Page 77 of Long Pig

Willow

Life slowly returned to normal. She had taken her first trip into town the day before. She had overdue library books. The librarian greeted her warmly, and then surprised her with a hug.

“We missed you,” Paige said.

Willow almost cried. It was something she was doing a lot of lately. Her therapist said she was starting a new chapter in her life, and emotions were part of that.

Dale cried too. She would catch him staring at her with tears trailing down his cheeks. She would hug him, and theywould return to whatever they had been doing. Julie, her therapist, was awesome, and she helped Willow deal with the nightmares.

During her trip to town, she’d worried that everyone knew about her past and hated her. The story of her kidnapping and her history had been top news for weeks. Things died down for about a month, but then they discovered Butch’s graveyard, and the media was back in full force.

Law enforcement interviewed Willow three times including the FBI. Dale finally called a stop to it. She wanted to cooperate and help as much as she could, but he said enough was enough. She needed time to heal emotionally. He became a grandfather with Rottweiler teeth.

The horrors found inside Butch’s home far exceeded those found in his boneyard. Willow couldn’t watch the news or read anything about it without nightmares, so the news stayed off.

Roger and Louisa visited two weeks after Willow came home. A week later, Lucia came.

“Piss on that,” she said after Willow voiced a concern that she was a felon. “My friends are who I say they are. That department has taken enough of my life; I’ll be damned if they control what I do on my own time, and besides,” she smiled. “You’re rather a hero there these days. At least to some. We had a serial killer in our backyard and didn’t know it. The department has mud on their face, but me and the dispatchers have some hero worship going on.”

They drank iced tea in the shade while Lucia caught them up on the latest involving the case.

“Most of the dead haven’t been identified except by first names. They’ve put out a national call for DNA if family members have gone missing anytime in the past twenty-fiveyears. The current count, including the woman killed at the rest stop, is one-twenty-eight.”

Willow tried to absorb that number, but couldn’t. True crime documentaries would go wild. As long as they left her alone, she didn’t care.

Dale entered her periphery as he placed his cell in his back pocket. He looked at her questioningly.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“That was Liz from the safehouse. She has a woman with a small baby who needs a place to stay—or I should say, hide. I think it’s too much right now, but I told her I would speak with you about it.”

Willow looked up to the sky, feeling her grandmother looking down. Dale was wrong. It wasn’t too much; it was perfect.

Live free Willow, Joan whispered on the wind.

Epilogue

The Quiet Pressure

Sammy

The first time Sammy felt the quiet pressure in the air before Todd’s anger she couldn’t name it. It wasn't a noise; it was the absence of noise, a sudden, sterile vacuum that sucked the oxygen and the light out of the room. It felt like the heavy, electric stillness that precedes a thunderstorm, yet the sky outside was perfectly clear.

They had only been married three weeks. Their new life was still glossy and unmarred. They’d married hastily against her mother’s wishes because Todd demanded it. Sammy thought she was getting the fairytale and she did. But hers was from the original tales, whispered around cold hearths and collected by writers like the Brothers Grimm. They were not meant to comfort only to warn and instruct. The darkness behind the stories was a raw, unvarnished reflection of a world where life was brutal, survival was conditional, and evil was not a fantasy, but a real and present danger.

And now Sammy’s life was following the terrifying outline.

She would say something small, something utterly ordinary, like suggesting a change to a dinner plan ormentioning a casual joke she heard and Todd’s expression would change. It was never a full frown. Never the dramatic scowl of obvious irritation. It was a precise but vanishing flicker. If she blinked, she missed it.

She’d learned to see it not with her eyes, but with a pre-emptive tightening in her chest.

At first, she thought she was inventing the sensation. She’d rationalize the feeling away. Todd had been so much fun before they married. Now he was just tired from the relentless push of his new job, or perhaps she’d spoken too softly, or maybe he simply hadn't heard her at all. But that invisible pressure would return and her stomach would tighten leaving a cold ache behind her ribs.

Todd could be thoughtful and bring her something small he’d picked up that day. They had little money and his surprises always swelled her heart. Yet, it was the in-between moments that unsettled her. The small, unscripted instances where his silence filled the room. He had this uncanny ability to take gentle words and hone them into something sharp without ever needing to raise his voice. His disapproval was delivered with a chilling lack of warmth.

The night he found her moving the furniture, she was trying to create more space in the living room, pushing the heavy, used sofa three feet to the left. When he walked in, his silhouette framed in the hallway light and he didn't react immediately. He smiled at her, and for a suspended, sickening moment, she thought everything was fine.

He set his keys down on the counter with unnerving care. Then, he moved into the room, his shadow swallowing the sliver of floor she had just cleared. His voice lowered.