The first night in Ravenmere, I didn’t sleep so much as count the seconds between howls.
The motel room smelled like old pine cleaner and something sweeter underneath, like a room that had seen too many secrets and not enough airing out. The thin curtains breathed with every gust from the mountains, exhaling cold into my bones. I lay on the lumpy mattress in my clothes, phone in hand, trying to pretend I wasn’t refreshing the local crime feed like some kind of ghoul.
Ravenmere’s missing persons board glowed on the screen: names, dates, the vague language I knew too well—"last seen," "no signs of foul play," "ongoing investigation." I could practically hear the shrug in every line.
I dragged my thumb down. Newest report:
LUCAS FLETCHER, 23. LAST SEEN: TRAILHEAD OFF FERN RIDGE ROAD. DATE: THREE NIGHTS AGO.
Outside, somewhere in the tree-black valley, a howl cut through the wind.
The sound lifted the hair on my arms. Too long, too deep, too…aware. A wolf shouldn’t sound like it’s asking a question.
I locked my phone and pressed it to my sternum until the plastic edge bit skin. "Coincidence," I whispered to the empty room. "Just…a lot of coincidences. That’s all this town is. One big statistical middle finger."
It would’ve been easier if I believed myself.
Another howl rolled up the mountain, answered by a second, farther off. I tried counting my breaths—one, two, three—but my brain kept fitting the dates together instead. Disappearances in a pattern: roughly every month, always near the forest. No bodies. No press conferences. No outraged families on TV. Just names sliding into oblivion while the town turned the volume down.
Like the universe was mocking me for thinking I could escape the noise of my own failure by moving somewhere quiet.
The accident flickered behind my eyelids—shattered glass, red lights, the weight of a stranger’s cooling hand—so I threw the covers back and sat up too fast. The room tilted. I braced my palms on my knees and forced air into my lungs until the ringing in my ears faded.
I needed out. Of the room, my head, this loop of what-ifs.
The bedside clock read 1:12 a.m. Good. Fewer people to see the new girl having a panic attack on Main Street.
I grabbed my hoodie, laced my boots with fingers that didn’t want to cooperate, and stepped outside. The motel walkway was slick with recent rain, wood swollen and groaning. The air hit me like a slap—cold, wet, tasting of wet earth and distant smoke.
The howls had gone silent.
Ravenmere spread below me, a scatter of yellow windows layered against the dark mountains. The forest pressed up to the town’s back like a living thing. I could feel it watching, which was ridiculous, because forests didn’t watch. People did.
I headed downhill, hands shoved into my pockets, letting the night swallow the motel’s neon "VACANCY" sign. The pavement turned to cracked asphalt, then to packed dirt as curiosity—not a good word, not for me anymore, but there it was—pulled me toward the edge of the trees.
Just to see. Just to prove it was all in my head.
Fern Ridge Road was a narrow, unlit ribbon. A hand-painted missing poster fluttered from the trailhead sign, corners gone soft from damp. Lucas Fletcher grinned from the paper in black and white, his eyes bright with the kind of optimism that looked like a curse in retrospect.
