The sheriff's office smelled of stale coffee, damp wood, and something older—the faint metallic tang of old paper and buried things. It was a smell that crawled into your lungs, made you cough even if the air was still. Sheriff Grady sat at his desk with a thick folder open in front of him. He didn't look up when Mara entered. His fingers didn't stop their deliberate flip through the pages of the file, moving slow as if the weight of the papers matched the weight on his conscience.
Mara stood in the doorway for a moment, letting the sound of her boots on the wooden floor settle between them. She hadn't come here to waste time.
"We need to talk about Samantha Leigh," she said, her voice cutting through the stillness like a knife. Her breath was steady, but her insides twisted in that familiar, gnawing feeling that had been haunting her ever since she found the sketchbook in the woods. She had felt its eyes on her then, and she could feel them now, watching her from the corners of this room, from Grady's unreadable gaze, from the shadows that clung to the walls.
The sheriff didn't react immediately. He turned a page slowly, his face grim, unmoving.
"I told you," Grady muttered without looking up, his voice a low rasp, "She's gone. She wandered too deep into those woods. Happens."
Mara's jaw clenched. "That's not all that happened. She didn't just wander into the woods, Sheriff. She saw something."
Grady paused mid-turn, his fingers stiffening against the folder. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, as if the room itself was bracing for whatever truth Mara was about to uncover. Then, slowly, he exhaled and finally met her eyes. His gaze was hard, impenetrable. She saw years of buried secrets there—layers of them, all smeared with guilt.
"You don't know what you're asking, Agent," he said, his voice carrying a weight that made Mara's stomach churn. "This town... It's got a history. And some things, some things are better left buried. You're poking at old wounds that we've learned to live with. You want to find her? You want answers? The only answer you'll get is more pain. For you. For everyone."
Mara closed the door behind her with a deliberate click, locking it. She knew he wasn't going to make this easy. But there was no turning back now.
Grady's eyes flicked toward the door, his muscles tensing as if he were preparing for something dangerous. But Mara didn't care. She crossed the room, her boots clicking sharply against the floorboards.
"You warned me," she said, her voice calm but fierce, "Not to 'wake it again.' Your words. What did you mean by that?"
He didn't answer at first. He just turned his eyes back to the file, but his gaze was distant, as if he were seeing something far beyond the pages in front of him. The rustling of paper filled the silence, but it felt empty now—hollow, like the breath before a storm.
Finally, he spoke, his voice barely above a whisper. "You ever heard of root rot?"
Mara blinked. "In trees?"
Grady nodded, his fingers still gripping the file. "Doesn't start at the surface. No. It begins deep underground. The roots get sick. Fungi, mostly. But you can't tell until it's too late. One day you think you've got a good strong pine. The next morning, it's on its side. Dead. Hollow inside. No warning. No sign of it coming."
Mara leaned forward, intrigued despite herself. "And this has to do with Samantha?"
Grady's hands tightened around the folder, crumpling the edges. "This town... something took root under it a long time ago. We don't remember how. We don't want to. But every so often, it feeds."
The words hit her like ice water. Something about the way he said it, as if he were speaking from the very bottom of some dark well, made Mara feel like she was slipping deeper into something she wasn't meant to understand.
"Feeds? On what?" she asked, her voice rough.
He glanced at her for a moment, and Mara saw the shadows in his eyes—something ancient and terrible. "Memory. Guilt. People. It doesn't care the order. It just takes. We used to keep it quiet with stories. Vigil lights. Warnings. People would tell their kids to stay inside after dark, keep away from certain places in the woods. But... kids don't listen. Samantha didn't."
Mara placed a sketchbook on his desk, the one with the hollow-headed figure that had haunted her since she first found it. She slid it forward, the cover creaking with the weight of its secret.
"She knew," Mara said, her voice thick with unease. "She saw it. This thing you're talking about. She saw it."
Grady didn't look at the sketchbook. His eyes stayed fixed on the table, staring at nothing. "I burned mine," he muttered, almost to himself. "Years ago. Didn't help. Still see it. Behind me. In reflections. In dreams. It waits. That's what it does. It waits for someone to remember the wrong thing."
Mara's heart quickened. She leaned in closer, the question slipping from her lips before she could stop it. "So you do believe she was taken."
Grady's eyes flicked up, and for the first time, Mara saw something other than detachment in them—something raw. Something broken.
"My daughter was the first," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Not in this generation. The first-ever offering. I was a kid when she disappeared. My pa was sheriff before me. He made the deal. Gave the thing what it wanted. The town forgot her. Except me. I remembered. And it punished me for that."
Mara's stomach twisted. "Your daughter—"
Grady slammed a hand down on the desk, making the sketchbook jump with the force of it. "Don't say her name. Don't remember her. That's how it listens. Through names. Through memory."
Mara stood, suddenly feeling small beneath the weight of his words. The man across from her wasn't just a sheriff anymore—he was a man who had lived through something unspeakable, something that had broken him in ways she couldn't begin to comprehend.
"You let it happen again," she said, her voice cold, almost accusing. "You knew, and you let it happen."
Grady didn't defend himself. He didn't even flinch. He just stared at the sketchbook again, eyes dull, tired. "I kept files. Records. For a while. Tried to track the patterns. But they don't stay. They rewrite. Every time it wakes, history bends. People vanish, and no one even misses them. Because they've been removed. Not just taken."
His words hit her harder than anything he'd said before. Removed. Like they had never been there to begin with. Like the town had never known them, even if they had. Mara's mind raced with the implications, but before she could gather her thoughts, she turned toward the door. Her heart pounded in her chest, adrenaline mixing with the fear creeping at the edges of her mind.
"Then I'll stop it," she said, her voice shaking with determination.
Grady's voice followed her, low and filled with a terrible kind of finality. "You can't stop something that feeds on what you carry inside. You can't win by remembering. You only win if you forget. And you? You remember everything, don't you? That's why it likes you."
Mara paused at the threshold, her hand on the door handle. His words stung, like cold fingers crawling down her spine. She hadn't even realized how much she remembered until now. Everything—the faces, the names, the stories—it all lived inside her, buried deep. She had never been able to forget.
"Careful, Agent Ellison," Grady's voice was quieter now, but it carried a warning in it that made her blood run cold. "It's watching. Through every broken thing. Through every scar. You wake it too much, and it won't just take the girl. It'll take you."
The air in the room seemed to freeze. Mara's breath caught in her throat, but she didn't look back.
She closed the door softly behind her, the click of the lock a final sound in the otherwise dead silence of the office.
And then the whispering started again.