When a young girl vanishes, a haunted cop burdened by a past mistake finds himself entangled in the dark secrets lurking beneath Westville’s quiet facade. As the missing girl’s best friends embark on their own search, they uncover something malevolent and hungry stirring in the shadows of the woods. New installments of this serial by Lowell author Ryder Jones will be published each Friday. Parent discretion is advised.
Chapter 1
October 26th, 1996
Westville wasn’t the kind of place people went missing—until one frigid October morning, it suddenly was.
Casey Benson turned onto M-12, the dim, lifeless Family Affair Supermarket sign slipping out of his rearview.
The speed gun lay neglected in the passenger seat—a grand total of three cars having passed through in the last two hours where the limit dropped after the blinking yellow. The temperature that night had plunged just as quickly, breaking the grip of an Indian summer. The weathermen hadn’t even warned about the coming cold snap, and usually, they got all hot and bothered over that sort of thing. He turned down the radio, playing ‘Found Out About You’ by the Gin Blossoms, and glanced at the green digital clock display.
7:12am. He was due back at the station.
Seemed earlier—not that it had made the shift pass any faster. Being that time just before the clocks set back, the mornings were dark and the nights darker, with only a pale grayish yellow haze now on the edge of the sky hinting at eventual dawn.
Fog crept over the road, and Casey rolled down his window, letting his hand drift in the cold air—an old habit from childhood. The chill prickled the skin on the back of his hand as he accelerated in the new Chevy Caprice patrol car. The V8 had a strong kick, and he often sympathized with the drivers he pulled over. It was all too easy to speed into downtown Westville over the railroad tracks, doing 55 instead of 30.
He’d driven this road nearly every day of his life. After Chicago hadn’t worked out—after he hadn’t worked out there—the department in Westville had an opening, and the town had pulled him right back. He never imagined being here 14 years after high school, but here he was, a townie like most of the population, caught somewhere between the mild urbanity of Iron Falls and the back roads of Holt County.
He stopped at the blinking red light at the town’s main intersection. The two warring gas stations on opposing corners sat still and quiet, and overhead, towering concrete silos stood in opposing rows, hulking grain bins of galvanized steel filling the spaces between skeletal trusses and angled downspouts. If Westville had a skyline, Prince Milling was it—the six letter crimson neon declaring ‘PRINCE’ like a beacon above it all.
His brow twitched with fatigue, and he rubbed a hand over the rough skin on the scar there. Then the dispatch radio beeped, and being so close to the station, he ignored it.
He coasted on, tires hissing on pavement, passing historic downtown buildings that lined the block. Cold mist rose off the rushing dam as he hit the bridge, vapors snaking around the newest silo still under construction, sheets of plastic draped over it like a veil, and ahead the rolling fog gave a ghostly radiance to the black iron dual bulb street lamps the lined the whole of main street.
The radio squawked impatiently, with an odd burst of static—almost like a whisper, though Casey couldn’t quite catch it. He frowned at the receiver. Then Gail’s familiar voice came through.
“Benson, you copy?”
Read the rest of Chapter 1 on the Westville Substack.
Ryder Jones is the author of the ongoing paranormal mystery thriller serial, Westville, as well as the forthcoming Remnant Divine series of fantasy novels. He was born and raised in Lowell, MI, where he still lives with his wife Jessica, two daughters and son.
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