The Greens held their own memorial. For Reen, for Monalisa, and maybe for themselves. Brian Green—just a kid like me—started wearing his dad's wedding ring on a chain around his neck. Said it helped him sleep. I didn't have the heart to tell him it didn't help anyone in this town.
Vivian stayed quiet.
This was strange, Vivian was never quiet. Even at funerals, she found a way to make mourning sound like theater. But after the ribbon reappeared, she stopped being seen altogether.
The mailbox filled up. Newspapers turned brown in the driveway. Her front porch light stayed on, even in daylight, buzzing like it was nervous.
I caught sight of her once—just once—through her living room window.
She wasn't looking out; she was looking up, like something above her ceiling had started moving.
I heard it on the fourth night after my mother vanished, the creak above my bedroom ceiling, not pipes, not raccoons.
A slow, deliberate shifting—like someone was crawling across the beams.
I froze in bed. Sheets pulled to my chin like that ever saved anyone, my eyes locked on the plaster above me,
And then— tap tap tap.
Three knocks. Measured. Paused between each one, from the attic, I didn't scream.
I got up, Barefoot, Cold floor.
The attic door was in the hallway ceiling, near the closet where Mom used to hide birthday presents. I reached up, pulled the cord.
The stairs groaned down like they hadn't been touched in years.
The air changed. Heavier. Wetter. Like breathing in someone else's sweat.
I climbed halfway up, there was nothing. No light. Just darkness and a smell, not decay.
Lavender and copper, Vivian was waiting on our porch, no knock, no smile, no makeup. Just a black coat and a voice that had turned to gravel.
"You saw something, I didn't answer.
She handed me a matchbox. Inside was a burned scrap of ribbon, and a note in curling, frantic handwriting:
"I was never gone. Just buried wrong, Vivian looked me straight in the eyes.
"If you want to live long enough to leave this town, burn whatever she leaves behind."
Then she left.
And the front porch light started buzzing again; it was Kingsley WhiteHorse they found next.
The third-born son. Quiet, square-jawed, forever playing second fiddle to Wayne. Kingsley worked at the lumberyard and had a reputation for keeping his head down.
That head was no longer attached!
They found it in the baptistery behind the church, resting in the cold water like an offering. His body? Draped across the communion table like a misplaced Christ.
There was no blood at the scene, none, It was too clean. Too staged.
The official line?
"Some sick, satanic message."
But I knew better, it wasn't a message, it was a diversion, and WhiteHorse always needs a villain.
This time, it was Thomas, Kingsley's younger brother.
He'd been drinking again. Got loud at the diner two nights before. Told the waitress Kingsley "should've kept his mouth shut." Bad timing. Worse phrasing.
Sheriff Green arrested him before the sun rose.
Said it was a confession. Said the murder was personal.
Maybe it was. But not his personal.
I remembered something Kingsley had told me a few weeks earlier, sitting on the back porch after my father's funeral.
He leaned down and whispered like it was gossip.
"You ever hear your mother talk in a voice that isn't hers?"
I had, I just didn't know it yet.
Three days after they buried Kingsley, another ribbon appeared.
This one was wet, soaked, tied around the crank handle of the Roberts family well.
It hadn't been used in years. We had city plumbing now. But I remembered that well. My mom used to say it made water taste like thunder.
I untied the ribbon, same silk, same smell, lavender. And copper.
Something clinked to the ground when I did.
A tooth!
Still bloody, still warm.
By now, they'd decided it was all connected.
Vivian was questioned. Again. She talked circles around them. Again.
Brian Green tried to hang himself in the school library. He didn't die. But he hasn't spoken since.
The mayor stepped down without a reason.
And still no one asked the right question:
What if the person we buried… didn't stay buried?
I started dreaming of the woods, i was standing at the edge of them, barefoot in the frost, and someone was behind me, whispering, only it wasn't a whisper, it was a hum. A lullaby.
One I hadn't heard since the night my mother disappeared.
And when I turned around, there were footprints in the snow.
But no one was there to leave them.
People always say silence means peace. They're wrong. In WhiteHorse, silence meant someone new was dead.
After Kingsley, the bodies came quicker.
Ruth WhiteHorse — found in the school auditorium, hanging from the rafters with her eyes still open.
Monalisa's body was recovered from the lake, sealed in a rusted dog crate, hands folded like she'd gone to sleep.
Johnson WhiteHorse vanished completely. Not a trace. Only his boots left behind, standing upright on his porch like he'd stepped out of them and into thin air.
Emmett and Eli. Eleven. Little demons in denim. They teased me for the way I spoke. For my limp. For not knowing how to throw a ball, but no one deserved what they got.
Their bodies were found in the reservoir, floating face-up.
No bruises. No cuts. Just... smiling.
Someone carved identical grins into their cheeks—ear to ear.
The police blamed each other. A murder-suicide pact, they said.
What kinds of eleven-year-olds make a pact?
Miss Lacey Horne
Fourth grade teacher. Always smelled like cinnamon and rot.
She taught us to write our names in cursive.
Someone had written hers in blood, looping L's and swirled H's, across the classroom chalkboard.
Her body was found propped in the reading corner, red ribbon sewn through her lips.
I remember screaming, i remember silence, i remember how Vivian didn't cry.
Vivian tried to hold things together. She started a neighborhood watch. Set up nightly patrols. But the only thing she managed to catch was the mayor's wife sneaking pills from the church pantry.
And then she got the note, no envelope. Just slipped under her front door.
"He's mine now."