The Darkness I Carry

Chapter 23: The Weight of Guilt

Caleb didn't move for a long time.

The coffee went cold in his hands. His clothes clung to him like regret, the fabric pulling tight across his chest as if to remind him of the weight that had settled there. His eyes never left the motel door, staring at it like it might swing open again and she'd come back, like she hadn't just whispered something that carved a new hollow into his soul. Something that left him questioning everything he thought he knew about her. About himself.

You need to love the monster.

She was right. That was what it would take. That, or walk away. Pretend he never met her. Pretend he wasn't complicit in whatever was happening to her, to them both.

But he couldn't pretend anymore. Not after what he'd seen. What he'd let happen. There was no unseeing the blood on her hands, the coldness in her eyes when she spoke. And worse there was no pretending he hadn't chosen to stay. To follow. To watch. It wasn't just her actions that held him captive; it was his own decision to keep moving forward with her, even when the rest of the world screamed to turn back.

He set the coffee down, the cup no longer offering any comfort. He stood, wiping his hands on his jeans like that might shake off the guilt still lingering in his fingertips. Like it would somehow wipe the taste of everything they had done, everything they were about to do.

Then he opened the drawer again.

The newspaper was still there, its front page a quiet scream in a world that had forgotten how to listen. Caleb stared at the photo of the missing girl, Amy Delano. Sixteen. Honors student. Smiled too wide for the camera. Another ghost in Leah's wake. Another name that would fade into nothingness while the rest of the world moved on.

He closed the drawer. And with it, he closed another door on a life that had never been his to begin with.

Then he left.

Leah walked until her legs stopped aching.

She didn't have a destination in mind, didn't need one. She just needed to keep moving, to put distance between herself and the motel room, between herself and Caleb, between herself and everything that had come before. The fog had burned off, replaced by a sky too blue to be honest, too open, too clean. She hated it.

Past rows of decaying houses, overgrown fences, and the ghosts of old tire swings, she wandered like a shadow through the world, a world that no longer made sense to her. Each step seemed to echo louder in the silence around her, each breath a reminder that nothing could ever be simple again.

She ended up at the tracks.

There was always something comforting about train tracks. They only went forward or back. No mess. No choices. Just direction. A start and an end. And if she stayed here long enough, if she waited long enough, a train would come, and it would be like everything else in her life something that didn't ask questions. Something that didn't care what was left behind.

She sat on the edge of the concrete platform, her legs dangling over the edge. A train would come eventually. It always did. But she wouldn't get on. Not yet. Not until she figured out what she was becoming. Not until she understood why the edges of the world were beginning to blur and twist before her eyes.

Not the monster she knew that part well. Knew it by the rhythm of her heart when she took a life, by the way her hands stopped shaking after the kill, not before. It was the only part of herself she recognized, the only part that felt real.

But something was shifting.

Caleb had seen it. Called it hiding. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. A flicker of a different girl. A weaker one. One who still remembered her mother's perfume, the feel of sunlight through a window, a lullaby hummed in another lifetime. Those things should've been comforting. But instead, they felt like a betrayal.

Leah clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms.

That girl would get her killed. And everyone around her.

Detective Roland Avery stood outside the alley where the last body had been found. The crime scene was cleaned up now blood washed, chalk faded, but the ghosts still lingered. They always did. No matter how many bodies he uncovered, no matter how many killers he chased, the faces never left. They remained in his dreams, in the hollowness that settled behind his eyes every time he closed them.

He stared at the brick wall across from him, his mind moving faster than his feet ever could. Four sets of missing girls, all within a hundred-mile radius. No suspects. No connections. Just shadows and silence. Every lead went cold. Every door he knocked on only opened to more questions.

But last night changed that.

A witness said she saw someone. Not much of a description just movement, a silhouette. Young. Small. Wrong. That's what stuck with him. Wrong.

Not like a predator hiding in the dark. More like something that didn't belong to the world at all.

Avery had chased serials before. But this one didn't feel like a pattern. It felt like a person. A person who could've walked right past him on the street and he would never have known.

He turned to his partner, Jenkins, who was standing a few feet away, staring at the alley with a look of exhaustion. He'd been with Avery long enough to know that this case was different, but neither of them had been able to figure out why.

"Pull footage from the motel across the street," Avery said, his voice tight. "Get me every face from the last 48 hours."

Jenkins frowned. "You really think the killer's staying at a motel?"

Avery looked back at the alley, jaw tight, frustration pooling in his chest. "I think the killer's a kid," he said. "And kids need shelter, same as the rest of us."

Caleb found her three hours later.

He didn't know why he was surprised. He should've known where she would go. Should've known that the tracks were her place of solitude, her place to disappear into the world and let everything else fade away. The concrete platform looked too familiar, too much like every other moment they had shared in this strange dance of violence and survival.

She didn't turn around when he approached. Just said, "You followed me."

"I always do."

"I could've killed you back there."

"I know."

Silence stretched between them, as thick as the fog that still lingered in the distance. He stood there, watching her, knowing she wasn't going to make this easy. Knowing she never would.

Then Caleb said, "They're looking for you now. Harder than before."

"Let them."

"You're not scared?"

"I am the thing they're scared of."

He sat beside her. Didn't speak. Just let the quiet settle around them, thick with all the things that hadn't been said yet. Maybe they never would be.

After a while, she said, "They think it's a man. Middle-aged. Drives a van. Hunts at night."

"You don't drive."

"I don't hunt."

He glanced sideways at her. "Then what do you call it?"

She didn't answer.

But her hands were trembling.