Narrator

I did not look for the warning sign.

I left town before dusk, like the man on the ATV had told us.

Back home, I sealed the notebook and the strip of skin in a plastic container and put it in a storage bin in the far back of our garage.

I told myself it was to preserve evidence, but the truth is simpler.

I wanted it out of the house without throwing it away.

I didn't want to disrespect whatever history it belonged to, but I also didn't want it near our bed, near our life.

near the small daily rituals that make you feel safe.

For months after, I would wake up sometimes around 3 in the morning, always around 3, which I know is a cliché, but bodies don't care about clichés, and I would listen.

The house would be quiet.

The neighborhood would be quiet.

And then, in that quiet, my mind would replay the cadence of my own voice from outside that cabin window saying, I'm outside.

Just open up.

It was the worst part, even more than the deer thing standing upright in the road.

Because the deer thing was obviously wrong.

Your own voice is not supposed to betray you.

Nora asked me once, months later, when the worst of the immediate anxiety had softened, what do you think it was?

I could have said a person, and maybe that would have been easier.

A cruel local, a hunter, someone mentally ill.

But that explanation doesn't cover the way it knew our names without being given them, or the way it used them with such precision, or the way it chose calm tones over drama, like it understood human empathy as a lever.

It doesn't cover the notebook from 1936 describing the same behavior.