Page 20 of Anders
She blinked, and they were normal again.
Just a trick of the sun.Had to be.
But when she returned to her desk, her gaze was drawn inexorably back to her notes.So many questions.So many things that didn’t quite add up.
The way conversations stopped when she entered a room, only to resume with carefully chosen words.The visible relief when she didn’t comment on odd phrasings or impossible feats of awareness.The constant references to territory and hierarchy and bonds—
Another spike of pain shot through her head, and that last thought dissolved into static.
She found herself reaching for her pen again, needing to document…something.Something important that kept slipping away from her.
Shaking her head, she moved to the door that led to the building’s basement—a space that apparently only the newspaper office had access to, as it functioned as the paper’s archive room.
She made her way down the stairs.The archive room smelled of dust and old paper, with an underlying mustiness that made Etta’s sensitive nose twitch.
She’d been spending more and more time down here lately, drawn by the nagging sense that she was missing something important about Sunburst and its oddly intense residents.
There has to be something,she muttered, pulling another bound volume of old newspapers from the shelf.Some explanation for why everyone here acts so…synchronized.
The word felt wrong somehow.Not quite what she meant.But lately, every time she got close to the right word, her head would start to ache.
Like now.
Etta rubbed her temples and focused on the yellowed pages before her.This volume was from 1981, and the headlines immediately caught her attention:
MYSTERIOUS CATTLE DEATHS PLAGUE LOCAL RANCHES
Three More Animals Found Mutilated Under Full Moon
Etta’s hands trembled slightly as she read the article.The details were strange—bodies completely drained of blood but no signs of struggle.Massive claw marks that didn’t match any known predator.And always, always during the full moon.
She grabbed her notebook, already filled with similar oddities she’d discovered in her research:
1992: Three hikers disappear near Sunburst Mesa.Bodies never found.Witnesses report hearing howls.
1995: Local man claims to have seenmassive wolfin broad daylight.Recants story next day.
1998: Series of unexplained fires at the edge of town.Several residents report seeingglowing eyesin the darkness.
It’s like some kind of cult,she whispered, then winced as that familiar sharp pain lanced through her head.Or maybe…
Her gaze fell on another headline, this one from 1989:
LOCAL WOMAN CLAIMS ALIEN ABDUCTION
Sarah Mitchell Describes Lost Time, Strange Marks
Etta’s heart began to race as she read the account.Mitchell had described waking with a small mark on the back of her neck, exactly like—
She reached up to touch her own neck, fingers finding that small raised scar she’d never been able to explain.The one the doctors had dismissed, the one her parents had—
Pain exploded behind her eyes, white-hot and blinding.The memory scattered like ashes in the wind.
Etta forced herself to keep reading, though the words seemed to swim on the page.More stories emerged: mysterious lights in the desert, unexplained animal behavior, people who disappeared only to return days later with no memory of where they’d been.
But it was the patterns that really caught her attention.The way certain names kept appearing—Crawford, Ortega, Hamilton.The same families, generation after generation, always somehow involved in the stranger incidents.
Like they’re protecting something,she murmured.Or hiding something.
