Page 80 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

The blanket slipped from my shoulders, pooling onto the chair in a heavy heap as I crossed the kitchen for my gardening gloves.

Outside, the morning carried that familiar mountain chill that lingered long after sunrise. The garden blurred into the tree line as though the forest had quietly decided to reclaim it. Pine needles carpeted the earth beneath the hydrangeas, while stubborn weeds threaded themselves confidently between stones and flowerbeds alike.

I knelt in the damp soil. Cold earth crumbled beneath my fingers.

Pull.

Shake.

Toss.

Pressure changes everything. People assume pain begins with the wound. They are wrong. Pain begins with anticipation.

One dandelion after another surrendered, their long white roots emerging from the ground with surprising reluctance. Miss the taproot, and they'd return within days as though nothing had happened. Gardening teaches patience. My hands continued working through the flowerbed with practiced ease. You can't rush growth. You can't force roots. Everything takes hold in its own time. I brushed loose soil from my glove.

People aren't so different. The thought drifted into the cool morning air without explanation. A robin landed on the fence post, watching me with quick, curious eyes before darting away again. I smiled.

I looked toward the kitchen window, catching only my reflection in the glass. The breeze stirred the birch leaves overhead, filling the silence with their soft whisper. Most people are terrified of silence. They rush to fill it because they think empty spaces are lonely. My fingers returned to the soil, gently teasing a knot of ivy free from the base of the porch. They never stop to consider that silence isn't empty at all.

The birds were fully awake now, their songs carrying through the thinning fog as morning slowly unfolded around the cottage.

You're very quiet today. Good. I prefer it when you listen. Most people talk too much when they're nervous. They fill the space with noise because they think the quiet is an empty room. They don't realize the quiet is full of eyes. It’s watching them.

I pulled off the gardening gloves and stood up, shaking the loose soil from my palms.

Curiosity is an interesting vice, isn't it? It makes people do the most remarkable things. It makes them look through keyholes. It makes them linger by the windows after the lamps have been blown out. They want to see what happens when the skin comes off. They want to see the bone.

I walked toward the side path, my boots sinking into the soft moss.

Everyone has habits. A routine. They think their routine keeps them safe. They think because they buy their bread at eight and lock their back door at nine, the world has agreed to let them live but a routine isn't a wall. It’s a trail. It’s a map that tells anyone who cares to look exactly where you’ll be standing when the light goes out…

I stopped at the edge of the gravel track that led up the hill.

You have a routine, don't you? I know you do. I've been watching the way you turn the pages. So regular. So predictable. It’s almost... intimate.

The walk up to Elias’s cottage was different in the daylight. The fog was thinning now, lifting off the gravel in long, tattered white ribbons that caught the pale sun. His house sat at the crest of the lane, small and solid, built of dark timber and river stone that looked like it had grown directly out of the mountain.

The truck was gone. The gravel driveway was empty, save for the deep, heavy tire tracks he’d left when he drove down to the station at seven.

The back door wasn't locked. In Blackridge, no one locked their doors before the first frost, a collective delusion of safety that I found endlessly endearing.

I stepped inside.

The kitchen was cold. The air smelled of old coffee, cold fat, and the faint, underlying scent of clean wool and pine shavings. It was a functional room. No decorations on the walls. No small, bright things on the windowsill. Just a heavy iron skillet sitting on the stove, a thin skin of grease dried in the bottom from his breakfast, and a white ceramic mug sitting in the sink.

I didn't touch the mug. I just looked at it. The porcelain had a small, grey crack near the rim shaped like a lightning bolt.

I moved into the small living room with quiet, deliberate steps, my boots making no sound on the rag rug. The floorboards here were wide, rough-hewn pine, scrubbed so often that the grain stood up in white, pale ridges.

His books were on a single shelf near the cold fireplace. They were mostly technical manuals, state vehicle codes, penal law volumes with cracked leather spines, and a few paperbacks about forestry and tracking that looked thirty years old. I reached out, my bare finger trailing over the top edges of the pages. No dust. He touched them often.

I walked into his bedroom.

The bed was longer than most, built to accommodate a man who stood well over six feet tall. Its black iron frame rested against the wall beneath the window. The blankets were heavy grey wool and a dark green quilted coverlet that had been tucked in with military precision, the corners folded flat and tight. I leaned down, my face inches from the pillow.

It smelled of him.

It was a heavy, concentrated scent of cedar, the bitter tang of stale tobacco, and the warm, salty musk of his skin after a long day in the sun. It was the same smell that had been trapped in the blue jersey, but here, it was thick enough to taste.