Alicia Atkins

And for the first time, I saw.

This was not Bertrand's diary.

This was the diary of someone who was watching him.

This was the diary of the man who knew Bertrand's secrets.

The skull is clean now, and I'm so very curious about the patterning on the inside of it.

I'd always thought of skulls as smooth and empty, but the texture of the interior is like an endless fingerprint.

All crenellations and channels where blood vessels used to feed the brain that once lived here.

I don't know much about the history of this farmhouse before it came into the possession of my family.

We bought it when I was around 13, so depending on when the diary had been written, Bertrand could still be alive.

He could still be killing.

Who are you?

I asked the skull.

Before I realized that Bertrand was the subject of the diary, but hadn't written it himself, I would have thought it was one of the victims I'd read about in its pages.

Now, I wonder if it could be the diarist himself.

I take the skull to the sheriff's station that afternoon, derelict in the urgency I should have felt upon its discovery, and feeling stupid for having unearthed it.

I watch the murder shows on TV.

I know you don't disturb a crime scene.

The officer who interviews me is one I've met before, but he's professional and doesn't mention where we know each other from.

The tone of this interview is identical to that of the ones after the accident, and I began to think that this was just the way these things are done.

Maybe I was never as much of a suspect as I had assumed.