjar thinks so.
I scroll lazily past the chatter. I’ve watched these people chew on my name for years now. They make conspiracy boards and fan art. They assign me motives they can understand and ignore the ones they can’t. Half of them think they’re helping. The other half just want to sit close to the fire without getting burned.
They all listen when she speaks.
Nightjar has that effect. She’s small, but the room stops and listens when she speaks.
I’ve been listening to her for a long time.
The first time I noticed her, she was just text on a screen. No face. No weight. Precise, clever sentences mixed with a little snark that cut through speculation like a scalpel.
He’s not random. Look at the dates. Look at the gaps.
She was right, which was both irritating and interesting. Most people are lucky at guessing and bad at pattern recognition. She saw more.
She couldn’t let it go. Even after the town buried its dead and packed away its candles, she kept the file open in the back of her mind.
