Where The Mind Breaks

Chapter 1: The Ink

The call came with the rain.

It always rained in his memories of Everfell. It wasn't the gentle kind of rain that made you want to stay in bed. This was a cold, needling drizzle that found every crack in the world, and every crack in a man. Nel watched it streak the grimy window of his workshop, listening to the fourth ring. He almost didn't answer. Nobody called him on this line except clients, and he wasn't in the mood for their precious first editions or water-damaged family bibles.

He picked up. "Nel."

A breath, shaky and wet-sounding, filled his ear. Then a woman's voice, tight with a fear he could feel through the wire. "Nel? It's me. Golda."

His hand tightened on the receiver. Golda. The name was a ghost from a life he’d boarded up and abandoned. Her voice, usually so firm and sure, was frayed.

"Golda? What's wrong?"

"They're saying I'm crazy, Nel. They're saying I'm seeing things." Her words tumbled out in a rushed whisper. "I found it. The ledger. From the old mill. The ink... it's all wrong. It's the ink of the drowned, Nel. Just like the stories."

A cold knot tightened in his gut. The ink of the drowned. An old Everfell superstition. They said if you wrote with ink mixed with water from the lake, the truth would eventually bleed through, distorted and terrible. He used to laugh at those stories with her. Now, her voice held no laughter, only a raw, primal terror.

"Golda, slow down. What ledger? What are you talking about?"

"I can't say more. Not on this line. They listen. You have to come back. You have to see it. It's about Vivi, Nel. I think... I think I know what happened."

The world tilted. The name Vivi was a key turning in a lock he’d sealed shut twenty years ago. The familiar, panicked flutter started in his chest, his heart a trapped bird beating against his ribs. He could see her, his little sister, her red coat a splash of color against the grey lake, turning to smile at him just before...

"No," he whispered, the word a plea. "Golda, I can't come back there."

"You have to!" Her whisper was fierce, desperate. "I've put it all in a safe place for you. The key... it's where we used to hide things. From Jason. You remember."

He remembered. A loose brick in the wall behind the old movie house, a childhood secret.

"Golda, listen to me..."

A sound on her end. A sharp crack. Not thunder. Wood splintering.

"They're here," she hissed, the terror in her voice solidifying into pure, undiluted fear. The line filled with the thump of a dropped receiver, the scuffle of feet, a muffled cry that was cut off with brutal suddenness.

"Golda? Golda!"

Silence.

Then, a soft, wet, rhythmic sound. Drip. Drip. Drip. Like a tap wasn't quite turned off. Or like something was leaking.

The line went dead.

Nel stood frozen, the dial tone a dull buzz in his ear. The rain tapped against his window, a thousand accusing fingers. His hands were trembling. He looked at them, these hands that could restore a 200-year-old novel to perfection, but couldn't hold onto his own sister. He couldn't go back. Everfell was a grave, and he'd spent his life running from it.

He spent the next two hours trying to call her back. The phone just rang and rang in that empty office a thousand miles away. He called the Everfell sheriff's office, his voice strained as he asked to be connected to Sheriff Demmys, claiming to be a concerned cousin. The dispatcher, a woman with a bored voice, put him on hold and came back a minute later.

"Sorry, sir. The Sheriff is out on a call. Can I take a message?"

"What kind of call?" Nel asked, his throat tight.

"Nothing to be concerned about. A wellness check."

A wellness check. The phrase was so sterile, so innocent. It didn't belong anywhere near the raw terror in Golda's final words.

He poured a whiskey, his hand shaking so badly the bottle neck chattered against the glass. He drank it in one burning gulp. It didn't help. The image of Vivi by the lake was replaced by one of Golda, in her cluttered office, the rain at her window, and that sound... that dripping sound.

He had to know.

He found himself online, searching for the Everfell Sentinel's website. It was a small, patchy site. The top story was from three days ago: "Local Business Association Plans Fall Festival."

Nothing.

He refreshed the page. Nothing.

He refreshed it again, a compulsive, nervous twitch.

And then it changed.

A new headline, stark and black, appeared at the top.

PUBLISHER FOUND DEAD; SUSPECTED SUICIDE

The world fell away. There was no sound but the blood roaring in his ears. He clicked the link.

Golda Haines, 48, publisher and editor of the Everfell Sentinel, was found deceased in her office earlier this evening. Preliminary investigation by the Sheriff's Department suggests a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Sheriff Jason Demmys stated, "It's a terrible tragedy. Our thoughts are with her family. There appears to be no foul play."

No foul play.

The words were a lie. They were a clean, official blanket thrown over the ugly, writhing truth. He had heard her. He had heard the door break open. He had heard her struggle. He had heard the dripping.

His eyes scanned the article again, looking for a detail, anything. It was short, sterile. It mentioned she had been under stress, that the paper had been struggling financially. It was a narrative, neat and tidy, designed to close a book.

But Nel knew about books. He knew how to find the secrets hidden in the binding.

He stood up, his legs unsteady. He walked to the small, framed photograph on his desk. It was of him and Vivi and their parents, taken a summer before she vanished. They were all smiling. He was twelve, his arm around his little sister, pretending to be brave.

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, the one he never looked in. Beneath a stack of old invoices, his fingers found the cold, smooth metal. His father's old 38 revolver. A thing of weight and finality. He hadn't touched it in years. He put it on the desk beside the photograph.

Then he went to his closet and pulled out a duffel bag. He started throwing clothes into it. He didn't know what he was packing for. A funeral? An investigation? A war?

All he knew was that Golda was dead because of a secret she tried to tell him. A secret about Vivi. A secret written in the "ink of the drowned."

He was going back to Everfell. Back to the rain, and the lake, and the Demmys family. Back to the place where his life had ended twenty years ago.

He zipped the bag shut. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room.

He looked at the photograph, at his sister's smiling, trusting face. He had failed her once. He had run.

He picked up the heavy, cold revolver and tucked it into the duffel bag.

This time, he wouldn't run.

This time, he was walking straight into the heart of the darkness, and the only thing more terrifying than the secrets he would find was the one he was carrying with him...the memory of the man he saw watching them from the woods, a man whose face, after all these years, was still a blur. A man who might be waiting for him.

The rain outside his window seemed to whisper a single, relentless word.

Hurry.