William Royden

Cording walked with his head down, resigned.

He moved at a steady pace despite the fact that his breathing was becoming ragged.

If I'd been alone, I would never have kept going in a relatively straight line.

But courting had the air of a man who had been through something like this before and knew that plunging into the woods would be a mistake.

We were lost in the middle of a forest where no forest had ever been.

It would have been impossible to walk through Robinsong at such a steady rate and not emerge onto a street or a lawn or anything at all.

Time passed.

If the sun disappeared over the horizon, I would scream for help.

I would not be able to control myself.

About 45 minutes into the journey down the trail, something appeared around a bend.

In a small, grassy clearing sat a house, a single-story white house, overgrown with weeds and vines, looking decrepit and rotted.

It didn't take me long to recognize this house.

It had once belonged to Erwin Settle, the man who had murdered a psychiatrist in 1991.

This was not where his house should have been.

He lived on Cotler Road, but here it was.

The brown streaks of his doctor's blood were gone, but still the place was surrounded by an aura of dread and sickness.

We walked around it, checking out every angle.

Cording noticed something on the side of the house.

When we got closer, we saw that it was a paper flyer, taped haphazardly to a drainpipe and forgotten.

It showed a child who'd gone missing from Robinson.