The Pattern
731 Words
Later that night, Lena sat on Tyler’s bedroom floor, knees pulled to her chest, the shed file spread out in front of them in a loose semicircle of paper and fragments. Tyler had waited until his dad fell asleep before sneaking back into the shed and snapping photos of the pages they hadn’t had time to study. Now, lit by a dim desk lamp and the cold glow of his laptop, they combed through them one by one.
Every document felt like a crack in a wall that had been sealed for years and now, it was crumbling.
“You see this?” Tyler said, holding up his phone. “There’s a note scribbled on the back of one of the earliest reports. It says:”
1998 – M.H.
2005 – J.W.
2015 – E.R.
Pattern? Seven years apart?
Lena leaned in. “Emily’s initials are E.R. That matches. Who are the others?”
Tyler pulled a separate folder toward them, one marked with a different case number. “I searched the other initials just in case. M.H. is Maya Halbrook. Vanished in 1998. Ten years old. Lived on Pine Street.”
“Same neighborhood,” Lena murmured.
“Yeah. Then J.W. Jacob Wells. Disappeared in 2005 while walking home from Ridgewood Middle. He was twelve.”
Lena’s stomach churned. “And then Emily. In 2015.”
“Ten years old,” Tyler said grimly. “Same age range. All local. All cases left unsolved.”
Lena stared at the timeline Tyler was sketching across a notebook page: three victims, seven years apart. Always kids. Always the same time of year, late September.
“Every seven years,” she whispered. “And it’s 2022 now.”
Tyler nodded. “We’re in the seventh year. Again.”
She glanced back at the photo of the faceless figure near the fairground, tall, still, barely human. It made her skin crawl even to look at it. “So it wasn’t just Emily. It’s like… this thing keeps coming back.”
Tyler added something to the paper: a bold question.
Next disappearance?
Lena stared at it.
Then at him.
“We can’t let it happen again,” she said.
He nodded. “Agreed.”
“But what is it?” she asked. “Some guy? A cult? Or…”
She didn’t want to say it.
Tyler said it for her.
“Something not human?”
The silence stretched too long after that. Even the wind outside had gone still.
Lena reached into her backpack and pulled out the time capsule note again. She unfolded it, slowly, like it might say something different this time.
“He sees everything. Don’t let him in.”
“Who is ‘he’?” she asked aloud, even though the question was more for herself.
Tyler glanced over at his laptop and clicked something.
“I searched for that symbol — the circle with the X through it. Look.”
On the screen were blurry photos of old carvings, some ancient, some modern. He clicked on a link that showed the exact same symbol etched into stone in a photo from 1971.
“It’s not just local,” he said. “It’s old. Way older than Ridgewood.”
Lena’s chest tightened.
“It’s like it marks places,” she whispered. “Or maybe people.”
Tyler looked at her. “You said there were three of those symbols around the pine tree.”
She nodded. “Forming a triangle. And the capsule was right in the middle.”
“Maybe it’s not just a warning,” Tyler said. “Maybe it’s a trap.”
Lena froze.
“A trap for who?”
Neither of them spoke.
Then
A sharp knock at the window.
Lena flinched so hard she knocked over her water bottle. The sound echoed in the silence, followed by Tyler’s sharp intake of breath.
They both turned to the window beside his desk.
But there was nothing there.
Just dark glass.
Tyler stood up cautiously and opened the blinds.
Nothing.
No movement.
No shadow.
But when he reached forward and touched the glass, his fingers came away wet — not with rainwater… but smeared red ink.
Lena’s heart dropped.
Because written on the outside of the window, in the same handwriting as the note from the capsule, were five words:
YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.
- Writer
