Chapter 5: Homecoming

Chapter 5: Homecoming

Guilt is a patient poison. For four years, it had been a slow-acting agent, dulling my senses, greying my world, and slowly dissolving me from the inside out. But the revelation of Jacob’s four-year torment was like an antidote that burned a thousand times hotter than the poison itself. It shocked my system back to life, and the first thing I felt with this new, raw clarity was a singular, crushing imperative: I had to go back.

The four-hour drive to Blackwood was a journey through descending rings of hell. The anonymous concrete sprawl of the city gave way to identical suburbs, then to vast, empty farmland. Finally, the trees began to close in. The familiar, dense stands of oak and pine that lined the highway, once a comforting sign of home, now felt like the bars of a cage I was voluntarily driving into.

The “Welcome to Blackwood” sign was peeling, the painted raven mascot faded to a ghostly grey. It was a town preserved in amber, a living museum of my failure. Every corner held a ghost. There was the corner store where Jacob and I used to pool our change to buy comics and sour candies. There was the small public library where we’d first looked up the legends of Blackwood Elementary on a dial-up modem. I drove past the street where Jacob’s mother lived, and I had to physically force my hands to keep the steering wheel straight, my eyes fixed on the road ahead. To look down that street felt like a sacrilege, a violation of a grief I had no right to witness.

But it was the woods that watched. They were a constant, brooding presence on the edge of town, a dark green sea that lapped at the shores of civilization. They no longer looked like a place for childhood adventures. They looked predatory. They were the walls of Jacob’s cell, the hunting ground of the monster that had kept him. I imagined him in there, for one thousand, four hundred and sixty days, listening to the sounds of the town—the distant school bell, the siren of a fire truck, the laughter of kids playing—all just beyond his reach. The thought was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest until I could barely breathe.

I wasn’t a welcome visitor. I was the boy who came back. The lucky one. A living, breathing reminder of the town’s deepest wound. I could feel the stares of people on the street as I drove past, their expressions a mixture of pity and a cold, unspoken resentment. I didn’t deserve their pity. I deserved their hate.

There was no question of staying at my childhood home. I had sold it as soon as I turned eighteen, severing my last tie. Instead, I checked into The Pineview Motel, a sad, single-story establishment on the highway out of town, its sign flickering like a dying nerve. The room smelled of stale cigarettes and industrial-strength cleaner. The floral bedspread was thin and worn, the carpet stained with the ghosts of past miseries. It was perfect. A fitting cell for my own solitary confinement.

I dropped my single duffel bag on the floor and sat on the edge of the lumpy mattress, my hands clasped between my knees. The funeral was tomorrow. I would have to see Jacob’s mother. I would have to stand there among the mourners, a walking lie in a black suit. My fragile composure, barely held together by the monotonous routine of my city life, was already starting to crumble. The silence in the room was deafening, a canvas onto which my memory painted its horrors: the dead, black eyes of the Caretaker, the snap of Jacob’s bone, the mummified child in the closet.

I buried my face in my hands, trying to rub the images from behind my eyelids. What was I even doing here? Was I seeking forgiveness? Absolution? No. There was none to be had. I was here because Jacob’s suffering demanded a witness. I had run once. I couldn’t run again.

That’s when I heard it.

A soft, dry whisper. The sound of paper sliding on cheap, worn carpet.

My head snapped up. I stared at the bottom of the motel room door. In the thin gap between the door and the floor, a sliver of white had appeared. Someone had just pushed something into my room.

My heart began to pound a frantic, heavy rhythm against my ribs. Who knew I was here? I hadn’t told anyone. I hadn’t even made the reservation under my real last name. I crept toward the door, my footsteps silent on the grimy floor. Was someone outside? I strained my ears but heard nothing but the distant hum of traffic on the highway.

With a trembling hand, I reached down and picked up the note. It was a single piece of cheap, lined paper, torn from a spiral notebook. It was folded once. The paper felt cold, almost damp, in my sweating palm. For a moment, I just stood there, staring at it, my mind racing through impossible scenarios. A mistake? A promotion for a local pizza place?

My fingers, clumsy and numb, unfolded the paper.

There were only three words, written in thick, angry block capitals. The letters were pressed so hard into the page that they were almost embossed on the other side. They were words I had screamed at myself in the dead of night for four years. They were the truest and most terrible words in the world.

YOU LEFT HIM.

The air rushed out of my lungs. The cheap motel room seemed to shrink, the walls closing in on me. This wasn’t my guilt talking anymore. This wasn't a voice in my head. This was real. The note was a physical object, a tangible accusation.

My deepest, darkest fear, the one that festered beneath all the others, had just been confirmed. My secret wasn't a secret at all.

Someone in Blackwood knows. Someone knows the truth of what happened that day in the school. And they know I’m back.