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Section 1
### Chapter 1: Chapter 1
He left Ashwood Hollow eight years ago, broken and unwanted. Now the ghosts have dragged Caleb Walker home. The spirits whisper of a killer who will strike again—and the town’s only hope lies with the man they swore to forget.
Warning short story. Eight years ago, Caleb Walker swore he’d never set foot in Ashwood Hollow again. Branded an outcast for claiming he could see ghosts, he left behind a broken family, a ruined reputation, and a brother who wanted nothing to do with him. But the dead don’t care about promises. When the ghost of a murdered girl returns to haunt him, Caleb is pulled back to the small southern town he once called home. The whispers of the dead warn him that a killer is still at large—one who has already taken lives and is ready to strike again. Facing hostility from townsfolk and icy silence from his younger brother, now a detective, Caleb is forced to rely on the only ally he has: his brother’s new partner, a newcomer to Ashwood Hollow who believes in the ghosts no one else dares to acknowledge. Together, with the restless spirits as their guides, Caleb must confront his past, rebuild fragile trust, and expose a murderer hiding in plain sight—before the next victim is claimed.
Complete Chapters 19 Rating 4.9 ( 7 reviews ) Age Rating 16+ {"language":"en","storyId":1562813,"genres":[{"name":"Mystery","path":"/genres/mystery"},{"name":"Fantasy","path":"/genres/fantasy"}],"authorName":"Jessica A. Nolan","authorPath":"/JessicaANolan","status":"complete","lastUpdatedAt":1787786953,"chaptersCount":19,"rating":4.857142857142857,"reviewsCount":7,"ageRating":"16+"} 1. Caleb I never planned on coming back to Ashwood Hollow . Not after the way I left. Not after eight years of pretending the ghosts didn’t exist, or at least that they couldn’t find me once I’d put a few hundred miles and a couple of state lines between us. I’d spent nearly a decade chasing the horizon, putting down roots in places that were too bright, too loud, and too full of living people to be bothered by the dead. I’d taken jobs that demanded all my focus—oil rigs, deep-sea fishing trawlers, anything with a roaring engine and a view of the open water. A world where a dead man in overalls couldn’t just shamble up and ruin your breakfast.
But sometimes life—or death—doesn’t bother to ask what you planned. It just shoves you where it wants, ready or not. It’s like when you’re driving down a long, straight road, and a sudden, violent storm blows up out of nowhere. You don’t pull over and argue with the sky; you just grip the wheel and let it push you. That’s what Ashwood Hollow felt like: a sudden, unwelcome squall that had found me three states away and demanded my attendance.
I took the exit off the I-22 and the asphalt immediately gave way to the familiar, cracking concrete of the state highway. The air immediately changed, heavy and wet, draped over everything like a cheap wool blanket. It wasn’t the heat that got to you; it was the humidity , thick enough to chew on, smelling like damp earth and summer rain that never quite evaporated.
The town hadn’t changed much, which was both a comfort and a curse.
The same faded gas station with the busted sign sat on the edge of the county line, a monument to rural entropy. The “E” in FOSTER’S FUEL & AUTO was still a flickering void, making the whole place read like a desperate plea for a good night’s sleep. I saw the familiar, dented blue pickup parked by the single, lonely pump, and I half-expected to see my Uncle Roy, my mother’s younger brother, asleep on a lawn chair out front, a fly-swatter resting on his chest and a half-full bottle of sweet tea sweating on the cracked pavement beside him. He wouldn’t be sleeping, though. Not with everything that was happening. But the expectation, the muscle memory of the town, was still there, pulling me back to a version of myself I’d successfully murdered years ago.
A block past the station was the First Baptist Church , its brick façade painted a blinding, sanctimonious white. The little black sign out front with its changeable white letters was still putting on a weekly show of folksy wisdom. This week’s attempt at humor was painted in crooked, blocky letters: GOD’S LOVE IS LIKE GRITS—IT STICKS WITH YOU. I almost smiled, a cynical, humorless twitch of my lips. Everything in Ashwood Hollow stuck with you, whether you wanted it to or not. The guilt, the grief, the people, the pine needles—and yes, the dead.
And then there was the smell—a classic Southern trinity. Pine and sweet, sickly honeysuckle were fighting for dominance over the sharper tang of exhaust fumes and the river’s dark, fishy mud. Ashwood Hollow was frozen in time, preserved under a thick coat of Southern dust and old secrets. The only difference was me, a man who’d spent eight years becoming a stranger to his own reflection.
I turned my beat-up, dark-grey pickup down Main Street , the tires crunching on loose gravel left over from a recent downpour. The street was lined with brick storefronts that looked like they’d fought too many wars with the weather, and whitewashed porches that sagged under the slow, heavy rotation of ancient ceiling fans. A few spots had clearly been spruced up , given a new coat of paint and some potted ferns, probably by some hopeful, civic-minded soul. But the majority of the buildings leaned into their age, resigned, their windows dark and dusty like sleeping eyes.
I parked outside the diner, the one that had served up more than just hash browns and coffee over the years. It was called The Daily Grind , and its pink neon sign still hummed a low, dying note, buzzing like a cicada on its last legs. The light flickered, casting a sickly, rosy glow on the pavement. When I was a kid, that light had been my compass: late nights after football games, a beacon for heartbreak and hangovers, a place to confess sins or just sit and watch the rain fall. Coming back now, it felt less like nostalgia and more like walking willingly into a well-laid trap.
I killed the engine. The resulting silence was immediate and oppressive. I kept my hands on the wheel, my eyes on the grimy windshield, gathering the last shreds of my composure. I didn’t have to check the rearview mirror. I knew. The ghosts noticed me before the people did. They always did. It was like I had a giant, invisible magnet for unresolved issues nailed to my chest.
The first one shuffled up before I even touched the door handle.
He was a pale man in faded denim overalls , his skin the color of river clay. He didn’t walk so much as shiver into existence, like heat rising off hot asphalt. The thing that always got me—the thing that never stopped making the back of my neck prickle—was the casual, devastating clarity of his demise. He had a hole in his chest , just beneath the sternum, big enough to see daylight through, or maybe the flickering pink neon sign of the diner. A neat, impossible circle of nothing where a heart should have been.
His eyes, cloudy and filmed-over like old milk, latched onto mine through the glass. He leaned down, his breath a non-existent chill that I felt deep in my bones, his nose nearly pressed to the window.
“You finally came back, Caleb Foster.” His voice was a dry, scraping whisper, like someone dragging a shovel across gravel.
“Not for you,” I muttered, my voice barely a rustle of sound, hoping the dead man hadn’t brought any friends.
“You can hear me,” he said, his head cocking slightly. The dead always sounded so surprised by this simple fact, like I was the only person who’d ever signed up for their personal complaint line and then tried to cancel the subscription without notice.
“Not today, friend. Got my own demons to wrangle,” I said, finally pulling my hand from the steering wheel. I let out a slow breath. He was just a random. Not the one who brought me here. Not my ghost.
I didn’t wait for him to finish the plea. The dead, much like my mother used to, always wanted something. I pushed open the heavy, metal-framed door with a deliberate slam. The force of the movement, the rush of the outside air, or maybe just my refusal to acknowledge him, was enough. He blinked out like smoke, dissolving into the humid afternoon air.
Out of sight, out of mind. I wished, for the thousandth time, that it worked that well with family.
Inside, the diner was a time capsule I’d desperately hoped had been bulldozed. It was the same worn-out cracked vinyl booths —a specific, faded shade of rust-colored red—and the same greasy, wood-paneled walls that smelled like a lifetime of fried chicken and cheap coffee. It was the scent of my youth, and it sat heavy and hot in my nostrils, a pungent mix of nostalgia and regret.
A couple of local farmers , their faces the color and texture of cured leather, were hunched over plates of biscuits and gravy, their conversation a slow, low rumble about the rising cost of feed. The low hum of the ceiling fan blending with the hiss of the griddle and the clink of silverware was the soundtrack of Ashwood Hollow.
I immediately spotted Mrs. Dunlap , who must’ve been well past ninety by now. She was perched on her usual stool at the counter, stirring a coffee that was probably mostly cream, her movements slow and deliberate. She wore the same kind of floral-print dress she’d worn for forty years. She didn’t look up at first, but when I passed her, she squinted at me, her eyes narrow and assessing, like she was deciding if I was really Caleb Foster or just a particularly disappointing hallucination brought on by low blood sugar. Probably both.
I slid into the corner booth, the one I used to claim as my own territory—deepest in the back, where the light was dimmest, perfect for sketching in notebooks or hiding from the world. I pulled my worn, leather jacket off and draped it over the back, hoping the town’s ancient, interconnected gossip network wouldn’t start its engines quite yet. I wanted a moment to breathe.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Look who finally decided to come home.”
The voice was rough, familiar, and laced with an eight-year accumulation of resentment. It came from the counter, right beside Mrs. Dunlap, who seemed to perk up instantly, sensing drama like a hound dog scenting a rabbit.
My little brother was standing there, a coffee mug dwarfed in his big hand. He was wearing his uniform: badge clipped neat to his belt, the khaki shirt pressed and starched so crisply it looked like he’d ironed it himself with military precision. He looked older, squarer, heavier around the shoulders, like he was carrying a load of bricks only he could see. He looked every bit the solid, reliable man I never was, every inch the son my father had always wanted. Still, the same kid lived under that starched, iron-clad exterior—the one who used to chase me barefoot through the pecan orchard behind the house, the one who once cried so hard he threw up when I left for college and never really came back.
Except now he was Detective Eli Foster , and he wore the title not just as a job, but as armor against the world, and against me.
I gave him my best grin, the lazy, reckless one that usually got me in or out of trouble depending entirely on the situation and how fast I was moving. “Miss me, baby brother ?” I asked, leaning back into the cracked vinyl.
His jaw tightened, a hard muscle jumping beneath his cheekbone. He didn’t return the smile. He didn’t even twitch. “Eight years, Caleb. Not a call. Not a word.”
“Phone works both ways, Eli,” I said, keeping my tone light, almost bored. It was an old argument, the easiest one to deflect.
“You left,” he countered, and in that single word was the entire, messy history of the Foster family. It wasn’t a question or an accusation; it was a fact, an indictment.
Can’t argue with facts. I leaned back further, folding my hands over the table like a polite, interested visitor, and tried not to notice the way every single other conversation in the diner had gone completely silent. Ashwood Hollow loved a scene, especially when the principal players were the Foster boys , who hadn’t shared a stage in nearly a decade.
Eli didn’t sit. He just stood over me, looming, staring down like I was dirt on his Sunday shoes—the one thing he couldn’t seem to wipe clean. “Why are you back?”
“Because the universe hates me,” I said, letting the grin fade into a sigh. “And apparently, so do you.”
“Don’t joke.” His voice was sharp, a whip-crack that drew the attention of the cooks behind the counter. “Not about this.”
“Who’s joking? I had a dream. Or maybe it was a nightmare. Either way, it brought me home. Is that a good enough answer for Detective Foster?”
I saw the flicker in his eyes—the old skepticism warring with the deep, buried knowledge of what I could do, what he’d seen me do. The fact that the dream wasn’t the full truth didn’t matter. The truth itself was complicated, a story about a girl—dead, blonde, maybe twenty—who’d stood at the foot of my cheap motel bed three nights ago in Tupelo, Mississippi. She’d been cold and beautiful, and her voice had been like broken glass in my ears, cutting through the thin wall of my sleep. Ashwood Hollow. Come back. They’ll kill her too. I hadn’t asked questions. I didn’t need to. I’d packed my bag, checked out, and pointed the truck north.
But Eli didn’t need all that messy, impossible truth. Not yet.
The old bell above the door jingled a low, mournful sound, and that’s when a different kind of trouble walked in.
She moved with the kind of focused, quiet ease that made people look twice without meaning to—a clean, confident stride, auburn hair tied back in a no-nonsense knot, and hazel eyes sharp enough to skin a deer alive. She was in plainclothes—dark jeans and a simple charcoal jacket—but the badge hanging subtly from her hip might as well have been a sword. She wasn’t from Ashwood Hollow. She had the look of a woman who was competent, professional, and slightly too educated for this town, a transplant Eli had clearly acquired since I’d left.
She stopped just inside the door, letting her eyes sweep the room with the practiced efficiency of a cop. They landed on me, assessing my scruff, my road-weary clothes, my general air of ne’er-do-well . Then they flicked to Eli, who was still standing stiff by the counter like he was holding his breath, waiting for the performance review. Something passed between them—unspoken, clipped, the kind of communication that comes from spending too many hours together in a patrol car.
Then she walked over, slow and deliberate, taking the long way, like she wanted to get the full measure of me before saying a word.
“You must be Caleb ,” she said finally, her voice low and dry, like old whiskey. No awe, no nerves—just cool observation, like she was noting the weather report.
I gave her the lazy smile again, the one I hadn’t even bothered to give my brother. “And you must be the infamous partner .”
“Infamous?” She arched a perfect, dark brow, but her lips quirked at the corner, like she was half a step from letting out a genuine laugh.
“That’s what folks call the people who willingly spend their days with my brother,” I explained, tilting my head toward Eli. “Takes guts. Or poor judgment.”
Eli groaned, a sound of deep, paternal weariness. “God, not this, Caleb. Don’t start with her.”
She ignored him, which was immediately a point in her favor. She slid into the booth across from me without asking, occupying the space with immediate, quiet authority. She folded her arms on the table, a solid barrier. Up close, I noticed a tiny, scattered cluster of freckles across her cheeks, and that her hazel eyes didn’t just look sharp—they looked like they carried weight, the kind of weight that comes from sorting out too many lies from too many ugly truths.
“Your brother said you wouldn’t come back,” she said.
“Your brother also said Santa Claus was fake when I was seven,” I shot back, the words easy and automatic. “He’s been wrong before.”
That earned the tiniest spark of amusement . Not much, but enough to light up the depth of her eyes. I took a chance and stretched an arm along the back of the booth, getting comfortable.
“You’re prettier than the partners he used to drag home,” I observed.
Her brows lifted again, a subtle, elegant movement. “You mean his dates?”
“Dates, partners, girlfriends. Same thing when you’re twelve and eavesdropping from the hallway.”
This time she actually smiled —a quick, involuntary flash of real warmth, gone just as fast as it appeared. “Flattery won’t work on me, Foster.”
“Good. That wasn’t flattery. Just an observation. I don’t flirt with cops.”
Eli slapped his hand lightly on the back of the booth, his patience clearly snapping. “You two gonna banter all day or get to the point?”
I should’ve lied. I should have told them I was just passing through, looking for a construction job down in Mobile, or maybe here to visit the graveyard like a normal, well-adjusted man who hadn’t seen his mother’s headstone in a decade. But Maren’s eyes pinned me like a butterfly on a mounting board. Sharp. Expectant. She was waiting for the real answer, the one Eli didn’t want to hear.
“The dead don’t like to be ignored,” I said finally, dropping the act. The warmth in the diner suddenly felt colder, and I knew I’d lost her amusement for good. “And lately, they’ve been pointing me back here.”
Eli shifted, profoundly uncomfortable, like I’d just stripped off my clothes and started singing hymns. “Jesus, Caleb. Still with that ?”
“It’s not something I can exactly shake off, Eli. You think I wanted this? Seeing things? Hearing them whisper at three a.m. in the dark? Believe me, I tried leaving it behind. But the ghosts are like Mom —they know how to track you down no matter how far you run.”
That landed heavy between us, a dull, metallic thud. Mom was the one thing Eli and I didn’t joke about. She was the epicenter of the destruction, the reason I left, the reason Eli stayed, and the root of the quiet, violent thing that lived between us.
Maren studied me, her eyes unreadable now, all professionalism and guarded curiosity. “So you see the dead.”
“I see, hear, sometimes smell,” I confirmed, shrugging a little. “It’s not glamorous. Mostly it’s just irritating. And lately, they’ve been sending me coordinates.”
“And you think these coordinates are… what? Leading you to our case ?” Her voice was steady, giving away nothing, but the question was a sharp hook.
I froze. My hands, still flat on the table, pressed down a little harder. “What case?”
Her gaze slid to Eli, the silent, unspoken plea. Tell him, or I will. Eli looked profoundly torn, chewing the inside of his cheek, his whole body tense as he wrestled with the decision to shut this down or let it play out.
Finally, Maren looked back at me, her expression hardening into something cold and serious. “A girl. College student. Missing a week. She was a volunteer at the local shelter, good grades, the whole bit. Clean slate. We found her body yesterday. Out by the river. About three miles north of the county line.”
The diner noise faded to a distant, meaningless murmur. All I heard was the voice from my motel room in Tupelo, the broken-glass whisper: They’ll kill her too.
I didn’t answer at first. The weight of eight years, the shame of my abandonment, and the sickening reality of the girl’s death crashed down on me all at once. I just pressed my palms flat against the Formica table, grounding myself, forcing the air into my lungs.
Maren didn’t look away. She was relentless, a quiet force. “You want me to believe this ghost thing is real? You want to tell me you drove five hundred miles on the word of a dead person? Now’s your chance, Foster. ”
Eli snapped, stepping forward, ready to intervene. “Maren—”
But she cut him off, her gaze never leaving mine, never even flickering. “If he’s got something, I want to hear it, Eli.”
I looked at my brother, whose face was a mask of furious, terrified resignation. Eight years stretched wide between us, a chasm of silence and resentment. He wanted me gone, silent, erased—back on an oil rig where my bizarre ability and my mistakes couldn’t hurt him or his career. But the dead didn’t give me choices. They just gave me missions.
“ Where’s the body? ” I asked, my voice suddenly deep, quiet, and absolutely serious. The lazy grin was gone. The flippant attitude evaporated. I was finally back where I belonged.
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### Chapter 2: Chapter 2
I could see the words he wanted to launch at me, the words that burned in his throat: This isn’t your business. Leave it alone. You don’t belong here. But the fundamental, infuriating problem with Eli has always been that he never says what he wants, not in the moment. He swallows it down , lets the frustration, the resentment, and the fear sit there in his gut until it ferments and rots. By the time he finally coughs it up, it’s usually sharper and more toxic than it ever needed to be.
Maren Holt broke the immediate, toxic silence. She slid out of the booth with a liquid grace that suggested she was used to de-escalating tense situations. “We’re not discussing the supernatural or a capital murder investigation in front of a diner full of ears,” she said, her voice low and firm, a voice used to giving orders. She didn’t wait for an argument; she stood, tilted her head toward the door, and walked out.
Eli hesitated, his jaw working like he was chewing glass, then, grudgingly, he followed her lead. And because I’m either fundamentally stubborn, terminally stupid, or cursed with the impossible knowledge of the dead, I got up and went after them, too.
Outside, the late-morning sun was already a cruel, copper color, bearing down heavy on the asphalt and promising a day that would be brutal, airless, and thick with sweat. The sound of cicadas buzzed in the towering oak and pecan trees that lined the courthouse square, their collective, mechanical drone sounding like the town itself was screaming in a high-pitched frequency only dogs and I could hear.
Eli stopped by the driver’s side of his unmarked Ford Crown Victoria—a classic, anonymous cop car—his hands planted on his hips, staring at me like I was a broken-down engine he didn’t have the right wrench for.
“You’re not coming,” he said finally, the words flat and final.
“Sure I am,” I countered, feeling the old, familiar need to push him just to see him break. “You just don’t know it yet.”
“Caleb, stop this,” he pleaded, a sliver of the old, exasperated little brother surfacing beneath the uniform.
“Look,” I said, walking closer, dropping the banter. “You have two options, little brother. You can drag me back to my truck, stand over me, tell me to drive off into the sunset, and I probably will. But then you’ll find me standing at the crime scene anyway, because the dead don’t take no for an answer , and they certainly don’t care about your jurisdiction. Or, you can save yourself the headache, lock me in the back seat, and let me ride along.”
Maren, who had been leaning against the cruiser, arms crossed, watching us like a veteran referee about to call a clear, obvious foul, spoke up. “He’s right,” she said.
That startled Eli into silence. “What?”
She gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug, maintaining her cool, analytical demeanor. “If he’s going to show up anyway, and he will—people like Caleb are drawn to this kind of magnet—better we keep an eye on him. Less paperwork for the uniforms trying to restrain a civilian at a scene.”
Eli stared at her like she’d just sprouted horns and suggested they share a plate of biscuits. He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and took a deep, shaky breath, the kind of breath that holds back a lifetime of arguments. “Lord give me strength,” he muttered, more a prayer than a complaint, and unlocked the rear door with the remote.
I grinned, a genuine, if brief, flash of victory. “Knew you still loved me.”
“Get in the back,” he said flatly, his voice devoid of warmth. “And don’t touch anything.”
“Always the gentleman,” I said, sliding into the spacious, cracked vinyl of the rear seat. The car smelled like old coffee, gun oil, and the lingering, faint scent of municipal air freshener that never actually worked. It felt like coming home in the worst possible way.
The drive out of town was quiet, the silence in the car a heavy, suffocating thing. Eli kept his eyes fixed on the winding, pine-lined road, his knuckles white against the steering wheel, his jaw a rigid knot. The only sound was the low murmur of the police radio, a constant crackle of static and clipped voices talking about a church bake sale and a lost cat. Maren, a portrait of focused professionalism, sat in the passenger seat, scrolling through notes on her phone, occasionally typing a quick memo, never once looking back at me. I stretched out in the back, trying to affect an air of bored ownership, but inside, I was coiled tight as a spring.
The closer we got to the river, the heavier the air felt, and not just from the oppressive, Southern humidity, though it was certainly thick enough to chew. It was that other kind of weight, the spiritual kind, the kind only I seemed to notice—like walking into a room where someone had just been violently screaming, except the sound was long gone, the echoes still clinging to the fabric. It was the crushing, palpable presence of trauma and finality .
When Eli finally turned off the paved road and onto a dirt path that cut through a dense thicket of tall pines and weeping willows, my skin began to crawl. I was picking up the scent now, the terrible, unique flavor of a fresh death: a mix of profound sadness and lingering confusion.
We pulled up to a small, isolated clearing. There were already two marked patrol cars and a white medical examiner’s van parked along the rutted path. Yellow tape—bright, almost insulting against the deep green of the foliage—fluttered weakly in a breeze that smelled faintly of river water.
I didn’t need to be told. The smell hit before the sight. It was a noxious cocktail: river mud, decay, thick algae, and something sour underneath—something profoundly wrong .
I pushed the heavy door open and stepped out onto the damp earth. The world tilted just a little, the familiar feeling of my own gravity shifting as the spiritual dimension overlapped with the physical.
Not her body—at least, not at first. Her ghost .
She stood on the edge of the shallow, murky water, where the mud gave way to the reeds. Her blonde hair was plastered against her pale cheeks, her clothes torn and soaked, hanging off her like wet paper. Her eyes were wide, frantic, fixed on me like a lighthouse beam, conveying a sense of running that had failed to stop even after death.
She noticed me instantly. They always do. She took a step toward me, a shimmering mirage in the dense heat.
“You came,” she whispered, her voice a dry, rasping sound that only vibrated in the air around me.
My throat tightened, raw with empathy and dread. I wanted to answer, to tell her my name, to ask her what she needed, but Eli was already barking orders to a uniformed deputy, his professional, protective mask firmly in place. Maren was pulling on a pair of latex gloves, her attention fixed on the scene. I forced myself to look away from the ghost, down at the ground, focusing on the living, on the heavy reality of the scene.
I followed Eli’s pointed gaze. The real body lay half-hidden in the reeds, caught up in the tangle of vines and debris where the current had finally deposited her. Same hair, matted with mud. Same torn clothes. Her face was a muted gray, her lips cracked and lifeless. I’d seen corpses before, in different states and different times, but it never got easier. Especially not when the ghost of the victim was hovering just a few feet away, silent, desperate, begging for something I didn’t know if I could give.
Eli squatted down by the body, his movements all business. “Female, early twenties. Looks like a college student, if the clothes are any indication. Missing from Pinehurst College, I bet.”
Maren clicked her pen, making a note. “Name’s Lila Garner . Reported missing last week after she didn’t show up home from a campus party. Parents thought she’d run off to the coast. Guess not.”
Eli shot me a sharp, defensive look, daring me to speak, daring me to comment on what he knew I saw. I didn’t. My eyes kept slipping back to the ghost, Lila .
She inched closer to me now, her mouth trembling, her ghostly hands held out in a silent plea. “He’s still here. Please. Don’t let him—”
Her voice cracked like static, the energy of her ghost fading as if she’d run out of batteries. Then she vanished entirely, snuffed out like a candle in a sudden draft. The loss of her presence was like a physical pressure dropping from the air, leaving me momentarily dizzy.
I swayed on my feet. Maren, ever observant, noticed the slight wobble. “You okay, Foster?”
“Fine,” I said quickly. Too quickly. The word was a lie, a tight knot in my chest.
Eli straightened up instantly, his mask of professionalism cracking. “He’s not fine, Maren. He’s playing one of his games, trying to get attention.”
I wanted to snap back, to rip into him for his callous dismissal, but the ghost’s broken plea— He’s still here —rattled around in my skull. I had to focus.
“What exactly do you mean by games, Detective Foster?” Maren asked, her eyes flicking between the two of us, a clear challenge in her tone.
Eli opened his mouth, clearly preparing to deliver a lecture on my mental stability and criminal record, daring me to interrupt him. And maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut, but I didn’t leave home for eight years just to sit quiet when a girl’s ghost was begging for justice.
“She talked to me,” I cut in, my voice low and determined.
Eli cursed under his breath, a sharp, ugly sound. Maren, though—she froze entirely, her latex-gloved hand hovering over her notepad. “The victim?”
“Her ghost. Lila. She was standing right there,” I said, pointing toward the reeds where the apparition had been. “She said… he’s still here .”
The words hung heavy in the damp air, changing the atmosphere from that of a simple discovery to something predatory and unresolved.
Maren’s brows furrowed, thoughtful, analytical. She wasn’t dismissing me; she was processing the data. “Here, as in… the immediate area? Or the town?”
I shook my head, frustration mounting. “Didn’t get the chance to ask. She disappeared. Her energy just cut out. Like something spooked her away.”
“Convenient,” Eli muttered, his voice dripping with acid skepticism.
I ignored him entirely, focusing only on Maren. “But she’s scared. Terrified. That level of fear doesn’t just fade after death; it’s burned into you . Whoever did this, she knew him. It wasn’t random.”
That earned me a sharp, dangerous glare from Eli. “Don’t. Don’t start spinning stories from nothing, Caleb. This is a crime scene, not a psychic hotline.”
“It’s not nothing, Eli,” I shot back, the anger finally bubbling over. “You think I like this? You think I want to stand here talking to people nobody else can see? This isn’t a choice for me, it’s a burden.”
The silence stretched out, thick and challenging. The only sound was the drone of the cicadas, the gentle lapping of the river water against the muddy bank, and the distant, constant crackle of radios.
Finally, Maren spoke, her voice quiet, a startling contrast to Eli’s fury. “What else can you tell us, Foster?”
I blinked at her, genuinely surprised. “You actually believe me?”
“I believe in information ,” she said, looking me dead in the eye, her expression entirely serious. “I don’t care where it comes from, as long as it’s useful and verifiable.”
For the first time since I’d rolled back into Ashwood Hollow, I felt a flicker of something other than resentment and dread. For the first time, I liked Maren Holt.
I crouched near the body, careful not to touch the scene, careful not to look directly into Lila’s empty, staring eyes. Instead, I closed mine, shutting out the suffocating light and the judging eyes of my brother, and focused entirely on the echoes . Sometimes, when a death is sudden and violent, the victim leaves behind a piece of their final moments, an emotional recording snagged in the air, waiting for someone to play it back.
At first, I felt nothing but the residual cold and the crushing weight of the place. Then—
Laughter . Distant, youthful, muffled, carried on the wind. Music . A cheap, tinny boom box. A girl’s voice singing along, tipsy, free, enjoying the moment.
The scene flashed into my mind, vivid and sharp: a dock, a bonfire, college kids laughing.
Then, suddenly, the joy cut out. A sudden snap , like a door slamming or a switch being thrown. Panic . Running footsteps, frantic and uneven. The sight of a muddy, root-tangled bank. The sound of water rushing nearby, getting louder.
And then, a terrible, desperate scream cut short. Silence. Just the heavy, sucking sound of mud and water.
I jerked back, gasping, the psychic backlash leaving me momentarily winded and nauseous. I opened my eyes, blinking against the harsh reality of the sun and the police tape.
Maren’s voice was sharp, immediate. “What happened, Caleb? Talk to me.”
I wiped my clammy face with my sleeve, the sleeve suddenly feeling heavy with sweat. “A party,” I said, forcing the words out. “She was at a party. Running from someone. Made it this far before…” I trailed off, gesturing vaguely toward the body and the reeds. “She was running hard. In a panic.”
Eli stared at me, his face pale with a mixture of disgust and disbelief. “You didn’t hear any of that,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “Not with your ears. You’re making it up. You saw the college ID, now you’re spinning a story.”
“Believe what you want,” I said, shrugging off the accusation, too exhausted to fight. “But you’ll find her shoes upstream . She lost one when she ran.”
He opened his mouth to argue again, his features twisted in fury. Then, one of the uniforms, a young deputy with a crew cut and wide eyes, called out, his voice echoing through the quiet clearing.
“Detective Foster? Detective Holt? Found something.”
We all turned. And there it was, caught in the reeds a few yards away, exactly where the muddy bank was steepest: a single, black-and-white muddy sneaker .
Eli’s face went white. The blood drained out of him so fast he looked instantly older, sallow and shaken. He didn’t look at me. He couldn’t. He just stared at the shoe, the physical, undeniable confirmation of my impossible story.
The investigation moved forward in a blur after that—photos, measurements, forensic technicians arriving, radios crackling with updates. I stayed off to the side, hands shoved deep in my pockets, trying not to stare at the ghost of Lila, who had reappeared near the water, a silent witness to the collection of her own remains.
Lila looked at me, her hollow eyes pleading, her voice barely a breath. “Don’t let him do it again.”
“I’ll try,” I whispered back, a promise whispered to the dead.
But she was gone again before the words left my mouth, her energy extinguished by the presence of the investigators.
When the body was finally bagged and loaded into the van, Eli turned on me. His face was tight, his voice dangerously low so the others couldn’t hear the family drama. “Don’t you dare interfere, Caleb. This isn’t some parlor trick for you to chase. This is real police work. Real lives. ”
“I know,” I said softly, the weight of Lila’s last moments still heavy on my soul. “That’s why I’m here. And for the record, I’m not chasing a parlor trick. I’m doing the only thing I can do.”
“You’re here because you don’t know when to quit,” he spat, and then he shoved past me toward the cruiser.
Maren lingered. She studied me for a long moment, unreadable as ever, but there was no mockery in her eyes. Only curiosity. And maybe—just maybe—a flicker of professional respect.
“You really saw her?” she asked, her voice hushed.
I nodded, the lie of my ability finally too heavy to carry.
She hesitated, then leaned in slightly, a conspiratorial movement. “If you get anything else… tell me. Not him. Me. ”
That caught me completely off guard. “Why?”
“Because Eli will shut you down to protect his own sanity and his badge. And I’d rather have too much information, no matter how strange, than not enough to catch a killer.”
Before I could answer, she turned and followed my brother, leaving me standing by the river. The smell of death, algae, and wet earth was still thick in the oppressive air, and I thought about the girl’s whisper. He’s still here.
If she was right, then Ashwood Hollow had more than just its usual, peaceful ghosts to worry about. It had a living, breathing monster walking the same streets as my brother.
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