CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jenna’s feet sank into earth that felt too soft, too yielding—like walking on moss rather than solid ground.
The forest around her stretched in impossible directions, trees bending at angles that defied the laws of nature, their branches reaching toward a sky that couldn’t decide if it was dawn or dusk.
Shadows pooled where they shouldn’t, light filtered through canopies that seemed to breathe, and somewhere in the distance, dark shapes wheeled against a bruised sky.
This wasn’t right. This wasn’t real.
“I’m lucid,” she whispered, her voice sounding both familiar and strange to her ears, as if it traveled through water before reaching her.
She was dreaming, and knowing it meant she could navigate this realm with intention rather than confusion.
The dreamscape sharpened around her in response to her awareness, colors intensifying, details becoming more pronounced.
Leaves that had been indistinct blurs moments before now revealed intricate veining, and she could count the rings of fungus climbing the nearest tree trunk.
Above the treetops, the dark shapes she’d noticed earlier resolved into vultures, their bald heads gleaming dully as they circled in a tight formation.
Jenna frowned, watching their methodical pattern.
Vultures meant death—something or someone lay dead in that direction.
The realization wasn’t frightening so much as it was a fact.
She began walking toward where the birds circled, guided by instinct and the strange rules of this place where her very thoughts seemed to bend reality around her.
The forest floor undulated beneath her feet, sometimes rising to meet her steps, other times receding so she had to reach farther than should have been necessary.
Trees whispered as she passed, their leaves rustling without wind, telling secrets in a language just beyond her comprehension.
A sharp sound cut through the forest’s murmurs—a staccato clatter that reminded her initially of a snare drum, crisp and rhythmic.
Jenna paused, trying to pinpoint its source.
It came again, more distinct this time, a rapid-fire series of impacts followed by a bell-like ding and then silence before the pattern repeated.
Not a drum. A typewriter. An old manual typewriter with metal keys striking a platen, the carriage return bell marking the end of each line.
Jenna changed direction, moving toward the sound.
As she did, the path beneath her feet became more defined, transforming from loose soil and scattered leaves to packed earth worn smooth by use.
The trees along this path seemed older, their bark gnarled into faces that watched her with hollow eyes as she passed.
Roots broke through the ground in arches, forming natural gateways that she ducked through, each one seeming to transport her deeper into this strange woodland.
The typewriter sounds grew louder, more insistent. The rhythm had a frantic quality now, as if whoever—or whatever—was typing had been seized by urgency or inspiration. The clatter echoed, multiplying until it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
Jenna’s dreamscape shifted again. The forest thinned, and before her stood a small cabin constructed of rough-hewn logs darkened by age and weather.
A thin wisp of smoke curled from a stone chimney, disappearing into the uncertain sky.
Near the front door, an axe was embedded in a stump, a neat pile of split firewood stacked against the cabin wall.
The scene would have been mundane, even picturesque, if not for that persistent clacking of typewriter keys from inside.
The vultures still circled overhead, but now they seemed fixed in place, as if painted onto the sky rather than flying through it. Their shadows, however, moved independently across the ground, sliding over the cabin and through the trees.
Jenna approached the door, her footsteps making no sound despite the carpet of dry leaves that now covered the ground. The typing continued unabated—click-clack-click-clack-ding—a rhythm as steady as a metronome. She raised her hand and knocked firmly against the weathered wood.
No response came, just the uninterrupted sound of keys striking paper. Whoever was typing either couldn’t hear her or was choosing to ignore her presence. She knocked again, louder this time, but the typing never faltered.
“Hello?” she called, her voice sounding thin and insubstantial against the solid reality of the cabin. “Is anyone there?”
The typewriter continued its relentless pace.
Jenna reached for the wrought iron door handle, half-expecting it to be locked, but then she realized the door was slightly ajar.
It swung inward on silent hinges, revealing the cabin’s sparse interior—a single room containing a small potbellied stove, a narrow cot pushed against one wall, and a simple wooden table placed directly beneath the room’s only window.
At the table sat a figure that made Jenna’s breath catch in her throat.
It wasn’t human—not exactly. It was a mannequin like those she’d seen in Liza Sewell’s studio.
Its unclothed body had the articulated joints of a museum-quality display figure, the kind used for historical exhibits.
Its fully jointed hands moved across the keys of an ancient typewriter, striking each one with force. A stack of typed pages rose beside it.
But it was the mannequin’s head that truly unsettled her.
Unlike those in the other cases, this one had no face at all—just a smooth, blank oval where features should have been.
No eyes to see the keys, no mouth to speak, yet its fingers found each letter without hesitation, and the papers kept filling up with words she couldn’t read from where she stood.
“Excuse me,” Jenna said softly, uncertain if the figure could hear or understand.
Without turning or pausing in its typing, the mannequin responded in a voice like gravel dragged across weathered boards. “Go away. I’m busy.”
The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, not from the featureless head but from the air itself. Jenna took a step closer, drawn by curiosity and the strange certainty that this encounter mattered.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said. “But I need to ask you something.”
The typing stopped abruptly. The mannequin’s hands froze above the keys, as if caught mid-word. Slowly, with a creaking of joints that sounded painful, it turned toward her. Though it had no eyes, Jenna felt its attention fix on her with unnerving intensity.
“Sheriff Graves,” it said, surprise evident in its rough voice. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“You know me?”
The mannequin's head tilted slightly, a too-human gesture from its inhuman form. "Of course, I know you. We've met before. I'm surprised you don't remember me."
Jenna searched her memory, trying to place this strange entity within the context of her waking life, but found nothing. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“It doesn’t matter,” the mannequin interrupted, turning back to the typewriter. “You won’t remember this conversation when you wake up anyway.”
“What are you typing?” Jenna asked, moving around to try to see the pages, but the words seemed to blur whenever she looked directly at them.
The mannequin’s shoulders lifted in what might have been a shrug. “I wish I knew. I thought I was finished with this kind of thing for good. Thought I could settle down to a solitary life out here in the woods. But somebody had other plans for me.”
“What do you mean? Who is ‘somebody’?”
The faceless head turned toward her again, and though it had no mouth, Jenna could have sworn it smiled—a cold, joyless expression felt rather than seen.
“Somebody thought he was doing me a favor by putting me in this situation,” the mannequin said.
“He told me I was his first. The irony is that I thought we had a lot in common, he and I. He told me what he believed. He’s a philosopher, you see.
Like me, he’s had enough of the human race.
He talked about euthanasia. And happiness. ”
"Euthanasia? Happiness?" Jenna repeated the words, sending a shiver down her spine. "What does that mean?"
“If you don’t understand it, I can’t explain it to you.
Still, I’ve got to admit he made at least some sense to me.
This is a cruel world, and as an ancient philosopher once said, the greatest blessing is never to have been born.
But I sure as hell wasn’t ready to leave this world, cruel though it may be. ”
The figure continued typing.
“Who are you?” she asked again, more urgently this time. “Please, it’s important.”
The mannequin’s hands stilled on the keys. “You met me once, Sheriff Graves. Just once. I was different then. Had a face, for one thing.” It gestured toward its blank visage with one perfectly articulated hand. “Now I’m just waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For him to finish his work. For him to understand that his philosophy is just another way of saying he’s afraid.” The mannequin leaned forward, its posture suddenly intense. “He’s just playing with dolls, Sheriff Graves. That’s all he’s doing.”
Jenna took a step closer, reaching out. “Tell me who you are. Tell me who he is.”
But as her hand neared the mannequin’s shoulder, the cabin began to dissolve around her.
The walls became transparent, then vanished entirely.
The typewriter melted like candle wax, the pages scattering into butterflies that fluttered away into nothingness.
The mannequin remained last, its faceless head turned toward her as the forest itself faded into gray mist.
“Remember—euthanasia, and happiness,” its voice echoed as it too began to dissolve. “Remember...”
Jenna jerked upright in bed, her heart hammering.
Her bedroom was dark except for the faint glow of her digital alarm clock—3:17 a.m. The sheets were tangled around her legs, damp with sweat despite the cool air from the open window.
For a moment, she remained perfectly still, trying to hold onto the fragments of her dream before they slipped away like water through cupped hands.
The forest. The cabin. The faceless mannequin at the typewriter.
She fumbled for the notepad she kept on her nightstand, flipping it open and scrawling by the dim light of the clock: “Mannequin—typewriter—euthanasia and happiness.” The pen shook in her hand, leaving the words jagged and barely legible.
“Who were you?” she whispered into the darkness of her bedroom. “When did we meet?”
Dawn was still hours away. Jenna lay back down, staring at her ceiling, knowing sleep would be elusive now.
The mannequin’s gravelly voice still seemed to hover in the air around her, a presence lingering at the edge of wakefulness.
Somewhere beyond her window, an owl called out, its lonely cry mingling with the whispers of her fading dream.
She closed her eyes, trying to recall the mannequin’s face—but there had been no face to remember, just that smooth, blank surface where features should have been. Yet it had known her. Had claimed they’d met before.
Jenna pushed her damp hair back from her forehead.
Was this just her subconscious processing the case, building connections between the mannequins they’d found and the nameless dread they’d inspired?
Or was it something more—another visitation, like Marjory Powell’s, but from someone she couldn’t quite place?