03 Mar The Widowmaker’s Curse

Part I

Melissa Brent had always feared heights.

In the early days of their marriage, she had confessed to Lucas that just looking over a balcony railing made her palms sweat. It wasn’t the drop itself that unnerved her, but the sense of invitation—as though the edge held something patient and unseen, waiting for her to misstep. Lucas had laughed, called it silly, and promised to keep her far from places like that. And he had meant it.

That was why it made no sense when she told him she needed to visit Widowmaker’s Bluff that night.

Lucas tried to reason with her, but something in her voice allowed no room for argument. He had never seen her like that before—detached, insistent, her brown eyes glassy and unfocused. She barely touched her dinner, and when he asked if she was feeling alright, she only murmured, ”I have to go. I just have to.”

So he drove them in silence.

Widowmaker’s Bluff loomed over a rocky expanse where the wind howled through the jagged terrain, carving out ghostly echoes that locals claimed were the voices of the dead. The cliff had earned its reputation over generations: husbands, fathers, lovers—men who had wronged the women in their lives—found at the bottom, broken and lifeless. Superstition kept people wary of the place after dark. Lucas never believed in any of it.

They reached the bluff just past eleven. The full moon cast everything in stark relief, bleaching the landscape into shades of gray and silver. The wind roared up the cliffside, tangling Melissa’s long hair across her face, but she hardly noticed. She walked ahead of him, arms slack at her sides, her body carrying her forward like a sleepwalker. Lucas followed.

“Melissa, stop!” he called.

She didn’t respond. He quickened his pace, his breath growing heavy as she neared the drop. Loose rock crunched beneath his boots as he reached out. He nearly grasped the sleeve of her coat when she halted on her own, teetering at the edge.

“Melissa, don’t!” he pleaded, stepping forward with caution.

She turned to him then, but no recognition crossed her face. Her lips parted as if to speak, but instead of words, a soft, wheezing exhale slipped out. Then, she smiled.

It was the last thing he saw before she fell.

Lucas lunged, but she moved too quickly. One step forward—effortless, like she had simply chosen to leave the earth behind. He reached the cliff’s edge just in time to watch her vanish into the darkness below, swallowed by the jagged rocks.

His scream tore from his throat, but the wind carried it away.

* * * * * *

When they arrived, the sheriff’s deputies found Lucas still standing at the edge. Their voices barely registered. Flashlights cut jagged beams through the darkness, swinging toward him. Someone gripped his arm, tugging him back, but he resisted at first. Moving felt wrong. Leaving felt worse.

They took him into custody, of course. That had been inevitable. A man standing alone at a cliff’s edge, his wife dead at the bottom, might as well have confessed already. At the station, they questioned him for hours, pressing for details—why did you do it?—but he had no answers to give.

Melissa had walked forward on her own. She had smiled.

When they finally released him—pending further investigation—Lucas returned home to a house that no longer felt like his own. The walls seemed thinner, the air colder, the very space around him stretched in unfamiliar ways. Sleep was impossible. Even closing his eyes brought her face behind his eyelids. The smile. The invitation.

Three days later, the rumors started.

The first reports came from a group of hikers. They had been on the trails near Widowmaker’s Bluff just before dawn when one of them spotted something through the trees—a woman standing at the edge, her nightgown fluttering in the wind. They called out to her, thinking she was in distress, but she gave no indication she had heard them.

Then, she took a step forward. Only she didn’t fall—she vanished. The group rushed to the edge, scanning the ground below, but found nothing. No sound of impact. No body. By the time word reached town, the legend had already begun to twist.

Lucas heard it for the first time at Tilly’s Tavern, the kind of place where stories made their rounds with whiskey on the breath. He sat at the counter, nursing a beer he hadn’t touched, when the man next to him muttered, “Widowmaker’s got another one.”

Lucas kept his head down.

“I’m telling you,” the bartender said, refilling a glass. “She’s still up there.”

“Who?” someone else asked.

“The Brent woman,” the bartender replied. “I heard folks saw her walking the bluff again. Bet she ain’t the last, either.”

Lucas left before they could say anything else.

It didn’t matter. The whispers followed him everywhere—in grocery store aisles, at gas stations, murmured between strangers who thought he wasn’t listening. They believed she was still there.

More reports surfaced. A trucker, passing through town late one night, swore he saw her standing at the side of the highway, barefoot and staring. A couple spotted a woman matching her description through the fog at the lake’s edge, watching her reflection ripple.

Then the authorities found names carved into the rock at the bluff’s edge, deep enough to be seen. Lucas Brent. The deputies asked if he had done it. He denied it. He had been home that night, alone.

They humored him but didn’t believe him. The truth was, Lucas didn’t believe himself anymore, either.

For a week, he barely left the house. Calls went unanswered. Every glance at the mirror revealed movement behind his reflection—shapes shifting in places where nothing should have been.

Then the whispers started, soft at first, and then louder. Among them, one familiar voice always stood out. And when he listened closely, it was laughing.

Part II

Noah Kessler never put stock in ghost stories. Twenty years in private investigation had taught him that the truth behind most mysteries was far more straightforward than people wanted to believe. A missing child wasn’t stolen away by some lurking evil but taken by a parent locked in a bitter custody dispute. Shadows creeping across a homeowner’s walls at night usually traced back to faulty wiring and an overactive imagination. The human mind created patterns where none existed, turning tragedy into folklore when reality felt too mundane to stomach.

That was why he hadn’t hesitated when Lucas Brent’s attorney called.

“I need you to look into Widowmaker’s Bluff,” she said. “The case against my client is flimsy at best, but the town’s already convicted him. I need an outsider—someone who won’t go in expecting the worst.”

Noah agreed. He hadn’t expected much. A grieving husband, a tragic accident, and a small town eager for a villain. That was how these cases usually went.

His first stop was the sheriff’s office.

* * * * * *

Sheriff Dale Hempstead looked exhausted, the weight of a hundred cases sitting behind his dull brown eyes. When Noah arrived, he gave him a firm handshake, but it carried no warmth, no real interest in making him feel welcome.

“You’re wasting your time,” Hempstead said once they were seated. “Brent did it. The case just isn’t strong enough to hold up in court.”

Noah leaned back, taking stock of the man. The way he spoke sounded rehearsed, like he had repeated it enough times to almost convince himself.

“Then why am I here?” Noah asked.

Hempstead sighed. “Because people around here don’t let things go. Every couple of years, someone goes off that bluff. People start talking about the stories, making them bigger than they are, and the next thing you know, we’ve got folks whispering about ghosts and curses instead of looking at facts.” He tapped a finger against his desk. “Lucas Brent is guilty. If you’re smart, you’ll come to the same conclusion.”

Something in his tone unsettled Noah. Not the warning itself—he had dealt with enough reluctant lawmen to recognize professional posturing—but the way the sheriff looked at him. Not with authority or frustration, but with pity.

“Tell me about the other cases,” Noah said instead. “The ones before Brent.”

Hempstead’s face darkened. “There aren’t many,” he admitted. “Not on paper, at least. We get one every decade or so. Drifters, usually. People with nowhere else to go. They pass through town, stay a little too long, then one night someone finds their body at the bottom of the bluff.”

Noah frowned. “And you’re sure they weren’t suicides?”

Hempstead hesitated. A flicker of discomfort crossed his face. “I used to be,” he muttered. “Not anymore.”

* * * * * *

The next stop was the archives.

Most small-town cases left behind a paper trail that ran thin after a generation or two, but the deaths at Widowmaker’s Bluff had been well-documented. The stories stretched back over a century, detailing accounts of men seemingly walking off the edge without a struggle.

An article from 1924 described a farmer found shattered at the base of the cliff. His widow swore he had been asleep in bed when she last saw him. Another, from 1968, detailed a traveling salesman passing through town on business. He checked into the local inn, stayed two nights, then disappeared. His remains turned up at the bottom of the ravine two days later.

But it wasn’t just the victims that caught Noah’s attention. It was the ones they left behind. As he dug deeper, a pattern emerged—one the sheriff hadn’t mentioned. Every man who went off Widowmaker’s Bluff had been married. And within weeks of their deaths, their wives disappeared.

Sometimes there were notes. Sometimes there weren’t. None of them were ever found.

That night, Noah sat in his car outside the motel, files spread across his lap. He prided himself on being a logical man, someone who dealt in facts, but something about this case gnawed at him: A dead woman seen walking long after she was buried. A husband who swore she smiled before she fell. A history of men walking into the dark—and the wives who followed after.

It was absurd. Irrational. Yet, even sitting alone in his car, Noah felt certain someone was watching him.

* * * * * *

The next morning, he decided to see the bluff for himself.

The hike started easily enough, the well-worn trail winding through sparse pine trees and frost-covered grass. When he reached the top, he stopped at the edge and looked down. The drop was brutal, an unforgiving sprawl of jagged stone jutting up from the earth like shattered bone.

There were no ghosts. No shadows. Just a name, carved into the rock at his feet.

Melissa Brent.

It hadn’t been in the crime scene photos. The engraving was fresh.

Noah left the bluff without looking back.

He planned to head straight to his car, but as he reached the base of the trail, movement near the tree line caught his eye. A woman—older, bundled in a coat two sizes too big—watched him for a long moment before turning and walking toward a small cabin just off the road. Something about her unsettled him.

Without thinking, he followed.

By the time he reached the porch, she was already waiting for him. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said before he could introduce himself.

“I’m looking into the Brent case,” Noah told her.

She studied him, searching his face before. “It’s not just about her,” she said. “And it’s not just about him.”

Noah frowned. “Then what is it about?”

The woman glanced toward the bluff. “You’ll find out soon enough,” she murmured. “That place knows when someone’s looking. And once it sees you, it doesn’t let go.”

Part III

Noah had never been the type to bring his work home. Over the years, he had learned to keep the weight of unsolved cases from creeping into his personal life. It was a survival skill, one that had preserved his marriage through long absences and cold trails. He had seen too many investigators unravel under the strain of taking their work to bed with them, letting it seep into the spaces where it didn’t belong.

But that night, lying awake and staring at the dark ceiling of the motel room, he couldn’t push this case away. It wasn’t just the unease that settled into his thoughts after meeting the old woman at the cabin or the way the wind howled through the trees as he made his way back to town. It wasn’t even the way Hempstead had warned him to leave things alone.

It was the way his gut told him something was already watching.

* * * * * *

The call from Evelyn came just after two in the morning. Noah had nearly dozed off when the phone vibrated against the nightstand, rattling the water glass beside it. He blinked the sleep from his eyes before reaching for it.

“Ev?” His voice was thick with fatigue as he sat up. “Ev, what’s wrong?”

“It’s cold,” she murmured. “I can hear it.”

Noah swung his legs over the edge of the bed, already reaching for his jeans. “What can you hear?” he asked.

She paused momentarily, then said quietly, “The water.”

The line went dead.

* * * * * *

He drove home faster than he should have, the roads nearly empty at that hour. The town lay silent, the occasional streetlamp casting warped shadows across the pavement. As he pulled into the driveway, he barely let the engine idle before yanking the keys from the ignition.

The front door was unlocked. Inside, the house sat in darkness, save for the dull glow of the porch light bleeding through the living room curtains. He moved through the hallway, listening, every nerve on edge.

The bedroom was empty. Next, he checked the bathroom and the kitchen. Nothing.

Then he saw it—the faint outline of the back door, swaying slightly on its hinges. Beyond the house, the backyard stretched into darkness, bordered by the skeletal silhouettes of bare trees. The garden path lay pale under the moonlight, and at its edge, a figure stood motionless.

Evelyn.

She was barefoot, her nightgown hanging loose at her sides, her hair swaying slightly in the breeze.

Noah stepped forward, keeping his voice even. “Ev.”

She didn’t turn.

He took another step. “Evelyn, come inside.”

The wind shifted, carrying the scent of cold earth and damp leaves. She swayed slightly, as though listening to something he couldn’t hear.

Noah reached her in three strides, his hands settling firmly on her shoulders. He expected her to flinch, to startle awake, but she remained still. Her skin felt ice-cold.

Gently, he turned her toward him.

Her eyes were open—but she wasn’t awake.

* * * * * *

Evelyn had no memory of it the next morning.

She looked pale over breakfast, her fingers curled around her coffee mug like she was trying to leech its warmth into her skin.

“You were sleepwalking,” Noah told her, watching her reaction carefully.

She frowned. “I haven’t done that since I was a kid.”

Noah nodded but said nothing. He didn’t tell her about the phone call, or the way she had whispered about water. He didn’t tell her how it had taken shaking her by the shoulders to get her to blink at him, her lips forming half-spoken words before she finally came to awareness.

And he definitely didn’t tell her that before she woke, she had tried to walk toward the trees.

* * * * * *

Later that afternoon, Noah returned to Widowmaker’s Bluff.

The wind had calmed, but the atmosphere remained unchanged. The place still carried a weight that had little to do with the barren trees and dead grass. He crouched near the cliff’s edge, fingers running over the rough surface of the stone where Melissa Brent’s name had been carved.

There was more. Faint. Worn by time, but still legible:

Clemens.

Noah swallowed. The name was smaller, nearly lost among the others:

Mark Clemens.

The first detective on the case. The one Sheriff Hempstead had said had fallen. His fingers traced the indentations, the letters jagged, as though carved in a hurry. He glanced around, but there was no sign of anyone else. Just the wind and the gaping abyss below.

He stood, and then, just for a moment, he heard it. A whisper, coming from the stone itself.

That evening, Noah went back to the cabin.

The old woman—Gale—was outside, setting a bundle of dried herbs into a ceramic bowl. She barely looked up when he approached.

“You’re still here,” she murmured.

Noah crossed his arms. “So are you.”

Gale gave a soft chuckle, shaking her head. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

He waited. When she didn’t speak again, he cleared his throat. “You said before that I’d find out soon enough. That the bluff knows when someone’s looking.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “It sees wives first,” she said.

Noah’s stomach tensed. “What?”

Gale met his gaze. ”The bluff doesn’t take men, Mr. Kessler,” she said softly. “Not at first. It starts with their wives.”

The cold seemed sharper then, seeping into his skin.

Gale gestured toward the horizon, toward the distant peak of Widowmaker’s Bluff. “How long has your wife been sleepwalking?”

Noah opened his mouth, but no words came.

Gale nodded to herself, as if she had already known the answer. “She hears it, doesn’t she?”

Noah clenched his jaw. “Hears what?”

The old woman sighed. “The whispers. The calling.”

She turned back to her bowl, tossing another bundle of herbs onto the embers. The smoke curled upward in thin ribbons, twisting like fingers into the dark.

“You need to leave, Mr. Kessler,” she murmured. “Before it decides she’s next.”

Part IV

Noah barely slept that night. Every time he closed his eyes, Gale’s words looped through his mind like an unraveling thread. It starts with their wives. He tried to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach, but it settled there, coiled and unmoving.

Evelyn had never been a restless sleeper. She didn’t toss or turn. She didn’t mutter in her dreams. She certainly didn’t wander barefoot into the yard in the dead of night. Until now.

Noah sat at the edge of their bed, elbows on his knees, watching the slow rise and fall of her breathing. She looked peaceful—calm in a way she hadn’t been since he took the case. But he knew better now. Whatever had drawn her outside the night before hadn’t let go. It was still there.

The next morning, Noah bought a small camera. He set it up discreetly on the dresser, facing the bed.

When Evelyn saw it, she laughed. “You think I’m going to start levitating?” she teased, brushing past him to the closet.

Noah forced a smile. “If you do, I’d like to have evidence.”

She shook her head, amused, but something about her response felt careful, like she didn’t want to linger on the subject. “It’s just stress, Noah. I’m fine.”

He wanted to believe her, but the footage told a different story.

* * * * * *

That night, Evelyn fell asleep easily. Noah stayed awake as long as he could, but exhaustion pulled him under sometime after midnight.

When he checked the camera the next morning, his hands felt stiff, his movements too slow—like his body already knew what he was about to see.

The footage began as expected. Evelyn lay curled beneath the blankets, Noah beside her, motionless in sleep.

Then, at 2:17 a.m., she sat up.

She didn’t jolt upright or shift groggily. She moved as though something had lifted her by invisible strings, her spine straight, her head tilting slightly to the side. Her hair hung over her face, but Noah could still see her lips. They were moving.

He scrubbed the audio up, but the words were too soft. She stayed like that for nearly three minutes. Then, she slid out of bed, her feet barely making a sound on the floor as she crossed to the doorway. Noah remained still beside her, undisturbed. Just before she stepped out, she turned back to the bed—to him.

Noah rewound the footage, his stomach twisting. He expected a blank expression, the emptiness of someone deep in sleep. But when she turned, her mouth was slightly open, her lips forming a word: his name.

* * * * * *

Evelyn didn’t remember getting up.

“I was probably just going to the bathroom,” she said over breakfast, dunking a piece of toast into her coffee.

Noah studied her for a long moment before setting his phone down. He had taken a picture of the video’s timestamp before leaving the room.

“Does 2:17 mean anything to you?”

Evelyn blinked. “No. Should it?”

Noah opened his mouth, then shut it. No. She didn’t need to know. Not yet.

* * * * * *

Sheriff Hempstead wasn’t in his office when Noah arrived, but the secretary pointed him toward the filing room. Noah found him sitting among a sea of old case files, flipping through a yellowed manila folder.

The sheriff sighed when he saw Noah. “I thought I told you to drop it.”

Noah ignored him and pulled up a chair. “You knew about the wives.”

Hempstead didn’t react. “What are you talking about?”

“The wives of the men who went over the bluff,” Noah pressed. “None of them stuck around. They vanished—some left notes, some didn’t—but not a single one was ever found. And you knew.”

The sheriff closed the folder, shaking his head. “You don’t want to know the answers to those questions.”

Noah leaned forward. “Yes, I do.”

Hempstead hesitated, his jaw tight. Then, finally, he sighed wearily. ”Clemens’ wife started sleepwalking.”

Noah went still.

The sheriff’s fingers drummed against the desk, his eyes distant. “It started a few days after he took the case. Little things at first. Waking up in different rooms. Finding the back door open in the morning. He thought it was stress. Then he started noticing the water.”

The hair on Noah’s arms prickled.

Hempstead glanced at him. “Sinks left running. The bathtub full when he swore it had been empty. And then…” He trailed off, eyes darkening. “The day before he died, he told me he found her standing at the foot of their bed, staring at the ceiling. When he called her name, she turned and said something he couldn’t understand.”

The sheriff exhaled sharply, rubbing a hand over his face.

“The next morning, she was gone.”

* * * * * *

Noah drove home with one hand clenched around the wheel, his mind turning over the conversation like a loose gear grinding against rust. Water. Evelyn had said she could hear it. That wasn’t normal. None of this was normal.

He parked in the driveway, stepping out of the car just as Evelyn emerged from the house. She smiled when she saw him. “You’re home early.”

Noah forced himself to smile back. He didn’t tell her what he had learned. He didn’t tell her about Mark Clemens’ wife, or the water, or the way she had turned toward him on the camera and whispered his name. Instead, he kissed her.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

That night, he set an alarm for 2:15 a.m. When it went off, he sat up, listening. Evelyn was still lying asleep beside him, her body slack under the blankets. He turned toward the camera on the dresser, the small red light blinking steadily. Then, just as he was about to turn away, she moved.

Her lips parted, and she exhaled softly, shifting against the pillows. Then, clear as day, she whispered, ”I can hear it.”

Noah’s stomach clenched. ”What do you hear?” he asked.

She inhaled deeply, her fingers twitching against the sheets. ”The river,” she murmured. “It’s calling.”

Part V

Noah didn’t sleep after that. He sat up in bed, watching Evelyn’s steady breathing, listening to the absolute silence of the house. Years in law enforcement had taught him that nothing happened in isolation. Patterns repeated. Behaviors followed predictable paths. And the past always had a way of staining the present.

Melissa Brent had sleepwalked before she died. Mark Clemens’ wife had done the same before vanishing.

And now Evelyn was hearing the river.

* * * * * *

The following day, Noah left before she woke.

Lucas Brent had been staying at a motel just outside town—a nameless two-story dump that smelled like mildew and despair. He had checked in after making bail, waiting for his trial, waiting for the town to decide whether he belonged in a cell or a grave.

Noah knocked twice on the door. There was a long pause, then movement inside. The door cracked open just enough to reveal a tired, unshaven face. Lucas looked worse than he had in his mugshot—hollow eyes, stubble creeping down his neck, shoulders tense like he had been expecting someone to come for him.

“You’re the detective,” Lucas said flatly.

Noah nodded. “Mind if I come in?”

Lucas hesitated, then pulled the door open. The motel room was exactly what Noah expected. A stained carpet. An unmade bed. A half-eaten fast-food bag on the table.

“You want coffee?” Lucas asked, gesturing toward the motel’s cheap machine on the counter.

Noah shook his head. “I need answers.”

Lucas sat on the edge of the bed. “Yeah. Don’t we all?”

They sat in silence for a long moment before Noah spoke again. “Did Melissa ever talk about the bluff?”

Lucas tensed. “Not until the night she died.”

“What changed?”

Lucas rubbed his temples. “I don’t know. She’d been acting strange all week. Distant. Like she was always listening for something I couldn’t hear. Then, one night, she woke me up and said she had to go. I asked why. She wouldn’t say.”

Noah leaned forward. “Did she ever mention the water?”

Lucas frowned. “No.”

Noah studied him. “What about before? Any history of sleepwalking?”

Lucas hesitated, then shook his head. “Not that I ever saw.”

Noah waited. Lucas exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “There was one time, though. Years ago. She told me once that when she was a kid, she used to have these dreams. She’d wake up in strange places—outside, mostly. Her parents started locking the doors at night. It stopped eventually.”

Noah felt the cold certainty settle in his gut. “And before she died?” he pressed.

Lucas was quiet for a long moment. “I caught her standing in the backyard three nights before it happened,” he admitted. “She was barefoot. Just… standing there.”

Noah swallowed hard. “Did she say anything?”

Lucas nodded slowly. “She said she could hear the river.”

Noah left without another word. He drove aimlessly for nearly an hour, thinking. Trying to pull the pieces together into something that made sense. But none of it did. Not yet. Eventually, he found himself parked outside the library. It wasn’t an impulse decision. If there was one thing he had learned in his career, it was that no matter how deep a secret tried to bury itself, some trace of it always remained. It was just a matter of knowing where to dig.

The library was small, but the local history section was surprisingly extensive. The deaths at Widowmaker’s Bluff had been recorded in old newspaper articles and town registries, tucked away between mundane reports of town hall meetings and agricultural updates.

Noah skimmed through decades of obituaries, his fingers tracing along the yellowed pages, searching for a pattern.

Then, he found it: an old article, dated August 2, 1897. The ink had faded, but the words remained legible.

LOCAL WOMAN MISSING AFTER HUSBAND’S MYSTERIOUS DEATH

The woman’s name was Margaret Lewis. She had been twenty-nine years old, married to a man named Albert. According to the article, Albert had fallen from Widowmaker’s Bluff under mysterious circumstances. A week later, Margaret disappeared without a trace.

The story sounded familiar. Too familiar. Noah flipped forward through the archives, searching for more. Before long, he found another article. 1913. A man named Samuel Reid died at Widowmaker’s Bluff. His wife vanished days later.

Then, he founds another. 1929. Same pattern. Over and over again. For more than a century, the cycle had repeated. Men went over the bluff, and their wives followed.

* * * * * *

The drive home was a blur.

Noah barely registered shutting the car door behind him. He had spent years training himself to mask fear and compartmentalize, but the moment he stepped into the house and saw Evelyn standing in the kitchen, his composure cracked. She was washing dishes, humming softly to herself. The sound should have been comforting. Domestic, even. But something about it set his nerves on edge.

She turned when she heard him, smiling. “You’re back early,” she said.

Noah swallowed. “Yeah.”

She dried her hands on a dish towel. “You okay?”

He was about to answer when he noticed the sink. The water was still running—and Evelyn hadn’t turned it on.

That night, Noah bolted the doors. He double-checked the windows. He moved the camera closer, adjusted the angle, and set his phone alarm again for 2:15 a.m.

He didn’t tell Evelyn what he had learned. Not yet. And he wouldn’t—not until he knew how to stop it.

* * * * * *

At 2:17 a.m., Evelyn sat up in bed.

Noah had been awake, waiting. She turned, looking directly at him. Her eyes were open—but she wasn’t awake.

Noah’s body tensed as Evelyn leaned in, her lips brushing against his ear.

“It’s time,” she said softly.

Part VI

Noah’s mind raced. He had prepared himself for this, had set the alarm and stayed awake, had forced himself to sit in the dark and wait for whatever was coming. But nothing could have prepared him for the way she spoke—not in the vague, drifting tone of a sleepwalker, but in something far worse.

She had said it with certainty.

Noah placed a careful hand on her shoulder. “Time for what, Ev?”

She didn’t blink. “I have to go.”

His grip tightened. “Where?”

She turned toward the bedroom door, the dim glow of the streetlamp outside casting a pale sheen over her face. “To the water.”

The words sent a sick twist through his stomach. “You’re asleep,” he said, voice low and even. “You don’t have to go anywhere.”

She smiled faintly. “Yes, I do.”

Then, before he could react, she slid out of bed and started walking. She moved quickly, with purpose, her bare feet silent against the hardwood as she crossed the threshold and into the hallway. Noah was right behind her, watching as she reached for the front door with the certainty of someone who had done it a thousand times before.

He caught her wrist just as she touched the knob. Her body jerked at the contact, but she didn’t try to pull away. Instead, she turned her head slowly toward him.

“I have to go,” she said again.

“No, you don’t.” He kept his voice steady and controlled. “Come back to bed.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then blinked. The trance flickered, her face creasing slightly in confusion. “Noah?” she asked.

Relief flooded through him. “Yeah, it’s me. You’re sleepwalking.”

She looked down at her hand on the doorknob, then back at him. “I was—” She stopped, shaking her head as if trying to clear something foggy and thick from her mind.

Noah exhaled. “Come back to bed.”

Evelyn hesitated, and then nodded slowly. “Okay.”

* * * * * *

She didn’t remember it the next morning.

Noah had watched her carefully over breakfast, but she had been the same as ever—chipper, distracted, making absentminded notes about her students’ upcoming exams. If he hadn’t spent the night watching her nearly walk out the front door in her sleep, he might have believed everything was normal.

Instead, he grabbed his coat.

“I need to see Lucas again,” he said.

Evelyn looked up from her coffee. “Why?”

“Because I need to know if he left something out.”

* * * * * *

Lucas Brent looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His hands shook slightly as he fumbled with the lock, and when he finally pulled the door open, his bloodshot eyes flicked warily over Noah.

“I already told you everything,” Lucas said.

“You told me what you thought mattered,” Noah corrected. “But I need to know the rest.”

Lucas rubbed a hand down his face. “The rest?”

Noah stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. “Melissa’s wedding ring. Where is it?”

Lucas blinked. “Her ring?”

“Yeah.” Noah crossed his arms. “Did they find it on her body?”

Lucas hesitated, his fingers twitching at his sides. “No.”

Noah’s stomach tightened. “Where is it, Lucas?”

A long silence. Then, finally, Lucas exhaled sharply and turned away, crossing the room. He reached into a drawer, pulled something small from the back, and turned, holding it out in his palm.

A thin gold band. Melissa’s wedding ring.

Noah stared at it. “You kept it.”

Lucas nodded. “It was still in the house after she died. On her nightstand.” He swallowed. “I didn’t know what to do with it.”

Noah took it carefully, his fingers closing around the warm metal. “I think this is what’s tying her there.”

Lucas frowned. “What?”

“I don’t think Melissa jumped,” he said. “I think she was called. And now it’s trying to do the same thing to my wife.”

* * * * * *

Widowmaker’s Bluff had never looked so vast.

Noah stood at the edge, the wind whipping through the trees, the sound of the rushing water below barely audible beneath its roar. Evelyn was behind him, silent. She had been quiet since waking up that afternoon, distant in a way he had never seen before. It was as though something had shifted inside her, as though she were watching the world through a pane of glass and barely recognizing it.

She hadn’t questioned why they had come here. She had simply followed.

Noah turned to her and said carefully, “Evelyn, do you know why we’re here?”

She lifted her gaze slowly, blinking. “Because I have to go.”

The wind howled, and Noah clenched his jaw. ”Come here,” he said gently.

She hesitated, then took a slow step forward.

He reached into his pocket, his fingers closing around the ring. ”I need you to take this,” he said, holding it out. “And I need you to throw it over.”

Evelyn frowned, her brow creasing. “Why?”

“Because it’s the only way to stop this.”

She stared at the ring. For a moment, he saw something flicker behind her eyes—hesitation, resistance. Then, she nodded.

Noah placed the ring into her palm, and Evelyn turned toward the cliff’s edge, her fingers tightening around the gold band. The wind screamed through the canyon.

Noah braced himself, every muscle locked in place as she lifted her hand, her body swaying slightly. Then, just as she opened her fingers, the air around them shifted, and they heard a voice, low and hollow, rising from the depths of the ravine.

“Stay,” it called.

Noah lunged forward.

Evelyn gasped as something yanked at her, her body tilting forward—too close to the edge, too far to catch her in time—

Then the ring slipped from her grasp. It tumbled, spinning end over end, disappearing into the void below.

The wind stopped and, for a moment, there was silence. Then Evelyn stumbled backward, gasping, her hands flying to her face.

Noah caught her before she fell, his arms locking around her.

She trembled. “Noah,” she whispered. “I—I heard it.”

“I know,” he murmured.

She pulled away, staring at him with wide, glassy eyes. “Is it over?”

Noah turned toward the bluff’s edge, scanning the chasm below, the shadows curling at the base of the rocks.

He wasn’t sure.

“I think so,” he said.

Part VII

Evelyn didn’t sleep for two nights after they left the bluff. Noah didn’t either. They had driven home in silence, neither of them speaking as the trees thinned and the town lights reappeared in the distance. The weight of what had happened—what almost happened—sat between them, thick and suffocating. Evelyn hadn’t let go of his hand the entire way back.

When they pulled into the driveway, she hesitated before stepping out of the car, her eyes flicking toward the house as though it was unfamiliar. Noah understood. It had changed for him, too.

It took Evelyn a full minute to move. When she finally did, she walked straight to the bathroom and turned on the faucet, letting the water run. She stood there for a long time, staring at it as though she expected it to speak.

Noah stayed in the doorway.

She dipped her hands into the sink and sighed. “It’s quiet now,” she murmured.

* * * * * *

Sheriff Hempstead didn’t ask questions when Noah showed up at his office the next morning. He was sitting at his desk, a thick file open in front of him, but when he saw Noah standing in the doorway, he closed it without a word.

“You did something,” Hempstead said.

Noah exhaled. “I stopped it.”

The sheriff studied him, his fingers laced together on the desk. “For good?”

Noah hesitated. “I don’t know.”

Hempstead nodded, as though he had expected the answer. “You should leave town,” he said after a moment.

Noah’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Why?”

The sheriff sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. “Because that thing’s been here longer than any of us. Maybe it’ll stay gone. Maybe it won’t. Either way, people don’t forget things like this. Not in towns like ours.”

Noah understood what he meant. The town had made up its mind about Lucas Brent the moment Melissa died. It wouldn’t take long before they did the same about him.

* * * * * *

They packed up a week later.

Evelyn didn’t argue. She didn’t ask for time to reconsider or say she wanted to think about it. She just nodded and started boxing up the kitchen.

Noah didn’t ask her how she felt. Some things didn’t need words.

A package with no return address arrived on their last night in town. Noah frowned as he picked it up from the porch, turning it over in his hands before stepping inside.

Evelyn glanced up from the half-packed box in front of her. “What is it?”

Noah tore off the brown paper, revealing an old leather folder—the kind detectives used to use before everything went digital. When he opened it, his stomach knotted. Case files. Newspaper clippings. Handwritten notes. And, at the very top, written in block letters, was a name he recognized immediately:

Detective Mark Clemens.

Noah swallowed, flipping through the pages. Dates and names leapt out at him—Margaret Lewis. Samuel Reid. The endless cycle of men who had died and the wives who had disappeared. The last page had a single sentence scrawled across it in ink: I broke the curse for now. But it always comes back.

Noah stared at it for a long time before closing the folder.

Evelyn was watching him. ”Are we done?” she asked quietly.

Noah thought about the name on the cliff—the ones that had faded, the ones that hadn’t. The way the wind had whispered before it stopped.

He thought about the quiet. He wanted to believe it would last.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re done.”

* * * * * *

The news came two months later.

They had settled in a new city by then, far from Colorado, far from anything that smelled like pine or damp stone. Evelyn was sleeping through the night again. The water in the house had stayed where it was supposed to.

Then, one morning, Noah opened his laptop and saw the headline:

Local Woman Missing Near Widowmaker’s Bluff

His stomach turned.

The article was brief. A young woman—passing through town—had been last seen near the hiking trails. Authorities were still searching.

Noah closed the laptop before he finished reading.

A few minutes later, Evelyn found him standing at the window, staring at nothing. She didn’t say anything. She just slid her hand into his.