𝐇𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐬 𝐀𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 - 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟓
Almost a week after Dwayne vanishes, someone else does too. Santa Carla shrugs it off , but you can’t. On the boardwalk, beneath flickering lights and weathered missing posters, the truth starts to surface.
Thank you for being so patient with this part -I know it took a bit to get here. And please don’t shoot me… Dwayne isn’t in this chapter, but his absence is very much on purpose. Things are shifting, and it’ll make sense soon. 💛
It’s been six days since you last saw him.
You know that because you counted at first. Not obsessively - just enough to keep yourself grounded. One night, then another. Six evenings where you half-expected to hear the low growl of a motorcycle somewhere down the street, even though you had no reason to. Six mornings where you woke up with the faint, disorienting sense that something had been there and quietly decided not to come back.
The motorcycle never returned.
Life didn’t pause for that fact. It rarely does. You kept your routine because that’s what you’re supposed to do when something unsettles you , pretend the shape of your days hasn’t changed and hope your body follows along. You went to work, clocked in, answered questions, moved through tasks on autopilot. But you noticed the difference anyway.
You walked more carefully now. Took routes that stayed lit. Slowed at corners without knowing why. Your body reacted before your thoughts caught up, steering you away from shadowed spaces with a quiet urgency that felt learned rather than chosen.
You didn’t tell anyone about the ride home. About the way the world had narrowed to wind and motion and the steady slowing of your heartbeat as he carried you through the dark. About the sound of his voice when he said your name, or the way he’d spoken afterward.
You hadn’t understood then why it sounded like more than a statement. Only that when you’d stepped inside and glanced back through the narrow window beside the door, he’d still been there - straddling the bike, dark hair shifting in the breeze, his gaze fixed on you like he was committing the moment to memory.
Then the engine had roared to life, and he’d disappeared into the night.
By the sixth day, the absence felt deliberate.
You’re halfway through your shift when Gina notices you staring at nothing.
“You gonna tell me what’s wrong,” she says, sliding past you with a tray, “or are you just planning to burn a hole through that wall?”
You blink, glance where you’d been looking. There’s nothing there. Just paint and a small crack you don’t remember noticing before.
“I’m fine,” you say automatically.
Gina hums, unimpressed. “That’s what people say when they’re not.”
She hesitates, then lowers her voice. “You hear from Mark?”
The question lands heavier than it should. You realize, with a slow tightening in your chest, that you haven’t. Not since that night. Not since he dropped you off and warned you about the bikers with a seriousness that hadn’t matched his earlier jokes.
“No,” you say. “Have you?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. Tried calling him yesterday. Straight to voicemail.” She exhales through her nose. “Police have been asking around, though.”
Your head snaps up. “Police?”
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Missing persons. Couple of them came by earlier. Took his name, asked the same questions they always do.”
Eddie leans back against the counter, arms crossed. “They’ll say he left town,” he mutters. “That’s what they always say.”
Eddie’s been there longer than you. Long enough that he doesn’t bother dressing up his words. He works the late shifts, takes the doubles no one wants, knows which managers will look the other way and which ones won’t. He grew up close enough to Santa Carla that he knows the town through half-heard stories and things people stop asking about after a while. When he talks about people leaving town, it isn’t gossip - it’s experience. You’ve worked with him long enough to recognize the tone, too. Eddie only sounds like that when something’s already gone wrong, when the explanation has already been decided without anyone saying it out loud. That’s why his comment settles so heavily. Eddie doesn’t speculate. He states patterns.
Gina shoots them a look. “Doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Eddie lets out a short, humorless breath, shaking his head. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t,” he says. “Santa Carla’s good at pretending people don’t just… vanish.”
Eddie gives a weak shrug. “Maybe he’s still… ghosting.”
The word snaps through the air like a crack.
“That’s not funny,” Gina says flatly.
The joke dies where it stands, and the room feels colder for it. Mark’s name lingers long after the conversation starts drifting, settling into the spaces between clinking dishes and low voices like it doesn’t want to leave.
You hear his voice again without trying to.
One guy I knew - we used to work together - talked to them once. Next day, he was gone.
You remember the way he’d looked out over the boardwalk instead of at you when he said it - the pause before he admitted people went missing, the half-smile he’d forced afterward, like he regretted saying anything at all.
The memory tightens something in your chest, and before you can second-guess yourself, you speak.
“Mark told me once,” you say quietly. “About someone he knew. A coworker.” You hesitate, frowning as the details line themselves up in your head. “He said they used to work here. Before they disappeared.”
Eddie doesn’t react right away. He exhales slowly through his nose, gaze dropping to the floor like he’s deciding whether to let this go or not.
“That’s not…” He stops, shakes his head once. “That’s not exactly true.”
Gina turns toward him. “Eddie-”
“It was his brother,” Eddie says, lifting his eyes to you this time. His voice is steady, stripped of its usual offhand tone. “Not a coworker.”
The words land heavier than anything else that’s been said.
“He worked here for a bit,” Eddie continues. “Couple years back. Mark didn’t want people knowing. Thought if he called him a coworker, it’d make it easier. Smaller.” A pause. “Didn’t help.”
“He talked about him like it was just some guy,” you say, more to yourself than anyone else.
“Yeah,” Eddie replies quietly. “Because if he said ‘my brother,’ people would’ve paid attention. And around here…” He trails off, then finishes flatly. “Attention doesn’t last.”
Mark hadn’t been exaggerating when he warned you.
He’d been speaking from experience -and trying not to let it show.
“How long ago?” you ask, the words coming out quieter than you mean them to.
Eddie doesn’t answer right away. He shifts his weight, gaze drifting past you toward the back door like he’s measuring the distance to something he’d rather not revisit.
“Couple years,” he says finally. “Maybe three.” His jaw tightens. “Before the town started acting like it was normal.”
Gina exhales slowly. “Yeah… I remember.”
Your throat tightens. “That long?”
“Long enough,” Eddie replies. “Long enough that people stop asking questions and start telling themselves it’s none of their business.”
You nod slowly, your thoughts already moving, connecting threads you hadn’t wanted to touch before.
“And the police?” you ask, shifting your weight, suddenly aware of how still the room has gone.
Eddie lets out a short breath. “They took a report. Asked about debts, girlfriends, whether he’d been talking about leaving.” A pause. “Same script they use every time.”
Your fingers curl against the counter, knuckles whitening. “They never found anything?”
“No,” Eddie says, jaw tightening. “Because they weren’t looking for what took him.”
The words settle between you, heavy and unfinished, like something no one wants to touch for fear it might open further. The diner feels smaller suddenly, the hum of conversation at the edges too loud, too distant, as if you’re standing inside a pocket of silence that doesn’t quite belong to the room.
You think of Mark again - of the way he’d softened the story when he told it, pared it down to something impersonal. A coworker. A phrase chosen carefully, deliberately. Something that didn’t invite questions. Something easier to carry. Something that didn’t bleed.
You see it now for what it was: not a lie, but a shield. A way of keeping the worst part tucked away, where it couldn’t be examined too closely. Where no one would see how deep it went. Where he didn’t have to say the word that would’ve made it real.
The realization settles low in your chest, uncomfortable and sharp, and suddenly Mark’s warning feels heavier than it did before. Less like superstition. Less like rumor.
More like something he’d been living with for a long time.
And suddenly the warning he gave you doesn’t sound like superstition at all.
It sounds like a promise he couldn’t keep - one he’d tried to pass on instead. A last, quiet attempt to spare someone else the weight he’d been carrying alone. He hadn’t been trying to scare you. He’d been trying to redirect you, to nudge you just far enough out of harm’s way that the past wouldn’t repeat itself.
You see it now in hindsight: the careful wording, the way he’d stopped short of saying too much, the tension in his voice when he’d told you to walk the other way. Not because he didn’t know more - but because knowing more had already cost him something.
And maybe that was the cruelest part.
He’d warned you because he couldn’t warn his brother in time. Because once had already been enough. Because he knew what it felt like to watch someone vanish and be told to accept it, to live with unanswered questions and a town that kept moving anyway.
The promise hadn’t been that nothing would happen.
It had been that you wouldn’t be the one who disappeared next.
And standing there now, the weight of that settles deep in your chest, heavy with the knowledge that even promises made out of love aren’t always strong enough to change what’s already in motion.
The thought stays with you as the conversation thins and the diner slowly returns to its usual noise, like everyone has silently agreed to move on. Plates clatter. Someone laughs too loudly. A door swings open and lets in a rush of cold air that smells faintly of salt.
You finish your shift on autopilot.
Your hands know what to do even if your mind doesn’t. You clock out, shrug into your jacket, murmur goodbyes you barely register. Gina catches your eye once as you pass, her expression softer now, like she wants to say something else but doesn’t know how to put it into words.
Outside, the air hits you sharper than you expect.
The sky has already begun to darken, the last stretch of daylight thinning over the horizon. Neon flickers to life along the street, humming faintly as it warms. You take a breath you don’t realize you’ve been holding and start walking, letting your feet choose the direction before you do.
The boardwalk draws you in without effort.
The sound of the ocean grows louder as you approach, steady and relentless, a rhythm that doesn’t care who comes or goes. The boards creak beneath your steps, worn smooth by years of passing feet. People drift by in loose clusters - tourists with cameras, locals pretending not to notice anything out of place.
You walk past them all, the weight of the diner still clinging to you, Eddie’s words replaying in your head alongside Mark’s. Experience. Patterns. Disappearances that get filed away as inconvenience rather than loss.
You tell yourself you’re just trying to clear your head.
But the truth is, you’re looking.
Not for anything specific - not yet -just for something that feels wrong enough to confirm that this unease didn’t come out of nowhere. That Mark hadn’t been the only one paying attention. That Dwayne hadn’t stepped in for no reason at all.
The ocean air is colder here, the wind tugging at your jacket as you move farther along the rail. You slow, scanning faces without realizing you’re doing it, half-expecting to see a familiar silhouette where there’s only motion and shadow.
But the feeling doesn’t leave either.
He hadn’t stopped you from going into that alley. He’d just refused to let it be the last place you ever stood.
And for the first time since all of this began, you don’t fight it.
You let the feeling settle instead of pushing it away, let it sink into your bones where it’s been trying to take root all along.
You stand there for a moment longer, fingers curling around the railing, grounding yourself in the rough grain of the wood. Your heartbeat is still too loud, your thoughts still too sharp, but beneath it all, there’s something steadier now. A thread pulling forward instead of back.
The boardwalk hums around you - footsteps, distant laughter, the whirr of arcade lights ,but it all feels slightly out of sync, like you’re walking half a second behind the rest of the world. You turn from the railing and start moving again, slow at first, letting the crowd carry you.
That’s when you notice them.
Flyers, taped crookedly to posts and lamp poles. Corners curling. Ink running where fog or sea spray has kissed the paper too many times. Some are new, sharp-edged and hopeful. Others look tired, sun-bleached, layered over older ones like the town is trying to bury its own memory.
The word repeats itself until it stops feeling like a warning and starts feeling like a pattern.
Your eyes skim faces you don’t recognize - tourists, locals, people who look like they could’ve passed you on this same stretch of boardwalk a dozen times without leaving an impression. Names blur together. Dates. Last seen locations.
His photo is smaller than the others, almost an afterthought, like it was added late or without much hope. The picture is grainy, taken in bad lighting, his smile awkward and unfinished -the kind he wore when he didn’t quite trust the camera. Someone has written the date in thicker ink, pressing too hard, as if trying to force it to matter.
Your fingers lift before you realize you’ve moved, hovering just short of the paper. You don’t touch it. It feels wrong to.
So this is what happened.
Not silence with an explanation waiting at the end of it.
The word settles heavy in your chest as pieces slide into place - the warning in his voice, the way he’d looked anywhere but at you when he talked about people disappearing. How carefully he’d told the story, sanding it down until it couldn’t cut anymore.
You swallow, jaw tightening.
That’s when the air shifts.
Not the breeze - something else. A pressure, subtle but unmistakable, like being looked at before you actually see anyone. The hairs at the back of your neck rise, every instinct you have going rigid at once.
He’s leaning against the railing a few yards away, one boot hooked casually over the other, posture loose and unbothered , like he’s been there the entire time and simply decided now was when you’d notice. Pale hair catches the boardwalk lights, almost glowing, his face half-shadowed and sharp in a way that doesn’t soften when he smiles.
A cigarette burns between his fingers.
He takes a slow drag, eyes never leaving you, then exhales just as lazily - smoke curling into the night like it belongs there. His mouth quirks, not quite a smile, not quite a threat.
Recognition hits before logic has time to catch up.
The memory settles with unnerving precision.
The boardwalk - already loud, already crowded. The motorcycles lined up nearby, engines quiet, chrome catching the lights like teeth. They hadn’t just arrived. They’d been there. Watching the night move around them.
You’d been walking with Mark when it happened -mid-sentence, mid-step - that prickle down your spine that made your attention shift without permission.
Dwayne astride his bike, dark and unmoving, gaze fixed on you with that same unreadable calm - not curious, not threatening, just certain. Like he’d known you’d look back eventually.
And beside him, the blonde.
Leaning against his own bike, cigarette glowing faintly as he watched you too. Not the crowd. Not the boardwalk. You. His mouth curved in something close to amusement, something sharper than a smile, as if he’d noticed Dwayne noticing you and found it entertaining.
They hadn’t been looking around.
They’d been looking at you.
Now, with the blonde leaning against the railing a few yards away, smoke curling lazily into the night, that realization clicks into place with cold certainty.
He’s the one who was watching, right alongside him.
If anything, it sharpens, like he’s tasting something. Like he’s pleased.
The world around you dulls, sound thinning until the boardwalk feels too wide, too empty, too exposed. The hum of the lights fades to a low buzz. The ocean’s roar drops out entirely.
And then - without warning -
The words don’t echo - they settle. Smooth and invasive, curling through your thoughts like smoke. Not loud. Not urgent. Certain. As if they’ve been waiting for you to be ready to hear them.
Your breath catches. Your hand tightens around the edge of the railing, nails biting into the wood as your stomach drops hard and hollow.
His smirk deepens, just a fraction - pleased.
“It’s cute,” the voice murmurs, amused. “How surprised you are.”
For a split second, you don’t know where it’s coming from. It doesn’t echo, doesn’t carry - it simply exists, pressed too close to your thoughts to be sound at all. Your pulse stutters, breath catching as you search the night for a source that isn’t there.
The smirk on his mouth deepens, eyes glinting with something unreadable, and the pressure in your head tightens in response - like two things brushing too close together.
You don’t know how you know.
You don’t have proof. No explanation that would make sense if you tried to say it out loud.
But standing there with his eyes on you and that voice still echoing where it shouldn’t be, you understand it anyway.
And somehow, the certainty of that settles deeper than fear.
The certainty lingers, heavy and wrong, like a hand resting where it shouldn’t.
And then - softer now, almost indulgent -
“See you around” ,the voice adds, accompanied by the faintest trace of a chuckle.
The words aren’t a promise or a threat. They don’t need to be. They carry the same casual confidence as his posture, the same certainty that whatever’s been set in motion will find its way back to you whether you want it to or not.
The impact comes out of nowhere.
Someone collides with your shoulder, hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs. Your grip slips. Your bag tears free and hits the boards with a dull thud, spilling its contents across the walkway - keys skittering, paper sliding, something metallic clattering too loudly against the wood.
“Sorry-!” the stranger mutters, already moving on, swallowed by the crowd before you can react.
Your heart hammers as you crouch, hands shaking as you gather your things, shoving everything back into your bag without looking, breath coming too fast, too shallow.
When you straighten , when your gaze snaps back to the railing -
The space where he’d been leaning is empty now, railing bare and unremarkable, like it was never occupied at all. No pale hair catching the boardwalk lights. No cigarette ember glowing in the dark. No trace of movement slipping away into shadow.
It’s as if the night has folded over itself, swallowing him whole.
The ocean rolls on below, steady and indifferent, waves breaking against the shore with the same rhythm they always have. People pass behind you, laughing, talking, brushing too close -none of them slowing, none of them noticing that anything has changed.
You scan the boardwalk anyway. The crowd. The shadows between posts. The stretch of rail disappearing into darkness at either end.
No sense of where he might have gone.
Just absence - sudden and complete -sharp enough to make your chest ache.
Your skin still hums with the echo of being watched, of something brushing too close to your thoughts and slipping away before you could grasp it. The words he left behind linger heavier than his presence ever did, curling low and slow in your mind.
You swallow, heart still racing, knowing with unsettling certainty that disappearing like that wasn’t chance.
And whatever he is , whatever he’s been doing this whole time , he didn’t vanish because he was finished.
He vanished because he’d said exactly what he wanted to say.
And now it’s your turn to sit with it.
Your gaze drops back to the poster.
Mark’s face stares up at you from the paper, frozen in that half-smile you recognize too well -unfinished, uncertain, like he’d been caught mid-thought. The edges of the flyer flutter in the breeze, tape peeling where it’s already started to give up.
The words surface without warning, slipping back into your thoughts with the same quiet certainty they’d carried moments ago. Not loud. Not urgent. Just there -like they’ve always been waiting for you to slow down long enough to hear them.
You look around instinctively, half-expecting to see him again, but the boardwalk gives you nothing back. Just movement. Just noise. Just the ocean breathing steadily below, indifferent as ever.
You don’t know if it’s a threat or a promise. You don’t know who it’s meant for.
You only know you’re holding proof in your hands.
You reach out before you can talk yourself out of it.
The paper tears free with a soft rip, louder than it should be in the open air. You fold it once. Then again. The movement is quick, almost angry, like if you don’t do it now you never will. You shove it into your bag and zip it shut, fingers lingering there for a second longer than necessary.
The boardwalk doesn’t offer answers. Just noise and lights and people who keep walking like nothing is wrong. You turn away from the railing and start moving again, heart still beating too fast, thoughts racing ahead of your feet.
His voice lingers - that amused certainty , but you push it down, refuse to let it be the only thing echoing in your head.
If he thinks you’ll freeze, he’s wrong.
If he thinks this ends with fear, he’s wrong.
You don’t know where to start yet, but you know what you’re looking for now. Patterns. Names. Dates that line up too neatly to be coincidence. Disappearances that get dismissed as people “leaving town.” Old reports. Old stories. Anything Santa Carla has learned not to talk about.
You don’t know what he is.
You don’t know why he saved you.
But you know this much with a clarity that settles deep in your bones:
He wasn’t the only one watching.
The night swallows your steps as you head home, the ocean fading behind you, the weight of the folded paper pressing against your side like a promise you’ve just made to yourself.
Whatever this is - whatever you’ve stepped into -
You’re done pretending it’s nothing.
And tomorrow, you’re going to start digging.
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