The Mind He Left Behind

Prologue

Ilooked at her.

She was too pale.

Rain had begun to fall, thickening the night and swallowing the last trace of blue from the sky. Moonlight slid over her skin, making it glisten, and her blonde hair spilled down her back, tangled with wet leaves and dirt.

I knelt beside her. The damp earth soaked through my black jeans. I tried to piece together how I ended up here. My eyes traced her face. Her lips were already blue. Her half-lidded eyes held nothing but emptiness behind them.

I reached for her cheek.

Cold bit through the leather of my gloves, sharp enough to steal my breath. When I tried to tilt her head, it resisted. A dry sound came from her neck, like cracking bones. I’ve seen death before. She has been gone for weeks now.

I stopped.

My head tilted, my eyes locked with a single puzzle piece that rested against the spine of her back. The puzzle piece was empty, just white with the number eleven stamped into it.

“Who are you?” I whispered. The question felt pointless the moment it left my mouth.

The rain answered instead.

Footsteps crunched behind me.

Someone was sneaking.

Branches cracked. Leaves crunched as someone moved closer. Then a beam of light cut through the darkness, blinding me.

“I caught you red-handed,” a man said.

Before I turned, I slid the puzzle piece from her back. It came away too easily. I slipped it into my pocket, my fingers closing around it as the light sharpened onto my eyes.

“Turn around,” he shouted.

I did.

The flashlight burned my eyes. I squinted as a gun came into view, and a man steadied it in his grip, just before his badge flashed beside it.

“You are done, you bastard,” he said. “You will die in jail.”

I said nothing.

“Hands behind your back,” he ordered. “You are under arrest.”

The words barely registered. I let him move me. Let him pull my arms behind me. The cuffs snapped shut, locking my wrists.

He read my rights. I still said nothing.

Silence was all the answer he needed.

A beginning turned into an end. An end turned into a new beginning.

And my mind pulled me back to the night before.

I woke drenched in sweat.

The clock read 3:07 a.m. People say strange things happen around that hour. I’ve never been superstitious. Being back in Eureka Springs was starting to change that.

I reached for the lamp on the nightstand and turned it on.

Just as light lit the room, two knocks hit the door.

I stood. As I crossed the room, I heard footsteps, slowly fading, as if whoever had been there didn’t want to be seen.

And when I opened the door, the hallway was already empty.

A small box sat on the floor, its lid carved with the initials ‘Z.’

I picked it up and closed the door behind me.

I moved back to the bed as I opened it.

Inside were two cassette tapes and an old voice recorder, one of those old ones that smelled faintly of plastic and dust.

I sat down and picked up the first tape, labeled 1998.

I slid it into the recorder and pressed play.

“I have failed,” a man’s voice said. “I have created a monster. Not just one. But two.”

I knew that voice.

I knew why he had failed.

And I couldn’t stop laughing.

I leaned back onto the bed. My chest hurt. One hand pressed flat against it while the other rewound the tape and played the first sentence again.

“I have failed.”

Again.

And again.

Laughter tore out of me. Too loud. Too hard. Saliva gathered at the corners of my mouth, slipping free as my body shook.

Monsters born from monsters will always be monsters.

It doesn’t matter how carefully you try to reshape them.

Some people never change. They only learn how to pretend better.