Greyson hadn't changed much. The same rustled swings. The same sleepy roads that coiled around the school like veins. But something had shifted.
The day detective Elias Crane arrived, the air turned colder – even though the sun still shine.
He didn't come with sirens. No badge flashing. Just a dark car, dust – covered from the long drive, and a gaze too sharp for a quiet town like this. He walked into Willow Creek High like he already knew the layout. Like he'd been here before.
No one greeted him warmly. No one dared to ask what he was looking for.
Ms. Moore's disappearance still hung in the air like question no one wanted answered. And now, a stranger was here to answer it.
Crane walked into the halls like a shadow. He didn't knocked. He observed. Ask strange, quiet questions to teachers who tried to act like they weren't nervous.
"Did she ever stay late??"
"Any student she seemed concerned about?"
"Was she the type to keep secrets?"
His questions were never pointed in one direction – but the feeling remained: he was circling something.... or someone.
Then, one afternoon, he stepped into a classroom during break.
Rose felt it instantly – the pressure in the room shift. She didn't look up, but she felt his eyes on her, just for a moment. Like he knew something. Like he saw something that others missed.
He didn't speak to her. Not then.
But over the next few days, she kept seeing him. By the front gates. Outside the art room. Once even standing across from her house, pretending to check his phone.
Then, one late afternoon, she found him on her park bench. Her bench. The one where she came to draw things she couldn't say.
He didn't say her name. Didn't even greet her. He just looked straight ahead, as if watching the winds move the trees.
"Funny things about silence," he said calmly.
"Most people run from it. Fill it with noise. But silence...."
He glanced at her.
"....it has weight. Especially when it's hiding something."
Rose sat on the other end of the bench, still holding her sketchbook. Still silent.
"I knew someone once who drew the things she couldn't explain. Windows. Shadows. People she wasn't supposed to see."
He turned slightly towards her. "They thought she was imagining it. Until someone went missing."
He reached into his coat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
Without touching her, he set it beside her on the bench.
"You dropped this." He said.
"Or maybe....you meant someone to find it."
He stood and walked away.
Rose stared at the drawing.
It was hers. A sketch of woman being followed into the woods. She'd drawn it months ago before she even saw that guy dragging a body into the same woods - or perhaps Ms. Moore's body. She had ripped that drawing – afraid someone might see it. She never shown it to anyone.
But he had it.
And he didn't ask her what it meant.
He waited.
And now she didn't know what frightened her more.....
That he'd found it.
Or that part of her wanted him to....