Part I It had rained the day before they arrived, though the air that lingered along the hedgerows and cottages smelled more of earth than of water. Andrew noticed it first as they stepped out of the narrow rental car in front of the stone-framed gate...
Part I I first noticed something different in Owen when the heat broke and the evenings cooled enough to leave the windows open. There hadn’t been an incident—no fever, no fall, nothing to blame. Just a sudden and unshakable quiet that didn’t belong to a six-year-old...
Part I We came to the cabin after everything else had fallen apart—not for a vacation, and not because we wanted to live a simpler life. It was the only option left. My aunt had owned the place decades ago, back in the seventies, when she...
Part I I was never supposed to lead the Aravik survey. Officially, the initiative belonged to the Oceanographic Institute of Bergen, a multi-year study into the tectonic properties of a glacial rift beneath an inland body of water. On paper, it was meant to be geology,...
Part I Mason Firth watched the rural highway unravel in a slow curve through brittle grass and leafless oaks, the pavement cracking into patches where frost heave had bullied its way to the surface. His truck groaned with each dip, suspension aging as poorly as his...
Part I The gravel cracked beneath the tires of the rented Jeep as it slowed to a halt, dust rising in thick orange plumes that lingered in the still air before dissipating into the mid-afternoon glare. The sun was high over the rim of the ravine,...
Part I Dr. Neal Farrow stepped down from the rust-scorched cab of the Hilux, his boots sinking slightly into the orange dust as the wind carried dry grains in lazy spirals across the barren flat. The engine idled for a moment longer before the driver cut...
Part I The iron gate at the edge of Charlotte Street let out a brittle screech as Camille Wren pressed it inward with her forearm, careful not to let her suitcase topple sideways against the uneven brick. The fence, once black, now bore the fading bronze...
Part I There was something in the tape that defied explanation. Claire Morse had watched it more than a dozen times since the envelope first arrived, but each viewing stirred the same unease—an itch at the base of her neck, a vague stirring behind her eyes....
Part I The storm rolled in heavy over the Gulf, carried on winds that scraped shingles off rooftops and bent palm trees at the waist. Rain lashed the streets of Old Town, and the few people who hadn't already taken shelter had long since vanished into...
Part I The road narrowed as Kevin drove north, the trees arching overhead like clasped fingers, thick enough in places to blot out the afternoon light. With each mile, the canopy grew denser, the asphalt rougher, the shoulder swallowed by the unchecked growth of grass and...
Part I The package arrived without a return address. Wrapped in weathered brown paper and sealed with twine that left rust-colored streaks across her hands, it had waited patiently in her mailbox, as though it had been there longer than it had any right to be. Eleanor...
Part I I hadn’t expected the house to be as quiet as it was. You’d think an old farmhouse, even one wired for utilities and insulated in the seventies, would creak or groan or do something to remind you you weren’t the only one inside it—but...
Part I It was the siren that woke him, though the sound at first didn’t register as real. It wormed its way into his half-dreaming consciousness, a drawn-out wail that ebbed and surged, pitching awkwardly between mournful and mechanical. Dennis blinked against the dark, lifting his...
Part I Michael and I had been best friends since the first week of high school. I met him in the lunch line, both of us shuffling forward with our plastic trays, silently weighing whether the nachos looked edible. He cracked a joke about the cheese...
I can’t believe I’m finally creating a record of this after so many years. It’s not an easy thing to talk about, but my therapist tells me it needs to be done. She says it’s time to let go of the past and that talking about...
Part I Tom Bellamy hadn’t heard of the place before he bought the wood. Erin called him on a Tuesday morning with one of her usual leads, telling him she’d found something special—”prime old-growth oak, maybe a century old,” salvaged from a demolition site out past...
Part I The lower levels of Ashford High had been sealed off years ago, after a pipe burst during a particularly harsh winter and flooded the basement with rancid water. Mold took root, the ceilings sagged, and several classrooms on the lowest floor were condemned. Since...
Part I I’ve spent most of the last year convincing myself that what happened wasn’t my fault. But when I close my eyes, when I let myself really think—really remember—I always end up in the same place: the sound of metal screaming against asphalt, the smell...
Part I Martin Greaves arrived at the Cortland Municipal Archive just after eight on a Tuesday morning, two days after the city finally cut power to the upper floors. The building, a vast brutalist monolith set between two defunct overpasses, had been shuttered since 2007, but...
