Page 102 of Pareidolia

“Sociopath,” my father had muttered under his breath as he held the door open for me.

If I was, maybe I’d gotten it from the man who’d raised his hand to me more times than I could count—the same man who was more than happy to let a fifteen-year-old leave in the middle of the night with nothing but a backpack and three hundred dollars to his name. The sociopath didn’t fall far from the psycho tree.

I pause at a missing persons board tacked up at the front of the trail. Had anyone ever thought to put my face on one of these, or was I just another statistic of Duskfen? Swallowed up by the darkness, my sudden absence left to question and speculation. It wasn’t like my parents would tell anyone, “Something happened to my son in the woods and he ran away.” They probably said I got lost.

My face had probably looked out from a board just like this for months.

When I reach forward, I notice exactly how many posters there are. At least twenty, pinned in two neat rows…

And beneath every page is another page.

And another.

The mystery of missing people in Duskfen runs deep. The paper at the bottom is so faded with time that I can barely make out the name, Tomas.

“People-eating woods,” I mutter beneath my breath and drop the pages in my hand with a curious tilt to my head. “It has possibilities.”

I throw one more look at my van over my shoulder before I pull the straps of my bag tight and start my hike. I want to get there before I’m too tired to get firewood, and knowing my luck, the last assholes who stayed didn’t leave anything behind.

My hands stretch out in front of me, moonlight catching against pale, tattooed flesh as I open and close my fingers. I’ve been to this tower before, though it was a lot different the last time I was here—I was different.

I’ve been all over this forest… all over this town. I wonder if eight years, a lot of tattoos, and some bleached hair are enough to make people forget who I am.

I go by my pen name now. Alex Michaels is just a memory, a name I put on my fucking taxes at the end of the year and when I have to sign official documents.

I’m Aspen Morrows—a horror author who lives in a renovated van and hasn’t done anything illegal.

Alex, though… fuck.

My fingers clench again.

Alex has blood on his hands. I realized a long time ago that you can wash them a thousand times, but they never really come clean. Especially when a part of you really liked putting it there.

More than once.

A new name can’t make the sins of your past disappear, but it can mask them enough that you can try to pretend.

I drop my hands to my sides, pushing the thoughts away and focusing on the trail in front of me. The last thing I need to do is stray off the path and have to camp out in the trees overnight. I could do it—I’ve done it before—but I don’t really want to contend with the spiders… and as much as I’m not afraid of what might come out of the wood to eat me, I’d still be dead just the same if something did.

It’s better to follow the plan, and the plan has me walking for another ten minutes before the flat pathway starts to incline and the old fire tower comes into sight.

It stands like a skeleton against the soft moonlight, and I’m excited to see that there are no lights on in the blank windows that stare down at me like dead, lifeless eyes.

It’s perfect. The perfect place to get lost. The perfect place to start over.

The perfect place to get inspiration for a new book.

I’ve stayed over a month at an abandoned cabin before without anyone bothering me. Since this place is supposed to be haunted, I have a feeling I’ll be able to stay here even longer.

The cool bite in the air reminds me that fall is well underway—maybe the ghosts won’t spook me out of here, but if I don’t get everything prepped, the weather just might. I remember every biting cold winter growing up in this town, every snowfall and unexpected storm that left us without power for a few days until they got around to fixing it.

If I have time, though, I can prepare for it.

If I don’t… Well, if I don’t, it’s back to the van.

Because the other possibility—the house that’s still standing empty because I haven’t bothered to go to it or even sign the papers to sell it—is not an option.

“Come on, Aspen. Fucking get it together.”