The sound of murder is usually a scream, but in my line of work, it’s static.
I woke up to the hiss and crackle of the scanner app on my phone, a digital vulture I’d left running on the nightstand. The motel room was bathed in the neon red glow of the NO VACANCY sign outside, turning the cheap floral bedspread into a landscape of dried blood.
“…Code 187. Sector Four. Logging Camp Road, three miles past the gate. Coroner requested. Repeat, Coroner requested.”
- Homicide.
The time on the screen read 4:12 AM.
I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I moved with the muscle memory of a soldier hearing a mortar whistle. Jeans. Boots. Coat. Keys. I grabbed the burner phone I’d bought to wait for the killer’s call, shoving it into my pocket alongside the stone from the library.
Outside, Oakhaven was submerged. The fog had thickened overnight, turning the air into a soup of gray particulate matter. The moisture stuck to my skin instantly, cold and clammy, like the touch of a dead thing.
I drove fast. Too fast.
My tires shrieked against the wet asphalt as I took the turn onto Logging Camp Road. The Subaru’s headlights simply bounced off the wall of white, illuminating nothing but the swirling mist. I drove by feel, by the sickening lurch of the suspension as the pavement gave way to gravel and mud.
I knew where Sector Four was. It was the “Deep Woods.” The part of the forest where the canopy was so thick the ground stayed in a perpetual state of twilight. It was where the River Rats went to drink and where the Logging Royalty went to hide their mistakes.
And it was where I used to hide when the Glass House became too loud.
Red and blue lights strobed ahead, fracturing the fog into epileptic spasms. I slammed on the brakes, the car sliding sideways in the mud before coming to a halt behind a line of cruisers.
I was out of the door before the engine died.
“Elara! Stop!”
Julian materialized out of the mist like a spectre. He looked wrecked—rain dripping from the brim of his hat, his face pale and drawn. He stepped into my path, hands raised, blocking the gap in the police tape.
“Get out of my way, Julian,” I said. My voice was low, vibrating with adrenaline.
“You can’t be here,” he pleaded, his voice cracking. “Not for this one. Elara, please. Go back to the motel.”
“Is it the clay?” I demanded, stepping closer. “Is she wearing a dress?”
“It’s worse,” he whispered. He wasn’t acting like a cop. He was acting like a man trying to shield a child from a car wreck. “It’s theatrical, Elara. He’s… he’s showing off.”
“He’s talking to me,” I corrected. “And if I don’t listen, he’s going to shout louder.”
I ducked under his arm. He grabbed my shoulder, his grip hard, desperate.
“Elara, listen to me. It’s Ms. Albright.”
I froze.
Ms. Albright. Third-grade art teacher. The woman who had taught me how to mix watercolors. The woman who had once kept me after class, not to punish me, but to give me a cookie because she saw the bruise on my arm that I said was from a bike accident.
“She’s…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“She’s gone,” Julian said. “Since last night. Her husband thought she was at a school board meeting.”
“Let me see,” I said. It wasn’t a request anymore. It was a compulsion. I needed to witness the desecration. I needed to hate him enough to kill him.
Julian looked at my face, saw the granite resolve there, and slowly let go of my shoulder.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said, defeat heavy in his tone. “And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
We walked into the dark.
The trees here were ancient, their trunks wide as cars, covered in hanging moss that brushed against my face like wet hair. The smell was overpowering—ozone and iron.
Then, the clearing opened up.
I stopped dead.
My brain refused to process the geometry of it. It was a domestic scene transplanted into the heart of a nightmare.
A wrought-iron patio table, rusted and covered in lichen, sat in the middle of the mossy clearing. It looked like it had been dragged here years ago and forgotten. Two matching iron chairs sat on opposite sides.
In the left chair sat Ms. Albright.
She was upright. Her posture was rigid, unnatural. She was wearing her Sunday best—a floral cardigan and a skirt I recognized from the grocery store. Her head was tilted slightly to the side, as if she were listening politely to a guest. Her eyes were open, staring blankly at the empty chair opposite her.
But it was the table that made my knees buckle.
A tea set.
It was plastic. Bright, garish pink plastic. A child’s tea set, arranged with military precision. Two cups. Two saucers. A teapot.
“Oh god,” I choked out, my hand flying to my mouth.
“Look at her hand,” Julian said, his voice void of emotion.
I forced myself to step closer, fighting the urge to turn and run back to the safety of the fog.
Ms. Albright’s right hand was resting on the table. Her fingers were curled around the handle of the pink plastic teacup.
But they weren’t just holding it.
The skin around her fingers was angry, red and blistered. A clear, hard substance had oozed out from between her flesh and the plastic handle.
“Superglue,” Julian said. “Industrial strength. He glued the cup to her hand while she was…” He didn’t finish.
“While she was alive,” I whispered.
I looked at the teapot. It was filled with a thick, dark sludge. Mud.
The world tilted violently.
The smell of the woods vanished. Suddenly, I smelled gin. Cheap gin and fear.
Flash.
I was under the dining room table in the Glass House. The carpet was rough against my bare knees. Above me, the sounds of glass breaking. Richard was shouting. My mother was crying, that high, thin wail that sounded like a tea kettle.
“Shhh,” the boy whispered.
He was under the table with me. Elias. He was dirty, smelling of the river, but his eyes were bright stars in the shadow.
“Don’t listen to them,” he said. “We’re having a party.”
He pulled a plastic tea set out of his pocket. It was stolen. I knew it was stolen.
“It’s tea time, Princess,” he said, setting the cups on the carpet.
“I don’t have any tea,” I whispered, tears hot on my cheeks.
“Use your imagination,” he said. He scooped a handful of mud from his pocket—he always had mud—and plopped it into the cups. “It’s Earl Grey. Drink up. But remember the rules.”
“What rules?”
“Pinkies out,” he said, his voice turning hard, mimicking Richard’s tone. “Sit up straight. Smile. If you spill, the monster comes.”
He grabbed my hand. He pressed my fingers around the cup.
“Hold it tight,” he commanded. “Don’t let go. Never let go. If you let go, you’re real.”
Flash.
“Elara!”
I doubled over and retched.
The vomit splashed onto the ferns, acidic and hot. My body was trying to purge the memory, trying to expel the guilt that was rotting me from the inside out.
“It’s the Tea Party,” I gasped, spitting bile. “The Tea Party in the Mud.”
Julian was holding me up, his arm a steel band around my waist. “Breathe. Just breathe.”
“I did this,” I sobbed, clutching his jacket. “Julian, I did this. I invented this game.”
“You didn’t kill her, Elara.”
“I wrote the script!” I screamed, the sound tearing out of my throat and echoing through the trees. “We played this when Richard was hurting Mom. We hid and we pretended to be civilized. We pretended to drink mud tea so we wouldn’t hear the screaming.”
I looked back at Ms. Albright. At the horrific parody of manners.
“He glued the cup,” I whispered, trembling uncontrollably. “Because in the game, the rule was you couldn’t let go. If you let go, the monster would find you.”
Julian stared at the victim, his jaw working. “So he made sure she couldn’t let go.”
“He’s escalating,” I said. The journalist part of my brain was clawing its way back to the surface, cold and analytical, dissecting the horror. “Sarah Miller was the Sleeping Princess. That was a quiet game. A gentle game. But this…”
I gestured to the scene.
“This is an angry game,” I said. “This is about control. About forcing someone to smile while they’re in pain.”
I walked closer to the table, ignoring Julian’s warning hiss.
There was something else.
On the other side of the table. The empty chair.
There was a saucer. And on the saucer, sitting in a puddle of mud-tea, was a piece of paper.
It was folded into a perfect square.
“Julian,” I said, pointing.
He stepped forward, pulling a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. He snapped them on, the sound sharp like a gunshot. He reached out and picked up the paper with tweezers.
He unfolded it.
It was a drawing. Crayon on construction paper. It looked old, the wax faded and cracked.
It showed two stick figures sitting at a table. One had long yellow hair. The other was a scribble of black darkness.
And written underneath, in a child’s block letters:
WHY DID YOU LEAVE THE PARTY?
I recognized the handwriting.
It wasn’t Elias’s.
It was mine.
The ground seemed to dissolve beneath my feet. That drawing… I had drawn that. I had drawn it for Elias the day I left for college. I had left it in the tree stump we used as a mailbox. A goodbye note he never got.
Or so I thought.
“He kept it,” I whispered. “He kept everything.”
“Elara,” Julian said, his voice tight with urgency. “Look at the date on the tea set.”
“What?”
“The plastic,” he said, shining his light on the bottom of the teapot. “There’s a price tag sticker. From the General Store.”
I squinted at the neon orange sticker.
Sold: Yesterday.
“He bought this yesterday,” Julian said. “After you arrived in town. After we talked at the diner.”
The implication hit me like a hammer.
“He’s not just remembering,” I said, the terror cold in my veins. “He’s responding. I came back, so the game started again. He killed Ms. Albright because I refused to play.”
“We need to get you out of here,” Julian said, grabbing my arm again. “Now.”
“No,” I said, pulling away. I looked at Ms. Albright’s frozen, terrified face. I looked at the glue fusing her to the prop of my childhood trauma.
“I’m not leaving,” I said. “He wants a guest for his party? Fine.”
I looked into the dark woods, into the wall of fog where I knew, I knew, he was watching.
“I’m RSVPing,” I whispered.
I turned to Julian. “Take me to the station. I want to see the file on Elias Thorne. All of it. Even the parts your father tried to burn.”