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Pain and Powder [excerpt]

I had never looked for a body before.

It was morning, cold and cool. The kind that settles in your chest. The sun was rising slowly in the distance, casting light across an empty sprawl of fields. I was centered there — forest to the north, a valley curling out to my right, and rolling hills stretching far beyond the edge of my vision.

I paused for a moment and took a single stalk, sliding my thumb and forefinger from its base to the tip, pulling the grains free as I moved. A small brown tree of grains formed where my fingers met. Then, with a breath, I let them go, leaving their fate to the will of the wind.

I moved along a trampled path, broken stalks of wheat and long grass crunching beneath my boots. It reminded me of a garden trail — overgrown and forgotten. I couldn’t help but think of old films, the kind where four-foot-high wheat and whispering grass concealed something terrible underneath.

That’s what I was doing, wasn’t it?

Searching.

Searching for someone named Jack.

I wasn’t quite sure who he was, or what I expected to find. But I felt like I knew him, not in the way you know someone from memory, but in the way you recognize a voice calling out from somewhere deep inside you.

Then the wind would shift. I’d turn around.

“Keep searching… keep searching,” a voice would whisper.

Not loud. Not urgent. Just present.

A whisperer. Some guide I couldn’t place.

Where was Jack?