Chapter 5: The Rules of Forgetting

Chapter 5: The Rules of Forgetting

The morning sun streamed through the window, painting a bright, cheerful square on the kitchen floor. It was a lie. The light felt thin and sterile, devoid of any real warmth. Jim Vance was at the stove, humming a tune Leo had never heard before, flipping pancakes in a brand-new pan. He moved with a lightness that was deeply disturbing, a man unburdened.

“Morning, son!” he said, his voice booming with the same forced optimism as yesterday. “Pancakes are almost ready. Thought we’d start the day off right. New town, new kitchen, new day. No point in looking back, right?”

Yesterday is a dream you don’t need. The radio’s flat voice echoed in Leo’s head. He looked at his father—at the smooth brow where a knot of worry used to live, at the easy smile on his face—and saw a stranger. The shared language of their grief had been erased overnight, and his dad was now fluent in the placid, empty dialect of Old Ridge.

“I’m not hungry,” Leo mumbled, grabbing his faded hoodie from the back of a chair.

Jim’s smile tightened just a fraction. “You gotta eat, Leo. A good breakfast gives you a clear mind for the day.”

A clear sky is a clean mind.

Leo felt a wave of nausea. “I’m just going for a walk,” he said, pulling the hoodie over his head. His fingers instinctively found the chain around his neck, the golden heart a small, solid anchor in a world that was rapidly turning to mist. He needed to get out of this house, away from his cheerful, hollowed-out father and the silent, cold presence that slept in the basement.

He walked out the front door without another word, the lock clicking shut behind him with an air of finality. The morning air was crisp and clean, yet it felt recycled, like the air in a hospital room. The neighborhood was already stirring. A man in a pressed cardigan was meticulously trimming an already-perfect hedge. A woman was polishing her gleaming brass house numbers. They all looked up as he passed, their faces breaking into identical, welcoming smiles. Their eyes, however, were blank. They saw him, but they didn't see him.

He walked toward the town’s center, a desperate need for answers gnawing at him. He needed to find a crack in this perfect facade. He passed a small, charming building with a sign that read ‘Old Ridge Community Hall & Records.’ An idea sparked. A town’s history might hold a clue.

An elderly woman was sweeping the already spotless porch. She wore a floral apron and her white hair was pinned in a perfect bun.

“Excuse me,” Leo said, his voice sounding rough in the quiet air.

Her head snapped up, a brilliant smile instantly appearing. “Good morning! Such a lovely day, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I was just wondering if this is like a library? I was hoping to look up some of the town’s history.”

The woman’s smile froze. It was still on her lips, but it was a dead thing. The light in her pale eyes went out, replaced by a flicker of something that looked like panic. She glanced nervously up and down the empty street.

“History?” she repeated, the word sounding foreign and distasteful. “Oh, my dear boy, we don’t… we don’t really concern ourselves with all that. It’s so much nicer to focus on today, don’t you think? Yesterday is just… clutter.”

She gave a short, brittle laugh and immediately went back to her sweeping, her movements suddenly frantic, as if trying to sweep away his question along with the nonexistent dust. Leo stood there for a moment, stunned by the cold, swift dismissal. Rule number one, he thought with a growing dread. Never mention the past.

He continued on, the feeling of being an anomaly, a virus in a sterile system, growing with every step. He soon reached the town square, the heart of Old Ridge. It was a perfectly circular park, dominated by a large, imposing fountain at its center. The fountain wasn't the cheerful, cherub-adorned type. It was carved from a dark, porous-looking black stone that seemed to drink the sunlight. Water trickled from an unseen source down its rough sides into a wide, shallow basin, making a sound like soft, constant weeping.

Several townspeople were gathered there, but they weren’t talking. One by one, they would approach the fountain with a solemn, placid expression. A young mother stepped forward, holding a small, hand-drawn picture of a stick-figure family. She looked at it for a long moment, her face a blank canvas, then gently placed it into the water. The paper grew heavy and sank slowly to the bottom, its bright crayon colors bleeding into the dark water. She turned and walked away, her shoulders a little lighter.

An older man followed. He pulled a single, tarnished silver cufflink from his pocket, stared at it with the same vacant expression, and dropped it into the basin. It vanished with a soft plink.

Leo watched, mesmerized and horrified. They were making offerings. Giving away small, personal pieces of their lives, of their memories, to the dark, weeping stone. He felt his hand tighten around the heart charm beneath his shirt. This was what Bill had meant. A graveyard for memories. This fountain was the tombstone.

“Creepy, isn't it?”

The voice, coming from right beside him, made him jump. A girl was sitting on the edge of a park bench he hadn’t even noticed, sketching in a notepad. She looked about his age, with dark, cynical eyes that were jarringly alive in this town of vacant stares. She wore a worn leather jacket and her expression was a mix of boredom and sharp intelligence. She wasn't smiling.

“They do it every day,” she continued in a low voice, not looking up from her drawing. “Like taking out the trash.”

Leo stared at her, his throat tight. She was the first person he’d seen who looked real. “What are they doing?” he managed to ask.

The girl finally looked up, her gaze piercing. “Giving something up. A small piece of yesterday, so they can have a clean, empty today. It’s the price of admission.” She looked him up and down, her eyes lingering for a second on the slight bulge of the necklace under his shirt. “You’re new. The Vance kid, right? Welcome to the land of the pleasantly lobotomized.”

A hysterical laugh almost escaped Leo’s lips. “I’m Leo. And I think I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not crazy,” she said, her voice dropping even lower, becoming urgent. “You’re just still awake. I’m Maya. My family got suckered into moving here two years ago.”

“My dad… he’s already different,” Leo confessed, the words spilling out in a rush of relief. “He’s so happy, and it’s terrifying. And the house… there’s this locked door in the basement, and I hear things…”

Maya’s cynical expression hardened into one of serious concern. She nodded slowly, as if he were confirming something she already knew. “The houses are all different, but they all have a… a hungry spot. Listen to me, Leo. If you want to stay awake, you have to learn the rules. You’ve already figured out the first one, haven’t you?”

“Don’t talk about the past,” Leo whispered.

“Rule one,” she confirmed, ticking it off on her finger. “Rule two is what you’re seeing right now.” She gestured with her pencil toward the fountain. “You have to give the town a little piece of yourself every day, or it starts to take bigger ones. It keeps it satisfied.”

She leaned in closer, her eyes darting around the pristine square. Her next words were barely audible, a chilling whisper against the fountain’s soft weeping.

“And then there’s rule three. The most important one. You see those woods?” She pointed to the edge of town, where the unnervingly uniform wall of pine trees began, the same trees that had flanked the highway. They looked dark and menacing, even in the bright morning sun. “Never, ever go into the woods after sundown.”

Leo’s blood ran cold as he remembered the fleeting, skeletal shapes he’d seen from the car. “Why? What’s in the woods?”

Maya looked at him, her dark eyes filled with a fear that was far more terrifying than any of the town’s empty smiles.

“It’s not what’s in the woods, Leo,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “It’s that the woods are where the town’s rules don’t apply.” She closed her sketchbook with a snap.

“These aren’t quaint traditions. They aren't customs.” Her gaze was intense, locking onto his, trying to burn the truth into his brain. “They’re survival instructions.”