Chapter 3: A Town Drowning in Silence

Chapter 3: A Town Drowning in Silence

The Blackwood Creek police station smelled exactly as it had twenty years ago: stale coffee, damp paper, and a faint, cloying scent of pine-scented cleaner that failed to mask the underlying odor of decay. It was a smell of secrets left to rot. The man behind the desk, Sheriff Miller, had been Deputy Miller back then. His face was a roadmap of the intervening years, etched with deeper lines and shadowed by the same weary skepticism Leo remembered.

“Leo Vance,” Miller said, his voice a gravelly rumble. He didn't stand. “Heard you were back in town. Can’t say I’m surprised.”

The implication hung in the air between them. Trouble starts, and the troubled boy returns.

“It’s happening again, Sheriff,” Leo said, his voice tight. He leaned forward, placing his palms flat on the worn wooden counter. “Lily Patterson. It’s the same as Billy.”

Miller sighed, a long, theatrical exhalation of patience stretched thin. He swiveled in his chair and pulled a thick, dog-eared file from a cabinet behind him. The name VANCE, WILLIAM was typed on the tab. “We’ve got the entire county out looking for the girl, son. Search and rescue, canine units. We’re doing everything by the book.”

“The book won’t help you,” Leo insisted, his voice rising with an urgency that sounded like madness even to his own ears. “You’re looking in the wrong places. You’re looking for a person. You should be looking for a monster.”

He told him everything, the words tumbling out in a torrent he’d held back for two decades. He spoke of the game of Marco Polo, of the dry, whispering voice that answered his call. He described the girl with the mismatched eyes and the missing arm, her frantic warning about a ‘Mother’ with no face and long arms. He pointed to his own leg. “It left this scar on me. It took Billy. I saw it.”

Sheriff Miller listened with a practiced, placid expression, his eyes betraying nothing but a deep, profound pity. When Leo finished, breathless and shaking, the Sheriff tapped a thick finger on the old case file.

“Leo, we went over all this back then. Your friend Billy tragically drowned. The coroner found water in his lungs when they recovered his body from the river, miles downstream. A terrible accident.”

“They found one sneaker,” Leo shot back. “They never found him.”

“Close enough for a ruling,” Miller said, his tone final. “As for the rest… you were a scared kid. You’d just lost your best friend. The mind plays tricks, it invents things to cope.” He leaned forward, his voice softening into a patronizing drawl. “There was no one-armed girl, Leo. No monster. Just a tragic accident in the woods. Now, another child is missing, and you’re dredging up old ghosts. You’re not helping. You’re upsetting people.”

The wall was thicker than brick, built of stubborn denial and cemented with the town’s collective will to forget. Leo felt a cold fury rise in his chest. He was being dismissed, erased, just like he had been as a child. He was a relic, a ghost story the town told itself, the crazy kid who never got over what happened in the woods.

He left the station and walked onto Main Street, the afternoon sun feeling unnaturally bright. The town’s silence was no longer passive; it was aggressive. A woman pushing a stroller crossed the street to avoid him. Two old men sitting on a bench outside the hardware store stopped their conversation, their eyes following him with a mixture of suspicion and fear. He heard a whisper from an open doorway as he passed the diner.

“…the Vance boy. Poor thing…”

They didn’t disbelieve him. Not really. Deep down, they were terrified he was right. The woods that bordered their town, the woods their children played near, held something ancient and hungry. It was easier to brand Leo as crazy than to face the alternative. He was the scapegoat for their fear.

There was only one other person who couldn't call him crazy. One other person who had been there, who had heard her own sobs cut short by the unnatural silence that fell after Billy was taken. Sadie.

He found her name in a local directory, her address a small, neat house at the newer end of town, still uncomfortably close to the treeline. He drove there, a desperate hope warring with a gnawing dread.

The house was immaculate, the lawn perfectly manicured, the flowerbeds bursting with color. But every single curtain was drawn tight, shutting out the world. It looked less like a home and more like a fortress.

He rang the doorbell, the cheerful chime echoing hollowly. For a long moment, there was no answer. He was about to ring it again when the lock clicked and the door opened a few inches, stopped by a heavy brass chain.

A woman’s face appeared in the gap. It was Sadie, but the years had not been kind. The girl whose laughter had once filled the summer air was gone, replaced by a pale, gaunt woman with shadows under her eyes so deep they looked like bruises. Fear was etched into her features, a permanent part of her expression.

“Leo?” she whispered, her voice a fragile, trembling thing. Recognition dawned, followed swiftly by pure, undiluted panic.

“Sadie, thank God,” he breathed, a wave of relief washing over him. “I need your help. A little girl is missing. Lily Patterson. It’s happening again, just like with Billy.”

Her eyes darted nervously past him, scanning the empty street as if expecting to see something lurking there. “You shouldn’t be here, Leo.”

“You were there,” he pleaded, keeping his voice low and urgent. “You have to tell them what we saw. The girl in the woods, the sound it made. They won’t listen to me. They’ll listen to you.”

At the mention of the girl, Sadie flinched as if struck. A tear escaped her eye and traced a path down her pale cheek. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stammered, shaking her head. “Billy fell. It was dark. We were running. That’s all.”

“No,” Leo said, his hope curdling into disbelief. “That’s not all. You were crying, you saw something. I know you did.”

Her façade of denial cracked, revealing the raw terror beneath. Her eyes locked on his, wide and pleading. “Stop it,” she hissed, her voice dropping to a desperate whisper. “Don’t you understand? It never left. It’s always there, just… waiting. In the quiet. In the shadows. If you talk about it, you call it. If you look for it, it finds you.”

She was trapped, a prisoner in her own home, held captive by a twenty-year-old memory. She hadn't forgotten; she had built her entire life around pretending to.

“We can’t let it take another one, Sadie,” he urged, his last hope fraying.

“We can’t do anything!” she choked out, her knuckles white where she gripped the door. “Stop digging, Leo. Some things are meant to stay buried. You keep digging, and the only thing you'll find is a grave. For you, and for me.”

Before he could say another word, she slammed the door. The heavy thud of the deadbolt sliding into place was a sound of absolute finality.

Leo stood on the porch, stunned into silence. The cheerful flowerbeds seemed to mock him. He was completely, utterly alone. The police, the town, and now the only other witness—they had all slammed the door in his face. The town wasn't just drowning in silence; it was actively choosing to drown, pulling a blanket of denial over its head while a monster came to steal its children.

As the sun began to dip below the horizon, casting long, menacing shadows from the treeline, a grim resolve settled over him. The ache in his scarred calf pulsed, a slow, cold beat. No one was coming to help. No one would even listen.

There was only one place left to go. The one place he had sworn he would never enter again.