Lie: That which does not kill you makes you stronger.
Truth: Strong is overrated.
Truth: Sometimes the school of hard knocks knocks you down and makes it impossible to get up.
The breeze picked up and stung my cheeks. The gray sky hung so low you could almost touch it. And the farther I walked into the park, the denser the trees, the more the chill clung to my skin and settled into my body.
Wet leaves stuck to the gravel path; some lay scattered, damp and lifeless, across the footbridge that connected the main part of the park to Wooded Isle, the small island set off by lagoons. I put my head down and kept going, beyond the Garden of the Phoenix, beyond the birding trails that Nate highlighted in his videos. Beyond all that was the quiet place. The part of the park that was still not redeveloped. The dried stalks of wildflowers that bloomed purple and yellow in the spring, the limp prairie grass, the gnarled roots of fallen trees—it was like all their colors had been drained. The only signs of life were the pops of bright-green moss that thrived in dark, damp places and clung to rotting trees.
I pulled my scarf over my mouth and nose so that it warmed the air I breathed. I had no idea what I was doing. Or thinking. But my body knew where to go. This was the place where the ghosts were, according to local urban legends. In the past few years, there’d been Mothman sightings all over town, and the mostly abandoned area beyond the Garden of the Phoenix was one of those spots. I shoved those images out of my mind. My heart already had enough reasons to pound in my chest, and I didn’t need rumors of a red-eyed harbinger of death to add to it. But it didn’t matter, because I couldn’t push the heaviness out of the air.
The sickly sweet stink of decaying leaves swirled in the air around me, making my nose twitch. And then a hint of that incense underneath all that rot. My pace slowed. I’d searched on Google Earth to find the area that Nate had called his “secret” in one of his Fowl Play episodes, and made my way there through the park. It was a place, Nate had said, where no one went but him. A short walk in front of me was the culvert he’d pointed to, almost completely hidden by the grasses of the embankment, slightly beyond the crumbling old bridge that went over a nearly dry stream. I hopped over, but my boot slipped on the muddy bank and I fell into a pile of leaves and twigs. I pushed myself up, then wiped away the dirt and bits of leaves that stuck to my knees, my jeans dampened with cold. I straightened up and sighed. Took a look around. What the hell was I doing? I shook my head, upset at my runaway imagination, at my belief that I would find answers here.
A charcoal-gray sneaker ringed with salt stains, sticking out of the culvert, toe pointed down in the semi-frozen earth. Wet leaves piled up against it.
My breath froze in my chest.
Every part of my brain screamed STOP! But I still took a step forward. Then another. And another. My pulse throbbed in my ears until that was all I could hear. The entire world slowed around me. I shined a light from my phone into the metal culvert.
That’s when I saw the body.