The world had turned into a strobe light.
Red. Blue. Black. Red. Blue. Black.
The rhythm was hypnotic, pulsing against the backs of my eyelids even when I tried to close them. It was a visual siren, a silent scream of light that cut through the Oakhaven Shroud and turned the mud of the sawmill yard into a landscape of shifting, bloody shadows.
I was sitting on the rear bumper of an ambulance. The metal was cold through my jeans, vibrating slightly with the idle of the engine. Someone—a paramedic with kind eyes and a face I couldn’t focus on—had draped a Mylar blanket around my shoulders. It crinkled with every breath I took, a sharp, synthetic sound that grated against my nerves like sandpaper.
I stared at my hands.
They were clean.
Someone had wiped them with a wet nap. I remembered the smell of lemon and alcohol. I remembered the sensation of a rough cloth scrubbing at my knuckles. But I didn’t remember who had done it.
They shouldn’t be clean. They should be stained. I had held the gun. I had held the journal. I had held the door shut against a monster.
“Ms. Vance?”
I looked up. A state trooper was standing in front of me. His hat was encased in a plastic rain cover. He looked like a mushroom.
“Ms. Vance, we need to take a statement when you’re ready. The Sheriff says—”
“Not now,” a voice cut in. It was rough, like gravel grinding in a mixer.
Julian.
He limped into my line of sight. He looked like he had been through a war zone. His coat was torn at the shoulder, revealing the dark stain of blood on his shirt underneath. His face was a map of bruises, swelling purple along the jawline, and he was leaning heavily on a piece of rebar he must have scavenged from the ruins.
The trooper straightened. “Detective Thorne, I have orders.”
“And I have a headache,” Julian said, not looking at the man. He was looking at me. His green eyes were the only clear thing in the chaos. “Give us a minute. Go count shell casings or something.”
The trooper hesitated, then nodded and walked away, disappearing into the swirl of fog and lights.
Julian didn’t sit next to me immediately. He stood there, swaying slightly, watching the mill.
The main doors were open. A floodlight had been set up, pointing into the black maw of the building. It illuminated the dust motes dancing in the air, millions of tiny particles that looked like stars.
Or souls.
“Is he…” I started, but my voice cracked. It felt like there was glass in my throat.
“He’s gone, Elara,” Julian said softly.
“Did they bring him up?”
“They’re working on it. The machinery… it’s old. It’s a mess down there.”
I closed my eyes. I saw the fall again. I saw the way Elias had looked at me in that final second. Not with hate. Not with anger.
With betrayal.
I’ll break the dolls, he had said.
But he hadn’t broken them. He had tried to fix them. He had tried to wrap them in tape and make them wake up. He was the broken one. And I had led the army right to his castle.
“I killed him,” I whispered.
Julian moved then. He sat down on the bumper next to me, his weight shifting the ambulance on its suspension. He hissed in pain as his leg settled, but he didn’t complain.
“You didn’t pull the trigger,” he said.
“I brought him here. I lured him out. I gave Miller the target.”
“He raised a weapon, Elara. He pointed a gun at police officers.”
“He didn’t know what he was doing,” I argued, the numbness starting to crack, letting the hot, stinging tears leak through. “He thought he was the Knight. He thought he was defending the castle.”
“He murdered three women,” Julian said. His voice was hard, but it lacked the judgment I expected. It was just a statement of fact. An anchor to reality. “He tortured them. He bound them. He killed them.”
“Because of me. Because of my games.”
“Because he was sick,” Julian corrected. “Because he was broken long before you ever met him. My father broke him. This town broke him. You… you were the only thing that kept him alive this long.”
I pulled the shock blanket tighter around me. It felt like a shroud.
“I should have saved him,” I said. “Twenty years ago. I should have told someone he was in the walls. I should have told my mother. I should have told you.”
“If you had told anyone back then,” Julian said, “they would have locked him away in a state hospital. Or worse. You gave him a life, Elara. A shadow life, maybe. But it was the only one he had.”
I looked at the mill again. Two men in white coveralls were pushing a gurney toward the entrance. A black body bag was folded neatly on top.
The zipper waiting to be closed.
“He kept my things,” I said, the memory of the cellar washing over me. “The photos. The hair ribbon. He built a shrine.”
“I know. I saw the report from the cellar.”
“He loved me.”
Julian was silent for a long moment. He watched the gurney disappear into the darkness.
“I know,” he said finally.
He reached out and took my hand.
His palm was rough, calloused. It was warm. It was alive.
The contact was a shock to my system. After days of touching cold evidence—the damp journal, the icy gun, the wet earth—the heat of another human being felt miraculous. And terrifying.
I looked down at our hands. His fingers curled around mine, encompassing them.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “He was your brother.”
Julian squeezed my hand. “I mourned him a long time ago, Elara. I mourned the boy I couldn’t save. The man who died in there tonight… that was the Sandman. And I’m glad he’s gone.”
He was lying. I could hear the tremor in his voice. I could feel the tension in his grip. He was grieving, but he was burying it deep, just like he had buried the truth about the shoes. He was doing it for me. He was being the solid ground so I wouldn’t fall into the pit with Elias.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Now?” Julian sighed, a sound that rattled in his chest. “Now the circus comes to town. The state police take over. The press descends. You write your article.”
“I can’t write this,” I said. “How do I explain it? How do I explain that the monster was a victim?”
“You tell the truth,” he said. “That’s what you do, right? You’re the one who digs up the bones.”
“Some bones should stay buried.”
“Not these,” he said. “Oakhaven needs to see this. They need to see what they made.”
A commotion by the mill entrance drew our attention.
Sheriff Miller was storming out, shouting at a deputy. He looked furious. He looked like a man who had won the battle but lost the war. He saw us sitting on the ambulance and stopped.
He marched over, his boots splashing in the puddles.
“Thorne,” he barked. “You’re supposed to be in custody.”
“I’m getting medical attention,” Julian said calmly. “Unless you want to drag a wounded man to a cell and explain it to the paramedics.”
Miller sneered. He looked at me. “And you. I hope you’re happy. You got your headline.”
“Is that what you think this is?” I asked, the numbness receding further, replaced by a cold, sharp anger. “A headline?”
“Three dead women,” Miller spat. “And a dead suspect who can’t stand trial. It’s a mess, Vance. A goddamn mess.”
“It’s the truth,” Julian said, standing up. He swayed, gripping the ambulance door for support, but he put himself between me and the Sheriff. “Elias Thorne is the killer. The journal proves it. The DNA will prove it. Case closed.”
“It’s not closed until I say it is,” Miller growled. “I want both of you at the station at 0800. Formal statements. And Thorne? Bring your badge. You’re going to need to hand it over permanently this time.”
Miller turned and stomped away, barking orders at the coroner’s team.
Julian slumped back down onto the bumper. He let out a long, shaky breath.
“He’s going to fire me,” he said.
“He can try,” I said. “But when I write this story, Julian… I’m going to tell them who the real hero was. It wasn’t the Sheriff.”
Julian looked at me, a faint, sad smile touching his lips. “I’m not a hero, Elara. I just gave you a gun.”
“You gave me a chance.”
He looked down at our joined hands. He rubbed his thumb over my knuckles.
“Do you still have it?” he asked. “The stone?”
I reached into my pocket with my free hand. The river stone was there. Cold. smooth. The token Elias had given me. The ring for a wedding that never happened.
I pulled it out. It looked dull in the strobe lights. Just a gray rock.
“I have it,” I said.
“Throw it away,” Julian said.
I looked at him.
“Throw it away, Elara. Leave it here. Let the mill have it.”
I looked at the stone. I thought of the boy in the wall. I thought of the Snickers bar. I thought of the way he had waved at me from the treeline.
I stood up. I walked to the edge of the muddy yard, where the ground sloped down toward the dark, rushing water of the Blackwood River.
I pulled my arm back.
But I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t throw it away. It was the only piece of him that wasn’t tainted by blood. It was the only piece of the boy who had saved me from the coal cellar.
I lowered my arm. I slipped the stone back into my pocket.
I turned back to Julian. He was watching me, his expression unreadable.
“I can’t,” I said.
He nodded slowly. “Okay.”
He stood up again, wincing. He held out his hand to me.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. The fog is lifting.”
I looked up. He was right. The dawn was fully breaking now, a pale, gray light filtering through the trees. The Oakhaven Shroud was tearing, dissolving into wisps of harmless mist.
The mill looked smaller in the daylight. Less like a monster, more like a pile of junk.
I took Julian’s hand.
We walked toward the cluster of police cars, leaving the ambulance behind. Leaving the pit behind.
But as we walked, I could still hear it. Faintly. Under the sound of the radios and the wind.
Hummm… hummm… hummm…
It wasn’t real. It was a memory. An echo trapped in the architecture of my brain.
But I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that the silence would never be truly quiet again. The Sandman was dead. But the lullaby would play forever.