Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I rapped the poster from the
bulletin board, and the papers live wet with adhesive under
my finger nail. Suspicion tightened my voice before I could
think the face in the poster was mine. Ellen grabbed
my wrist and said my name, as if that should
stop me. Alex Duantee, she said, and people in line
turned to watch. I shoved the torn sheet into my
jacket and said, whose idea is this? The click pressed
palms flat on the counter, and amagna to coffee machine
cleared his throat. The problem was simple and concrete in
those first seconds. My face on a missing person post
is stapled where the town leaves lost cat notes. I
moved on adrenaline and habits. I lived two blocks from
the gas station. I know the board and the way
the fluorescent light flickers above the pumps. I know Ellen,
the night clerk, but a coffee stain on her apron,
and the way she keys the register with her thumb ring.
I know Marcus because he takes me a picture when
he finds something that looks like a puzzle in the
next three sentences, I listed details, allowed to ground the others.
The post of paper was cheap, think rany. A top
right corner stamped and read with a date that read
two months from now. Saying the date out loud produced
a different sound in the room. A line of people exhaled,
face staid the same, while the town folded its attention
down to me. Suspecion was the first thing that governed
my hands. I had to catalog at how Maks held
the postop to my phone camera under desk lamp and
scroll for phurtos of me he had saved from years ago.
He that's you, and then not exactly. The words were
short clipped. I traced the scar along my right eyebart
in the photograph against the scar on the paper and
found it a lined but slightly deeper in the print.
Maccas leaned close and pointed at the pupils in the poster.
They reflected a light that didn't match any of my
old pictures. Look at the time stamp here, he said,
tapping the corner where faint red stamp read a date
two months later. I felt a shift, suspicion sliding into confusion,
and then a colder thought this couldn't be a prank
if the poster carried a future date. We worked until late.
Marcus set up a makeshift comparison rig, two phones, a lamp,
printed scale beside each face. We measured jaw angles and
scarred depth and freckle placement. Marcus muttered classifications and terms
lightings match blake, gray, echonoise. He moves like some one
who catalogs to field control. When he said that matches,
the scan from the county clipping, my chest heightened the confusion,
folding into a long county clipping. I asked. He pulled
up a catch file on his laptop and then he
went quiet. He doesn't ego unless he thinks he has
to protect something. His jaw set and he said, don't
you show that to Allan, don't you show any one
the past told me he was moving from caution to fear.
The next morning, I went back to the station before dawn.
I wanted the board under neutral light and fear witnesses.
The pompney unstowed the gravel and a thin rain smeared
the parking lot. Shri Fer Mears pulled up in his
truck while I was still walking from my building. He
stepped out and said, Alex Mercer, my name should have
felt like an anchor. He held a clipboard. I handed
him the torn poster. He flipped it over, flicked his pen,
and said, we have no record of this in despatch.
His voice had a professional flatness that didn't match the
worry in his eyes. Missus Halloway from the diner came
up the sidewalk with a folded paper. She pushed it
into my palm without waiting and said, don't stare. It
looks back. She kept her sentences short and fixed. Her
voice carried a warning intended to move me away from
the board. I folded the new piece into my pocket.
At the archive the afternoon, some made the stacks look
less like a shelter and more like a maze. I
moved through rows of box clippings while Marcus held the
flask light up on his phone like a lantern. We
found a clipping day to twenty eight, eight years earlier, a
photograph of a board identical lay out and a grain
new posa at the center with a different face. The archivist,
a woman with a precise bun, handed over a redacted
memo on type paper. She we keep this under lock,
request Marcus, we probably the archivist, watched me and then
pushed a thin folder across the table with sticky finger prints.
The memo fragment used language that read like a bureaucratic
instruction set. One line that was fully reducted said something
about faces being assigned and a process to replace. The
ward made a physical sound in my mouth when I
read it aloud. That was the moment doubt hattened into alarm.
Emotion shifted again. All arm push me to action. I
called Ellen, and she answered with a short sentence, we
didn't put those up. Her voice tightened once. Then she
added some one went through the back door last night.
Marcus interrupted from the doorway and said, give me the
storm lock was replaced last month. Ellen's reply was quick.
It was Sheriff knows. The conversation clipped in defensive, a
small confrontation in which names appeared repeatedly. Sheriff Fromires arrived
at my doyle that evening without knocking. He looked at
the printed memo in my hand, and his mouth compressed.
I need that, he said, I hesitated. He Alex, we
don't want this blown up online. He used the town's
safety as an argument but his hands trembled when he
took the paper. He left a terse warning stopped spreading panic.
When I went back to the board that night, a
new poster had been stapled and the space how decleared.
The photo showed me asleep in my bed. My head
turned to the side and had fallen across my ear.
I hadn't given any one that picture. I had not
sent photos of that night. I held the paper by
the corner and said aloud, who took this? Marcus had followed.
Alan stood behind the counter with her hands clenched. We
traded short lines. Marcus, did you no? I didn't touch
anything to night Marcus Ellen, I asked. Alan's jowl moved
around words. I swear I didn't he put that up?
She said. I was at the register. People walked in
and out. Shurer came by. Earlier, a stranger in a
hoodie had been rifling the bACC Alli trash. Earlier, a
man now gone. The three of us circled the board.
The air tasted of wet paper and exhaust. I slid
a thumb under the staple and tried to pull the
photo free. Ellen grabbed my arm and said, daunty to
that one. Her voice was low. Marcus's fingers were close
on my shoulder. He Alex look. He pointed at the
poster's edge. The paper fiber was different. The staples had
been pushed through with the serrated plier, not the station
stapler that was the mid chapter cliffanger. The post of
me asleep meant someone could photograph me in private or
replicate stage scene. I felt the emotion shift from alarm
to betrayal. Alex can teach trust. Marcus or Ellen base
purely on their denials. The evidence pushes me toward a
desperate need to control the next move. We split the
night into tasks. Marcus went to check the trash cans
for camera memory cards. I went back to my apartment
to see if any other prints had been placed on
my door. Ell unlocked the front door, looking like she
argued with herself about what to tell the regulars. My
apartment corridor smelled of detergent and old coffee. The lock
turned the same way it always did. My cheap digital
watch read three point two in the morning. The whole
way light was a cold bulb that buzzed. The door
had a single new steeple pinning a small rectangle of
paper to the scenter of the wood. I peeled it
off with slow cair and found a foot kpody cut cleanly,
a glued to the scrap. The pupil were slightly off center.
I called sheriff from mirrors and told him what we defound,
and he said bring that in. He arrived and took
the paper with glove fingers and said we can file
an incident report. The report was a single sheet with
stamped fields in a place for a badge number. When
I asked the deputy for copy, the deputy said were
redacted for investigation. Raymars's face tightened and he said, don't
go back to that board to night. His warning carried
the weight of some one who had already seen things
he couldn't explain. We went to the gas station together anyway.
Marcus carried a small lead flat light and an easy
lower he borrowed from a friend. He if this is
staged and catching it unraw. When we arrived, the board
had quadrupled and posters. They were arranged like a grid,
each one bearing subtle variations of my face. Some had
blurred mouths, some had smaller ears, some showed a faint
bruise along the jaw. Light from the pumps threw hard
edges across paper and nail heads. A man in a
maintenance jacket stood by the sewed color and refused to
meet my eyes. I said, who put these up? He
shrugged and said done to no. People pointed and took
pictures with phones. Ell and Alex stopped tearing them. Marcus
set the camera on a tripot and started shooting systematic frames.
He worked in short, efficient sentences, great one close up,
flush off. The tone in his voice was cataloging and
oddly steady, as if naming the sequence made the dangerous molder.
I started tearing posters anyway. My hands moved mechanically, ripping
staples and running fingers along paper edges. The posters reacted
under my fingers. The ink blood, a faint chemical odor rose,
and on one sheet the face changed mid wrapped, the
mouth opening wider to show a small dark coal. I
gripped a stack and heard cloth against my shoulder. Something
gripped me from behind in a hard, implacable hold. The
weld narrowed to the scent of diesel, and the pressure
of a hand at my throat. An onsen assailant forced
a poster over my face. A paper was damp and
the ink felt cold against my nose. Words blurred, and
the page and the image shifted in the photograph. In
the paper, I was being led by two hands toward
a van. I called at the paper with my free hand,
and the assailant tightened the grip. My breath hitched and
I felt blood hot on my lip. I knew then
that the posters did more than showfaces. They enacted. The
image under the light had changed from static printing to
a sequence. I could feel his pressure. I bit down
on a cry and felt Marx's elbow slam into the hold.
He shouted, let him go. Allen came around the counter
and grabbed a broom swinging. There were three short lines
of shouted exchange while bodies moved. Let go, get off him,
Call the sheriff. The assailant ran into the dark between
pumps and a van. As back doors slammed. I rolled away,
clutching the paper, my shirt soaked at the shoulder with
my sweat. The climax resolved in physical poems. I escaped.
I limped home with bleeding knuckles and paper fiber stuck
to my palms. My apartment door had a new, official
looking envelope wedged under it. Inside was a stumped incident
report and a short typed memo signed by Cherfer Mirrors.
The memo acknowledged the disturbance, but every third line had
blocks of black and queer words had been redacted. I
lifted the page, and the redactions were so precise they
felt intentional, not bureaucratic. Hereror Rae Mirrors came to my
door the next morning and stood on my step. I
did what I could. He said his hands were empty.
He put his weight in the threshold and said, leave
this alone. Kid out of town for a while. He
repeated his warning two times, and each repetition lost more
of the admonition and became flatter, as if he were
discarding a shape he could no longer hold. I recorded
a survival look that night, because writing names and times
felt like arma, I spoke into my phone under the
desk lamp its places the red stamp that read the future.
I described the grip at the pumps, the way the
printed mouth had opened, the way the paper had forced
an action. I said names allowed L. M. Marchus share
for Mirrus to make the record concrete. I ended the
law by staping my torn poster until binder I labeled
with the felt tip pen evidence. The label itself was
short and direct. When I locked, the bind of the
apartment felt smaller. The room did not change, but my
actions had. Three nights later I found the final scrap.
It was pinned to my apartment door under the pifol.
The colored paper the size of a thumbnail. I opened
the front door and pecked it up. The scrap held
one small eye printed from a different face. The Irish
color was rom It gleaned green instead of hazel. I
held it up to the light and re las The
reflection inside the people wasn't mine. The survival lock remained
on my phone and in the binderer, but the scrap
meant the process might be incomplete. I pressed the paper
flat against the wood and felt my fingers tremble. I
slid the scrap into an envelope, wrote to day's state,
and stamped it with a blunt pencil in dent. Then
I locked the door, and in the lock's metallic click,
I heard a decision. I would leave copies of the
binder in places I trusted, and I would keep the
original with me. The chapter ends with a concrete situational beat.
A knock at my door while I was turning off
a lamp. I froze with the envelope in my hand.
The knock came again, three short wraps. I set the
binder on the table and walked to the door. When
I opened it, there was no one on the landing,
but a single staple scrap of paper lay on the stair,
a fragment with the photograph of my mouth slightly ajar.
I slid it into my palm and shut the door.
The sound of the latch closing was the last thing
the chapped records. Mister Harger held the poster by the thumbtack.
When I reached the landing, his mouth moved, and I
heard my name in a voice that sounded like accusation. Suspicion.
Tightened my hands around the stair rail, but I could think. Alex,
he said, and put the paper closest so I could
see the face. The photograph was grainy, the glue wet
at the corners, and the face in the paper was mine.
Neighbors leaned out of doors behind me Hargrove and watched
with their arms folded. I shoved past him and grabbed
the poster. My fingers hit the tack and the paper shook.
I peeled it free, and the glow left a gracemerror
on my palm. Why is this on my door? I said?
Lell Hargrove kept his eyes on me. Some one pinned
it up an hour ago, he said, thought he should know.
His voice was an attempt at normal. There was no
apology in it. The poster was a photograph printed on
cheap paper, a hedgehok cropped too tight, phone numbers mired
by water stains, and a type line that read missing
in block letters. I pressed my thumb to the image
and felt the ink cliff slightly under my skin. The
scar on my right eyebrow matched the cut in the photo.
My watch drap dug into my wrist as I held
the paper, I could not tell if my pulse was
my own. Ellen stepped out from a door behind me, Hawgrove, Alex.
She said, a dune tea. Her voice stopped when she
saw the poster in my hands. She came closer and
reached for my arm. Allan's hand was small and cold.
She kept looking at the photograph like she expected. Some
seemed to run across it and reveal a trick. Ye
tore one down at the gas station, Remember, she said,
Her words landed sharp. I had ripped a poster from
that bullet and board two nights before. The paper had
stuck to my fingers. Then too, that memory was well
enough to taste the stair, will smell the bleach and
old cigarettes. A young man who lived cross from me
stood in the doorway with a coffee cap and watched
without moving. Was this put up after you left? He asked?
At ten? His question was a small demand for clarity,
I said, I was working a shift with Rage until Minnay.
I said the name to anchor the claim. The neighbor
nodded and closed his door slowly. I called Rage while
I held the porter over my kitchens and can run
cold water on the glue. Raj answered, on the sickond ring, Raj,
can you pull the footage from outside the gas station,
I asked, please, e I already grabbed it. You are
not coming to like what I found? He spoke fast.
This tax one leaves. I pressed my tongue to the
roof of my mouth. I was on a different side
of town, I said, I was at the tech lap.
The words were short factual. I walked back to the
landing and found Officer Ramira standing at the bottom of
the stairs with a flashlight off and his coat buttoned up.
He had an official pad and a bolt point. He
took the poster from my hands without touching the wet glue.
I'll log it, he said. He'd a routine things, name,
date of birth, last scene. His questions sounded practiced, I
answered in single line sentences, he wrote, without looking up. Well,
file a report, he say, But the way he said
it left the sentence half way between a promise and
the note to archive, where myers did not stay. He
left the pad on my kitchen table and told me
to come down if anything else shrewd up. I laid
the poster on my table and stared at the photograph.
The scar on the eyebrow was a small topographic detail.
The angle of the jaw comparable to mine. The hair
crop the same. A small asymmetry in the man matched
the way myllife cheap root minutely when I smiled, I
tried to think of someone who could have taken this
photograph of me without my knowledge, but the list was empty.
The only camera I die handed over was to Rage
for a project. Two nights before, I called Raj again
and asked him to meet me at eleven. The next morning,
I went to the gas station. The pump lights burned
within Greenishmere across the forecourt. Marla was behind the counter
counting money. She looked up and then down at the
bulletin board with a hand that trembled. The board was
covered dozens of posters, overlapped like shingles. Each one carried
a similar head shot, the same jawline and the saints gar,
but with small differences. One had an arrow or nose,
one had a faint frockle near the lip. One showed
a different tilt to the head. People milled around the pumps,
underat the notices in small clusters. Marla, I said, who
put these up? She kept counting with the metal clicker
and did not meet my eyes. They were there when
I opened, she said. She reached up and tapped a
poster with a finger dip. The paper gave under her
nail and left a dark stripe on her skin. Do
you want me to take him down? She aughed, voice flat.
Ellan came running up with a paper clutch to her chest.
Her face had smudges of yesterday's mascare alex. She said,
they put one of me up. She spread the poster
on the hood of a park car. This photograph was
different from mine in the way her hair fell across
her forehead, but the features were hers, unmistakably, her mola
on the left cheek, the way her left ibrow rose
when she listened. Her hands shook when she touched the
edge of the paper. I didn't he give anyone my photo,
she said, I didn't he. Her sentence fell apart. Cluster
of townspeople gathered. Marla, who takes these photos? The men said,
who's doing this? Some one else muttered about pranks and teenagers.
I said, these are not the same photo de rea variants.
I pointed at the slight differences. Look at the nose here,
look at the freckle here. Raj pushed through the people
and held up his phone. I pulled the surveillance from
the gas wall and from the pump cameras. He said,
watch this. He set the phone in the hood and
handed it to me. The clip showed a figure approaching
the boarder too. In the moment the figure moved with
my gait, the coat cap and hands match what I
would wear. The camera angle was low, grainy. The figure
reached up and tacked a poster. The time sent breaches
Rominus to zero M. I slid my finger down the
screen and then looked at Raj. I was at the
lab at that time. I said, you can check access lugs.
Rag bit his lip. I did. He said, ye, bow Jean,
you bawjat Atoo's Rominus one. You were still loved in
His voice was precise. Some one who looks like he
posted them at two point two. He paused and added,
the movement of the hands is off the way the
right shoulder comes up when it pins. It's not the
same tension you have, he sounded and settled. Officer Ramiroz
returned that evening and sat with me at a dinerh
Birth near the pumps. The dinah was half emptied and
the vinyl screep When he shifted. He put a small
folder on the table and slid it toward me. The
top page was redacted by heavy black bars. The writing
I could read was bureaucratic and click reports similar cases.
The paper smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. We saw a
passing like this five years ago. Remirors. Without meeting my eyes,
he tapped the reaction. We called them face incidents. Then
we never solve them. His fingers left a circle of
grace and the folder. What do you mean face incidents?
I asked. I've felt heat at the base of my
neck and tried to keep my even. Ramirez set the
flush light on the table and flaked it on briefly,
so the beam ran across the reduction boxes. Someone gets posted,
he said, Then some one else gets posted photographs that
look like the victim movement around the town. People claim
to have seen a person. Sometimes the person has found
later missing. Sometimes they show up again changed. We don't
Tea have a cause. He the last sentence slowly. Is
there anything I can do? I asked. Ramires tapped another
line that was legible. Rul, do not confront posters alone.
Dawn Tea go alone, he said, and catalog everything, take photos,
note dates who saw them. His voice was flat. He
slid the folder back across the table. We can file reports,
we can patrol, but there's no guarantee. I stared at
the redactions until the black boxes look like windows shut tight.
That night, I went back to the board alone. The
pumps were dark. My footsteps were loud against the cracked concrete.
The wind smelled of oil and old rubber. I had
a knife in my pocket and my backpack on my shoulder.
I told myself the objective and short sentences. Teered down
the poster's collect semples, bring them to wredge. When I
reached the board, my hands were steady. I grabbed the
edge of a poster and ripped the paper came down
in a long For a second, the photograph looked wrong
in my hand. The head and image tilted inward, and
the mouth micro adjusted if it were responding to the
motion of being ripped. My fingers slipped on wet adhesive.
The paper peeled back, and the face in the photograph
moved its eyes to track the rep I froze. The
board hummed with neon and the sound of a distant truck.
My knees locked. I shoved the paper away, and it
flottered to the ground in a wet carl face printed
on the paper shoe a blink I had not expected
to be possible. The blink was a small mechanical contraction,
an iffy twitch, but it was a change I could
not have imagined an ink. I ran. When I reached
my building, my shout. It was damp at the collar.
I expected people to be awake and accusing. Instead, the
wholeway lights were on, but the neighbors moved as if
nothing had happened. One woman walked past me carrying a
grocery bag and said morning, Alex, like we were strangers.
I ran my thumb through the torn poster in my
back pocket. The fiber is stuck under my nail and
left black along the cuticle. I pulled my keys and
fumbled them into the lock. The torn poster had a
new scene where the rip had been mended within transparent adhesive.
The glue looked fresh, and my thumb left a slick
smere Ellen came to my door an io later and
sat on my front step. Her hair was tied back,
her hands were folded tight in her lap. Alex, I
found another one in my mail box. She said it
was inside an envelope with a stamp I've never seen.
She slid a paper across my table. I recognized the
paper stock. It was from the same run as a
post is at the board. I checked the postmark and
found a town office address from a neighboring district. Who
would have access to that printing? I asked. Ellen put
both palms flat on the table and said, I done
to know. I scared Alex. I can tea sleep. Her
voice was Rag came by that night with a laptop
and a set of hard drives. He looked thin under
the light of the screen and kept tapping the desk
when he spoke. I clipped every camera within two blocks,
he said. I stabilized the footage and ran facial recognition.
The software flags a match with you, and then marginal
matches with Ellen and two other people in the last month.
He slaughtered a drive into the laptop and pushed it
toward me. But this a glitch. The metadator time coat
is wrung in a way that suggests hampering. Someone deliberately
offset the time stamps on certain clips. His hands moved
quick and precise. Either someone is manufacturing albis or someone's
changing the cameras. He did not look up. We argued
for solid ten minutes about whether to release the footage
to the public. Ellen, we post this and someone will
find them, Raj. If we post, they will hide the
evidence or escalate. I said, what other choice do we have,
and my voice was short. The three of us traded
lines so fast they ran into each other. We have
to be careful, Raj. We have to do something Allan.
We have to collect everything and not go near the
board alone, I said. The conversation ended with no resolution.
Rage tapped his temple and said, when more oddity. He
brought up a frame from a camera across town, a
figure in a hoodie face obscured by shadow holding a
roll of posters. The figure turned to the camera and
the face it showed was not mine. It was a
face I did not recognize, and then na image glitch
and the frame when a store revealed my features for
a half second, Rag leaned back and rubbed his jaw.
I don't to have an explanation, he said. Two nights later,
Officer rouma Is knocked on my door. He held a
small envelope and did not sit. We found this alarm
from at downtown, he said. He opened his palm and
showed me a foote copy of a torn poster with
a stamp on the back. Candy archives, yu udie catalog things,
he said, start with gates, locations, write them down, Alex
keat the originals, bring me copies. He folded the paper
and placed it back into the envelope. There may be
a practical reason for keeping copies. He tapped the side
of the envelope once and left. I started a log
that night. I labeled entries with place, date, time, witness names,
and a short physical note about the paper stock and
glue type. I took photographs with a neutral background and
logged the fall names. The log became methodical gas station
bore two hundred two m witness Marla, apartment door three
hundred five a m witness Mister Hargrove, mail books envelope
nine hundred ten m witness Celler. Each line was an
attempt to turn a chaotic event into sequence I could control.
The act of writing was a small relief that required
no metaphors, only strokes of ink and the scrape of
a pen. On the third day after I started the lock,
Raj colled and said he'd he found the mis match
in the lab axis locks. There's a badge swipe at
the lap at one hundred seven m that shows you read,
he said, But the cam outside the lab shows you
entering at twelve fifty seven m, not one hundred seven.
There's a ten minute gapway are handlers were off. He
sent me an email with screenshots. I ran my thumb
across the printed time codes. The numbers were precise and
on sympathetic. Does that mean, I asked, rag and hailed
and led up the breath. It means either someone duplicated
your badge or someone duplicated you for a short window.
I don't know which, but the hardware logs are clean
on our end. If someone's manipulating cameras and badges, the
wreathrower either word thorough like he was describing mildew. I
went back to Morrow that night and asked her about
the board. She was wiping a counter with a dirty rag.
They keep showing up, she said. Sometimes they take them down,
sometimes they reappear. People talk in the morning like it
was always there. She looked at me and said, Alex,
you should leave them alone. Her sentence was flat and urgent.
Just stay away from that wall. At night, she pushed
a paper cup into my hand like it was a talisman.
At two in the morning the following night, I didn't listen.
I told myself I would take samples, not confront the image.
I carried nitrug gloves, a small roll of clear tape
and a pocket knife. The pumps were silent. I crouched
in the shadow of the dumpster and pulled the edge
of a poster. This time, I planned the motion cat's
the top edge fold under slide tape across the back
so the fibers would stay together. I reached and slipped
my fingers into the adhesive. The poster resisted. It held
with a grip that pulled at my finger nails. When
I yanked a face and the photograph shifted its mouth
into a shape at master word I could not place.
My stomach clenched, and I threw the poster down. I
heard a corstart at the street and footsteps that approached fast.
I turned and saw silohet moved near Pumphrey, a figure
that mirrored the way I had tensed. The silhouette stopped
when it saw me, and then did not move at all.
I ran again, faster than before. My lungs burned. I
reached my building and slammed the door inside. My torn
samples had reassembled themselves. A sim of clear tape was
placed across the rip, and the paper lay flat as
if irond. My fingers trembled and left dark just along
the edge. When I tried to pick at the tape,
I pressed my nail into the adhesive and it stuck.
I heard a soft knock at my door, one long
too shore. I did not answer. The knock came again
and then stopped. I sat at my kitchen table with
the log and the photocopp is spread in front of me.
My hands moved with deliberate slowness. I recorded another entry
gas station board night attempted to remove a sample compromised.
I set the page down and listened outside. Someone laughed
in the distance, a single high note that carried and
then cut off. I picked up the fern to call
Officer Ramirez, but my thumb hovered over the screen instead.
I started a new list rules. Rule one, do not
confront posters alone. Rule two photograph before touching ruul free,
Always bring a witness. The lists read like instructions, but
felt like vows. The next morning, Ramirez called he another poster,
a sighting near the river walk. I wrote the location
down as he spoke, there is something else, he said.
You should know. The report mentions a witness whoes or
she saw you post the flyer. He added the sentence slowly.
She she watched you put it up and walk away.
She signed a statement. I put the pen down and
stared at the ink. What are you asking me to do?
I asked. Ramirez's reply was instructive rather than warm. Keep everything, catalog,
share copies with me, and of rage, don't take me
witnesses without me present. And most of all, if a
post or changes while you are retouching it, back away
and leave it. He paused, File everything, keep the originals,
will try to patch a pattern together. The alignment quiet.
He added, almost as an afterthought, that Alex duntego after
it'll and then the call clicked off. I closed the logan,
put the photocoppa is in a folder. I sat up
and turned on a small recorder I keep in my
drawer for notes of red light blinked. My throat felt
while I spoke into it. In short, measured sentences, I said,
gas station bore, attentive removal, evidence of mobility and printed
face adise is inconsistent. Witnesses contradict location and time. I
listed names and times, and the unusual details about the
glue in the way the first grass micro adjusted. I
ended by saying Officer Ramirez reported another sighting at the riverwalk.
I'm going to cattle out the address he gave. I
set the recorder down and reached for a pen. The
phone buzzed on the table with a message from Radge
Stop don te go alone. I put the pen to
paper and wrote the address from mirrors had given the
final line I wrote before the chapter close was a
practical motion. I folded the lock, slid it into my
backcack checked my knife, and left the apartment with the
recorder turned on in my pocket. The flashlight caught the
top row of the bulletin board. First. I saw my
dow line in every rectangle, and the lamp going off
gave me a metallic taste in my mouth. Suspicion tightened
my hands. Before I spoke, I checked the nearest poster
edge with a finger tip and felt wet glue pole
away from paper. What is this? I said? In the
word came out robb. Because the posters were not just similar.
There were variations in my face, hair length, a different
scar here, a different shadow. I had come back to
the gas station to prove I wasn't he losing my head? Instead,
I found the whole boarder plastered. At midnight and a
man turning a flashlight on me, like I had been
stealing a car radio. I kept my voice lower. I
didn't you put these up, I said, because saying anything
else would have sounded like a plea. The night tendant
stepped out from under the pump canopy. He had a
baseball cap, a thin jacket, and a clipboard close to
his chest like a shield. He pointed to beam at
one poster and then at me. The beam made my
eyes water. These were here when my shifts started, The
attendants said, I found them like that. His voice was flat,
not accusatory, but his grip on the clipboard tightened. I
should have been furious first, instead of felt anger. Break
out of suspicion and pull me forward. I reached foot
the edge of up posted to slide a free and
check the photograph. The thumb ducks scraped under my finger nail.
He cleared his throat. You can't be tearing things down here,
he said. He my name when he read my face,
but he didn't know me. The beam of his flashlight
landed on my shoulder. He saw the canvas jacket with
the missing button, the crack watch on my wrist, the
thin silver chain, tucked under my shirt, the things I
carried every day. He saw some one who could be blamed.
I tried to pull the poster loose with one hand.
The tac didn't he budge. Someone beaped a horn in
the parking lot. The car idled with a passenger watching
the pumps from under the neon. Ellen's silwit sat rigid
behind the wheel. I had told Ellen I would come alone.
I had meant to check the boat quietly and leave
evidence for myself. Now she stepped from the car and
came in tight quick strides. Her breath fogged in a
small cloud by the open door. Alex Ellen, and she
use my name like a rope. What are you doing here?
She had a coat over her arm, and briefly as
all light reflecting off fabric under her sleeve. That small
flush changed the tone of the night. She walked straight
to the board and smooth her palm over a poster,
as if checking for texture. I pulled my hand away, Ellen.
I tried to explain that I'd been following Prince on
the edges of posters, that I thought the paper glue
might hould a clue. I stopped when the attendant bent
and plucked a poster off the board. He pinched the
thumb tack and the papers one toward him like a
loose tooth. He held it up so we could see.
You tell me, then, he said, does this look like
someone who ought to be out here tearing posters down?
He turned the poster, and the face looked different in
the lamp light. It had my cheek bone and the
tiny scar on my right eyebrow, but the hair and
the photograph swept over a small white line near the
left eye, a crescent of paleness I'd done to have.
I reached for it, as if touch could make the
photographs suddenly right. Mister Hargrove's was cut the night like
a tired bell. He had been a fixture round the
pumps for years, a narrowly morning paper runner, and a
man who liked to stand near the board to see
who came and went. He had one of those faces
that falls into the groom of a town. Alex, he said.
When he said my name, he did not look at me. First,
he looked at the poster, and then at the attendant,
and his eyes narrowed into a question. He held his
jaw as if deciding whether to side with me. Or
with the image. Allan stepped in. She I found it
one soon into my coat, in a voice that was
too calm. She pulled her sleeve and showed a corner
of paper stished into the lining. The paper was damp.
I thought it was lint, she said, I thought it
was trash. My hand trembled when she pulled the scrap free.
The image in the scrap had an eye that was
t mine. She handed it to me. The papers meld
of gas and salt. We stood there with three different
proofs of the same thing. The bore, the scrap in
Ellen's hand, and the attendant holding a poster like evidence.
The attendants danced changed. When I said, mister Hargrove, you've
been around here. Did you see these earlier? His mouth
opened and closed. I clocked in and they were all ready.
He started and then stopped. He scraped his knuckle against
his neck. The knight felt too small for the collection
of proofs. I wanted to carry each one back to
police station and leave them on a day. Elam wanted
that too, for Joe sat in a line that made
a crease in the side of her mouth. Then let's
go now, she said, let's take these to the sheriff.
If they are faked, put them in evidence. She sheriff,
like a command, and not like hope. We drove in
silence to the Sheriff's office. The fluorescent lights inside the
lobby buzzed with a ladden constant. Tom Sheriff Cold, while
sat behind a desk that smelled faintly of old coffee
and plastic. He had the coffee stain on his sleeve
and the slow patience of a man who'd been listening
to the same complaint for years. He listened as I
set the posture on the desk. We need these cataloged,
I said, we need someone to look at them. Sweated
formed along my hair line. Sheriff Cold will open the
locked drawer without a sound, and produced a small metal
box with the padlock. He set it in the desk
like it was the normal thing to do. We've even
collecting these, he said. Not all of them are recent.
Some have been impounded. We fold them, we foul them,
that's our record. His hands were steady while he spoke,
but his eyes moved to the coroner were the fluorescent
light flickered. He did not look embarrassed. He looked like
a man doing an administrative duty. He wanted some one
else to carry. I asked why I panted them. Caldwell hesitated,
because people coming into clam missing and then things escalate.
The answer made no sense. We done to post them
publicly unless it's necessary, he added. He pulled a neat
stack of folded posters from the box and set them
between us like a brick wall. Mister Hargrove came with
a shopping bag full of flires. He laid them out
on Coldwall's evidence table. The fliers were older, with faded
dates and coffee spots. Hargrove's fingers moved over the paper
with a kind of careful reverence. I recognized the top one,
a missing person flyer from nineteen ninety, now aim with
a face I didn't den, and then in the lower
corner a blurred suggestion that could be my jaw line. Hargrove,
we found these in the attic of the diner last month.
I figured they were old. I didn't to think. His
voice trailed, and he looked at me as if making
a direct pology could fix a puzzle. The stack grew
under our hands, fliers from different years, different hands, different
telephone numbers crossed out and written colt Will slid a
magnifier across the desk and pointed at tiny stamps along
the edges, somehow dates stamped by hand, some hadding smears
where someone had tried to darken an eye. The more
we laid them out, the more a patent formed than
the margins. A repeating set of face angles, the same
tilt of the head, a similar crop Hargrove's thumb rested
on a flyer from two decades before. I found this
behind a wall in the old boarding house, he said.
At first I thought it was a family's photograph, but
then he coughed and left the sentence unfinished. He didn't
he need to finish it. The image was already speaking,
my cheek bone, emerging like a ghost in a college
of faces and dates. Someone pushed up in the office door.
Then a deputy with a clipboard came in and said,
sheriff paperwork from the pump station. He set a Manila
folder on the table. Inside, beneath the standard forms was
a single fold deposed to stamp for the date three
weeks from there, I felt the floor tilt under me
in a way I could name dread not an abstract orf,
but a physical lurch. The printed date was neat and official,
a blocky stamp used by the county. The photograph on
that poster was cropped to an eye, and the eye
did not belong to me. I picked up the future poster.
The paper was cold. I turned it over to read
a small print. There was a case number and a
tiny note in a sheriff's pen leave on file. There
was no signature. The deputy shrugged, We file what's brought in?
He said, Sometimes people burn through their grief and handless things.
We log it and move on. His voice had the
tone of someone with citing procedure to sue the stranger.
My thinking changed at that moment. Suspicion had driven me
to the pump, anger pushed me to the sheriff's office.
Now something sharper, A fear map from logic took over.
If a poster could have a date stamped in the
future and be already in official hands, then some one
in the town had the means to predict or to
set an event in motion. That was no longer a
private nuisance. That was a mechanism with people on both
sides of it, Folks who cataloged dividence, and folks supplied
the paper. We argued, Allan spoke in short lines. Then
why are you holding them, she asked, while lock them away.
Caldwell answered with the administrative lines about liability and community panic.
Mister hargo, We did this to keep folks calm. We
thought if we had prooved, we could stop rumors. Why
didn't he think it would he stopped? He had a
habit of pausing at the exact place where confession began.
He kept handing us things cold well. You kept coming
in with flyers and stable papers. We logged them. We
never thought to ask coup at them on the boards,
because then we do have to tell people. We couldn't
ease stop it. That was a small, practical sentence built
out of a larger emission. My anger moved into a
steady cold clarity. If the Shriff's office was filing these
as evidence instead of removing the cause, then some one
inside the system had chosen containment over prevention. I asked
for the lock box key. Caldwell studded me and then
pushed the padlocked box across the desk. The metal was
heavy than I expected. We opened it together. Inside were
folded posters, negatives, and strips of microfilm taped in a
precise line. My hands shook as I unfolded a post
a dated from five years ago. The photograph had been
me touched with microscopicing strokes along the pupil. There were
strips of film with face that overlapped like tracing paper.
I could see how if someone had the originals with
the plates, they could make new papers that looked like
old ones. Hargro clicked his tongue. We found a box
of plates at the diner when they tore the wall out.
I thought it was the owner's stuff. We kept it
in the back until someone said to give it to
the sheriff. I didn't know what else to do. His
voice carried a small, rural blundness. It meant he did
not want the consequences of what he admitted. Allan folded
her arms tightly. We had proof and still no immediate fix.
Called well we done, tea of the staffing to run
a full investigation. We contain what we can. We logged
the items and we tried to put a name to them.
That sentence arrived with the weight of a palsy. It
didn't to help it only explained the mechanics of inaction.
I left the evidence room with a single folded scrap
crumpled in my pocket. It was a tiny piece of
paper that had belonged inside someone's coat or hand. In
the daylight io as that followed, I went back to
the pumps and watched the board through the frame of
a convenience store window. People walked by, and I marked
who glanced at the posters and who did. The attendant
waved her regular with a nod elan brought me coffee
in a paper cup, and slid passenger seat without taking
off her coat. A mid day I couldn't stand it.
I walked back on to the forecourt with the scrap
and folded and shoved it visibly into the center of
the posted faces. I ripped down a fresh poster in
front of ten people who had stopped to watch. The
photograph under the flyer was not my face. It was cropped, mismatched,
and the eyes were misaligned with the mouth. My hands
were shaking. I held the torn poster up. Someone in
the crowd said, you ripped that down. A woman I
recognized from the diner, Marla, took an involuntary step back Alex,
she called out, but the tone was not one of support.
It was a town sound, accusation softened by the way
to share disbelief sheriff called what came out from the
office a shadow longer in the nun sun. You can
Tea be tearing that down in public, he said, and
his voice had the same bureaucratic flatness he used in
the office. I said, look at it, look at the eye,
look at this. I held the torn scrap pyre. People
leaned and like they could make the photograph tell them
the truth by effort. This isn't tea right, Ellen, this
isn't ta yours. Her words were quick and clipped. The
sheriff moved toward me. Alex calmed down, he said, He
moved like a man trained to guide an upsite animal
back into a pen. I should have left when he
said it. Instead, A snapped, you have coppers in your files,
I said, you have plates, you have dates stamped in
the future. Who authorized this, Coldwell? Who decided to let
it keep happening? My voice was louder than I meant.
Hargrove muttered behind me. I told you we'd seen wide things,
he said. Coldwell barked enough, you were trespassing and causing
a disturbance. If you don't leave, I'll have you taken
him for disorderly conduct. Several people in the small crowd
muttered in agreement. Their faces slid in front of me
like a net. The feeling moved through me from anger
to a small, hot panic. I pushed past the sheriff
with a brief flare of motion and ran. I ran
down the alley behind the station, hand shoved into my
jacket pockets. I could hear forss dim behind me in
a sharp, sudden sound like paper hitting asphalt. When I
turned the block later, my breath came ragged and my
hands trembled uncontrollably. I expected the photograph i'd stripped to
be pinned in the middle of the forecourt. I expected
witnesses to shout about the image they'd seen. Instead, when
I went back with Ellen an hour or later, a
poster i'd rereaped was gone. The attendant at the pump
looked at me blankly. That didn't happen, he said, There
was no vit, No one ripped anything. Are you all right?
His words were simple. People in the fore courts were
starting to look at me with restricted eyes that asked
if I had snapped. Alan's face went still. She touched
my arm and said, Alex, did you, And then she
stopped because she couldn't find the thread of the air
low confrontation in her memory. I'd pictures on my phone
from the fight. I pulled them out and showed them
to Ellen. The images were blurry, but the rip in
the poster was visible in a single frame. Ellen's fingers
brushed the screen and the frame folded up and like paper.
She squinted at the pixels and then looked up at
me with a blankness that heurrot. I didn't ee remember that,
she said. Her words had shrunk into a thin reed
of disbelief. We went to the clok who worked the
countil late at night. He'd a watch from the doorway
to previous evening. He examined my photographs and frowned. I
was here, he said, I didn't he recall anything like that.
His manner suggested he genuinely could not place the event.
The billboard in the forecourt was full again with fresh posters,
each one bearing a face that was almost mine and
almost not. The clerk tapped a thumb against the glass
there have been a lot of posters lately, he said.
People get worried about missing folks. We pin them up
on this stick. People dawned. He always noticed details. His
explanation had the blundness of someone who'd he made simplifying
decisions for years. I kept one scrap. It fit in
the palm of my hand, creased and damp from when
Ellen had found it in her coat, under a hallogen
lamp at the edge of the parking lot. The eye
printed on that scrap looked like a different person. It
had a flock of grayil on the iris I have
never seen in any mirror. When I pressed it to
my skin and the light hit paper fibers at a
certain angle, I could see a hairline notch in the
eyebrow that was not mine. The scrap was a witness
that refused to be raised. That night, I recorded a
note into my phone in a shaking voice and said
everything in short, checked sentences. I said where the posters were,
who had them, what dates I had seen in the
sheriff's files, and where mister Hargrove had found his flyers.
I said that my photograph had been used as if
it were a blank. People could write on. I said
the word that began the season from me, suspicion. I
said it like a prayer, and then deleted the recording
twice and started again. The next morning, Sheriff cauld Will
call me into the office. He closed the door and
sat opposite hands folded alex, he said, naming me like
a ledger entry. We had a good talk with the
town this morning. People want to feel safe. His voice
had the same bureaucratic calm as before, but his eyes
were different, old or tired. He pulled a folded document
from a drawer and set it between us. There's a
place where this started, he said. Back when the mill closed,
some one began making replacement posters for folks who never returned.
It's bread. We tried to manage it. We failed for that.
I'm sorry. His apology was local and specific. It was
not a confession that excused Tom. Hargrove leaned in the
door frame. He we thought it would help them grieve.
We thought if there was a place where names were kept,
things would stop spirally. He rubbed his thumb along the table,
as if feeling the history there. Caldwell, we collected Blate's
Alex because we wanted to study them. We wanted to
see if there was a pattern. We wanted to know
who was making them. His mouth tightened, Who was making them?
I asked? The room fell into a small silence that
felt deliberate. Kalvwar looked at Hargrove and then at Ellen
and said, we traced a batch to a printer on
the edge of town. He retired five years ago. His
name was J. Kessler. He kept the old presses people
he liked to print memorials. The name landed like a
heavy stone in water. I had an image of some
one hunched over a table, rubbing ink along a plate.
We went to the printer's shed at the edge of town.
The door stuck when Ellen pushed it, and a smell
of oil and old paper rolled out. Inside were metal place,
statle like sleeping bodies, a press with a long lever
at a low table where someone had set photographs were cutting.
The press had a footprint worn into the concrete. A
small calendar pin to the wall stoped at a year.
I did not expect. There were coffee rings on a massingjar.
The place was so ordinary it made my stomach drop.
Hargrove clicked on a battery lamp, and we could see
the plates. They were labeled with date's, crop settings, and names.
Someone had been cataloging ut but like an amateur hypographer.
Under one plate was a notebook with handwriting and tight
slanted print. Kessler's entrance were tidy and repetitive list of
Prince times and a single odd notation that repeated in
several dates. Correction apply. That phrase had the mechanical coldness
of a shop lock in me. Someone had intentionally altered faces.
We found negatives carefully slid into paper sleeves. One sleeve
had my name, another sleeve had the future date. The
negatives were not supernatural objects. They were workmen, like strips
of films, scretched and touched by human hands. Someone had
uced them to make posters. The process was loked take
enough that I could imagine it a person sitting with
a magnifier filling in a people cropping a chin, stamping
a date. It was human, which made the harm more deliberate,
not less. We brought the negatives to Coldwell. He looked
at them and made a small decision in plain sight.
He broke the plate for the future dated poster by
striking at once with the heel of his hand. A
plate cracked along a vein of metal, and the sound
echoed in the evidence room. This ends, it called well,
and the words were heavy with finality. Hargrove nodded, Ellen,
sat down on a folding chair and put her head
in her hands. The destruction of place did not RaSE
what had already been printed and spread. I had to
know if the town's memory had been tampered with, or
if people had simply accepted as strange process was at
work and moved on. We went back to the forecourt
at dawn, when only the clock fished for lottery tickets,
and a bicyclist pause to read a poster. The board
had fewer faces. The morning sun bleached the edges of
paper and made colors dull. Some one had removed a
row while we slept, A boy of about ten walked
up and tapped a poster with his finger. Is this
a wonted poster, he asked the clerk. The clerk smiled
and said, no, son, it's a missing notice. We keep
them up here in case some one remembers. The boys
stumbled left a greasy circle on the paper. I watched
the child as if he could anchor the world back
to a human scale. He read and then tossed a
pebble in a puddle, and the bright splosh felt like
an answer to an unspoken question. Weeks later, the posters
stopped appearing in crowded runs. The sheriff cap plates in
a locked box, but also began making public notes. A
town meeting, a community review of old cases, an offer
of counseling. Some people said it was too late. Others,
like Hargrove, came forward with more old flies and offered
to help catalog them for a public occave rather than
a private drawer. The town's actions changed from concealment to recording.
Memory did not snap back all at once. I still
had new lines on my face when I shaved, and
I still checked the mirror for a notch in the
eyeboro that belonged to someone else. Allan stopped sleeping in
a neat line. She started to keep the porch light
on and make a pot of coffee. In the small layers.
She developed a habit of checking her coat pocket more
than necessary. Hargrove visited more and left me piles of
old newspapers folded under his arm. Sheriff cold Well handled
inquiries with a professional flatness that occasionally cracked into simple
human apology. We never found evidence that all the prince
had come from one malice alone. Kessler's press had been
the origin of a major batch, but some plates predated him.
Some negatives were cut and reprinted in different towns. The
full width of how the postos spread was messer than
any single culprit. It looked like a long series of
choices and omissions. Kindness that became theater, grief that became
a craft. Officials who opted a law rather than to
dismantle that messy truth was worse and more fixable. At
the same time. In the final week, I arranged a
short public meeting. I read aloud from the notebook we
found in Keslos Shed and from Caldwell's lock. I showed
photographs of plates and negatives and described how the dates
could be stamped and how eyes could be redutched. People listened.
They argued. There was a cluster of rapid exchanges, three
or four people pushing and cutting into voice where hargrove.
We thought it would help and called well answer. We
did what we thought would keep order, and Ellen you
hid it and someone got hurt. They traded short lined
until the quieted. The argument was human and audible. It
changed I then the posters themselves had stoped making the
town and saying. Some faces still turned up in small,
isolated pockets, but the flow sloaded. The sheriff's office put
photographs in a public file rather than a close box.
They posted explanations in the diner and the library, a
note describing were to take a missing person report and
here to call. People began to pinhandrate and notice rather
than printed sheets, as a way to show that the
town would look as a neighbor, not as a cattle loader.
I kept the torn scrap with the impossible eye. I
glued it into the back of my notebok, under a
page where I listed dates and nanes. It had to
look at it because of his evidence that someone had
fold it acceptable to alter people's faces as if they
were labels. It also reminded me of the moment I
pushed away from the sheriff and ran. That failure and
their action sat together in a notebook like proof of
what I'd been willing to risk. In the end, the
biggest change was small and ordinary. Ellen and I went
to the bulletin board one morning and took down every
printed poster that matched no current report. We set them
on a folding table and let the paper soak in
a barrel, slow burning calls until they blackened and curled.
Argrove and Sheriff Coldwell supervised while the town gathered a
small unofficial committee to watch the pages burn. The burning
was not a ritual, It was a practical gesture. Destroyed
the old prince published the names in a registry. It
stopped the private alteration of faces. When the last edge
went black, I folded this scrap into my palm and
put it into my pocket. I had what I needed,
the proof we could act, the memory we refused to erase,
and a record of the town's choices. The postos dwindled
to nothing like a nuisance ending. People remembered some things
and forgot others. Some of the older fliers were sent
to an archive at the county library with detailed notes.
The Sheriff's office agreed to stop filing them. Priderly. I
did not get my face back in the mire of
the day after the burning. There was no cinematic correction,
but the signs in town changed. The clerk stopped tapping
his thumb on the glass when someone pointed at a poster.
Allan stopped checking her coat pockets in public, as if
she expected paper to fall out. Mal Hargrove came by
with a thermos and hounded it to me, like a
man who'd been given a job to do. The last
scene I offer here not dramatic. At dawn, I stood
by the bush elter on the main road with the
back back and the folded notebook. Ellen brought a plastic
cup of coffee and held it out. Stay in touch,
she said, Alex, stay with people who know you. I
handed her the scrap, folded small and she took it
as if it were a relic. She slid it into
a small envelope, and slid that envelope into a drawer
where the town would not burn it or file it
would out notice. I boarded the bus, with the rest
of my life not fixed, but quieter. As the town receded,
the gas station's neon shrunk to a small pulse. I
thought of the cracked plate and the magnifier of Sheriff
Caldwells apology and hargrove Vest's slow confessions. I thought of
Ellen's hand on my arm when I ran, and of
the crowd's faces when I held up a torn poster.
Those images are a ledger of choices. They ended in
a set of practical acts. Break the plates, make the
records public, burn. What can tee be trusted? I do
not claim a neat moral recommation. I claim only that
we stopped a mechanism and made the town an answer
for how it had let the mechanism run. At the
counter line, the driver called out the town name, and
the bus took a slow left. I slid the notebook
into the inner pocket of my jacket. The taunt scrap
was not a talisman, it was a record. I folded
it into the page where the dates met the names,
and closed the book. The bus hummed, Elleen waved, there's
a bus pulled away. The Palgroff stood by the pump
and tipped a cap. I had never seen him. We
moved before Sheriff cold Wool was at his office window
with a hound in the glass. I walked off the
bus at the next stop, carrying an ordinary life with
an extra way, proof that people had altered faces, and
proof that people could choose to stop. That was not
a tidy end to everything. It was enough. I put
my hands in my pockets and kept the notebook there
like a small instrument for measuring the town's honesty. I
had the scrap in its envelope in Ellen's drawer, and
a copy of Coldwall's Public not pinned in the library.
My name stayed mine. That is a simple fact. The
poster stopped. We changed a protocol in the Sheriff's office,
mister Hargrove joined the volunteer archive team. Ellen and I
traded more coffee than secrets. The town's memory is imperfect,
but it is now a public thing for me. The
chapter thus started with suspicion and anger, and moved through
fear to a decision, ended with the practical physical action.
We burned the false papers, and we made a public record.
The last concrete sound of the chapter with the dull
snap of a cooling coal and the soft, deliberate click
when Sheriff Caldwell locked the box and handed the key
to the County Archives, saying put it where people can
see it. That click closed the room on the plate
and opened a ledger to the public. And then I
walked away, And that is the end. Thank you for listening.
And I will see you in the next one.