The engine of Julian’s truck ticked as it cooled, a metallic heartbeat slowing down in the silence of the pre-dawn gloom. I was parked two streets away from the old elementary school, hidden in the shadow of a weeping willow that dragged its branches across the roof of the cab like skeletal fingers.
I looked at the dashboard clock. 5:14 AM.
The sun was technically rising, but in Oakhaven, dawn was just a rumor. The world outside was a monochrome study in gray—gray fog, gray rain, gray asphalt.
I took a breath, and it shuddered in my chest. This was it. The preamble was over. The investigation was over. Now, there was only the confrontation.
I reached into my bag. I needed to be ready. Not just mentally, but physically. I needed to be a fortress.
I pulled out the .38 revolver Julian had given me. It was heavy, cold, and smelled of gun oil. I flipped the cylinder open, checking the rounds for the tenth time. Five bullets. Five chances to stop a monster who had survived a flood, a burial, and twenty years of solitude.
“Point and pull,” I whispered, snapping the cylinder shut.
I shoved the gun into the deep pocket of my coat, keeping my hand wrapped around the grip.
But five shots might not be enough. Or maybe I wouldn’t be able to take them. What if I froze? What if I saw the boy who took a dog bite for me and couldn’t pull the trigger?
I needed backups. I needed options that didn’t require me to look him in the eye and end his life.
I dug deeper into my bag. I found the small canister of pepper spray I kept on my keychain—city armor for late nights in Seattle. I unclipped it and shoved it into my left pocket.
Then, the paring knife. I had swiped it from the kitchenette in the motel room yesterday, a reflex I hadn’t fully understood at the time. Now, it felt like prophecy. The blade was short, serrated, meant for cutting lemons, not arteries.
I pulled up the leg of my jeans. I didn’t have a sheath, so I used a roll of medical tape from the truck’s glove box. I taped the handle of the knife against my ankle, the cold plastic pressing against my skin. It was crude. It pulled at the hair on my leg. But it was there.
Gun. Spray. Knife. Stone.
I touched the river stone in my breast pocket. The token. The ring.
I was a bride preparing for her wedding day, but instead of something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue, I had something lethal.
I looked at the phone in the cup holder. The screen was dark.
I shouldn’t call him. It was dangerous. It was weak.
But if I walked into that fog and didn’t come back, I couldn’t let the last thing I said to him be an accusation in a police station.
I picked up the phone. I dialed the number I had known by heart since I was sixteen.
It rang once. Twice.
“Elara?”
His voice was rough, breathless. He answered on the second ring, which meant he was staring at the phone.
“Julian,” I said. The sound of his name nearly broke me. It tasted of safety.
“Where are you?” he demanded. “Miller has a grid search going. He’s got dogs out. Elara, you need to come in. I can… I can fix this.”
“You can’t fix this,” I said gently. “You’re not even a cop anymore, Julian.”
“I’m out on bail,” he said, his voice tight with frustration. “My father’s lawyer… look, it doesn’t matter. I’m at the house. I’m getting my personal hunting rifle. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come to you. We’ll end this together.”
“No,” I said.
“Elara, don’t do this.”
“He called me, Julian.”
Silence on the other end. Then, a sharp intake of breath. “Elias?”
“Yes. He wants to meet. He wants to finish the game.”
“It’s a trap,” Julian shouted. “You know it’s a trap! He’s going to kill you!”
“He doesn’t want to kill me,” I said, staring out at the fog swirling against the glass. “He wants to marry me. In his head, we’re the last two people on earth. He thinks he’s saving me from the Dragon.”
“The Dragon is dead!”
“Not to him. To him, the Dragon is everyone. The Dragon is you.”
“Tell me where you are,” Julian begged. His voice cracked. “Please, Elara. Don’t make me find your body in the woods.”
“If I tell you, he’ll know,” I said. “He’s watching. If he sees police lights, if he sees you… he’ll kill the others.”
“The others are dead, Elara! He broke into the morgue!”
“I know,” I said. “I was there.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I have to go alone, Julian. It’s the only way to get close enough.”
“Close enough to what?”
“To wake him up,” I lied.
I wasn’t going there to wake him up. I was going there to put him to sleep. Permanently.
“I love you,” I said. The words slipped out, unplanned, unbidden. They hung in the air between us, heavy with fifteen years of silence.
“Elara—”
“I’m sorry I left,” I said. “And I’m sorry I came back. But I’m going to fix it.”
“Don’t you hang up! Elara! Do not hang—”
I pressed the red icon. The line went dead.
I turned the phone off. Then I rolled down the window and threw it into the deep brush by the side of the road. No GPS. No tracking. No lifeline.
I was invisible.
I sat in the silence for a moment longer. I watched a drop of rain trace a path down the window, erratic and winding.
I wasn’t afraid anymore. That was the strange thing. The terror that had gripped me in the cellar, the panic in the hotel room… it was gone. It had burned away, leaving behind a cold, gray ash of resignation.
I knew, with a certainty that settled in my bones, that I wasn’t walking toward a victory. I wasn’t walking toward a scoop.
I was walking toward my death.
And that was okay. Because if I died, the game ended. If the Princess died, the Knight had no one left to save. The story would collapse.
“Okay,” I whispered.
I opened the door.
The damp air hit me, smelling of ozone and wet metal. I stepped down from the truck, my boots splashing into a puddle.
I didn’t lock the truck. It didn’t matter.
I walked toward the school.
The playground was located behind the main building, a sprawling expanse of asphalt and woodchips that had been reclaimed by nature. Weeds grew waist-high through the cracks in the blacktop. The merry-go-round was a rusted disc frozen in the mud.
And in the center, rising out of the fog like the ribcage of a giant beast, was the swing set.
It was huge. An industrial steel A-frame that held eight swings. Only two were left now, the chains rusted, the rubber seats cracked and peeling.
I walked through the tall grass. The seed heads brushed against my coat, whispering.
Shhh. Shhh.
Visibility was less than ten feet. I couldn’t see the treeline. I couldn’t see the school. I was in a white room with no walls.
I reached the swing set.
I put my hand on the cold steel of the frame. It vibrated slightly in the wind.
“I’m here,” I said.
My voice was swallowed by the fog.
I waited.
The silence stretched. Ten seconds. Thirty. A minute.
Had he lied? Was he at the Sawmill after all, laughing as I stood here alone in the rain?
Then, a sound.
Squeak.
It came from the fog. Rhythmic. Slow.
Squeak… squeak…
The sound of a swing moving back and forth.
I turned.
He emerged from the white mist like a photo developing in a darkroom. First a shadow, then a shape, then a man.
He was sitting on one of the swings. His massive frame dwarfed the small rubber seat. His long legs were bent, his boots dragging in the dirt as he pushed himself gently back and forth.
He was wearing the same filthy coat. His face was obscured by the hood, but I could see the glint of his eyes.
He stopped swinging.
He looked up at me.
“You came,” he rasped.
He sounded surprised. As if he had expected me to run. As if he had expected me to be smart.
“I promised,” I said.
I took a step closer. My hand was in my pocket, gripping the gun. My thumb found the hammer.
“Hello, Sandman,” I whispered.
He smiled. And in that smile, I saw the boy. And the monster. And the end of everything.