The Riverbend Diner was the kind of place that never changed, no matter how much the world outside rotted away. It still smelled like bacon grease, floor wax, and the specific brand of cheap hairspray favored by the waitresses who had been working there since the Reagan administration.
I slid into the red vinyl booth in the back corner, the one with the duct tape patch on the seat shaped like a jagged scar. It was our booth. Or it had been, fifteen years ago, when Julian Thorne and I were just two kids trying to figure out how to escape the gravity of Oakhaven.
Now, he was a cop with a badge heavy on his hip, and I was a ghost story that had walked back into town.
I checked my watch. Seven minutes past eight. He was late. Julian was never late.
I wrapped my hands around the ceramic mug of coffee, letting the heat seep into my cold palms. The stone from the library was still in my pocket, a smooth, heavy reminder that I was being watched.
The bell above the door jingled, and a gust of wet wind followed Julian inside. He looked exhausted. The shadows under his eyes were dark enough to bruise, and his raincoat was slick with the relentless drizzle.
He spotted me instantly. He didn’t smile. He just nodded, a curt, professional gesture, and walked over.
“You didn’t have to pick this booth,” he said, sliding in opposite me. He took off his hat, running a hand through damp hair that was starting to curl at the ends.
“It was the only one open,” I lied.
“Right,” he said. He signaled the waitress—Loretta, who looked at me with narrowed eyes before pouring him a cup without asking. She didn’t offer me a refill.
We sat in silence for a moment, the air between us thick with things unsaid. I looked at him, really looked at him. He had grown into his features. The sharp angles of his jaw were hidden under stubble, and there was a line between his eyebrows that hadn’t been there when we were eighteen. He looked like a man who carried weights he couldn’t put down.
“So,” he said, taking a long swallow of the scalding coffee. “You wanted to talk. I’m here. But I have to head back to the station in an hour. The Sheriff is breathing down my neck about the press leak.”
“I didn’t leak anything, Julian.”
“I know you didn’t,” he said, his voice softening just a fraction. “But Miller thinks you’re a vulture circling a carcass. He wants you out of town.”
“And what do you want?”
He looked at me over the rim of his mug. His green eyes were guarded. “I want to solve this case, Elara. And I want to know why you really came back. Because it wasn’t just for a story.”
I reached into my bag. My hand brushed against the police reports I had stolen from the library—the ones proving my mother had called the cops on a feral boy in 1999. But I didn’t pull those out. Not yet. That was a grenade I wasn’t ready to unpin.
Instead, I pulled out the blue envelope and the Polaroid.
I slid the photo across the Formica table, face up.
“This is why I came back,” I said.
Julian looked down. He stared at the image of the doll—Annabel—half-buried in the mud, her cracked face catching the flash. He didn’t recoil this time. He just went very still.
“You showed me the envelope yesterday,” he said quietly. “You didn’t show me the picture.”
“I showed you the doll,” I corrected. “I told you it was missing from my house. But look closely, Julian. Look at the mud.”
He leaned in, the booth’s overhead light buzzing above us. “It’s dirt, Elara.”
“It’s garden dirt,” I said. “From the estate. But look at her hands.”
He squinted. “They’re tied. Just like Sarah Miller’s.”
“And the caption on the back says ‘Let’s Play.’ I got this in Seattle three days ago. The day Sarah went missing.”
I leaned forward, lowering my voice so the truckers at the counter couldn’t hear. “The killer dug up my childhood doll, photographed it to taunt me, and then used it as a blueprint to murder Sarah Miller. He’s not just killing random girls, Julian. He’s restaging my memories.”
Julian sat back, exhaling a long breath through his nose. He rubbed his face with both hands.
“Elara,” he started, his tone patronizingly gentle. The tone you use for a witness who is losing their grip. “We have a suspect. A drifter was seen near the logging road. We’re bringing him in tomorrow.”
“It’s not a drifter,” I snapped, the frustration flaring hot in my chest. “Unless that drifter had intimate knowledge of games I played alone in my backyard twenty years ago.”
“You said you played them with an imaginary friend.”
“He wasn’t imaginary!” I hissed. “I found reports in the library. My mother called the police on a ‘feral boy’ in ‘99. He was real, Julian. And he’s back.”
Julian’s expression hardened. “A feral boy? You mean the rumors about the ‘Sandman’? That’s ghost story crap, Elara. Parents tell their kids that so they don’t play in the mill.”
“Then explain the doll,” I pointed at the photo. “Explain why Sarah was wearing a blue lace dress. Explain the ivy knots.”
“Coincidence,” he said, though the word sounded hollow even to him. “Or maybe you talked about it. Maybe you told someone in high school.”
“I didn’t tell anyone,” I said, my voice trembling. “I didn’t even tell you.”
That landed. I saw the hurt flicker in his eyes before he covered it up. We had shared everything—or so he thought. The fact that I had kept this darkness locked away was a betrayal he was still processing.
“Why are you fighting me on this?” I asked, desperate. “I’m trying to help you.”
“Because you’re biased,” he shot back. “You walked into a crime scene and had a panic attack. You’re seeing your own trauma reflected in a tragedy that has nothing to do with you. It’s classic projection.”
I stared at him. My ex-lover. The only person in this godforsaken town I thought might be on my side. He was looking at me like I was broken. Like I was the crazy Vance girl who lived in the glass aquarium.
“Fine,” I said, snatching the photo back. “If it’s projection, then prove me wrong. Tell me there was no physical evidence linking the scene to me.”
Julian looked away. He stared out the window at the rain streaking the glass. His jaw worked, the muscle feathering under the skin.
“Julian?”
He didn’t answer. He just reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small notebook. He flipped it open, staring at a page of scribbled notes.
“The Medical Examiner finished the preliminary scraping,” he said, his voice low. He wasn’t looking at me. “Under Sarah’s fingernails. She fought, Elara. Not a lot, but she scratched at the ground where she was laid out.”
“And?”
“And they found traces of clay. Red clay.”
My stomach dropped.
“Red clay isn’t native to the Weeping Woods,” Julian continued, his voice flat, reciting facts to keep the horror at bay. “The soil there is peat and loam. Black. Acidic.”
“Where does red clay come from?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. I could feel the grit of it on my own fingertips from the toy chest earlier that day.
Julian finally looked at me. “The ridge,” he said. “Specifically, the construction fill they used to stabilize the foundation of the Vance Estate.”
The diner sounds—the clatter of silverware, the country music on the jukebox—faded into a buzzing white noise.
“He took her there,” I whispered.
“He kept her there,” Julian corrected. “Antemortem. The clay was embedded deep. She was alive when she got it under her nails. She was likely held at your property before he moved her to the woods to… display her.”
“He was in the house,” I said. “I told you. I found a wet raincoat in my closet today. He’s been using the Glass House as a staging area.”
Julian closed his eyes. “Jesus.”
“Do you believe me now?”
He opened his eyes. The skepticism was gone, replaced by a cold, hard fear. He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. His palm was warm, rough with calluses. It was a touch I remembered in my cells.
“If he’s using your house,” Julian said, “then you can’t stay there. You need to go back to the motel. Lock the door. Put a chair under the handle.”
“I’m not running, Julian.”
“This isn’t about bravery, Elara. It’s about survival. If he’s been watching you… if he thinks you’re part of the game…”
“Then I’m the only one who can stop him.”
He squeezed my hand, hard. “I can’t lose another person to those woods, Elara. I can’t.”
There was a crack in his voice, a fracture line that went deep. I realized then that he wasn’t just talking about Sarah Miller. He was talking about his brother. The boy who supposedly drowned. The boy who I now suspected was the one hunting us.
“Who was the feral boy, Julian?” I asked softly. “The one my mother reported?”
He pulled his hand back as if I had burned him. The walls went back up instantly.
“I told you,” he said, his voice tight. “Just stories.”
“Was it Elias?”
The name hung in the air between us, heavier than the smell of grease.
Julian stood up abruptly. He threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table.
“I have to go,” he said. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Stay at the motel, Elara. Don’t go back to the house. I’ll send a patrol car to sit outside your room.”
“Julian—”
“Goodnight, Elara.”
He walked out without looking back, the bell jingling cheerfully behind him.
I watched him go, watched his silhouette dissolve into the fog and the rain. He was lying. He knew something about the feral boy. He knew something about Elias.
I looked down at the table. He had left his notebook.
My heart skipped a beat.
I reached out and slid the small, leather-bound pad toward me. I knew I shouldn’t look. It was police property. It was a violation of the fragile trust we had just started to rebuild.
I opened it anyway.
The page he had been reading was there. Red clay. Trace evidence.
But underneath that, scribbled in a erratic, shaky hand that didn’t look like Julian’s usual precise script, was a note.
He’s awake.
God help us, he’s awake.
I closed the book, my hands trembling.
Julian knew. He knew the Sandman wasn’t a ghost. And he knew exactly who he was.