Chapter Thirteen: The Erasure
232 Words
The house was quiet.
Too quiet.
The blood had dried. The badge was gone. The crawlspace hatch was sealed with fresh boards, nailed from the inside. Jesse and Caleb didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.
The house had cleaned.
Every trace of Sheriff Halvers was gone.
His cruiser had been towed to the old mill by something that didn’t leave tire tracks. His radio was found in the river, still transmitting static. His last call was logged as a false alarm—an abandoned barn on the edge of town.
No one questioned it.
Halvers had no family. No partner. No one who’d notice he was missing until the next town meeting.
And by then?
It would be too late.
Inside the Mercer house, the walls pulsed with satisfaction.
The boys were busy.
Jesse was burning clothes—his own, Caleb’s, the sheriff’s. The fire in the backyard pit burned black, smoke curling upward in shapes that didn’t obey wind.
Caleb was digging.
Not graves.
Hollows.
Places for things that hadn’t been born yet.
Their mother hadn’t moved since her kill.
She sat in her chair, eyes closed, hands folded, humming something that made the windows rattle. Her mouth never moved. But the sound came anyway.
The house was pleased.
The sermon was intact.
And the town?
Still asleep.
Still watering lawns.
Still blaming outsiders.
Still pretending the blood wasn’t theirs.
- Writer
