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I pushed the door open and stepped into the dim lighting.

The door shut behind me with a soft, final click.

I swear the second I stepped inside, the temperature dropped a good ten degrees. I told myself it was just the air conditioning.

Shadows pooled between displays. Red track lighting washed everything in a low, hellfire glow. A faint, canned thunder rumbled through hidden speakers.

Hand-painted signs pointed the way.

Blackwood’s Darkest Sons & Daughters

The Mountains Remember

Blood in the Pines

Someone had gone all in on the aesthetic.

I wandered past the gift shop, which consisted of a glass case of mugs, shot glasses, T-shirts, and commemorative knives, and into the main exhibit. The Victim Wall dominated one side, covered in yellowed clippings and black-and-white photos. Names, dates, headline fragments.

Sideshow Killer Claims a Fourth.

Local Teen Last Seen at Dot’s.

Bodies Found Near Old Shaft.

I let my gaze slide over the faces. There were men, women…a couple of kids. Their eyes stared out across decades, caught mid-laughter, mid-blink, mid-something that would never be finished.

A little plaque read: They walked these streets, too. The town remembers. Even when no one else does.

My scalp prickled, and I quickly moved on.

The next display hit harder.

Photographs. Crime scene photos, some black-and-white, some grainy color, all of them frozen in that same awful stillness. A kitchen with a chair knocked over, dark stains blooming across tile that someone had tried—and failed—to scrub clean. A stretch of road lit by headlights and police tape, something half covered on the asphalt, the edges too dark, too wet. A bedroom that looked almost normal if you didn’t look too closely at the mattress, and how the sheets were twisted, soaked through in places no one had bothered to crop out.

I slowed despite myself.

There was something about them—the way everything looked so ordinary around the edges. Cabinets. Curtains. A bedside lamp still on. Like whatever had happened had just…slipped into a normal night and rewritten it in red.

My chest tightened.

For a split second, something tried to surface.

A different room. Different lighting. The sharp, coppery scent of blood where it shouldn’t have been. The sound of a voice I didn’t want to hear again.

David.

I shut it down immediately.

No. Not here. Not now.

My gaze snapped away, my pulse picking up as I forced myself forward, out of the line of sight of the photos, out of whatever memory had almost clawed its way up.

A mannequin in flannel and a ski mask stood frozen mid-lunge, plastic knife raised. The recorded audio tour voice droned overhead, eerily chipper.

“Many experts have speculated that environmental factors may have exacerbated latent tendencies in individuals predisposed to violence. Blackwood’s unique geographic and atmospheric conditions⁠—”

“Sure,” I muttered. “Blame the trees.”