27. Wren #2
There is a long, heavy silence. I can almost see her leaning back in her chair in the darkened media trailer, her eyes narrowing as she tries to figure out which way the wind is blowing.
This is the moment where the Forgery Brain takes over.
A good forger doesn’t just mimic the brushstrokes; they understand the desire of the buyer.
Sarah doesn’t want a monster. A monster is a legal nightmare, a scientific impossibility, and a logistical trap.
What Sarah wants is to be the smartest person in the room.
She wants to be the one who pulled back the curtain.
“What are you talking about, Wren?” she asks, her voice dropping into a dangerous, low register.
“Six months ago, before I even launched the hotline, I realized the lodge needed more than just a phone number. It needed a face. A myth. But it had to be tactile. It had to withstand the scrutiny of high-definition cameras. So I contacted Toby Richter at Richter Effects. We’ve been collaborating on a prototype suit for a season-long narrative arc.
We call him ‘The Guardian.’ We hired Rowan Smith, a former high-endurance athlete who is now a park ranger. We hired him for the season.”
I feel a sharp, cold pang at the name, but I push through it. The lie has to be specific. It has to have the boring, gritty details of a production budget.
“The rescue?” Sarah asks, her skepticism fighting with a sudden, desperate hope. “The way he moved through that mud? The hiker, Jason, said he felt like he was being lifted by a crane.”
“Jason was in shock and suffering from a Grade-2 concussion,” I counter smoothly.
“And the suit is built on a pneumatic exoskeleton. It’s designed to allow the performer to navigate rough terrain and lift significant weight to simulate the physical presence of a cryptid.
The rescue wasn’t part of the plan, Sarah.
That was Rowan making a split-second decision.
He saw a man dying and didn’t have time to peel off three hundred pounds of silicone and carbon fiber. He just went in.”
“If this is a lie to protect him from being hunted—”
“Check your email,” I interrupt. “I just sent over the initial design brief from Richter Effects dated last April. You’ll also find a series of wireframe rig concepts and a scan of the ‘Rowan Smith’ nondisclosure agreement.
I’m giving you the story of the year, Sarah.
You didn’t find Bigfoot. You found the future of immersive marketing.
You found a hero who did the impossible while wearing a masterpiece of engineering.
Which headline sounds better for your shareholders?
‘Documentary Crew Fooled by Forest Spirit’ or ‘Exclusive: The Secret Genius Behind the Viral Bigfoot Hoax’? ”
I hear the rapid-fire tapping of keys as she opens the files Toby and I just spent the last hour creating.
I know exactly what she’s seeing. Sketches with deliberate coffee stains.
Invoices with believable, non-round numbers.
A fabrication timeline that accounts for the exact level of detail seen in the 4K footage.
I’ve layered the provenance like an Old Master painting: base coat of truth, layers of technical jargon, and a top glaze of professional vanity.
“Richter Effects,” she mutters, more to herself than to me. “I know their work. They did the creatures for Dead of Night.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Toby is a perfectionist. That’s why the footage looks so real.
It’s supposed to. But now that the ‘hero’ element has happened, we can’t keep the secret anymore.
If we don’t come clean now, and someone spots a seam in the suit later, the lodge is dead and your documentary is a joke.
If we come clean together, it’s a triumph. ”
I hold my breath. My professors always told me that the most successful fakes aren’t the ones that look the best, but the ones that confirm the expert’s existing biases.
Sarah wants to believe she was part of something huge, but she’s terrified of being the punchline.
I’ve just given her a way to be the one holding the punchline.
“I’ll need to see the suit,” Sarah says. Her voice has changed. The panic is gone, replaced by the shark-like focus of a producer who has just spotted a new, more profitable angle. “And I’ll need an interview with this Rowan Smith. On camera. In the suit.”
“Rowan is... shaken,” I say, and that, at least, is the god-honest truth.
“He’s a private person. But I can get you the prototype pieces from the basement tonight.
I’ll have Toby send over the rest of the fabrication photos by dawn.
As for the interview, we’ll do it on my terms, after the press cycle has settled. ”
“Fine,” she says. “But if I find one hole in this story, Wren, one single thread that doesn’t match, I will bury you and this lodge so deep the bank will forget you ever existed.”
“I expect nothing less,” I say, and hang up.
I drop the phone onto the desk and let out a breath I feel like I’ve been holding since the storm started.
My hands are shaking. I look at the screen, at the face of the man I’m currently deleting from history.
I am turning Rowan into a line item. I am making him Rowan Smith, a phantom dressed in silicone and carbon fiber.
It’s a perfect plan. It accounts for the rescue, the witnesses, the footage, and the financial pressure.
It gives the documentary crew a face-saving exit and gives Rowan his forest back.
But it also creates a wall. If he’s a suit, he can never truly be seen.
If he’s a hoax, he has to stay in the shadows forever, even from me.
I walk back into the mudroom. The back door is still open, the darkness of the woods pressing in against the lodge. I want to run out there. I want to find him and tell him that I’ve fixed it. I want to tell him that I’ve built a lie big enough to hide him forever.
But I know how guardians are. He doesn’t want a lie. By making him the biggest story in the country, even a fake one, I’ve tied him to me in a way that might be more suffocating than the drones ever were.
I pick up his HIDE & SEEK T-shirt. It’s cold and wet. I press it to my face, catching the faint, lingering scent of him—something like honey, old wood, and the electric charge of a storm.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into the fabric.
I walk back into the office and begin the final step. I pull up the lodge’s social media accounts, which started this whole mess, and prepare the first post. It’s not a debunking yet. It’s a teaser. A photo of the prototype sketch Toby emailed me, cropped so it looks like a design document.
Caption: Everything you thought you saw was just the beginning. Stay tuned for the real story behind the Guardian.
I hit post. The red light on the hotline phone blinks once, twice, and then goes solid as a new wave of calls starts to flood in. The internet is a swarm of bees, and I’ve just thrown the first bucket of honey.
I sit there in the blue light, a forger at the end of her masterpiece, and wait for the world to start believing my lies.
The mountain is silent. The lodge is humming.
And for the first time in weeks, I know exactly what I’m doing.
I just don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look Rowan in the eye again once I’ve finished making him disappear.