Episode 1 - The Long Morning
Westville is an paranormal mystery told in serial. Be sure to catch up on previous episodes.
D.C.B. Incident Report
Interview Series 3: The Westville Incursion
“Date is January 2, 1997 — 10:48 AM. This is Special Agent Stephen Lochlear. Please state your full name for the record.”
Benson: “Really? It’s Casey Benson--for the tenth time.”
Lochlear: “Your full name.”
Benson: “Casey. Alan. Benson.”
Lochlear: “I understand your frustration Mr. Benson, but this is necessary. An incursion of this scale requires absolute diligence. We need to know exactly how the events of these past few months unfolded.”
Benson: “You call diligence leaving a girl to rot while your people played spy games in my town?”
Lochlear: “The situation and left us no better choice than to adhere to our protocols.”
Benson: “Don’t give me your bureaucratic bull—”
Lochlear: “Mr. Benson, please calm down. The sooner we finish, the sooner you can return home. Things can start to go back to normal.”
Benson: “You don’t believe that. You can’t honestly think we’re ever going back to normal after what happened.”
Lochlear: “I do. Because I have to. And so do you and everyone in Westville who witnessed what happened. I think you know that.”
Benson: “Fine. Let’s just get this over with.”
Lochlear: “Good. Now... from the beginning.”
Episode 1 - The Long Morning
Chapter 1
October 26th, 1996
Westville wasn’t the kind of place people went missing—until one frigid October morning, it suddenly was.
Casey Benson turned onto M-12, the dim, lifeless Family Affair Supermarket sign slipping out of his rearview.
The speed gun lay neglected in the passenger seat. A grand total of three cars passed through in the last two hours where the limit dropped after the blinking yellow, the temperature overnight plunging just as fast, breaking the grip of an Indian summer. The weathermen hadn’t even warned about the coming coldsnap, and usually, they got all hot and bothered over that sort of thing. He turned down the radio, playing ‘Found Out About You’ by the Gin Blossoms, and glanced at the green digital clock display.
7:12am. He was due back at the station.
Seemed earlier—not that it had made the shift pass any faster. Being that time just before the clocks set back, the mornings were dark and the nights darker, with only a pale grayish yellow haze now on the edge of the sky hinting at eventual dawn.
Fog crept over the road, and Casey rolled down his window, letting his hand drift in the cold air—an old habit from childhood. The chill prickled the skin on the back of his hand as he accelerated in the new Chevy Caprice patrol car. The V8 had a strong kick, and he often sympathized with the drivers he pulled over. It was all too easy to speed into downtown Westville over the railroad tracks, doing 55 instead of 30.
He’d driven this road nearly every day of his life. After Chicago hadn’t worked out—after he hadn’t worked out there—the department in Westville had an opening, and the town had pulled him right back. He never imagined being here 14 years after high school, but here he was, a townie like most of the population, caught somewhere between the mild urbanity of Iron Falls and the back roads of Holt County.
He stopped at the blinking red light at the town’s main intersection. The two warring gas stations on opposing corners sat still and quiet, and overhead, towering concrete silos stood in opposing rows, hulking grain bins of galvanized steel filling the spaces between skeletal trusses and angled downspouts. If Westville had a skyline, Prince Milling was it—the six letter crimson neon declaring ‘PRINCE’ like a beacon above it all.
His brow twitched with fatigue, and he rubbed a hand over the rough skin on the scar there. Then the dispatch radio beeped, and being so close to the station, he ignored it.
He coasted on, tires hissing on pavement, passing historic downtown buildings that lined the block. Cold mist rose off the rushing dam as he hit the bridge, vapors snaking around the newest silo still under construction, sheets of plastic draped over it like a veil, and ahead the rolling fog gave a ghostly radiance to the black iron dual bulb street lamps the lined the whole of main street.
The radio squawked impatiently, with an odd burst of static—almost like a whisper, though Casey couldn’t quite catch it. He frowned at the receiver. Then Gail’s familiar voice came through.
“Benson, you copy?”
Casey pressed the radio. “Yeah, I’m here. Heading your way. Over.”
Another squelch.
“I’ve been trying to stave her off, but Marge Potter’s blowing up the line with another noise complaint. Want to check it out? Over.”
Casey sighed. His stomach growled, and his eyes burned as if anticipating the long stretch ahead, the prospect of food and rest slipping further away.
“Not really, but I’m on my way.”
“Copy. You’ll get your reward in heaven.”
“God’s work, huh? Over.”
He turned left at City Hall and passed the station, giving it a baleful glance as he drove by.
Who needed sleep anyway?
Marge Potter’s place sat just past Elmwood Cemetery, where Harrison Street turned to dirt. Casey had lost track of how many noise complaints had brought him here.
The yellow two-story house stirred memories of watching his dad mow her lawn—his third job to make ends meet—while Casey sat on the back steps, eating gas station Oreos, the taste always ruined by the cloud of mosquito spray Mrs. Potter insisted on dousing him with in the summer heat.
He parked behind Marge’s old Buick Century, which listed to one side on a flat tire that had probably been that way for months. She didn’t drive anymore, as far as he knew. Since Frank passed, her kids carted her around.
Before he could unbuckle his seatbelt, the front door swung open. Marge stepped out onto the sagging porch, wrapped in a floral housecoat, her gray hair piled haphazardly atop her head like cotton candy gone wrong.
“About time, Officer,” she called, her voice sharp enough to slice through the morning fog, half-laugh, half-crass.
“You can still call me Casey, you know,” he said, flashing a smile as he closed the patrol car door. “Gail said you had a noise complaint?”
“Well, I wish I didn’t,” she huffed, arms crossed tight over her chest. “Them kids were at it again. Hollerin’ like they’ve got nothing better to do.”
Probably because they didn’t. There wasn’t much to do in Westville late on a Friday night. He nodded anyway, stifling a yawn, and glanced toward the tree line across the road. “By the scout cabin?”
She pointed a quavering finger, her voice matching its tremor. “Saw a red light over in the woods on the hill too.”
“Red, huh?” he repeated, squinting at woods bordering her property.
Beyond them lay the river and, to the south, the dense forest and the hilly North Country Trail. The Boy Scout cabin was a longtime favorite for kids looking to party.
“Yep. Flickering in and out. Better not have been fireworks, or those damn kids’ll set a fire.”
Another thing that hadn’t changed in Westville: small-town boredom. It bred the same asinine, if not creative, midnight activities, like the time he and Joe had set off a dozen road flares they’d lifted from the Prince Milling tractor trailer trucks, just because. It hadn’t gone well, and Joe’s dad, Jack Thompson, was none too happy.
“I’ll check it out, Miss Potter.”
“You do that.” She narrowed her eyes. “And it’s Marge.”
“Right.” Casey smiled, heading back to the patrol car.
He wrote up her report, tapping his pen on the clipboard in time with the engine’s idle, the brain fog from three consecutive night shifts doing its worst. Then he reversed out of the drive.
For a moment, he considered heading straight back to the station, but he knew full well Marge would be watching from the window, making sure he drove down by the cabin to ‘investigate.’ He’d do a loop, just for show.
The dirt road dead-ended at a turnaround, with the Boy Scout cabin perched on a slight hill to the right. A rusty gate, padlocked at the top of the turnaround, stood obscured behind a thickening fog from the river. It was the kind of barrier that enterprising teens hopped over every weekend.
A good, secluded spot meant for camping, but used more often for drinking, smoking, or working out hormonal frustrations. Casey had come out here once or twice, flashing his lights and scattering them like cockroaches. Seargent Reynolds, seemed to enjoy it more—like spritzing an ornery cat with a spray bottle.
The fog crept across the road, thick and cold. Casey rolled down his window, letting the chill air rush in.
For a moment, he thought he heard something—a low groan, maybe a dead tree creaking, or something moving in the brush. But the crunch of gravel under his tires drowned it out, and there was no sign of anything else.
As he headed back down Harrison, a dog stood on the shoulder where the dirt met pavement. Ears pricked, eyes locked on the tree line, like it was listening to something only it could hear.
Casey glanced at the dog in his rearview, a shiver running through him as he rolled up the window.
When Casey pulled into the station—just as tired and even hungrier—the door rattled down, shutting him in.
Inside, apart from the steady hum of fluorescent lights and the crackling radio in Johnston’s cubicle playing some Metallica song at a moderate volume on K-ROCK 97.9, things were quiet.
Gail sat behind the reception desk, a jar of peanuts and candy corn perched precariously on the edge. It never seemed to empty, so either it sat there getting stale, or she had a sweet tooth and refilled it when no one was looking.
Gail was half-focused on her daily crossword, half on the paperwork that needed filing. She looked up as he passed, glasses perched low on her nose.
“How’s Marge doing?” she asked, smirking.
“Thoroughly annoyed and surprisingly sharp. Ears like a bat.”
“Maybe we should hire her,” Gail said.
“No argument there.”
Casey caught Travis Johnson—the department rookie five years younger and greener than Casey—up to speed on the night’s events. Which, aside from the sudden cold snap and the kegger that wasn’t by Marge Potter’s, turned out to be a whole lot of nothing.
He was sipping the last of some coffee from a Styrofoam cup when Travis cleared his throat.
“You used to go out with Allison Fischer, right?”
Casey clenched. “We talked for a while.” It had been much more than that, but it hadn’t ended well. “Why?”
“Thought about asking her out.”
Casey paused, then glanced up at Travis. “A little old for you, huh?” He wasn’t Ali’s type anyway, by a long shot.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Travis said, holding out his arms in an exaggerated display, walking backward out of the kitchen. He fumbled straight into Sergeant Gordy Reynolds.
“Watch your six, son,” Reynolds said.
“Sorry, Sarge.”
Reynolds nodded at Casey. “Another night in the trenches, eh, Benson?” He grabbed the coffee pot and refilled his maize-and-blue U of M mug.
“Something like that,” Casey said.
“Well,” Travis called, heading for the garage, “I’ll make up for your share of the ticket quota this morning. Don’t worry,”
“You do that,” Casey muttered.
After clocking out and changing in the locker room into a flannel, undershirt, and jeans, he felt his left eyebrow twitching again beneath matted brown hair—probably getting too long for department standards. He glanced in the mirror. The twitch had been a habit ever since he’d fractured his orbital bone on a rusty trampoline as a kid, and afterward, his left eye had always drooped a little. A condition called ptosis, apparently, giving him an off-kilter look. As a kid, it had bothered him. Not so much anymore. Too many other things to occupy his thoughts.
One of those being the roadside memorial he’d passed that morning around 2 a.m. on his shift—a white cross with a wreath of dead, dried flowers.
He shook the image away, grabbed his bag, and headed for the door. Gail called out, “Benson, watch the phones for a minute?”
She didn’t wait for an answer, already hobbling off toward the ladies’ room.
“Sure thing,” he muttered to no one, stepping into the admin office.
His stomach growled. Fischer’s Café was only a mile away, and he was already thinking about French toast and bacon. But Aly was probably working, and truth be told, he didn’t have the energy for that today. Still, Travis’s comment had stirred something up in him.
She’d been back in town six months now, ever since her dad passed, helping her mom run the restaurant. He hadn’t seen much of her since the funeral, and before that, it had been nearly two years since he broke things off. In a town of 3,000, though, you couldn’t avoid each other forever.
A sharp trill cut through the silence—the phone ringing.
With a resigned sigh, Casey walked over to the desk and picked up the receiver. “Westville Police Department, Officer Benson speaking.”
There was a moment of static-laden silence on the other end, followed by a shaky inhale.
A woman’s voice broke through, tinged with panic. “Casey? It’s Erin.”
He recognized Erin Thompson’s voice right away. His first thought was Joe—Casey’s best friend and her husband—passed out behind the Riverbend again after too many drinks, or worse, his car in a ditch or wrapped around a tree. Westville had seen its share of tragic wrecks. Casey pushed down the worst assumption.
“Hey, everything alright? Joe okay?”
“I don’t know—I mean, it’s not Joe,” her voice wavered. “He’s out driving. Looking.”
“Erin, what’s going on?”
“God, I’m sorry… it’s Millie,” she blurted, her words tumbling out in a rush. “She didn’t come home last night. I—I don’t know where she is.”
A knot twisted in Casey’s stomach. “Maybe she stayed over at a friend’s and forgot to tell you.” But even as he said it, he knew that wasn’t like Millie, who might as well have been his niece—smart, responsible, a rule-follower.
“I’ve called everyone,” Erin said, her voice cracking. “I don’t know what to do.”
Casey’s grip tightened on the phone. “I’ll be right there.”
Chapter 2
Olivia Fischer woke with the taste of sick in her mouth.
She groaned and rolled over in her bed, thoroughly regretting the combination of weed and the Jack Daniel’s that Brett Hoffman had stolen from his dad’s liquor cabinet.
Wiping drool from the corners of her mouth, she drew in a deep breath, and her nostrils were assailed with a skunk-like after-stench. She grabbed hold of her matted red curls and held them to her nose, confirming they were, in fact, the biggest offender, then rubbed her hands over her face.
Her blue curtains were drawn partway, and the bright white light seeping through the gap made her wonder just how late she’d slept. The house seemed unusually quiet outside her door, and as Olivia slowly surfaced from the fog of what must be her first hangover (and what she swore in that moment would be her last), she remembered it was Saturday.
Kathy (Mom) didn’t like her sleeping in until all hours, even on weekends. Usually by now, she would have poked her head in, fresh from opening the restaurant and just before running down to Family Affair for an urgent restock, and to rouse Olivia.
But then she remembered her mom was out of town visiting Aunt Stacy, which was the whole reason Olivia had felt bold enough to do what she did last night, and that Ali would be working the restaurant in her absence.
Her jaw clenched at the thought of her much older sister, who’d come back home six months ago to help Mom run things after Dad died.
Had it been six months already?
All she knew was that by the time he was gone, she was ready for him to be. At least that’s what she told herself. He hadn’t been himself for a long time, and years before he got too bad to function, he and Kathy had been nothing but at each other’s throats.
Brain cancer, as it turned out, was a bitch.
She blew a tangled mess of curls away from her face, the stale scent of last night’s mistakes clinging to her hair. The quiet emptiness of the house pressed in, amplifying the pounding in her head. These days it felt more like she was living someone else’s life—a guest in a family that had moved on without her.
She could make out hazy images of the night before, down at the fairgrounds behind the old baseball diamond, by the river. Brett, Jason Davies, and a couple of other sophomore and junior boys and one or two of their girlfriends.
And Millie had been there…
Olivia shot up in bed—something she immediately regretted as her stomach churned, and she had the fleeting thought once more that she never wanted to drink again—then replayed the argument she and Millie had gotten into.
You just had to have your fun, didn’t you, Liv?
There was one surefire thing that always cheered Millie up—good old-fashioned junk food.
Olivia rummaged around in her drawers for spare change and a couple of dollar bills—she’d been slacking on allowance chores lately, apparently—figuring that a couple of Saturday morning Cosmic Brownies would be a fine way to bury the hatchet.
Sure, Millie would probably make some crack about them being laced with whatever she smoked last night, to which Olivia would roll her eyes and say, if only.
Then Olivia would promise to come back to youth group at the Methodist church across from the restaurant—and she would. For a couple of Sundays. Then she’d probably decide that she was over it again, didn’t want to hear Mr. Meyers’ corny jokes, and would rather be at the Lanes skating or bowling with Kyle and Austin—the only boys Millie actually liked to be around because they were just friends and had all been friends since forever. Then Olivia would convince Millie to ditch youth group like before, and get her grounded again.
It was sort of their thing.
She got herself into some semblance of order, brushing tangled clumps of auburn red into painful submission, then pulling it back with a teal scrunchy. She pushed the curtains aside, winced against the gray morning light, and heaved up the window, reaching out her hand to feel the chill.
She pulled on cargo jeans, picked up her light blue and neon green windbreaker—which smelled worse than her hair—so she threw it back on the floor and grabbed her salmon Reebok sweatshirt from the closet, slipping it on over her trusty Green Day T-shirt.
She slammed the front door shut behind her and grabbed her bike, which was leaning against the side of the house.
By the time Olivia was passing Erb Lumber and the row of car dealerships, her face stung with the keen wet-cold of fog, the sun fighting to break through a ceiling of gray.
Glancing up at the always-on PRINCE sign above the Main Street buildings, she precariously crossed, hoping a car with no headlights wasn’t making its way through the haze.
She got the goods at the Shell gas station and grabbed a Coke slush with two straws to go with their breakfast of fake fudge and sprinkles. Kathy was always getting after Olivia for not eating enough and eating all the wrong things when she did eat.
That was one thing Olivia couldn’t argue much.
When Olivia banked left across Main at the crosswalk and passed the police station, her stomach started turning in knots.
It had been stupid to try and drag Millie along. They both could have wound up thoroughly and completely drilled to the ground for life. She hated admitting she was wrong, but when it came to Millie, there was no point in holding out.
Her friend could be just as stubborn, and she needed a commiseration partner. They both did.
Olivia didn’t know what, but she knew something had been going on lately. Millie had been more moody—more like Olivia herself—which she wasn’t sure how to deal with. She’d given Millie her copy of Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette a couple of weeks ago, telling her it helped her work out some things after her dad passed.
Even as Olivia tried to convince herself they’d be laughing about this in ten minutes, something gnawed at her. Maybe it was the cold snap—the way Michigan’s weather could flip in a heartbeat.
Maybe it was the guilt, heavy and sour, from ditching Millie and indulging in last night’s whiskey and weed. She hadn’t hated the way it felt at first—the warmth, the looseness—right up until she’d thrown up on Brett’s shoes.
But as she walked her bike up the sidewalk toward Millie’s house, a creeping dread clawed at the edges of her thoughts, growing stronger with every step.
Then she saw it.
A police car parked in front of the Thompsons’ house.
She froze, breath catching in her throat, heart thudding painfully in her chest. Why the hell was there a cop here? The cold she’d been brushing off earlier now felt brutal, biting into her skin, and a surge of panic welled up inside her.
Olivia slunk around the side of the house, every instinct telling her to turn back, but she couldn’t. Her pulse pounded in her ears as she reached the backyard, creeping toward Millie’s slider door. She leaned in, her breath fogging the glass as she peered inside.
The room was empty. Pristine. The bed was made, neat and perfect, just like Millie always kept it—always the opposite of Olivia’s chaos.
A cold sweat broke over her. So where is she?
Her heart hammered in her chest as she heard muffled voices from inside the house, adult voices, serious voices. Every nerve in her body screamed for her to listen.
But something else told her she wouldn’t like what she was about to hear.
Within three minutes of hanging up the phone, Casey was walking up to the front porch of Joe and Erin’s house, a two-story historic home four blocks from the station.
Reynolds hadn’t liked him taking it—Casey was already over his hours and out of uniform—but everyone else was tied up, and Chief Hart had taken the day for hunting up north.
Casey let himself in. At one point, Joe had offered him the spare bedroom for as long as he needed. It would have saved Casey from renting the half-finished house he lived in just outside town, but Joe and Erin had enough to work through without him hanging around.
Erin was still in her blue scrubs—she was probably fresh home from her shift at the nursing home by now. She was yelling at someone over the wireless phone.
She slammed it down, and the phone toppled to the linoleum floor as she slapped her hand on the counter, jaw clenched, staring at the wall.
Casey walked over, picked up the phone, and replaced it on the receiver.
“Didn’t hear you come in,” she said, turning and wiping her eyes.
“That Joe?” Casey asked, glancing at the phone, though he already knew the answer.
Erin nodded. “He’s on his way.”
“Millie wasn’t staying the night anywhere?”
“No. And if she was, she would’ve told us. This isn’t like her.”
Casey agreed. Millie, for all intents and purposes his unofficial niece, was nothing if not a rule follower. She probably did better in school than he and Joe had combined.
“How long’s it been since you last saw her?”
“She left for the football game around six last night.”
The games this season were still being played down at the old Burch Field near the fairgrounds and the river, while the new high school stadium was being finished.
“Who was her ride back?”
“It was supposed to be Joe,” she said, eyeing the phone.
Casey could guess what happened, but he hoped he was wrong. Three weeks ago, he’d gotten a call from Roger Osmond over at Riverbend Saloon, a bar outside of town, saying Joe was passed out in the men’s bathroom. Casey had told him, like a thousand times before, to get his act together.
“I know, Case. I know,” Joe had said, wiping his mouth after puking on the side of the road.
“Erin needs you sober. So does Millie.”
“Don’t tell me what my family needs.”
“Well, maybe you need to hear it.”
Joe had stayed quiet until they got home, and Casey drove a few laps around the Harrison and Jackson loop, just enough time for Joe to sober up a bit before walking in the house.
“You’re a good friend, man.”
“I’d rather not be the kind of friend who has to pick you up outside a bar.”
“I’ll be better.”
“You need me to take you to get the truck tomorrow?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Joe got out, and Casey hoped that had been the last time—but knew it probably wasn’t.
“He’s not out looking, is he?”
Erin shook her head. “No. He was supposed to pick her up last night. He went up to the cabin, and I couldn’t reach him.”
Right now, none of this matters, Casey told himself.
“Who would she have been with at the game?”
“She said she was meeting Liv.”
“Liv?”
“Olivia Fischer,” Erin said.
It dawned on Casey. Ali’s younger sister. Her and Olivia had been hanging out a lot the past couple years.
“What should we do?” Erin asked, her voice tight.
Casey sighed. “Well, I’d say start by calling anyone she might be with and driving around, but we need to file a report.”
Erin nodded, her cheeks reddening, eyes glistening.
Casey picked up the phone and called the station to let Gail know they were coming in. He guided Erin out the door, and they were just about to get in his patrol car when Joe’s shiny new Ford pickup came roaring down the street. He parked crookedly, left it running, and got out.
Joe was taller than Casey—he always had been. He’d inherited his father’s receding hairline but still had a short covering of blonde. Joe had always been the better athlete, though Casey had retained his thicker head of hair.
Joe walked up to Erin, who stood rigid as he pulled her into a hug. It didn’t take long before she folded into him, a blubbering mess. Casey nodded at his friend, pissed as he was about Joe’s binge last night. Judging from the redness in Joe’s eyes and the dark rings beneath them, it was obvious. Still, that didn’t matter right now.
“We were heading to the station to file a report,” Casey said.
Erin shoved herself free, pushing Joe away.
“Dammit, Joe. Why do you do this?”
“Erin—”
“Just don’t.”
“I already called the station. They know you’re coming. I’ll head there in a bit.”
He turned and headed to his car.
Erin bit her lip, sidestepping Joe’s hand as he reached for her shoulder. She got into the passenger side of the truck and slammed the door.
“I’m sorry, Case.”
Casey shook his head. “Don’t apologize to me,” he said, glancing at the truck.
Joe wiped a big hand down his face. “Right.”
“I’ll meet you at the station.”
Casey got in his car and turned left. He hadn’t mentioned to Erin or Joe the sinking feeling he’d gotten after replaying Marge Potter’s noise complaint.
Kids partying and yelling by the cabin.
Or maybe just one kid screaming.
He didn’t want to think that way. The friend in him refused to entertain it. But thinking in best-case scenarios wasn’t part of a cop’s job.
He pushed the thought down. Not yet. It wasn’t the next logical step.
They needed to talk to anyone who had been the last to see Millie.
And right now, that looked like it could be Olivia Fischer.
Olivia heard the pickup snarl out of the driveway and crouched low by the fence, hoping they wouldn’t spot her bike. She peered around the corner, and as they drove off, she caught a glimpse of Mrs. Thompson’s face, red and twisted.
She wanted to believe Millie was in the backseat of that pickup, or even in the cop car, ready to tell the police everything—including how Olivia had been smoking pot and drinking with the others by the dam.
That would have been a million times better if it meant she had misunderstood what Mrs. Thompson and the cop—who Olivia thought was her sister’s old boyfriend—had said.
But she hadn’t. She knew what she heard, hangover or not. Millie hadn’t come home.
Olivia’s stomach twisted, and for a moment, she thought she was going to throw up on her Vans.
She cursed under her breath as she remounted her bike and rode back toward downtown.
I should have just gone back with Millie, she scolded herself, thinking about the stories she’d heard on the news—girls going missing. She veered away from the police station, paranoia taking over, and headed onto the riverwalk, then across Main toward the woods by the river, where the train tracks crossed the water.
Her body tensed as she stared blankly at the scene before her, like a postcard sent from someplace called Reality, Michigan.
Welcome back, Olivia Fischer.
She set her bike down by the train trestles that stretched over the frothing river, overlooking the dam. The roar of rushing water drowned out everything else.
Later, Olivia would realize she was sitting in the last place anyone had seen Millie Thompson. She’d realize that the night before, she had made more than just a stupid mistake.
Olivia would realize she had damned Millie Thompson.
Chapter 3
Fischer’s Café was no exception to the rule in Westville: the more time went on and the outside world changed, the more things stayed locked in a time capsule of old routines and miraculously preserved locales.
The bell hanging over the door, long past its prime, gave a shrill and hollow ring as Casey stepped into the restaurant. The greasy scent of diner comfort food hit him—a heady mix of sizzling bacon, onions, and poorly ventilated, sodium-laced air mingling with the stale, acrid pall of cigarette smoke from black-lunged patrons.
Then there were the clowns, which Fischer’s was unfortunately chock-full of.
Portraits lined the walls—an array of middle-aged men in white makeup with red noses and lips—some pouting, others gleefully glaring down at customers in the booths. One even leered like a madman. Then there were the porcelain figurines that filled a glass display case—tiny, 1950s-style cartoonish clowns. As a kid, Casey used to imagine they came to life at night when the diner was closed, escaping their see-through prisons to lay in wait for their captors, armed with kitchen knives.
Even as a 32-year-old gun-carrying cop, the thought still creeped him out.
But these days, what really gave him pause was Allison Fischer. He’d been avoiding coming in on the days she worked for the past few months or whenever he spotted her lime-green Volkswagen Beetle—hard to miss. She’d been in a fender bender with it a couple of weeks ago, something he’d heard about from Travis, who was at the scene, and now she was using her mom’s car.
Today, though, he needed to see her. He needed to know if her sister Olivia had been with Millie last night—and if she’d seen her come home. Otherwise, they might be looking at two missing girls, not just one.
He scanned the restaurant—both the smoking and non-smoking sections—for Ali’s signature blonde ponytail, bobbing purposefully as she worked. Not seeing her, he stepped up to the host stand. A longtime waitress named Julie, with tan, weathered skin stretched taut over her wiry frame, flashed him a smile that was more like an exasperated grimace.
“Usual table is open,” she said, gesturing toward a booth on the left.
“I’m not staying,” Casey said, looking around the restaurant and through the food window into the kitchen. “Is Ali working today?”
One of Julie’s painted-on eyebrows arched. “What am I, chopped liver?”
Casey sighed. “Just the usual to go, thanks.”
He realized that Sheryl Crow was playing. When Ali was working she changed up the ambience from old gospel and country to something a little more modern. Then he heard Ali’s voice.
It still had a way of making him feel lighter, just like it had back then. Even now, with Millie missing, Erin falling to pieces at the station, and Joe barely holding it together, hearing Ali’s voice loosened something inside him.
He walked toward the non-smoking section, nearly colliding with her as she rounded the corner. She stopped short, a half-formed curse dying on her lips.
“Sorry about—” She looked up at him, recognition flaring in her green eyes. “Casey.”
“Hey.”
“Haven’t seen you around here lately.”
He thought it best not to mention that he’d been actively avoiding her. “Been putting in a lot of hours.” That much, at least, wasn’t a lie.
“I can tell,” she said, scanning his face—probably thinking he looked like hell, which was how he felt—then moved past him to the food window.
Casey followed and stood in the doorway. “I need to ask you something.”
Ali furrowed her brows, narrowing her eyes like she was looking at a stranger. Which, in many ways, was probably true.
“I’m not sure now’s the time,” she said, grabbing two plates of eggs and bacon off the warmer.
“It’s not about—Look, do you know where your sister is?”
Ali froze, then turned to him.
“Probably home, sleeping like the dead—usual for a Saturday.” Her eyes narrowed again. “Why?”
“Millie Thompson is missing. Looks like Olivia might’ve been one of the last to see her.”
Ali handed the plates off to Julie, who was clearly losing patience.
“When?”
A few minutes later, Casey and Ali sat in a booth near the back entrance of the restaurant. Casey wolfed down eggs and bacon, scraping the bottom of the Styrofoam container with a plastic fork.
He told her that Joe had stopped by their house earlier, knocked, and got no answer. Erin had called too, with the same result. Ali got up, went to the phone in the kitchen, and came back shaking her head.
“They already checked with the Stevens?” she asked.
“As far as I know. Can you think of anywhere else she’d be on a Saturday?”
She shook her head. “These days she’s usually with Millie, riding their bikes around. Maybe the bowling alley?”
He washed down the last bite with black coffee, then glanced up at a tacky clown clock on the wall that read 11:37 a.m. Sixteen hours missing now.
Casey chewed his thumbnail and shook his head. He couldn’t put it off any longer.
“I’ve gotta go,” he mumbled, closing the Styrofoam box.
Ali blinked. “Where?”
“The Boy Scout cabin. Marge Potter called in a noise complaint this morning. She thought she heard kids partying out there again.”
“You think it was them?”
“I don’t know. But it’s all I’ve got.”
Ali’s brow furrowed in concern, but she didn’t argue. “What do you want me to do?”
Casey realized then that it was the most they’d talked since before her dad died—and before that, it had been almost a year. He had wanted to apologize for the way things ended—or didn’t end. They just sort of faded into nothing, like he himself after the wreck with the Hopkins kid. But it was hard, maybe pointless to apologize when you knew nothing was going to change, and the ticking clock pushed him forward.
“Find your sister,” Casey said. “Take her to the station, make sure she’s safe. See if she knows anything about Millie.”
Ali hesitated for only a second, then gave a sharp nod.
“Thanks,” Casey muttered, heading for the front door, the bell choking out a pitiful ring behind him.
Chapter 4
Olivia lumbered down the sidewalk, her bike’s chain clicking laboriously as she pushed it along. The roar of the dam’s waters filled her ears, mist rising and swirling like ghosts over the rooftops of Main Street buildings. She paused by the second section of the dam.
Millie, where are you?
The question ricocheted in her skull, a buffer against uglier thoughts.
Why had she chosen those idiot boys over Millie? All she got out of it was a lurching stomach and hair that smelled like dead skunk.
She tried to shake it off, but the guilt clung to her like the damp air. If they’d walked back together, maybe her best friend wouldn’t be missing.
She kept moving, her Vans scraping against the worn sidewalk. At any moment, she expected a cop car to pull up, sirens blaring, ready to haul her in. They’d tell her they knew—about the fight, about the party, about her being the last person to see Millie before she disappeared. A bleak future of worst-case scenarios flashed in her mind. No driver’s license, no job, and the weight of knowing her best friend was gone because of her.
Okay, so that might be extreme.
But maybe not.
Even if Millie had just gone for a walk to clear her head, she wouldn’t have stayed out all night. Millie was careful, cautious. No way she’d do something reckless. In other words, she wasn’t like Olivia.
The possibilities gnawed. Either Millie had gotten hurt, or someone had hurt her.
As Olivia reached the end of the historic district, past the antique mall and the tax office, she found herself staring at the silos and fat bins of PRINCE Milling. The railroad tracks snaked through the yard, leading toward the fairgrounds.
She didn’t know what she was hoping to find. She’d seen Millie walk across the trestles last night, so this was the way she’d have gone. Maybe she’d gone back to the game. Maybe home.
What would I have done?
Olivia chewed on that question, hard. If Millie had told her to shove it and ditched her for stupid boys and booze, what would she have done? Probably sulked and gone home. That’s what Olivia would’ve done. And Millie… in that way at least, wasn’t so different from her.
With a sigh, Olivia turned left, following the tracks toward the river. Signs posted around the yard warned about trespassing, but she ignored them. The trestles loomed ahead, stark and empty against the sky.
There’s no point in this, she told herself. I’m not going to find anything. I’m just doing this to make myself feel better.
Millie would show up, crying and apologizing to her parents, and everything would go back to normal. They’d sit together later, laugh about how ridiculous it all was. Olivia would apologize for being an idiot, and Millie would forgive her because that’s what they did. Everything would go back to how it was before.
Olivia walked past graffitied train cars, their colors dull in the foggy overcast day. The hum of the mill drowned out almost every other sound. She heard the distant screech of brakes and the hollow clang of metal as a train lumbered somewhere down the line.
Then she looked to her right and saw a rusty old Toyota pickup parked at an angle in the loading dock, and next to it, a small white bus.
Hadn’t she seen one like that before?
A shabby man in a gray PRINCE Milling shirt was loading something heavy into the back of the bus. Olivia stopped, her skin prickling.
The man glanced up at her, staring with sullen eyes as he closed the rear bus door. “Can I help you?” he called.
“I’m good,” she said. But she didn’t move. Something kept her there. Something didn’t feel right.
He walked out of the loading dock, and in the pale, overcast light of the day, she could see the dark bags under his eyes, making him look older than he probably was. She glanced at the red nametag under the red crown logo that read “Ethan.”
“You shouldn’t be here, kid,” his voice low and gravelly. Ethan didn’t just look at her like she didn’t belong there—he looked at her like she’d done something deeply offensive to him personally. Like he was ready to lay into her.
Then she glanced down at his pant legs—dirty—and his boots, caked with mud. This was a mill, not a farm…
“Sorry. Just… looking for something I lost.”
“On the train tracks?”
“I don’t know where. If I did, I wouldn’t be looking.” Olivia immediately regretted the smart remark, especially when he took a couple of steps closer. His greasy brown hair grayed at the edges near his ears, his tired eyes locking onto hers.
“Alright, yeah. I’m going,” she muttered.
He didn’t move a muscle. “Go on, then.”
Olivia backed away, her pulse quickening.
When she glanced over her shoulder, he was still watching her, eyes drilling into the back of her skull like he was trying to examine the thoughts in her brain matter.
Back on the sidewalk, Olivia felt the nausea rising again. It wasn’t just the confrontation; something about that guy bothered her. She thought of his boots.
Why the dirt? What had he been up to? Maybe she was just being paranoid.
She had to talk to somebody. She thought of Kyle and Austin. Maybe they’d seen Millie at the game after their fight.
Olivia walked her bike over to the Shell station and rummaged in her pockets for enough spare change to use the dingy old payphone around the back.
She dialed Austin’s number first because it was the one she had memorized, but when he didn’t answer, she grabbed the phonebook and searched for ‘Stevens.’ Kyle had just moved several months back, and their family had gotten a new number. Luckily, this happened to be a new phonebook.
The phone rang and rang, then the line went dead. Not even an answering machine. She managed to scrape together just enough change for one last call.
Come on, come on. “Pick up, dumbass,” she hissed.
No answer, and no more coins. She slammed the phone back on the receiver.
Then it hit her. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t thought of it before.
Kyle had joined that bowling league on Saturday mornings—at least that’s what he told his parents—so he and Austin could meet there and play the arcade games.
That’s where they’d be. She hoped.
Olivia got back on her bike and glanced back at the mill loading dock. The overhead door groaned shut as ‘Ethan’ watched her ride away, before ducking inside.
She had only gotten just past Valley View trailer park, situated behind a row of tall, grown pines, when a familiar tan station wagon pulled up on the shoulder.
“Liv!”
Her sister, Aly, hung out the driver’s side window. “Get in. We need to talk.”
Olivia swallowed. At this point, she needed to talk to someone—anyone. But her sister… no, she wouldn’t understand. She never did, and anyway she didn’t feel like being lectured.
“Not right now,” Olivia said. “I have somewhere to be.”
Anywhere but in that car with her, she thought, banking into the trailer park to cut through to Rowe Street.
She heard the car behind her.
“Liv, stop. It’s about Millie.”
Olivia skidded to a halt. Seemed like word was getting out already.
“I know,” Olivia said. “I—I don’t know what to do,” she admitted.
“You can start by getting in the car.”
Olivia didn’t argue further. She put her bike in the back of her mom’s station wagon and got in the passenger seat.
Aly shook her head. “You should have come to the restaurant.”
“Wasn’t hungry.”
“Don’t be a smartass,” Aly said, then her face softened as she glanced over, and Olivia pretended to look out the window, passing the Rocky Lake apartments and the dog park. “Were you with her last night?”
Olivia swallowed. “Yeah. We got into a fight, and she walked off on her own.” Then her chest tightened as they turned toward Main Street and downtown. “Where are we going?”
“To the police station. They want to ask some questions.”
So this was it.
When they walked in, a secretary showed them the way. The police station was small and unremarkable, looking not so different from the high school front office.
Then she saw Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, and Millie’s grandparents. They were huddled in the small kitchenette, and when she caught their eyes, her own worry for her friend seized her throat, and her eyes stung.
Keep it together, Olivia.
When the cops started asking questions, she learned that they’d been asking everyone, including Kyle and Austin and their parents. After a while longer, Olivia let go of what she’d been holding in all day. She cried, told them everything she knew about the night before. Gave them the names of the kids who had been there by the river too, something she’d probably regret later.
She figured this was the worst of it. Ripping off the band aid. That they’d find Millie once they knew a little more.
But she didn’t realize this was only the beginning.
That Millie’s disappearance would be the first crack in a larger dam of secrets, flooding Westville with things no one was prepared for.
Least of all Olivia Fischer.
Chapter 5
He’d been suppressing the instinct ever since Erin’s call came through.
But there was a sinking certainty now, that this was more than anyone was willing to admit—that Millie Thompson hadn’t just wandered off or decided to crash at a friend’s place.
As the morning dragged on, dread coiled tighter in Casey’s gut, the statistics of missing kids circling his mind like a cruel and broken carousel. The unease only deepened when he pulled back into the dirt turnaround near the old Boy Scout cabin.
Did it still count as déjà vu if it had only been a few hours since he’d been there?
The fog had mostly cleared now, and Casey could see what he hadn’t before—or maybe what he hadn’t wanted to see.
The rusted gate leading back to Scout Park was slightly ajar. The chain hung limp, clattering against the red iron as the breeze picked up. The padlock lay in the dirt, sheared clean through. Casey knelt, running his thumb along the jagged edges of the metal—sharp and biting.
That’s when he noticed the tire tracks. A van or some kind of truck had been through here. He pushed the gate open and slipped the broken padlock into his pocket.
His eyes narrowed as he stepped further down the two-track that spilled out into the clearing, He looked out over the dead, leaf-choked forest floor and followed the winding trail with his eyes. The trees stood like silent sentinels, a lingering mist from the river weaving between them like spider’s thread in the breeze.
“Anyone out there?” he called. Silence pressed back, heavier now. He tried again, this time forcing himself to acknowledge the possibility out loud. “Millie?”
Only his voice returned, echoing back, her name distorted and haunting in the stillness.
A chill ran through him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. The forest seemed to go quiet.
Casey turned and saw it.
The neon yellow and gray Sony Discman lying in the fog-damp grass, lid open, a CD—a black disc with white text reading Jagged Little Pill. Black headphones lay tangled beside it, the cord limp and haphazard.
That’s when he knew.
An image flashed in his mind: Millie, sitting on the back porch of Joe’s place the week before, waving at him as he walked into the yard. “Hey, Uncle Nut-Case!” she’d shouted, wearing the same headphones he now held in his trembling hands, the yellow CD player resting in her lap.
Casey swore and stormed back to the patrol car. He yanked the door open, the radio crackling faintly as he slid inside.
“This is Benson,” he said, voice tight. “I found—”
The words barely left his mouth when a strange sound drifted through the woods—a soft hiss, distant but deliberate. Like air slowly leaking from a tire.
Casey froze, the radio still clutched in his hand.
The hissing grew louder, morphing into something sharper—like static on a detuned radio. Then came a groaning, like trees bending in the wind.
But there was no wind.
A cold shiver crawled up Casey’s spine, as something red flashed in his periphery near the trees.
He spun around. Nothing.
Then—faint, almost inaudible—a whisper.
“You’re the guilty ones...”
It brushed past his ear, chilling and garbled but unmistakably there.
Casey whipped back around, every nerve in his body screaming, but the clearing stood empty.
The radio squelched. “Benson. You copy?”
Chief Hart’s voice.
“Yeah, I’m here,” Casey breathed, clutching the radio. “I’ve got something.”
“So do we. Get back here.”
Casey’s chest tightened, trying to settle his nerves. Whatever they had, it didn’t sound good if the Chief’s tone was any indication. “On my way.”
He flipped on the siren, the red and blue lights spearing through the last shreds of morning fog as he sped down the dirt drive. The memory of Ms. Potter’s words echoed in his mind.
Red lights in the woods...
He shook the thought away and hit the gas.
Later, Casey would remember this moment. He would mark it as the moment everything in Westville changed.
He didn’t know then that Millie was no longer the only one missing.
Or… that they had a suspect.