The drive back to the Timberline Motel was a blur of wet asphalt and windshield wipers fighting a losing battle against the deluge. I was running on fumes—adrenaline, caffeine, and the toxic sludge of unearthed trauma.
Julian’s rejection still stung like a slap, but beneath the hurt, my mind was racing, plotting the geography of the river, the location of the old logging camps. He could keep his denial. I had the truth.
I pulled into the motel parking lot, the tires crunching over gravel. The neon sign buzzed overhead, casting the wet pavement in a flickering, bloody red. NO VACANCY.
Officer Miller’s cruiser was still parked in front of Unit 104. He was awake now, or at least upright, staring at his phone. He offered a lazy wave as I killed the engine.
“Everything quiet?” I asked, stepping out into the rain.
He rolled down the window, a blast of warm air and stale donut glaze hitting me. “Quiet as a tomb, Ms. Vance. Nobody in or out except the maid service.”
“Maid service?” I froze, my hand hovering over the door handle of my car.
“Yeah. About an hour ago. Just changing towels.”
My stomach tightened. “I had the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door.”
Miller shrugged, the gesture heavy with the indifference of youth. “Maybe it fell off. Wind’s picking up.”
“Right,” I said. “The wind.”
I walked to my door. The plastic tag—Shhh, I’m Sleeping—was indeed gone. I looked at the ground. It wasn’t there.
I gripped my key card, my other hand sliding into my pocket to touch the jagged edge of the river stone.
Paranoia, I told myself. You’re seeing monsters in the shadows because you just spent an hour arguing about ghosts.
I slid the card. The lock clicked with a reassuring mechanical thud.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside, immediately throwing the deadbolt and sliding the chain into place.
The room was exactly as I had left it. Or was it?
The air smelled of industrial lemon cleaner—the maid service Miller mentioned. My bag was on the chair where I’d dropped it. The laptop was closed on the desk.
But the air felt… charged. Static. Like the moment before a lightning strike.
I did a sweep. Bathroom: empty. Shower curtain: pulled back. Under the bed: dust bunnies.
“You’re losing it, Elara,” I whispered, leaning back against the door. “He’s in the woods. He’s not everywhere.”
I needed to wash the day off. I needed to scrub the smell of the police station and Mrs. Higgins’ mothballs from my skin.
I walked toward the bed to grab my towel.
And then I stopped.
The pillows were fluffed, propped up against the headboard in a mockery of comfort. And resting squarely in the center of the right pillow, distinct against the white cotton, was an object that hit me with the force of a physical blow.
It was a Walkman.
Not just any Walkman. It was a Sony Sports model, bright yellow hard plastic with black rubber seals. Waterproof. The kind designed for kids who played in the rain.
I stopped breathing.
I had owned one just like it in 1998. I had saved my allowance for six months to buy it so I could listen to Nirvana without Richard hearing. It had disappeared from my room the same summer the feral boy appeared. I had assumed Richard threw it out.
I took a step closer, my legs feeling like they were moving through water.
The headphones—bulky, black foam pads—were wrapped neatly around the device. A cassette tape was inside. No label. Just black plastic and magnetic ribbon.
It was a gift.
Or a bomb.
I reached out, my hand trembling uncontrollably. I didn’t want to touch it. Touching it felt like shaking hands with the devil. But I had to know.
I picked it up. It was heavy, substantial. I unwound the headphones and put them over my ears. The foam was cold against my skin.
My thumb hovered over the PLAY button.
Click.
The hiss of tape noise filled my ears. High, white static.
And then, a voice.
“Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry…”
I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth.
It was me.
It was a recording of a child’s voice—high, thin, and terrified. I was singing. I remembered this. I remembered sitting in the crawlspace, whispering the song to the boy in the wall because he was crying. He had cut his hand on a rusted nail, and I didn’t have any bandages, so I gave him a song instead.
“Go to sleep, little baby. When you wake, you shall have… all the pretty little horses.”
The audio quality was tinny, recorded through a vent, through a wall. But it was unmistakably me. He had recorded me. He had a recorder in that nest of his. He had been capturing my voice while I thought I was alone.
Tears pricked my eyes. It was a violation so deep it felt like he had reached inside my ribcage and touched my heart.
But then, the recording changed.
The hiss of the tape shifted. The ambient noise of the recording dropped out, replaced by a new room tone.
And a new voice joined the child.
It wasn’t a child’s voice. It was a man’s. Deep. Raspy. A voice that sounded like it was dragging itself over gravel.
He was humming.
He was humming along to the recording of me.
Hummm… hummm… hummm…
A duet across time. The twelve-year-old girl and the thirty-year-old monster.
The sound was intimate, sickeningly tender. He wasn’t mocking me. He was harmonizing. He was trying to be close to me.
I wanted to rip the headphones off, to throw the yellow box against the wall and shatter it. But I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed by the audio.
And then I heard it.
In the background of the man’s humming. A sound that didn’t belong to 1999.
Clunk. Whirrrr.
It was a heavy, mechanical sound. A rhythmic chugging.
I knew that sound. I had heard it ten minutes ago when I parked the car.
It was the ice machine. The broken, rattling ice machine located in the breezeway right outside my room.
The blood drained from my face, leaving me lightheaded.
He hadn’t recorded this weeks ago. He hadn’t recorded it in the woods.
He had recorded it here.
He had sat on this bed, holding this Walkman, listening to my childhood voice, and he had sung along to it while the ice machine rattled outside.
He was here an hour ago. When the “maid” was changing the towels.
I ripped the headphones off, throwing them onto the bed as if they were venomous snakes.
I spun around, scanning the room. The closet. The bathroom. The space behind the curtain.
He had been here. He had smelled my perfume on the pillows. He had touched my clothes.
“Officer Miller!” I screamed, lunging for the door.
I fumbled with the chain, my fingers useless, slippery with sweat. I got the deadbolt open and threw the door wide.
The rain was coming down in sheets now.
The patrol car was there. The engine was running. The wipers were slapping back and forth.
“Miller!” I shouted, running out into the deluge without a coat.
I reached the car and grabbed the handle. It was locked.
I pounded on the glass. “Miller! He was in my room! Open the door!”
Officer Miller didn’t turn. He was slumped forward, his forehead resting against the steering wheel.
“Miller?”
I cupped my hands against the glass, peering in.
His eyes were closed. His mouth was slightly open. He looked peaceful. Asleep.
But on the dashboard, right next to the defroster vents, sat a small, white paper cup.
From the motel lobby coffee station.
And taped to the cup was a Polaroid.
I couldn’t see the image clearly through the rain and the glass, but I could see the shape. A doll. Sleeping.
The Sandman had come. He had sprinkled dust in the sentry’s eyes.
I backed away from the car, the rain plastering my hair to my skull.
I was alone. The cop was drugged. Julian was gone. And the killer had a key to my room.
I looked back at the open door of Unit 104. The yellow Walkman sat on the bed, a beacon of bright color in the gloom.
It wasn’t a threat. It was a courtship gift.
I’m still listening, it said. I’m still in the walls.
I turned and ran.
I didn’t go to my car. He would expect the car. He might be in the back seat.
I ran toward the treeline behind the motel. It was insane. It was suicide. But the woods were the only place big enough to hide in.
As I crossed the threshold from the parking lot to the forest, the light from the neon sign faded. The darkness swallowed me.
But as I ran, stumbling over roots, I could hear it in my head. The raspy, broken voice humming a lullaby.
He wasn’t chasing me away.
He was singing me home.