SHADOWS OVER RIVERTON

SECRETS BENEATH THE SURFACE

CHAPTER FOUR

The fog still lingered over Riverton like a second skin, though the morning sun did its best to claw its way through. By the time Detective Marcus Hale made his way into the town square, the usual hum of life had returned—vendors at their stalls, children darting between puddles, women calling after them with half-hearted scolds. Yet beneath the surface, Marcus felt the unease. The smiles were thinner, the voices subdued. People were watching one another more closely than before. Clara’s disappearance had cracked Riverton’s shell of quiet living, and now everything felt raw, suspicious.

He lit a cigarette and leaned against the iron railing near the fountain, his sharp eyes roving over the faces around him. This was how he preferred it—standing back, letting the crowd show itself. A nervous glance here, a hurried step there. Fear made people careless, and Marcus thrived on what others overlooked.

An older man, stooped and gray, shuffled past with his basket of apples. Marcus stopped him with a polite nod. “Good morning, sir. Detective Hale. I’m following up on Clara Whitford’s disappearance. Perhaps you’ve seen or heard something unusual?”

The man’s eyes darted left, then right. His lips trembled slightly. “Unusual?” He gave a shaky laugh. “Detective, everything in this town is unusual these days. Fog that won’t lift, children not allowed past the square, fishermen whispering about curses. But me? I keep my head down. That’s how you live long in Riverton.”

Before Marcus could press further, the man hurried off, nearly dropping his apples. Marcus exhaled slowly, his suspicions deepening. They were hiding something, all of them. Not necessarily guilt, but fear. And fear, he knew, often pointed the way to the truth.

---

Meanwhile, across town, Elara Locke stood in her shop, staring at the folded piece of paper lying in her sewing basket. The words she had read the day before seemed burned into her vision: You’re looking in the wrong place. She walks where shadows linger.

The note pulsed in her mind like a curse. She should tell Marcus, she knew that. But something held her back. If she presented the note, would he not ask why she had been chosen to receive it? Why her, a seamstress of no standing? Would suspicion coil around her like it had around Clara’s family?

Her hands trembled as she threaded a needle. Fear made fools of good people, she reminded herself, and she refused to become one. Yet the unease grew when she noticed something else—the bolt of velvet cloth she had left neatly stacked was no longer aligned. Her scissors had been shifted, not misplaced but deliberately angled on her worktable. Someone had entered her shop in the night.

Elara pressed her back to the wall, clutching the fabric she had been working on. “Why?” she whispered. “What do they want with me?” The silence offered no answer, only the creak of the old wooden floorboards beneath her own weight.

---

That afternoon, Marcus wandered down to the harbor, the heart of Riverton’s gossip. Nets lay piled in heaps, heavy with the morning’s catch, while gulls wheeled overhead with greedy cries. He approached a cluster of fishermen seated on overturned crates, their faces carved by salt and weather.

“Morning, gentlemen,” Marcus began, tipping his hat. “I’m told you men see more of Riverton’s secrets than anyone. What do you make of this fog?”

They glanced at one another, uneasy. One finally spat into the water. “It’s the sea’s doing, Detective. She takes who she pleases. We’ve lost folk before, haven’t we?”

Another, older man with sunken cheeks leaned forward. “Don’t play coy. You’ve heard the stories same as me. The lighthouse. Always the lighthouse. You think it stands empty, but there’s life in it still. Lights when there should be none. Figures moving in the windows. And always… always the fog.”

Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “The lighthouse hasn’t been used in decades.”

The old fisherman shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Some places don’t forget their ghosts.”

The younger men shifted uneasily, muttering about bad luck. Marcus knew then he had touched something raw. He bought them each a drink from the dockside tavern, but the old man’s words stuck like a splinter under his skin.

---

As dusk fell, Elara closed her shop early. She couldn’t shake the sense of being watched. Each time she peered into the misted window, she half expected to see a figure staring back at her. Locking the door, she placed the mysterious note in her apron pocket and hurried down the street toward her small home.

Her steps slowed when she noticed the flicker of lamplight behind her. Someone was following. Her heart pounded as she reached for the small dagger her father had once given her, a relic of a harsher time. She clutched it tightly, though her hand shook.

The footsteps behind her stopped when she stopped. Then started again when she moved. She spun suddenly, dagger raised—but the street was empty, save for the curling fog and the dim glow of the lamps.

Breathless, she hurried home and bolted the door behind her. Only then did she pull the note from her pocket and whisper to the shadows, “Why me? What do you want from me?”

The silence seemed to mock her.

---

Late into the night, Marcus sat at his desk in the inn, papers scattered around him. He had obtained more from the dusty archives—reports on two other missing girls. The first in 1902, the second in 1912. Both vanished under almost identical conditions: a fog-heavy night, last seen near the coast, and both whispered about in tavern tales that eventually dwindled into silence.

And now Clara Whitford, 1932. Marcus tapped the end of his pen against the table. Three girls, all gone without trace, each separated by a decade. A pattern. A predator. But what tied them to Riverton’s lighthouse?

He pulled a map of the town closer, circling the lighthouse at the edge of the coast. It loomed at the border of land and sea, a skeletal structure long abandoned after ships stopped using Riverton’s harbor as their main route. Locals avoided it, claiming it groaned with the voices of the lost whenever the fog grew thick.

Marcus ground out his cigarette. “Superstition or not, that’s where this trail leads.”

---

The following morning, Riverton awoke restless. Children were kept inside, merchants opened late, and whispers thickened the air. Elara arrived at her shop to find something chilling: a length of red ribbon tied neatly around the doorknob, its bow precise, mocking. It was Clara’s favorite ribbon. Elara knew it—she had sewn the girl’s dresses herself.

Her blood ran cold. Whoever had been inside her shop before was now taunting her openly. She tore the ribbon down, stuffed it into her pocket, and locked herself inside. Her decision was made. She could no longer keep Marcus in the dark. She would tell him everything, note and ribbon alike.

At the same time, Marcus prepared himself. He strapped his revolver to his side, folded the map, and slipped it into his coat pocket. He had made up his mind to visit the lighthouse. Whatever Riverton’s people feared, he needed to confront it. For Clara. For the other lost girls.

The fog pressed heavy against the town that morning, as if determined to keep its secrets buried. But Marcus was done waiting.

The echoes of the past were pointing him toward the coast—and into the heart of Riverton’s shadows.