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Nora

The first thing I record in Hollow Creek is the wind, and there's something in it.

I don't hear it at the time. At the time I'm standing on the shoulder of the only road into the valley with my recorder held up toward the pines, catching thirty seconds of wind through old growth because it sounds different from wind through young trees. Deeper. Older. A cello instead of a violin. I say the date into the mic. I say, “Hollow Creek, arrival.”

I get back in the car and drive the last three switchbacks down into a valley that barely exists on any map.

Seven hikers in four years. That's why I'm here. Seven people reported missing from this stretch of the Rockies, seven files closed with the same five words typed in the same box: subject chose not to be found. No bodies. No distress calls. No sign of harm. Only families who, when you pushed them, admitted that the person had seemed lighter before they left. Like something had already been decided.

I've done eleven seasons of Gone to Ground. I know what a disappearance looks like when somebody made it happen. This doesn't look like that. This looks like a valley that keeps people.

The general store has EDNA'S GENERAL hand-painted over the door, and the woman behind the counter looks up when the bell rings as though I'm late.

"The podcaster," she says.

I haven't said a word. "Is it that obvious?"

"You've got a microphone in your hand, sweetheart." She sets a brass key on the counter, birch-wood tag worn smooth. "Larch cabin. The creek's loud from the porch. Some people find that settling."

"And the others?"

She smiles and doesn't answer, and pours me a coffee I didn't ask for, and spends the next hour telling me everything about the valley except what I came to ask. The way the creek runs black. How many elk came through the flats last week. When I bring up the hikers, she tells me about her sister's hip. By the time I leave, I'm half in love with her and completely certain she knows where all seven of them are.

On my way out I stop at the corkboard by the door. Lost cats, a woodstove for sale, a church supper in November. And in the bottom corner, faded almost white, one of the missing-person posters from case five, a woman in a running vest grinning into the sun. Someone has pinned it up with care. Someone has written across the bottom in blue ballpoint, in handwriting I'd bet my car is Edna's: She's fine. She sends her love.

"Edna," I say.

"Mm?"

"Is she fine?"

Edna turns a page. "Go and get settled, sweetheart. You'll want to be in before dark."

"Why?"

She looks up at me over her glasses, and for the first time since I walked in, she doesn't smile.

"Because you're not the only one in this valley who listens," she says.

The Larch cabin is small and clean, one room and a loft, with split wood stacked on the porch and the old growth pressing right up against the back wall. I get the stove going. I set up my gear on the kitchen table, laptop and headphones and the hard drive with seven case files on it, and while the kettle heats, I put the headphones on and play back the road.

Wind through old growth. Deep and slow and layered, exactly the way I remember it.

And under it, close to the mic, so close it makes the hair stand up along my arms, somebody breathing.

I stop the playback. My hands have gone cold. I scrub back and play it again with the volume up, and there it is, under the wind: a slow, steady in and out, a big chest, patient, maybe three feet from where I stood with my recorder held up to the trees. I didn't hear a thing. I didn't see a thing. I stood on that road for thirty seconds with my back to my car, and a man stood close enough to touch me and breathed into my microphone, and I said the date and got back in the car.

I play it four more times. By the fourth, my heart is going so hard I can hear it in the headphones.

I know exactly what I should do. I've told a million listeners what to do. You lock the door. You call someone. You leave.

The phone has no signal. The car's four hours from anywhere. And under the fear, low and warm and completely unwelcome, is something else, something that sat up when I heard that breathing and hasn't lain back down.

He didn't touch me. He could have, and he didn't. He wanted me to hear him later, with headphones on, alone.

That night I set the recorder on the porch rail to catch the creek, and I stand at the door with my hand on the deadbolt for a long time.