Page 17 of Where The Devil Kneels

Then she’s gone, vanishing through a crack between buildings I swear wasn’t there a second ago. I blink at the empty space where she stood, my fingers still gripping this weird map that’s either total teenage bullshit or the answer to why my floorboards creak when nobody’s walking on them.

I fold the paper with shaking hands and put it in my pocket, though part of me wants to look at it again right here. Two older women turn the corner, their curious eyes landing on me. I give a weak smile, torn between wanting to run and wanting to ask if they know about the man in my walls. Small towns always watch, but never tell what they know.

Back in my car, I pull out the map again and spread it over my steering wheel. My finger traces each red circle, connecting the dots. It hits me that these spots aren’t just random; they’re like checkpoints. The corner where the high school kids wait for buses. That creepy alleyway behind the bar. The jogging path wherenobody can hear you scream. Places where bad stuff could go down without anyone stepping in.

And right in the middle, with a circle so dark the pen nearly tore through the paper, sits my place. Not just another spot on his watch list, but the whole damn command centre. Ground zero for whatever the hell he’s been up to all this time.

I trace the outline of the estate on the map and can’t shake the feeling that he’s watching me as I figure things out. It should creep me out, but instead I feel a strange warmth in my stomach. For the first time since I got here, I don’t feel like I’m facing everything alone.

My tires crunch over the gravel driveway as I pull up to the estate, Marta’s map burning a hole in my pocket and Dr. Rao’s revelations simmering in my brain. Great. Now I’ve got confirmation from two separate sources that my house has a bodyguard with a hero complex.

The evening sun casts shadows across the lawn, making the estate look like the cover of a Gothic romance novel, all dramatic angles and moody lighting. It’s the perfect backdrop for the next surprise, which is apparently waiting for me in human form. Nora sits on my porch steps surrounded by stacks of what look like old newspapers in clear protective sleeves, her usual bubbly demeanour replaced by something that makes my stomach drop.

She looks up as I approach. “You’ve been busy today,” she calls, her voice wavering between accusation and concern. Her eyes track me with unnerving focus, then dart away, then back again, as if she’s fighting her own instinct to observe. When our gazes lock, I see something I recognize: the look of someone who doesn’t know whether to trust their own judgment anymore.

“I could say the same for you,” I counter, gesturing at the papers spread around her like fallen autumn leaves. “Spring cleaning at the archives?”

She doesn’t smile. “I think it’s time we had a real conversation, Elara.” Her fingers tap against a yellowed newspaper, the headline partially visible: “LOCAL TEACHER VANISHES WITHOUT TRACE.” The date: 1978.

I sit down next to her on the steps, careful not to mess up her stacks of papers. Nora looks exhausted, like she hasn’t slept in days. Her usual bright clothes are gone, replaced by a dull gray cardigan that almost says, 'don’t look at me.' Thewoman who once cornered me at the grocery store to talk about the historical society bake sale is gone, and whoever this is, she’s carrying something heavy.

“These are all from the archives,” she says, sliding a protective sleeve towards me. “I’ve been collecting them for years. Patterns that nobody talks about but everyone knows.” Her voice drops. “Disappearances. Decades of them.”

The newspaper trembles slightly in my hands. “YOUNG MOTHER MISSING AFTER CUSTODY DISPUTE,” screams the headline. A grainy photo beneath shows a woman, barely older than me, her smile tight and unnatural, arms wrapped around a small child as though someone might snatch him away. June 17, 1992. I skim the first paragraph: dinner still bubbling on the stove, back door unlocked, no signs of struggle. Just… gone.

“There are more,” Nora continues, spreading out article after article across the porch. “Going back at least sixty years. Maybe longer, but the records get spotty before that.”

Each headline tells a similar story: a person vanishes without warning, belongings left behind, no signs of a struggle, no body ever found. Almost as if they woke up one day and decided it was time to leave. The faces stare up at me, men, women, young, old, their newsprint eyes holding secrets their mouths never told.

“I don’t understand,” I say, though a creeping suspicion is already forming in the back of my mind. “Why are you showing me these?”

Nora hunches closer, her words barely audible despite our solitude on the porch. Her finger traces the red circles marking the yellowed newsprint. “See it? The timing?” She jabs at a faded headline from 1985.

The photo shows a gangly boy with defiance burning behind his eyes.

“This kid vanished exactly seventy-two hours after standing court against the mayor’s golden boy.” Her nail slides to another clipping, this one showing a woman with haunted eyes and a tight smile. “And her? Gone the night after she got legal protection from her ex. The same ex whose family owns half the storefronts downtown.”

My eyes dart between the articles, connecting the invisible dots. “You’re saying the missing weren’t random victims.”

Nora shakes her head. “They were targets,” she confirms, eyes flashing with an intensity I’ve never seen in her before. “People who’d received threats, who were vulnerable, who had enemies in positions of power.”

She pulls out another sleeve, this one containing not news articles but what appear to be property records. “And here’s where it gets interesting—nearly half of them had some connection to your estate.”

I stare at her, pulse quickening. “What kind of connection?”

Nora fans the documents across the porch between us. “People who lived here. Family members who inherited it. Even just regular visitors.” Her finger traces a connection between the three yellowed pages. “And somehow, your estate is a common denominator in all of their stories.”

The sun is setting, stretching our shadows across the porch while Nora keeps pulling papers from her bag. Birth records. Death records. Property papers. Marriage records. She’s clearly been digging into this for a long time, piecing together a huge puzzle that’s finally starting to make sense to me.

“So you think someone’s been… what exactly? Kidnapping people?” I ask, trying to reconcile this with what Dr. Rao told me about protection and what Marta’s map suggests about safe houses.

Nora laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “That’s what I thought at first. A serial predator working for generations.” She shakes her head. "Until I started finding them.”

I cock an eyebrow. “Finding who?”

“The missing.” She slides a final sleeve toward me, this one containing recent printouts rather than historical documents. “Not all of them. Maybe a third. But enough to establish a pattern.”

I flip through the papers, my jaw dropping. Facebook profiles. Apartment leases. Driver’s licenses. Holy shit, it’s them. That kid from ‘85? He’s some professor in Oregon now, middle-aged and looking happier than ever.