Silence, I discovered, was heavier than screaming.
Screaming has a pitch. It has a duration. You can brace against it. But silence is a shapeless weight that settles over a room, over a town, over a mind, and presses down until you can hear the blood rushing in your own ears.
For seven days, Oakhaven was silent.
The police scanner, which had been the soundtrack of my life for the past week, sat on the windowsill of Room 304, humming with nothing but the occasional static check of a bored deputy. No sightings. No footprints. No 10-33s.
The manhunt that had started with sirens and helicopters had slowly devolved into a wet, miserable slog through the mud. The state police brought in dogs on Tuesday. They lost the scent at the riverbank, washed away by the relentless, biblical deluge that pounded the roof of the hospital day and night. On Thursday, they brought in thermal drones. The pilots sat in their dry vans, flying robots over the canopy of the Weeping Woods, looking for a heat signature in a forest that was chemically decomposing.
They found deer. They found a bear. They found a meth lab in an old RV three miles north.
But they didn’t find Elias.
“He’s gone to ground,” Sheriff Miller had told the press on the courthouse steps, his face a mask of performative competence. “Or the elements have taken him. No one survives a week in the Throat with those kinds of injuries.”
Miller wanted it to be over. The town wanted it to be over.
And, God help me, I was starting to believe them.
I sat in the hard plastic visitor’s chair next to Julian’s bed, watching the rise and fall of his chest. He was asleep, the morphine drip doing the heavy lifting that his own stubborn brain couldn’t. His leg was elevated, encased in a heavy cast, and the stab wound on his shoulder was packed and stitched. He looked pale, stripped of the armor of his badge and his cynicism.
He looked like the boy I used to meet at the swings.
I reached out and brushed a stray hair from his forehead. He didn’t stir.
Outside the window, Oakhaven was a town under glass. A curfew had been instituted—dusk to dawn. The streets were empty save for the prowling cruisers. The schools were closed. The General Store closed at four. Even the diner, usually the heartbeat of the valley, was dark by six.
It felt like the town was holding its breath, waiting for a blow that never came.
I stood up, my joints popping. I needed coffee. The cafeteria swill was terrible, but it was hot, and it gave my hands something to do.
I walked down the hallway. The hospital was quiet. The nurses at the station nodded to me—the “journalist,” the “witness,” the “girlfriend.” I didn’t know what label they used when I walked away. I didn’t care.
I took the elevator down to the lobby and walked to the vending machines.
A copy of the Oakhaven Gazette sat on a table. The headline screamed in bold, black font: MANHUNT STALLS. MONSTER PRESUMED DEAD?
I picked it up. The article was full of speculation. Hypothermia. Infection. Blood loss. It quoted a local survival expert who said the odds of surviving a gut wound in forty-degree rain without shelter were “statistical zero.”
I traced the letters of the headline. Presumed Dead.
Logic dictated they were right. I had stabbed him with a shard of glass. He had fallen from a roof. He had been bleeding—heavy, arterial spurts—when he vanished into the tree line.
The rational part of my brain, the part that wrote factual articles and checked sources, did the math.
Infection sets in within twenty-four hours. Sepsis in forty-eight. Without antibiotics, without heat, the body shuts down.
Elias was strong. He was a survivor. But he was flesh and blood.
“He’s dead,” I whispered.
The words felt strange in my mouth. Forbidden. Like saying a curse in church.
But as I said them, a knot in the center of my chest, one that had been pulled tight since the day I opened the blue envelope, began to loosen.
I bought a black coffee and walked back up to the third floor.
When I re-entered the room, Julian was awake. He was trying to sit up, wincing as the movement pulled at his stitches.
“Hey,” I said, rushing over to adjust his pillows. “Stop moving. You’ll rip something.”
“I hate this,” he grumbled, his voice raspy. “I feel useless.”
“You’re healing. That’s not useless.”
He looked at me, his green eyes clearing as the fog of sleep lifted. “Any news?”
“Nothing,” I said, sitting back down. “Miller called off the dogs. Said they were getting trench foot.”
Julian let out a breath that was half-sigh, half-laugh. “Miller would call off a search party for his own mother if it started raining.”
He looked out the window at the gray expanse of the sky.
“Do you think he’s out there, Elara?”
It was the question we had danced around for seven days.
I took a sip of coffee. It tasted burnt.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Part of me… the part that remembers the boy in the wall… thinks he’s invincible. Thinks he’s just waiting.”
“And the other part?”
“The other part remembers how much blood was on the floor of the cabin, Julian. I remember the sound of his breathing when we fought. It was wet. Rattling.”
Julian closed his eyes. “I hope he’s dead,” he said softly. “God, that sounds terrible. He’s my brother. But I hope he died in the woods.”
“It’s not terrible,” I said, taking his hand. “It’s mercy. For him. And for us.”
We sat in silence for a long time. The rain drummed against the glass, a lullaby that was slowly losing its menace.
“The Doll Festival is in two days,” Julian said suddenly.
“I know. I saw the flyers in the lobby. They’re still going ahead with it.”
“Mayor refuses to cancel. Says it’s about ‘reclaiming our spirit.’ Says canceling would let fear win.” Julian scoffed. “Idiots. They’re going to build a giant bonfire in the middle of town while a serial killer might be watching from the ridge.”
“If he’s alive,” I corrected.
“If.”
“Julian,” I said, squeezing his hand. “If he was alive… if he was able to move… he wouldn’t have waited this long. He’s impulsive. He’s driven by a script. The Wedding. He wouldn’t pause the game for a week unless he couldn’t play anymore.”
Julian looked at me. He squeezed my hand back.
“You really think it’s over?”
I looked at the man I loved. I looked at the peace that was trying to settle on his face, the desperate need for permission to stop being afraid.
I wanted to give him that. I wanted to give it to myself.
“Yes,” I lied. Or maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe it was a prayer. “I think it’s over.”
The tension in the room broke. It was physical, like a cable snapping. Julian’s shoulders dropped. He leaned back into the pillows, the lines of pain around his eyes smoothing out.
“Good,” he whispered. “Good.”
Later that evening, the nurse came in to change his dressing. I stepped out into the hall to give them privacy.
I walked to the large window at the end of the corridor. It looked out over the parking lot and the treeline beyond.
The fog was lifting. For the first time in days, I could see the stars. They were faint, distant pinpricks of light in the velvet black.
I took a deep breath. The air in the hospital smelled of antiseptic, but underneath, I caught the scent of woodsmoke from the town chimneys. Normal. Domestic.
I thought about the Glass House. It was still a crime scene, wrapped in yellow tape, but in a few days, the police would release it. I would have to go back. I would have to pack up the rest of my life.
The thought didn’t paralyze me. It felt like a chore. A heavy, unpleasant chore, but manageable.
I beat him, I thought. I survived.
I turned away from the window. I was going to go back to the room. I was going to order a pizza. I was going to sit with Julian and talk about something that wasn’t murder. Maybe we would talk about Seattle. Maybe we would talk about staying.
I walked back down the hall, my boots clicking softly on the linoleum.
I felt light. Weightless. The crushing pressure of the past week had evaporated, leaving behind a hollow, giddy exhaustion.
I reached the door to Room 304.
“Everything look good?” I asked the nurse as she stepped out with a tray of bloody gauze.
“Healing nicely,” she smiled. “He’s a tough one.”
“Yeah,” I smiled back. “He is.”
I walked into the room.
Julian was awake, watching the TV mounted on the wall. It was muted. The news. A weatherman pointing at a map of the Pacific Northwest.
“Sun’s coming out,” Julian said.
“I saw.”
I sat down in the chair. I picked up my book—a paperback mystery I had bought at the gift shop just for the irony of it.
“Read to me?” Julian asked.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I like your voice. It keeps the nightmares away.”
I opened the book. I started to read.
For an hour, the only sounds in the room were my voice and the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor. It was peaceful. It was boring. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever experienced.
Around midnight, Julian drifted off.
I closed the book. I leaned my head back against the wall, closing my eyes.
I didn’t dream of the Sandman. I didn’t dream of root cellars or duct tape.
I dreamed of the ocean. Vast, blue, and empty.
When I woke up, it was morning.
Sunlight—actual, honest-to-god sunlight—was streaming through the blinds, striping the floor with gold.
I stretched, my back popping.
Julian was still asleep.
I felt a sudden, overwhelming need for fresh air. Not the recycled air of the hospital, but the crisp, clean air of a morning that didn’t have a body count.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to sleeping Julian.
I grabbed my coat and walked out.
The elevator ride down was smooth. The lobby was bustling with morning shifts. People holding coffees, looking tired but normal.
I walked out the sliding glass doors.
The parking lot was wet, puddles reflecting the blue sky. The air was cold, biting, but clear. The Oakhaven Shroud had retreated to the highest peaks of the mountains.
I walked to my car—Julian’s truck was impounded, but Miller had returned my Subaru as a peace offering two days ago.
I unlocked the door and slid into the driver’s seat.
I took a deep breath, savoring the smell of wet pavement and morning.
“It’s over,” I said aloud. “It’s really over.”
I reached for my coffee cup in the cupholder, intending to toss the cold dregs.
But the cupholder wasn’t empty.
And it wasn’t my cup.
Resting in the center console, nestled perfectly in the black plastic ring, was a small, rectangular box.
It was a box of wooden matches. The strike-anywhere kind.
My heart stopped. The peace of the morning shattered like glass dropped on concrete.
I stared at the box. The logo was a red bird.
I didn’t smoke. Julian didn’t smoke.
I reached out, my hand trembling so violently I could barely control my fingers.
I picked up the box. It rattled.
I pushed the little drawer open.
Inside, resting on a bed of red-tipped matches, was a single object.
Small. White. Irregular.
A tooth.
It was a human molar. The root was still attached, dried blood caked in the crevices.
I dropped the box. The matches scattered across my lap like drops of blood. The tooth bounced off the gear shift and landed on the floor mat.
I screamed.
The sound tore out of my throat, raw and terrified, echoing inside the car.
He wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t gone.
He had been waiting. He had waited for the rain to stop. He had waited for me to feel safe.
And now, he was ready to burn it all down.