The Darkness I Carry

Chapter 30: Road to Nowhere

They were still fifty miles from the state line when the sirens started. One cruiser. Then another.

Leah saw them in the rearview mirror. Caleb didn't have to ask he could see the tension hit her shoulders, her fingers gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles turned white.

"They're not after us," he said, though he didn't believe it.

"No," Leah murmured, her voice flat, like she was already bracing for impact. "They're after me."

She didn't speed up. Didn't pull over. Just turned the wheel sharply and took the car off-road, tires slicing through dry grass and gravel, bouncing over a ditch and into the trees.

Caleb gripped the dashboard. "Jesus, Leah"

"They found the gas station," she said. "The shoe. Maybe the cameras. Doesn't matter."

"Then we run," he said, panic rising in his chest.

But Leah shook her head, her face stone-cold.

"No. We send a message."

A Moment of Awe

Detective Avery wasn't in the first car, but he heard the call. Saw the bodycam footage from the cruiser that arrived too late.

Just a flash of movement—a girl's silhouette cutting into the trees, barefoot, fast, almost feral.

The officer, frozen. Not from fear. From awe.

"She looked at me," he said later, voice hoarse, eyes wide with something like disbelief. "Like she knew me. Like she remembered me from a life I never lived."

Avery didn't laugh. He just said, "She did."

That was the truth, wasn't it? Leah wasn't just a criminal. She wasn't just a killer. She was something else entirely something untouchable, something buried so deep inside that even he could feel it, if only for a second.

The Cabin of Echoes

The cabin was barely standing.

Abandoned. Rotting. Half-swallowed by the forest. Leah moved through it like muscle memory, as though she had walked these floors a thousand times before. She knew which boards creaked underfoot, which floorboards hid space beneath, and which closet door had a rusty latch you could hook from the outside.

Caleb stood in the center of it, breathing in the mildew and dust and something older. Something that hadn't been touched in years.

"What is this place?" he asked, his voice low.

"An echo," Leah said, her back turned to him. "A wound that never scabbed."

She opened a small chest in the corner. Pulled out a roll of Polaroids. One by one, she laid them across the floor like tarot cards.

Girls.

Some smiling. Some sleeping. One screaming.

Caleb didn't speak. He didn't need to. He understood what she was showing him non her confession, her warpath, a history she couldn't escape.

He stared down at the photos. At the faces he couldn't name but that he knew would haunt him forever. He saw Leah's younger self in each one.

And then, there was the last Polaroid.

It was of a girl. A face Caleb didn't recognize. But something in the way the girl looked at the camera made his stomach twist.

This was where it all began. The path Leah had walked. The one she could never take back.

The Arrival of Avery

At dusk, Avery found the cabin.

No backup. No warning. Just a gun in one hand and a photo in the other.

Leah. Age nine. Looking straight through the camera.

Avery stepped through the broken door, the wood creaking under his weight. His eyes moved from the darkness inside to the photos on the floor, laid out like they were waiting for him.

And then he saw it.

In the center of the room, scratched into the wood with a matchhead:

NOW.

A cold shiver crawled down his spine.

It was Leah's voice, though it wasn't spoken aloud. This was her mark. Her presence. Her claim.

For a moment, Avery didn't know what to do. His instincts screamed at him to leave. To run before he got too close.

But he didn't.

He moved deeper into the cabin. He needed to understand what he was dealing with.

A girl. A monster. A warpath that had been set in motion long before he ever heard her name.

A Predator's Response

Somewhere deeper in the woods, Leah stood over a shallow creek, rinsing blood from her fingers. Not hers.

She hadn't meant to kill the deputy. He'd pulled a gun. He'd said her name.

And her body reacted before her brain did.

That was the thing people never understood about predators.

They didn't plan every kill. Sometimes, they just answered instinct.

Leah didn't flinch when the blood smeared across her hands. Didn't feel anything except the cold rush of the water as it washed the evidence away.

Caleb stood beside the fire again, waiting for her. No questions. Not tonight.

He knew better than to ask. He wasn't there to save her. He was there to bear witness. And that was all.

The Question of Why

Leah stepped from the trees, wet to the elbows, streaked with mud and bark.

He didn't flinch.

He didn't need to ask why.

Just asked, "Are we done?"

She looked at him, unreadable. Her face was a mask of calm, but Caleb could see the flickers in her eyes. The internal war that raged behind her gaze.

"No," she said softly. "We're starting."

And behind them, in the dark, something cracked.

Not a branch.

Something deeper.

Something human.

The Darkness Closing In

Detective Avery stood over the files. Dozens of them. Cold cases. Lost girls. Burned leads. And now, one connection.

Eleanor Holloway.

She was a ghost. An echo.

And if his gut was right and it usually was then she wasn't just responsible for the missing.

She was the reason they were missing.

Avery's eyes flicked to the empty chair in the corner of the room. He didn't want to sit. Didn't want to feel the weight of the task ahead of him.

But the pieces were all coming together. And the picture they painted was more twisted than he had ever imagined.

Leah had returned to finish what she started.

The Calm Before the Storm

The fire crackled in front of Leah and Caleb, its warmth a stark contrast to the cold, growing dread in the air. Caleb stared into the flames, his mind racing. He wasn't sure what he expected from this life, but it certainly wasn't this.

A girl who had been broken so completely that she could never be put back together. A monster who felt nothing, who saw nothing, except for the need to survive.

Leah's voice broke the silence.

"You still want to stay?"

Caleb didn't look at her. "Until you make me leave."

She didn't answer. But she didn't turn away either.

And for a brief moment, he wondered if he could walk away. If he could leave her to whatever darkness she was running from.

But he already knew.

He wouldn't.

The Unseen Danger

Elsewhere, far down the highway, a deputy found something behind a gas station:

A shoe. Child-sized. Burned at the toe. Stuffed with red thread.

And carved into the concrete beneath it

A single word, jagged and smeared:

BEFORE.

A chill ran through Avery. The pieces were slipping into place. And he was running out of time.