Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The audio clicks on a minute shudder,
then the familiar hiss and catch that means the cheap
digital mic is running. I tap it twice, then blow softly,
ir ritual. The hash of the lot outside is broken
only by distant semi's humming against the limitless dark, the
engine siding low. Everything is smeared by the jaundice sprowl
of overhead sodium lamps. At this eye of two lenteen
a m. By my dassward clock, even the must seem
half alive, the wings flickering like faulty strokes around the
sign network comes whichever gods are awake enough to care.
My leggs jud restlessly, always a half beat behind their
urge to move. The wall feels like is being scrub
rawed by fatigue and pine o disinfectant. The flow of
a little concrete buildings still down from some midnight cxtodians run,
the stale tone of gas from Pumbe Island's rides on
the slip stream. Every time. The glass doors judd are
open in the wind, and somewhere and seen shoes queak
and coffin the taw maze of a public bathroom. I'm
not the only one awake. A close outside and the
lunarous pill of half shader sits one perfectly clean sedan
white of course, idling across three spaces at the rest
area's far end, head lights off, engine clearly running by
the faint cloud of exhaust winding its way up into
the colder. It hasn't moved since I arrived twenty minutes ago.
I watch its windows at intervals. There someone in the
driver's seat, maybe two, but the glass is just reflective
enough that whatever is inside remains featureless. This is for recro,
for insurance, for whatever comes after, I say into the recorder,
my voice carrying its own horse edge a rest area
mile mark A one hundred seventy seven point two westbound
im at the last outposts before the state line. I
clear my throat, listening to myself sound tired and thenner
than usual. Name withheld for now. God, this is such
a bad idea, but I have to see. I lean
on the steel canton near the vending machines, forcing myself
to look casual. There is comfort in the road. Examining
the layout, checking for posted security cameras, making a slow arc.
My fingers fiddled with my press pass useless, now expired
and scuffed, but somehow a relic I can't let go of,
just some one with a mother microphone in a compulsion.
As I've started introducing myself to people who don't care,
a wave of exhaustion hits me behind the eyes, blurring
the line between paranoia and legitimate care. Maybe this is
all nothing, Maybe the sleeplessness has folded the edges of
reality inward. But still last Squaastroersk is a white sedan
sitting at a deserted rest stop, engine purring not once
in over twenty minutes, switching on its lights are moving.
A janet a pushes path with the rattling cart, plastic
bags sagging from either side. I catch his glance, dullt, disinterested,
already somewhere else. He nods just enough to acknowledge me,
and my own reflection catches for a moment in the
black glass, wiry and kempt, dark collows under my eyes,
too deep to be solved by coffee or sleep. As
the janitor's for steps fade, something tugs at my tension
the old battered paporn in a plexicle's cage by the
edge of the lot. No one us paphones any more.
It might as well be an artifact. Still, there is
a shape to the graffiti and grime underneath the cradle,
something that doesn't fit. I step across, careful to keep
an eye, angle toward the sedan, still lifeless but potent
as a coiled snake dropping into a crouch. I brush
back a web of lint and torn tape. My hand freezes.
There's a time a yellow envelope peeled at one corner,
but held securely to the under side of the receiver
by a strip of ancient duct tape. It bears no dress,
just the words read then Decide, No troopers, no games.
My pulsed RUMs, my phone shakes, and my grip. As
I work the tabe loose inside, I find a brittle
dog Eve wrote, map its edges, browned sections marked by
faded crayon. A child's rough outline of a sedan colored white.
The tires are black, ovals, phaseless next to word a
note blocky pemanship hastily scroll the lines, uneven, impressed, so
hard they've nearly torn the paper for the next one.
Don't trust the local troopers, it says, underneath a string
of cryptic directions, exit numbers, a list of dates, strange symbols,
a circle to ex in the margin over mal MARKA
one hundred seventy seven point two, the exact place I stand.
I stifle gasp, folding the map and notes small in
my palm, Glancing up reflexively, the sedan's windows seem darker
than before. I can't tell if its perception of the
chill that shivers down my neck. The envelope crackles as
I slip it into my inside pocket. I forced myself
to laugh at breathless, shaky sound. Somebody knew I come,
I murmur into the microphone, but I don't believe it's
just me. They meant not really. Six weeks earlier, the
world didn't spin so tightly around this kind of late
night ritual. Back then, my biggest concern was which version
of the truth would make it through the editorial process
with my name still attached. Now, my apartment is a
tangle of boxes, still take out and pasted clippings, arranged
in constellations of missing persons. My own voice is a
comfort At first, steady in the echo of my living room.
Note yourself. Follow up with Troop G requesting the reducted
despatches isn't working, so try the county records. The wall
behind me is a patchwork newspaper clippings, online form print
outs a time, then traced with red strain. Every new face, smiling,
posed or candidly blurred, blends together. I linger on the
headline from last fall, the one that set me on
this trail. Five gone in two years. I did real
journalism once, enough to land on the front page, enough
to have something worth even now, after the missteps, after
the professional scandal. Don't say plagiarism. Don't say you believe
the wrong source. Don't say you've verrched for someone who
wasn't who they claimed. The hunger to uncover what's bary,
deeper than official statements is the only thing left that
gives shape to my days. My fall wasn't immediate, A
single ruin story, a source he vanished, A slow public
unraveling as my editors distance themselves, then finally pride my
name off the mastead the sting lingers. Every time I
open mynd books to yet another politely worded rejection or
no comment, But obsession has its own gravity. I record
audio day and night, notes, theories, interviews, hoarding every possible scrap.
There's a warp kind of hope. Let somehow, some voice
or detail will click. That's how I found the file,
a fragment of a missing college girl's diary, uploaded posthumously
to a now defunct forum. I play it, often, caught
by the row, adrenaline of fear in her voice, static,
then panic. If you find this, I I think some
one's following me, whitesedan and the file cuts out mid sentence,
replaced by static. She hasn't been heard from in fifteen months.
The police ruled her disappearance in conclusive, then gradually let
its slide into the background every day. Now, roucine becomes ritual.
I spend my morning skyring form posts for mention of
suspicious caws, my afternoon squinting over blurry security footage leaked
from traffic cawns, my nets called, calling family members who
mostly hang up or plead for privacy. It becomes a
mandra beold a pattern. Prove the system is more than
just coincidence. I've tried their official route. Brown men in
worn uniforms have ushered me from their offices, their polite
faces cracking only long enough to let slip. Faint syonus
are at fright warning these things happen. One lieutenant told
me too much road, too much night. Sometimes it's just
bad luck. When I push, they bristle close off. One
even suggested I drop it before I end up just
another statistic. My daily shape is warped around the problem,
but my own life is harder to hold intact. Coals
of my brother have become a battleground. Last week, I
braced my phone between cheek and shoulder, pinning photos to
the cork board as he sight heavy on the other end, Heather,
you asked as Cavastris, to let this god, He pleaded,
You can't say. If every one Ma'm sick over you
out there chasing ghosts, what are you trying to prove?
The question twisted. I could hear his voice in the
dark after we hung up a call deco one night
when I question my own motives. But there's something about
the tape, something taut and desperate in the way the
girl's words snap off, the way other voices scattered from cases.
A decade apart, mention the same car, the same ark
of events, and always the same brush off from those
meant to protect. It's not science, not yet, but my
sense is bone deep. These vanishings aren't just bad luck
or urban legend. There is a system and machinery, and
whoever or whatever is running it is counting on people
like me finally losing a noble getting tired of being
the only one still talking about it. I can't let
that happen, Not this time. The real work begins with
the spreadsheet. My computer screen flickers and I stare into
the grid of case numbers, names, dates, tech locations. Each
row is a person, each column I lost no moment
of the eye of They vanished with gas station, rest
stop pulled over for car trouble that each mile mark chronicled.
Comparing the records is slow, mattening accident reports filed by
different officers, pulled from public files, and sometimes no more
than scribbled summaries. The more I invest in the pattern,
the more it imuges in over half the cases I'll witness.
If there is one mentions a white stan, sometimes it's
just a bright car. Often plaits are described, but always
too fuzzy to identify a three where five should be
or tax from neighboring states. Two count is over a
shifting detail that gnaws at me. The strange thread catch
is my I M le dieu. The name crops up
in six separate police reports, listless in tone and always
a step outside credibility filing Officer of first and the
scene evehum. When the disappearance is spanned over two hundred
fifty miles in less than two hours, a signature is there.
I run the badge number. Nothing comes up publicly. Maybe
it's a small town convention, maybe it's not. My note
book is filling with fragments. I start hunting for some
one who lived through an encounter. Social media is a curse,
but sometimes it spits out the right breadcrumb on an
in a state discussion board. An ext trucker volunteers to talk,
provided we do it far from a nosey folks. We
arranged to meet at a chrome heavy diying off the highway,
at the sort of place that never closes but is
always half empty. He's older than I expect, hands like
bark I shop. He toys with his mug as that
bring out the white Sudan. The warmth in the room
chills a notch. He glances at everything but me, then
leans in. People talk like it's an urban thing, But
you spend enough nights on the stretch, he you'll see
it too. Always the same, and ever chases, never signals,
just watch it. Sometimes in the rear view, sometimes parked
at the far end of a lot. Never saw a face,
but once I swear I thought I caught a pair
of eyes in the mirror and they were looking clean
through me. Did you ever see trouble? I ask? He
shakes his head, not direct Never, but once buddy called me,
said the cogbin parked behind him for sixty miles, then
blipped up. When he pulled in at the eastboundress stop
that night, he held screams. Next morning, the lot was
empty except for his truck and a set of fresh
tire marks where a white car had been. He quit
the rut after that night. I ask about cops. They
like to look the other way, or maybe they just know.
But you see at Sudan, best to just keep moving.
Never ever stop for a brickdown if you spotted in
your mirror. He lights a cigarette, hand shaking enough to
make his light a flicker yet, so a man can't sleep.
O't the dam who you can call anyway? Back at
my desk, a borrower desk, now immotels or cheap Absilaya,
his words on to my time mine. The facts don't
line up, needeth the shirt, but the unease is something
I can't shake. There's orchestration at work, something deliberate in
what's left behind and what's never said. I weigh this
knowledge until it's heavier than sleep. I decide there's only
one way for the patent to shift, to get close
enough to glimpse what happens when somebody becomes the next one.
The risk stings at the base of my throat, but
the alternative is worse. I return to the interstate as
the day burns out and as chromes in equipped Now
with every precaution I can think to carry on the
seat next to me, a batted knock on, a dictophone
and a pile of annotated Sevilla's photos printed in blurry grayscale.
I am hyper conscious of every car in every lot,
tracking make model, collar plate. Most are ordinary. Family is
grinding out the last leg of a vacation, Students slumped
over fast food, every so often I spot a white vehicle,
but it never matches the shape or bearing the stunts
descried by the ex trucker or in the records. As
the night deepens, the lots then shadows move into handom
with the head lights that sweep over the concrete. I
make notes silver Honda, low dead uckansaw tags, white Ford,
driven by bleary eyed women and two kids, one ancient
sedan with a crack mirror and tags, two fitted to
read nothing lingers, nothing feels electric. I move from rest
area to truck stop under the slow eye of security cameras.
I'm careful, though, I buy a cheap breakfast sandwich and
pretend to nap, watching through my lashes as the crowd's
ebb and swell stir nothing. The night passes with only
their characteristic tension, the constant paranoid that if I let
my guard slip, I'll miss something vital. My next step
is to go deeper to the source official records. I
dress in a coat that could belong to a dozen
different people, hissed off into a cheap hat. I walk
into the Sherrif's substation and poses a road safety analyst.
The lobby is clottered with leaflets, abandoned coffee mugs and
walls are faded wanted posters. I play at humility and nobody,
a nod ball with too many questions but not enough
authority to warrant suspicion. Behind the counter, a young deputy
Garcia watches me with mild curiosity, her fingers drumming on
the paperwork. When I ask about accident stats, she gives
me a stack of ancient lot books and points to
a back room. Just don't go past the yellow line, ma'am.
In the gloom, I pour over faded VHS, security tapes
and handryton locks. Most show nothing but empty lots and
the slow cool of days and nights blowing into saneness.
But in almost every tape, a whites dan slides into
frame within a narrow window of time before each disappearance.
Sometimes it arrives early, waiting silent. Sometimes it lingers too
long after the last witness leaves, before finally vanishing into
the next stretch of black dup. The plates never match,
always plausible, but never verifying against state records. Sometimes there's
a small, almost invisible irregularity, a seven swat for one,
a state color too faded to be real. In one tape,
at all slander figure darts through the spill of head lights,
the outline distorted by lands flare. The face is shapeless,
a white oval washed out by the glare, eyes, indistinguishable
from empty sockets. It's only a frame, but it swims
in my mind. Aft As I repack to leave, Gosh
calls up quietly. Hey, you might find is helpful. She
slides a thumb drive across the counter, her hand twitching
a fraction. Most folks round here pretend it's all random,
but watch your back. Her words are burily above a whisper.
She looks away, pretending to organize a filing cabinet. As
I thank her. Back in my motel room, I prop
the door with a chair, I close the curtains tight
and pluck the drive in the laptop, flickering to life
beside my sleep starf face. The digital footage repeats the
pattern that white Sudan, always present, always inconspicuously marked, always
with an impossibly normal seeming person near enough to blend in,
but never caught clearly. I annotate time stamps, map cross
references in frame after frame. There's another oddity, a pattern
in how the Saddan parks, headlights always pointed away from
the main building, facing towards the road. I wonder if
it's a signal, don't linger here, don't stop. My phone
vibrates unexpectedly. The screen lights up with an unfamiliar number
belonging to the mother of a misin child, her case,
one of the oldst on my wall. When she speaks,
the phone distorts her voice, rendering it rail thin and brittle.
My daughter, she drew the car on everything for weeks
before she vanished, she says, quietly. Not always white, sometimes
sometimes just the windows all black. She said it was
coming to take someone who didn't stay awake. I thought
it was a nightmare. I pause, holding the fun close
the line, hissing, I've seen people in town who drive
cars just like that one, she continues. But it's not
the car, it's the ones who wait with it. I'm sorry.
I hope you find what you're looking for for her sake,
but sometimes sometimes I wish no one would. Her voice
falters and she hangs up before I can say more.
Immediately afterward, my own car alarm explodes in the stillness
of the parking lot, screaming like a living thing. I
fly out of the motels and at a guest in
a security jacket shakes his head, unconcerned. No one else
is anywhere near my car. The glass is unbroken, but
under the tire nearest the curt I find a single
dead mossplayed flattess wings dusted with what looks like chalk.
An Ira passes before my heartbeat returns to normal. I
sit in the dark, the microphone perched on the side table,
the evidence littered across my spread of bed sheets, my
hands to which from norse and too much caffiene, I
can done see what us started to piece together. There
is too much connective tissue, too many different families describing
the same empty expressions, the same vehicle, watching from the
edge of things. The authorities, the official channels. They know something,
or at least know enough to gently steer people away
from asking. There is a system, something bigger than a
lone driver or chance. A plant forms, shaky but unavoidable,
to get closer, to document a stretch where the system
seems to reload itsself every few months, To watch, to record,
to prove that hunting this pattern isn't dilution, but a
grim reality, oxtrated in plain sight. I park my car
at the edge of another rest area miles down the road,
the ground vibrating faintly each time a big rig passes.
My recorder is on safety off, my camera hidden beneath
a flannel shirt, I narrate in short, nervous bursts. If
I'm right, the sedan will show up again. Maybe it'll
only linger, Maybe it's a dead end. If not, the
eyro was rind down. The lot churns for its usual rotation.
Shift workers, worn families, nappy across back seats, lone traveler.
I pacing to stretch muscles and nerves. Each way car
that rolls through a jot details the shape, how it parks,
the plates, none linger or exactly fit. Eventually, another cruiser
noses into the lot. My eyes catch the tag, framed
by weak light, m the dew nerves flare bright in
my chest. The cruiser sits for a moment before inching
straight for a white sedan parked beneath a flickering lamp,
the only burned that lamped in the lot. The sedan
hasn't moved for almost an hour. I grip the camera
and forced my breath flat. A woman steps from the
cruiser uniform not fully visible. For a moment, she exchanges
glances with the sedans striver. I possible to read too
far and too dark. The sedan's trunk cracks open. The
officer walks over, quietly, serves something from her own trunk,
and passes it to the driver. The transfer is wordless.
In ten seconds, it's over. The officer lights up the
cruiser and leaves, not so much as glancing around. The
white sedan idols. Another car, this one with local tags,
rolls up a few spaces down. This driver, middle aged
construction vest, un locks his own trunk and retrieves a
duffle back. In the reflection from the building lights, I
see him handed to the sedan's driver through a half
open window, every inch of my nurse's live wire. This
isn't just intimidation or accident. This is a meeting point,
a ritual, a waypoint in a map. No outsider is
meant to see. I angle the camera for one more shot,
but the lens forks with my own breath in the
cooling air, the sedan's door opens. A silhouet steps out, back,
lit by a sliver of yellowed lamp. The shape is
wrong in a way I can't defiant, duped and sure
if male or female chin resets, lends too long, or
maybe just draped awkwardly, it pivots toward me with uncanny stillness.
In the sudden quiet, every sound invades, a scrape of boots,
a distant cough, the faint wind rattling wrappers around the
thresh bin. I try to steady my hands, but my
heart is galloping. I snab a photo, but the flush
bounces off the interior glass, streaking the shot with confusion.
The driver's face, if it is a face, remains sunk
in shadow. Still they turn, aligning perfectly with my windshield,
as if measuring the distance by scent alone. Suddenly, my
car alarm explodes again, the same screech as before, even
though my miles from where the last incident happened startled,
I scrambled to shut it off, all the while feeling exposed, absurd,
and impossibly seen. The white stands driver watches, then steps
back into the vehicle, face always turn my way. The
engine revs, the tail lights bloom in the knee and dark,
and after a moment it glides away. I sink in
my seat, roth shallow, whispering into the recorder. I think
they know I'm watching now, I really do. The words
feel strange, leaving my mouth lesser warning than a confession
whispered into the void of the half lick car. The
interior is called seats, spring sticking into my back as
I try and fail to steady, to tight coil in
my chest. The digital recorders. A lady glows like a
sullen eye in my hand, picking up the jetters in
my voice, the faint stark of my anxious breeding outside.
Everything has stilled. Activity in the lot windled when the
cruiser departed and the sedan glided away. Now only the
low bellow of a distant semi and a paper cup
flitting under the wind remain. I sit motionless, every sense
straining for movement. Are those footsteps just at the edge
of the lamp light or only the wind chasing trash.
My phone vibrates, one sharp, adrenaline spiking pulse, A message
from an unknown number go home. No punctuation, no number
to call back, just that bare instruction etched on a
background of digital silence. I hesitate only a second before
snapping a photo of it. At this point, documentation is
my only armor and minute passes. I force myself to
breathe again, to go over the footage checklists, shots of
the Sudan, the police cruiser, the transfer between trunks, the
obscure soilowit, stepping into the car. I flick through the
stills on my cameras LCD. My hands betray me, trembling,
so the image is plur I have to concentrate. None
of this matter as if I can't present it clearly,
show the connections. My mind jumps in, stutters between anxiety
and resolve. Pulling my jacketite, I dig out the envelope
from my inside pocket. The map, crumpled but still legible,
stares back with that child's drawing of the blank face car.
I run a finger along the crayon lines a circle
dex at mile marker one hundred seventy seven point two,
exactly where I am now. I record a quick lock,
this time more for myself than for evidence. It's here everything.
The map said, sa'dan transference look a law and for
horsemen involved more than one person using it as a
signal post may be for drops, maybe for meeting. Don't
trust the troopers. The note said, understand whyna nothing's random
out here. I tried to reconstruct what I saw in
sharper detail, committing it not just to audio but to memory.
How the local, the construction fisted man drove up without testation.
How the officer, presumably and le dou went through the
motions with no visible fear of surprise, like they had
done this a dozen times a hundred and would continue
as long as nobody interfered. I flick off the recorder,
certain now that I am past the point of retreat.
Why cossets in sullen isolation at the far edge of
the lot, overhead the club's skidder racing whatever moon had
tried to peer down on us, The white lines painted
on the asphalt, clisson and shifting shadows, always leading away,
never quite safety. Untempted to drive to just go, but
instinct pins me in place. Something tells me that leaving
now in panic would not make me less visible. So
I make myself smaller, slipping into the back seat with
my camou wedge between knees, phone angle to record out
the window, just in case anyone returns a thumb the
unlock button on the recorder. Am I hoping for answers
or witnesses for when this ineviataively goes sideways. The minutes
drug out. Each car that passes blinding for an instant
as the headlights wreak across the lot. Each is either
a fami laid, a couple, or a single travel of
their faces worry the motion's routine. I study them for
a twitch of recognition, some sign that any one else
here sees the patent, the wrongness beneath the surface. All
I see is exhaustion and the careful calculation that happens
in public at three a m. Whose watching, Who's alone?
Who leaves in a hurry? In desperation, I check every
resource on my phone again. The spreadsheet where I've been
trying to track timing locations, car descriptions, the map with
pins marking each insolved disappearance along the stretch of highway.
The single page of scrolled notes about the license plate
and consistencies. My head aches with it. Piecing together the
movements is like trying to reconstruct a dream. The moment
you wiger cent remains, but the details scatter through it.
All echo of the ex trucker's words won't leave me.
Asterisk never ever stop for a breakdown, if you spot
it in your mirror asterisk. I think about the dozen cases,
the ones with Dascom footage that never got released, The abstracted,
the missing, are discussed in the local paper, always with
the sadness, but never assent that anything abnormal had happened
at all. A car engine roars to life from the
far edge of the lot. Instinctively a flinch, ducking lower,
But it's only a weary traveler loading a dog into
their back seat does slamming in succession. I let the
tension leak slowly from my muscles. A shadow shifts by
the restroom, and this time I focus. It's only the janitor, again,
emptying bins. He glances into my car, and our eyes
locked through the window. I half expect a word, a threat,
but he just shakes his head as if to say
not to night, and moves on. If he notices my terrer,
he gives no sign if he knows what's happening here.
He's learned not to react. The lot is empty now
except for me, the janitor, and the moths across the way.
The white stripes leading from the parking space is vanish
in a twist of darkness toward the tree line toward
whatever highways and dead ends the next one might travel.
I almost put the key in the ignition, but stop myself. Instead,
I record a final note for the night. This is
not about one person, one monster, or one crime. It's
a system, something so well rehearsed that even law enforcement
plays alarm. I have it on film. Tomorrow I'll try
to back up the footage, share the files. But I
think they know now. I think I'm part of it.
The chill in my bones is less fear and more inevitability.
There's a magnet in these places, throwing out whoever needs
answers badly enough to come searching. A certain pulse of
headlight sweeps over the lot from the highway, and for
a brief second, my heart loach, as it could be
the stain come back prowling from mistakes for stray witnesses.
But the car bypasses the rest area of faded greenman
and van, rumbling past at highway speed. The tension ratchets
down in notch, but never fully releases. I tend to
my kit, tucking everything away in preparation for a quick exit,
then check my phone again. No new messages, no strange calls,
I scanned the rearview mirr repeatedly before unlocking the doors
and sliding back into the driver's seat. My nerves are
nearly spend, shoulders tight and drawn. Maybe to Night was
just one more data point, another disturbing tableau in a
statistical fog, But nothing about the way the Sadan's drive
returned toward me. To Night feels like coincidence. Fumbling in
the glove compartment from my back up drive, I mutto
to myself, trying to re in what comes next. The
rumble of an eighteen wheeler is audible down the long ramp,
is ca scading vibration, settling in my chest as much
as in the tarmac. It passes, haul in darkness with
it as it trundles on toward the horizon. Abruptly, my
wind shoed folks with my own breath, a ghostly layer
blurring the outside world into something distant and distorted. I
tilt my head and listened, straining for anything but the
lonely opera of tires, whend and rolls of distant thunder.
The storm promised by the forecast is beginning its low approach,
the air thickening, the static nerd dripping on my tongue.
When I wipe the glass clean, I catch my own
eyes in the glass, wild, rimmed with red, yet uncowed.
I scroll through my notes, reading over the entrance from
earlier in the year. Emily w Missing June nineteenth, last
seen westbound at my marker one hundred seventy eight. Witness
speaking to unidentified individual at pipon next Martin g It
disappeared July eleventh, sim Stretch his car found abandoned, trunk open,
no keys, no sign of forced entry. Then the college
student's partial audiophile, a flash of white light, then but
an abrupt silence. The files times time, peacelessly incomplete. Each
case echoes the last. Each is distinct and unsolvable, but
still linked by proximity, by pattern, by the ever slippery,
ever changing license plates in the near invisibility of the
sedan's driver. If there are so many missing, why hasn't
the public noticed? Why does the story slide off the
pages of the paper so quickly from the envelope. The
cryptic directions mell at my attention. Exit numbers that trace
a broken circle across the re states, dates that seem
at first random, be cluster of runmun as weekends and
the single warning no troopers. Was it just the Sheriff's
office tonight that played their part, or does this stretch
all along the corridor? I shudder at the thought. I
leaned back and close my eyes just for a heartbeat,
replaying the transfer. There was nothing avert, just the officer
back in hand and the sedan's silent acceptance of whatever
was past, like the ritual had been performed for years,
untouchable in its mondanity. Did the construction worker know what
he was complicit in? Was it fear, gratitude, blackmail? Where
was this about another kind of payment for silence or protection?
It's impossible, frustrating this so to answer a new fierce
slips in. If every one is playing along, how far
does the knowledge run? Who can I safely trust with
any of this? If anyone, even Deputy garsher who slipped
me the us B made herself scarce right after, I
leave a note on my phone to call her again
in the morning, to be careful how I phrase things.
The gnaw of paranoia refuses to let me rest. I
drive two eggs its father before feeling even half way
safe enough to stop again, pulling into a small twenty
four iron gas station lit up like fortifications. I refill,
watching every movement at the pumps, every car that idles
too long before pulling away. Finally, I end up at
another non ascript motel. It's signed, buzzing, the lot nearly empty.
The disc clock eyes my camera bag with board suspicion,
before handing over the key. Inside walls, froaming within insulation,
I barricade the door. I got over every frame from
the night, squinting until my eyes swim again and again.
The white sedan, its driver always a face as silouette,
almost purposely out of reach. The officer's features blow, and
the camera pick up two grainy the angles never quite
enough to capture a badge number. I curse softly, then
realize my voice is shaking. Rest doesn't come, but eventually
exhaustion overtakes tension. I lay down on top of the covers,
with the recorder running beside me, whispering thoughts to future me,
hedging each sentence against intrusions and power failures. If I vanish,
none of this matters unless it survives me. The envelope,
the map, the voice note from the missing girl, the
interview with the trucker, a phone call with the mother
of all these things rotate through my dreams and hazy cycles.
The sedan waits at the far end of every rest
stop in my memory, engine ticking quietly, always turns slightly
toward me, as if considering an invitation or a challenge.
At some point, around five thirty a m I joled
awake from a shallow fruct snap through the window. Just
over the edge of the lot, a white shape moves
in the half light of pre dawn. My heart thunders
as I reach for the camera, fumbling it to my face,
only to realize this sterior rising in my chest, that
it's nothing but a delivery van backlet by a neon sign. Still,
I drop the time un scene near my note, because
a reminder paranoia is not always alia. Sometimes it's just lonely,
with daylight threatening, I weigh the wisdom of going public
time in my next moves. The footage, whatever grainy edges
of holes, is better than nothing. The interviews and recordings.
The bread comb trail still like the explosive smoking gun
that would crack the infrastructure wide open, But it is
evidence of vasterist, something asterisk. So much of what happens
under the cloak of routine, goes unseen, unremarked, except by
those who need to see, and they too often are tired, dismissed,
or deliberately forgotten. That, I think is how it survives,
How the system's self perpetuates, quietly, shifting the pieces whenever
anyone starts to put two and two together. And now,
as morning breaks and turns last night's tension into the
softenings of daylight, I know there is no going back
for me. I whisper more to the tape than to myself.
Whatever this is. However, there I'm in their line of sight.
Now they'll expect me to show up again, to keep digging,
or to back off. But I'm not about to disappear quietly,
not for their convenience, not any more. I snapped the
recorder off in fall, silent, listening as the last echoes
of ristless engines and whispered warnings fade into the new day,
End Part one. The digital recorders light still glows are
tiny orange sun against the washed out motel room where
Dawn is deciding whether to arrive. I keep it running,
letting my thoughts flow in a quiet murmur as I
leaned against the faux wood head board, knees drawn up
under a last night's blanket. The city feels farther away
than ever, and the runess in my chest is a
new animal, more precise, heavier, prickling at the ages of
every nerve, as if it had entered my blood stream.
My hands fidgid, not from cold, but in the aftermath
of what I saw on what I now know is
watching me. In return, I thumb through the photos in
the camera, reluctant to go straight to the newest ones
I already know. The white sedan parked, the transfer from
officer to driver, the stranger who aligned with my gaze
through the dim glass. Each frame's significance almost lost in
its mundane setting. But there's one image that draws me back.
The driver's outline, murky and off, killed at the posture,
slightly wrong, that split second turn, that sense of being
acknowledged and measured, not just seen, but marked. The memory
is sharp, a lime peel pressed to a paper cut.
I'll listen back to my own breathless note. They know
I'm watching now. The quiet in the room is suddenly suffocating.
My phone is faced on on the table, but the
urge to check is overwhelming. I flip it over, still
the message closed from last night's encounter, that bare, unpunctuated
warning go home. The sender is still untraceable. I prop
myself upright ice, scanning the perimeter. Sunlight is finally peeling
across the lot outside, painting just enough gold and the
park cars to make everything look innocent again. For a
moment I consider leaving, packing up and vanishing, dropping the
whole case down a digital well and moving on for
the sake of survival or sanity. But then I spotted
again from the window. Three spaces over. Oh whites are
down night and quietly, not the same one from last night.
An older make or spidering beneath the door, but its
windows reflect only void. When I step outside, eer slick withduw,
a man in a jumpsuit is restocking the vending machine.
He glances up, not unfriendly, but not open either. Neither
of us wants to acknowledge the car or its driver.
Every nerve is awake, registering the innocuous in the threat
is nearly the same thing. Now I load my gear Hound,
slow and deliberate. Double chicken at the laptop is hip
deep on that both memory cards are in my jacket.
I mirrors in the lines the voice I'd use if
any one stop me, But nothing happens. I drive away
some light eels to thickening clouds, and in my mirror
the sedan remains waiting for what or whom I can't guess.
Back on the interstate, the sensation of being followed as
a persistent sire or note. Every white or pail car
merging from an eggs of ramp seems charged, too deliberate,
too attentive. When the third one falls in behind me
near mile marker one hundred eighty one, I pushed the
pedal a little harder, reassured only when it passes without
incident at a fork at the next open wife, I
stop an anonymous coffee shot jam between a pawn shop
and a bail bond's kiosk. I upload back up footage
to a head and cloud folder, shoving my paranoid down
with burncuffee cross from me. A couple of college kids
are hunched over their phones, oblivious and safe, but the
bars to eyes me with last night suspicion. I work fast,
sending digital files covering every trace using an encrypted email
to send a copy to trusted campus radio friend in
another state. I add one line. If anything happens, share
this everywhere. Don't back down even if I do. As
I start to back, my phone buses with a new notification.
It's minor, just a bounce from my back up server,
failing to send footage because the file extension is unknown.
My gut twists. I checked the drive. My audio notes
have been wiped. The footage from last night corrupt it.
The video lurches and stutters, entire blocks replaced by gray,
and my own voice is interrupted by static. But beneath
the hiss is something sharply, a burst of sound, a
faint automatic voice. Next one, next one, next one. My
hands go clammy. I close the laptop and quietly gather
my things as a stan The barster brings a tray
by one cup too many You left this. She's holding
a plain white paper cup, tape closed, written neither across
the layer, don't talk, don't trust, don't stop. Behind her,
a man in a uniform sweeps through postal or a
knock off, could be anything. He glances at my face,
pauses just long enough to make sure he's seen, and leaves.
I take the cup, dump it in the nearest trash
and head for the door. In the parking lot, a
lone white sedantics and culls in the shade of a
half dead tree. Plaits just the wrong color for the state.
Back on the road, every mile is in negotiation. Signs
for town slide by, most unfamiliar, each promising a local
flavor or family hospitality. I spot another gas station, a
batted cup cruiser idling out front. I can't tell if
the officer is asleep or watching. I pull in any way,
stomach twisted, and fill the tank with my back to
the building. Every instinct is screaming at me. Trust no
one local move quickly, draw no attention. Back in the
driver's seat, I try Deputy Garsh's number, reasoning she might
be my only ally within the system. Gun rotten. After
three rings, an unfamiliar voice clipped and official answers Deputy
Garsha has been transferred. There's no forwarding. Is there a
matter I can help you with? The words feel like
a seal vault. I hang up, not leaving a name.
I drive for ires, bumping from one county to the next,
changing stations, keeping to the major lanes and refusing to
linger at any stop longer than necessary. It isn't just
the sedans now. At every place I pause, I sense
the drift of gazes, the way locals clump by the
door toalped too quietly near the register, even how the
trash bags at the edge of the lot seem to
turn and watch. By mid afternoon, rain wanders, and from
the mountains pinning the world under gray, the road becomes slick, shiny,
lined with tracers of white. At the next rest area,
I find another envelope, this time the tape holding it
makes a thin grating sound as I rip it free.
It's nearly identical to the one from last night. A map,
a child's drawing, a new series of directions, the words
next one scribbled over a day two weeks from now.
I turned the key, the egg between my shoulders bloating
into pure nerves. The world upside is changing, flattening city
names and roads into blair, a kind of anti map
where every landmark is white clean. After I pass my
pham pings a calendar alert reminding me to check in
with my sibling. I mute it without thinking. As afternoon
slides into dusk. I skip two more planned rests stops,
each time, seeing a Whitesidean parked at the entrance, each
time convincing myself I'm projecting, but the rhythm is relentless.
Every attempt upot to the cloud get stuck at ninety
seven percent before the service fails. Memories take after memory
stick all seem to be failing. Is it my own
tech paranoia or does the system we achieven into this?
My notes begin to fray, the order of documents shifting
out from under me. That night night I settle in
a motel off the turnpick. The parking lot is nearly
empty except for a single whites edan set apart by
a few spaces. I locked the door, push a chair
against it, tuck the recorder under my pillow. Two hours
later and knocks off but deliberate rattles the glass. I
freeze after a minute, another gentler tap. No one announces themselves,
No official lights pulse through the curtains. It takes thirty slow,
silent breasts before I crawl out and peer nothing but
the white sedan drubbing in the rain. What breaks me
from the loop is a blank cassette, no label, just
the title White Lion Angel scored into the taped clear
body with what looks like a nail. It's pushed under
the door in the night. No sign of you delivered it.
Curiosity or resignation leads me to find the last surviving
tape dec ioen and plug it in while hunched in
the floor by the bed or cord, a running phone
streaming a screen shot, and the faint hope. Digital backups
are harder to erase. The tape starts with the hum
of an engine, a low crackling force, gobbled nearly to nonsense,
threads in and out. It's not a full sentence, just pieces.
Can you hear me? Next one? Always see'd always choose
a child's voice, maybe breathy and confused. Filters and as
the car engine swells, subsides, swells again, then unmistakably gucious whisper,
nearly lost beneath a hiss. There are watchers in every town.
I rewind play again, try to clean the sound with
my laptop. Every attempt creates new artifacts, but the meaning
is clear enough. At the end, A single barely discernible
tone of musical note may be sounds as if someone
closed a music box. The silence afterward is absolute, the
vacuum that the motalities he cannot fail sleep avoids me.
I lie awake, fingers pressed into the curve of my palm,
thinking of every local complicit, every uniform slouched in the
cruiser by the lot, every blank window in a white sedan.
If the network run so deep, there is no hope
of taking it apart single handedly. It relies on everyone
seeing only what they are meant to, maintaining an older
delicate a static on a radio dial. By first light,
it's clear the only way out is through. If the
pattern lives or dies by new victims by the next one,
then I must be the interruption. I record a single,
steady line. I will follow the white sidan. I want
these words to reach some one after me, even if
I do not get out. I plan my next move methodically,
drive the same stretch, watch for the markers and the maps,
anticipate the next drop. I reconfirm my notes, make digital
and paperback ups, Send the sum total of my findings
as in complete as they now feel to the friend
on the station in Missouri, to my sibling by a
ghostgoded phile, and anonymously to several journalists. I don't believe
it will make a difference, but the ac feels necessary
that evening, the storm that's been crawling the edge of
the weather map finally arrives, flattening the world into curtains
of water. My wife is take against the forts the headlights,
only managing to tunnel a few yards into gray. I
e half an old proteine bar nurse too tight for more,
and wait near the back of a half lit rest area.
The place is washed in wavering gold and blue rain,
striking the roofed rati pulses. The whites are down coasts
in headlights off. I do not let myself hesitate. Camera,
rolling keys in my lap, back up drive in my pocket.
I close my eyes for a moment. When I open them,
the cedan has turned so it's dark. Reflective windows stair
straight through my windshield. The interior is just shadows. It's
almost an invitation. I slip to traffic behind the sedan.
The moment it glides away, matching speed exactly, the world
collapses into the tunnel of my head lights and those
twin red dots ahead. Each time I think the sedan's
about to speed up or slow, it does neither, always
edging just head. My form flickers between service and static signal, vetching,
popping back into existence, dying again. I'll leave the recorder running,
narrating as evenly as I can. I'm being led now.
The cedan is a lure, not a predator, a guide.
My hand sweat against the wheel, dampening the plastic. The
sedan leaves me off the main highway, out onto a
service road, nearly chirped with puddles. Distant lightning turns the
world inside out for a second at a time, stark
and featureless. The radio hums a static lullaby, then unexpectedly
a child's laughter. A sounder recognized from Garsha's tape leads
through for a handful of heart beats, then goes dead.
I try the phone, nerveless, no signal. The service road
narrows hemp by drooping pine and scrub. At the far end,
a dilapidated rest stop appears, deserted for years. It's roof
caved in over the men's side. A junk payphone hanging
from one cable. The white sa'dan glies into a slot
at the very edge, pausing beneath what used to be
security light. No doubt. Four other vehicle's local plates account
a sheriff to calhalf peeled on one about a church
fan are already there, clusterdlessly, not blocking scape, but not
offering it either. I kill my engine, keep the camera running,
force a deep breath. The rain needles my face as
I step outside, resolves snared with dread. The sedan's door
opens and the driver emerges, hood up back to me,
postures of bland. It nearly raises itself, no swagger, no flinch,
only their eyes blank round, reflecting enough like to catch
my gaze through the sheeting rain. A door in the
ruined building creeks. A faint voice carries on the wind
to girls, maybe too thin, too afraid calling help, or
hear it's eden by the storm. I try to step forward,
camera up, forced tight, who's there? My question lands with
no echo. I snap a photoor flash, washing everything white.
That's when two people, one from the church fan and
another from the sheriffs car, move out from the shadows,
coming around behind me with practiced ease. They're not menacing,
just methodical. Each grabs an arm, not yanking, not rough,
but firm and inauguable. I go limp, letting myself be
lad my brain, catalog's details, the sound of water dripping indoors,
the cigarette burned, two shot and one deputy's hand, the
cadence of boots on tire. My recorder is muffled, jostled
but not knocked away. My shoulder screams in its grip,
but I let the moment pull me under inside lights,
bus overhead. In a makeshift office within the abandoned rest stop,
the ringleader wastes there, a weathered woman in ordinary clothes,
face lined by years and worry, the ka streeked wight.
Her hands rest easy and folded on a batter, discluttered
with ledges, envelopes, part of a police radio. She tips
her chin up, reading me there's no malice, only inevitability.
She gestures for the deputies to stand down, and they do.
I wish you'd walked away, she says, a voice low
worn horse by years of careful secrets. I want to
speak to the man answers, but words taarer against my teeth.
All I manage, is why, she sighs, looking past me,
past the two deputies pass the doorway toward the night
still howel's rain. Some roads take more than they ever give.
There is too little out here, too little law and
too little luck. Accidents happen, and so does bad intent.
After a while, you realize someone or something has to
tend a balance. She gestures to the sedan's driver, who
waits framed in the door with hands looser, the sights
the angel. We keep the system moving. Who chooses how?
When nobody here is innocent? But you think you can
bring it down with your your notes and tapes. I
swallow during one step forward. My phone is pocket warm recording.
I hope irrationally that it captures every word. You let
this happen for how long you just watch? Or worse?
The ringleader's eyes sow than only fractionally. No one acts alone.
We keep the line clear so the darkness doesn't spride.
The price is terrible, but it could be worse, and
you don't want to see what worse looks like. She
leans in expression, collapsing into fatigue. You can vanish the
same way as the rest or. You can carry the
word forward to the side. The driver steps closer. Now,
face still blurred under the hood, but those eyes are reflective, deathless,
never blinking. Now you, yes, you are part of the pattern.
It isn't about you any more. I understand then, sickly clear.
The angel isn't a person but a roll. The system
cycles through people, but never truly ends. Survivors are folded in,
warned off, or disappear. The cycle endures not just here,
but anywhere. A road stretches long enough and empty enough
for secrets to gather this motion. Near by, a third figure,
a girl barely more than a shadow, is led from
one fire room to another by quiet madron. She glimpses
me as hollow and says, only am I next, before
she's gone again into the dark. I struggle to speak,
My voice cracks. What happens if I refuse? No one
enters at first? Then the ring leader gestures, and the
deputy has moved to open the side door. Everyone here
started as a witness of survivor. Staying silent keeps you
outside the worst of it. Calling for help, fighting, Someone
always knows. The line always resets, they assure me, with
little force, directing me out into the storm again, away
from any hope of rescue or intervention. I realize there
is no easy escape, no clear victory, only the knowledge.
The complicity of silence is survival. Play modules is beneath
my boots and soaks my socks. As I march back
to my car, the camera's red light blinkslow battery, my
phone still secretly running audio. The two deputies drop away
before the line of cars, none making eye contact. The
angel remains nowhere and everywhere in my field of vision.
The ringleader's voice floats after me. Leave. Now tell what
you want. No one will believe you. The pattern doesn't break,
it bends. I keep walking through the storm until I'm
inside the car. I start the engine, flecken the wipers,
and sure off what I'm recording will even survive the drive.
When the lot falls behind me, I look into the mirror,
half expecting the white stand trail close, but it waits,
lights off in the ruin of that stop, ready for
the next. I dry first, slow, then breathless, every sun
in the car over amplified seat boats, rattling, the faint
grind from the faulty a sea, the scratch of wet
gravel under the wheels. For a dozen miles, nothing pursues,
just rain and empty lanes. I pull into a desperate
all night convenience door, pay cash for bonafone, and upload
every remaining file to any outlet that might listen. Radio
Static follows me into the store, and not again. I
turn it off. Outside, my old phone vibrates on the
passenger seat. Another message, no number, no punctuation, simply Angel
waits the empty road home, somehow longer than before. Every
sign for another white car, real or not makes me flinch.
I stop, if only to breathe. In one last rests area,
iris later, the recorder resting on the dash. Then from
the gloom under the pathhorone, I spot another envelope, same tip,
same childish crawl. Next one, I start the car. My
mind and spools. I pull away from the rest area
when shall smear would rain the night outside an unsturdy incline.
The first sign for a state border is a bitter relief.
There's nothing left to chase but the white lines. I
drive until the stars are gone, until the lost of
my courage is spent, and then a nondescript turn off.
In the next date, I stop. I check under the payphone.
There is another envelope, same hand drawn car, new map,
a single name scrawled, a new handwriting some one else's initials.
I wait a beat, then pull out, headlights, catching as
a white an id does across the far lot. The
road out is waiting, and I keep driving, knowing I
am only as safe as my silence, and that the
pattern will always be waiting for the next one. The
road out is waiting, and I keep driving, knowing I
am only as safe as my silence, and that the
pattern will always be waiting for the next one. That
night feels bottomless. My hands wrestle, the shivering wheel, neck tensed,
and every mile replaced the blank stare of the angel
and the unsaid warning in those tied complicit eyes. The
dash glow is both companion and judge, marking out the distance,
as if my flight itself is being calculated by someone
seen ledger. Each highway sign is a mile marker and
a kind of exile. Across a county line, then a
state border, far smoother than bureaucracy allows proof. I think
that even here, old boundaries don't really matter any more.
After an hour, the rain thins, and somewhere before sunrise,
a tattered string of motels appears. Their vacancy signs too
bright color is bleeding into the bleak silhouette truck cabs.
I tuck into a slock, crowded by battered pickups, engine off,
body numb, and wait for my pulses subside. The world
is silent except for the distant pump of diesel engines
and the infocused mouth from a convenient store start e
spewing radio. Inside this unfamiliar room, I don't let go
of my camera bag or the backup pone ill wide
a chair under the door knob, then click my recorder
on the red eye, steady, impatient. The hush here is
almost a relief for room between storms. It should be safe,
a different state, a corridor where no one knows my face.
But every time my eyes close, I see her, a
girl's face flickering past the ruined rest stop's grimy window,
mouthing on my necks, while the angel waits, half concealed,
haunting the edge of my sleep. In the morning, headlines
upon the small TV ankod above the vending machine, Weather alert,
storms across Midwest, chirrups, then local news, Nothing about missing persons,
nothing about a ruined rest stop. Instead, a smiling anchor
operates sports scores. Unidentified body found, no foul play suspected.
I jotted down automatically, then freeze. No details, none ever,
It seems. I shuffle through foot jen my old laptop
with a meticulous dread. Most of it survived, the shifting silhouettes,
the crooked line of cars, the glimpse of the Angel,
framed by rain and chain link gray. My audio logs,
though skip alarmingly gaps, worm into the timeline, Sigmunds replaced
by hissing loud voices, sometimes my own, sometimes that metallic
teasing child's next one. I less what remains, what might
yet break through? Then I upload every meaningful piece, wrought interviews,
shots of the license plates, audio of the ringleaders called Calculus,
to a scatter of hidden clouds and data stores. I
scribble Hundterton's summaries and mail them, one at a time
to in boxes and po boxes. My friend at a
college radio station. Two freelance reporters who once reached out
of the couple of activists who posted for its about
roadside disappearance as years back. No immediate answers, no return calls,
just studing rained against the glass, the stretch of dawn
refusing to brighten, and my own reedy voice in the playback.
Even if I do not get out, two days pass,
a sleeping burs waking at the echo of a cardor
at the creek of pipes, the illicit wine of a
distant siron. I draft a fake name, a check in
y's an old id. Every habit is defense, drilled by
scarcity and fear. On the third evening, some one pounds
my door. Two sharp knocks, then silence, idol danzer. When
I finally peer through the shade, much later, the corridor
is empty, but a plain white envelope has bloomed under
my door's wither stripping. I kneel, breath tight and unfold
it inside. Another map marked exits the car again in crayon,
this time drawn in frantic and steady lines. Here are
still listening. The note reads the letters jagged. A new cycle,
it seems, has begun. I spend iOS in the library,
trolling for any public record arrests, at rest stops, corruption,
incidents of police transfers. I find only scraps. The name
Aim reduced, surfaces again, reassigned now to the next county,
a badge number blurred, and ever listing her photograph omitted.
The missing persons stateabase updates with another presumed runaway, A
boydis time last seen buying gas twenty miles from the
ruined law. I search for the church van the battered
chair's cruiser, but the license numbers never match. One digit,
always off, two letters, inverted, impossible to pin down. The
network operates not by invisibility, but by a slippery chaneonic
shifting of detail, trusting no one will look closely for long.
I may content with the extruck again. My old interview
turned confidant. We meet at a lit diner, is from
my accounts, smudged by generations sunlight streaming through greasy glass.
He looks smaller now, wait losster in somnia and fear.
Our exchange is halting. Surface level voice is keploso as
do not draw interest from anyone's sipping coffee or a
filling sugar caddis. He hasn't been back on the highway
in months, he tells me not. After hearing that lafe
coming through a rest stops broken pa. He shakes his
head as haunted. We talk only for minutes, but the
exhaustion in his voice is amissible. You don't fight this thing,
He makes sure you are not in the way when
the line moves. I press a forward copy of the
child's drawing into his palm and say nothing. He holds
it knuckles whitening, then slides it back under my coffee cup.
Don't look for logic, he whispers. There isn't any just habit,
and habit is deadlier than intent. Out here. He stands,
drops a few bills, leaves. I watch his truck idle
at the edge of the lot, never turning toward the
whit sedan Tuo spaces over now almost a joke, almost
a threat, its engine idling soundlessly. That night, I try
uploading again, using borrowed WiFi from the fast food spot
across the street. Files hang at ninety eight percent, then stall.
I checked dark web forums and conspiracy boards for any
sign in the store is landed. Even as a whisper.
Nothing A single private message appears. Stop only wagh out
equal silence. I delete it, shaking call after call, message
after message, either no answer or a line that's gone dead.
I tempt to call my sibling, just to ground myself,
to reinforce that some one still knows my name. The
fomering six times, then a different voice answer is a stranger, polite, apologetic, sorry,
wrong number. Before the line cuts. I punch in the
digit again, but It's as if the number has vanished,
absorbed into a pool of old, unused accounts. Outside the motel,
lot flickers with movement. I sit in the window, shudder,
counting every white car that enters, every uniform figure that
punishes down the sidewalk, every coin flip, whether to run
or hunker down. All night traffic flows unending, a river
of commerce burden, and the odd electric thread of being
seen at sunrise. Unable to sleep a step into the lot,
recorder in pocket, came ast slung under my jay. Each
breath is shallow and careful. Trash bags, tires, discarded plastic.
Nothing moves by the wind. I catch sight of a
local patrol car at the edge lights off idlane. The
officer's face is half turned, indistinct behind fogg glass. Nothing happens.
After a few minutes, the cruiser pulls away. I eat
breakfast at a crowded counter, noting how conversations stole. When
I order coffee, two regulars, old timers with County caps
stop talking. The cashier's board expression shoppens minutely, eyes flickering
to my shoulder. Back. Later, in a public library, I
try another round of deeper search, checking my Craffiche combing
through small town papers for clues, anything that connects the
angel the sedans their rotating driver, instead of find tangents,
occasional protests about truck stops, references to bud seasons, articles
about lost shipments, about missing tourists, about local memorials that
appear overnight, under gun by week's end, I email cut
down packets of my evidence, bearest facts men to tempt
follow up to a journalist I once trusted, an editor
I admired before my own career burned out. No answer comes,
not even a bounce back. The systems I think are immune.
It isn't until late afternoon. At the nearer shoe drops,
I spot a shadow through the corner window, a lean
faced man in an ill fitting postal uniform, pausing at
the library drop box. He opens its slides in a small,
padded envelope, then glances pointedly in my direction. Our eyes meet,
and I know instantly he brought something from me. I
wait until he leaves out the side not the main door,
then cross over as innocently as possible. The package is unmarked,
but inside another cassette, this one with a scrap of
paper wrapped around at hand, writing, slashing across it in
blue pen count your blessings tell no one Gee. I
raced through the audio, static, riddled at first, and then
the unmistakable ghost of Garsh's voice, low and breathless, nowhere
to run, watch the trunk. Some things go, others stay?
Is balance not justice? That phrase watch the trunk is
sticks to me all night. I pace in the crump room,
imagining every possibility. Bod is yes, but also secrets, files,
ghosts of evidence that can never be made public without
foot or risk. What things go? Who's vanishing? Are not
chance but selection. By midnight I have the next detail
pin the child's map marks out to rest, stopped just
inside the state line, two nights from now, a date
circled the words next one. As always, I weigh my chances,
debating whether to show up, turn devene, to lay a
direct trap, poor instead, to broadcast what I have in
the last gasp before vanishing myself. But as evening deepens,
the answer is made for me. A knock, three brisk
wraps trembles the thin door. I freeze, Pau's breath held
silent this time, am a voice, low, female, almost apologetic.
You don't want to be here tonight, not you, not now,
no name, no further sound. I listen at the door,
ear pressed hard, and finally risk a look through the
fish eye people. The corridor was empty, save for a
flicker over retreating white sleeve half way down the hall.
A fresh pulse of dreadnoughts my gut. I debate calling
the police honest impulse, if not for what I know
of their part in all this. Instead, I write a
brief look for the recorder. Every sign I'm getting is
to run. Maybe that's mercy, maybe it's the system protecting itself.
I pause, then I add, but for the sake of
the ones who kee disappearing, I'm not done yet, and
that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I
will see you in the next one.