The Oakhaven Cemetery was segregated, just like the town itself.
Up on the hill, where the drainage was good and the sun actually touched the grass for an hour a day, lay the Logging Royalty. Granite obelisks and marble angels watched over the bones of the men who had stripped the valley bare. Down at the bottom, where the ground was marshy and the fog never really lifted, was the Potter’s Field.
It was where they put the River Rats. The drifters. The unwanted.
It was where we put Elias.
There was no priest. Sheriff Miller had offered to call the hospital chaplain, but Julian had refused. Elias didn’t know God; he knew the woods. He knew the damp earth and the roots of trees. Bringing a man in a collar to mumble about salvation over the body of a boy who had built his own hell seemed like a final insult.
So it was just us.
The grave diggers had already left, their job done with the efficient indifference of men who were paid by the hour. The mound of dirt was fresh, dark and rich against the sickly yellow of the dormant winter grass. It smelled of the deep earth—that same heavy, metallic scent that had filled the root cellar, the crawlspace, and the nightmares I was slowly waking up from.
But out here, under the open sky, the smell didn’t terrify me. It just smelled like the end.
I stood a few feet back, giving Julian space. He was standing at the foot of the grave, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black wool coat. He wasn’t wearing a hat today. The drizzle plastered his dark hair to his skull, water running down the back of his neck, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He hadn’t spoken since we left the funeral home. He had driven us here in silence, the only sound the rhythmic thwump-thwump of the windshield wipers clearing the view of a world that looked exactly the same as it had yesterday, yet felt entirely different.
“He’s really gone,” I whispered to the wind.
It was hard to process. For days, Elias had been everywhere. He had been the scratching in the wall, the shadow in the trees, the voice on the phone. He had been a force of nature, an inevitable gravity pulling me toward the abyss. Now, he was just a box in the ground.
I looked at the mound. There was no marker. Miller had said something about ordering a simple plaque from the county fund, but for now, it was just dirt.
A funeral for no one.
The town wouldn’t mourn him. To Oakhaven, Elias Thorne was a monster who had kidnapped three women and terrorized the Sheriff. They would tell ghost stories about him for generations. They would use his name to frighten children into staying in their beds. Sleep, or the Sandman will come.
They would never know the boy who shared his Snickers bar through a vent. They would never know the knight who killed a dog to save a princess.
Only we knew.
Julian’s shoulders began to shake.
It started as a subtle tremor, a vibration that traveled down his spine, but then a sound escaped him—a ragged, choked noise that was half-sob, half-gasp.
I stepped forward. “Julian.”
He dropped to his knees in the mud. He didn’t care about his suit pants. He put his hands on the fresh dirt, fingers digging in, as if he could reach down through the six feet of separation and pull his brother back.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I’m so sorry, Eli.”
I knelt beside him, the wet grass soaking through my jeans. I didn’t touch him yet. I let him break. He had been holding this together for twenty years. He had been the good son, the good cop, the rock. But rocks erode, and Julian had been weathered down to the core.
“I should have looked harder,” he wept, his voice thick with a lifetime of regret. “In ‘99. I should have checked the shoe size. I knew. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t his shoe. But I wanted it to be over. I wanted to be the only one.”
“You were a child, Julian,” I said softly.
“I was his brother!” He slammed his fist into the dirt. “I was supposed to protect him from Dad. I was supposed to make sure he was safe in that shed. But I let him rot in there. And then… then I let him rot in the wall.”
He looked up at me, his eyes red and raw, streaming with tears that mingled with the rain.
“He watched us, Elara. All those years. He watched me grow up. He watched me graduate, become a cop… he watched me live the life he should have had. And he never hated me. He just… he just wanted to be part of the game.”
I thought of the journal. The entry about the Bad Prince.
He lies to her. He says I am dead.
“He didn’t hate you,” I said. “He was confused. He thought you were the Dragon’s son. He thought you had forgotten him.”
“I did forget him,” Julian whispered. “I buried him in my head so I wouldn’t have to feel the guilt. And because I forgot him… three women are dead. Becca. Ms. Albright. Sarah.”
He covered his face with his muddy hands. “I killed them, Elara. Just as much as he did.”
I reached out and pulled his hands away from his face. I gripped them tight, transferring the mud to my own skin.
“No,” I said firmly. “Oakhaven killed them. Your father killed them. Richard Vance killed them. We are just the wreckage, Julian. We’re the ones who survived the crash.”
I looked at the grave.
“We aren’t burying the monster today,” I said. “The monster died in the mill. We’re burying the boy. The boy who liked peanut butter cups and wanted to live in a castle.”
Julian looked at the mound, his breathing hitching as he tried to stabilize himself. He nodded, slowly.
“The boy,” he repeated.
He wiped his face with his sleeve, leaving a streak of dirt across his cheek. He looked like a little boy himself then, lost in the woods.
“He used to love cars,” Julian said, his voice quiet, distant. “Before he… before he went to the shed. When we were really little. He had this one red car. A beat-up Matchbox thing. He used to drive it along the windowsill and make vroom noises. He said he was driving to California.”
“California,” I smiled sadly. “Why California?”
“Because the Beach Boys said it never rained there.”
Julian let out a weak, watery laugh that died in his throat. “He hated the rain.”
I reached into my pocket.
“I brought something,” I said.
I pulled out the object I had found in the glove box of Julian’s truck when I stole it. It wasn’t the exact car from Julian’s memory, but it was close. A vintage red Camaro, paint chipped, wheels slightly misaligned. I had kept it in my pocket during the siege at the mill, a talisman I hadn’t even realized I was holding onto.
Julian stared at it. “That was in my truck console. For years. I don’t even know why I kept it.”
“I think you know why,” I said.
I leaned over the grave. I placed the tiny red car on the center of the mound, right where a headstone would go if he had one. The bright crimson paint was a shock of color against the somber earth.
“For the drive,” I whispered. “Go to California, Elias. There’s no rain there.”
I stayed there for a moment, my hand hovering over the dirt. I wanted to say goodbye, but goodbye felt inadequate. Goodbye implied he was leaving. But Elias wasn’t leaving. He was in my head. He was in the scars on my psyche. He was in the way I would check closets for the rest of my life.
“Thank you,” I whispered, so low Julian couldn’t hear. “For saving me from the cellar. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you from yours.”
I sat back on my heels. The rain was lightening, turning into a fine mist that clung to our eyelashes.
Julian took a deep breath, the air rattling in his chest. He looked at the car, then at me.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
It was the question that had been hanging over us since the mill collapsed. The case was closed. The killer was dead. The town was safe.
But we weren’t.
We were two people who had seen the machinery of the world strip its gears. We had seen the crawlspaces where the truth lived.
“We mourn,” I said. “And then… we try to figure out who we are when we aren’t running.”
“I don’t know if I can be a cop here anymore,” Julian admitted. “Every time I put on the badge, I feel like a fraud. I look at Miller, and I see the man who let a twelve-year-old girl get stalked because he didn’t want to do paperwork.”
“You’re not Miller,” I said. “You’re the one who gave me the gun. You’re the one who went to jail to let me out.”
I reached out and brushed the mud from his cheek. His skin was cold, rough with stubble.
“You broke the cycle, Julian. Your father hid the truth. You handed me the weapon to reveal it.”
He leaned into my touch, just for a second, before pulling back. The barrier was still there—the ghost of his brother standing between us. But it was thinner now. Translucent.
“And you?” he asked. “You going back to Seattle? To the big city beat?”
I looked around the cemetery. At the fog clinging to the trees. At the town that had tried to eat me alive and failed.
“I have one more story to write,” I said. “The real story. Not the one Miller wants in the papers. Not the ‘Serial Killer Stalks Small Town’ headline. The story about the boys we throw away.”
“They won’t like it,” Julian warned. “The town. They want to forget him again.”
“I know,” I said, standing up and brushing the dirt from my knees. “That’s why I have to write it. Because memory is the only justice the dead get.”
I held out a hand to him.
Julian looked at my hand. He looked at the grave.
Then, slowly, he reached up and took it. His grip was strong, solid. The hand of a living man.
I pulled him to his feet. We stood there for a moment, swaying slightly in the wind, anchored by each other.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Yeah,” Julian said. “Let’s go.”
We walked away from the Potter’s Field, back toward the iron gates of the cemetery. We left Elias alone with his car and his silence.
But as we reached the truck, I looked back one last time.
The fog was shifting. For a split second, the shape of the mist near the treeline looked like a boy in a ragged coat, watching us go.
I didn’t blink. I didn’t look away.
I just nodded.
I see you, I thought. I will always see you.
Then I climbed into the passenger seat, and we drove away, leaving the dead to their California dreams.