Headlights(67)

I wonder if it’s not time to give our friends a little hint. Maybe we should say it’s important to keep your eyes to the SKY.

I can’t stop thinking it must be so much more obvious than I realize. If we’re right to put attention here at all.

Hours pass, combing through the same notes, the same pages, Hannah asking me periodic questions. At one point she says, “Are there any main suspects?”

“You mean besides us?”

“Yes.”

“A developer, Oliver Wright, maybe. And a person in this chat room. Calls themself Wizdumteller. We haven’t been able to track them, and they seem to know when the murders are coming. Those are really the best we’ve got at the moment.”

She takes this in. “You think for sure that someone aside from the Drifters is involved?” she asks. “That they’re not just all killing these people and eating them and then pretending they don’t remember it?”

I say, “We don’t know.”

She nods, looks back to the file in her hand. She flips a few pages, and I watch her as her eyes catch on one of them. She tenses again.

“What are you reading?” I ask.

“It says, um, ‘Tillman’s Notes.’”

She slides the paper over to me behind the firepit, keeps the folder in her lap. I pick up the paper and glance at it. It’s dated from yesterday, so it must be one of the new files Frazier last put on my desk, or the last batch I printed. The page says: Witchwalker Mentions. Then there’s a list of links.

Tillman. Of course he would run with this. I only said the word the one time to him in the car, but never underestimate the cryptozoologist or whatever. I wonder if he put together Witchwalker and the WW from Wizdumteller’s posts. Something tells me he did.

We start checking the links. There isn’t much. A couple low-view YouTube videos from internet paranormal people that are mostly incomprehensible. A couple Reddit threads that don’t say much, talking about kids at school, spreading scary stories. I hold the phone up so Hannah and I both can see them. She seems off, a little more on edge than before. The last link is a TikTok video of a guy in Carhartts with a horse behind him, a teenager asking him, Can you tell us about the Witchwalker?

The man looks angry. He says, Don’t you say that word. Seriously, that’s not funny. It’s not—

I squint at the screen, play the video again. I know him. Why do I …

Ryder Smith. Shit. He looks different now, has grown into a man. Our dead-end momentary suspect from years ago who went to the same school as a couple of the victims and one of the Drifters, who was busted for bringing in a fake gun to their high school and threatening to shoot up the student body. He was a teen at the time of these murders, there was no way he could coerce any of these adults into doing these things. And he didn’t have the personality to seek control, power. Not the kind that someone like this would. Just didn’t fit the profile. What he wanted was attention, to be understood, by his parents, the other kids at school. Still, it was terrible. To take even a fake gun into a school. He served the time for it.

I play the video a third time. I’m certain it’s him. And I think I remember reading that he works at a horse ranch somewhere now, rehabilitation programs for at-risk youth.

Hannah drops the file to the floor.

“Are you okay?” I ask, turning back to her.

“Um. I’m feeling a little bit … I need to get outside.”

“You…” I look around. We are basically outside.

“No, I, um … I need to move. Run. If that’s okay. And I think I need food. I haven’t eaten in a long time. Are you, do you care if I…?”

I know the look on her face. I know it because I’ve had it on mine a million times. She’s fighting off a panic attack. Something in the “Tillman’s Notes” file or the video I was playing gave her this reaction. Does she know Ryder Smith? Is he more a part of this than we think he is? Being tied in with that word, Witchwalker …

Maybe Hannah is the best lead I can follow for the moment. It’s risky—beyond risky—stupid, even. Leaving, going out in the open. Letting her call the shots on where we go and what we do. But maybe all I need is right here. This woman before me. Maybe she, as I have wondered this whole time, might really be the key to everything.

“I’ll go with you,” I say. And I don’t give her a chance to argue.

I pack up the files in case we don’t come back and carry them to the car. Hannah steps inside the house for clothes, and I start to follow her in, but another thought pulls at me. That look on her face with Tillman’s notes in her hand. I reach for the folder.

The paper on top is another list. Lines that Tillman’s pulled from different interviews—victims, family members, friends, killers—in which they used the word it instead of a personal pronoun. It’s not long, only eight or so.

Why it would it want my daughter?

It must’ve gotten him when—

Can’t sleep anymore. Scared it’s coming for us too.

He’s got each labeled and cross-referencing their interview. I reach for the corresponding interview transcripts. Each time, the way the lines sit in the conversation, no one would bat an eye. I’ve pored over these documents, for years, and I never caught these. Because why would I? What the fuck was it?