The Drag Marks

The rusted sedan coughed its last breath as I killed the engine, the silence that descended afterward not a relief, but a suffocating blanket. It was a silence that pressed in, heavy and absolute, a stark contrast to the distant hum of traffic I’d left behind hours ago. Oakhaven. The name itself felt like a forgotten whisper on the wind. I’d spent weeks trying to reach my brother, a phantom caller on a dead line, a ghost in a town that had apparently vanished. Now, standing at the edge of its desolation, I understood why no one answered.

The town limit sign, a skeletal frame of faded paint and peeling metal, was almost swallowed by an unruly tide of weeds. Beyond it, the road stretched like a forgotten scar, leading into a stillness that felt ancient and wrong. Even the leaves, usually a riotous symphony of reds and golds this time of year, lay flat on the asphalt, as if the very air had decided to hold its breath. I stepped out, my boots crunching loudly against the pavement—a sound that felt like a sacrilege in this tomb of a town.

My gaze was immediately drawn to the church, a skeletal silhouette against the bruised twilight sky. Its doors hung off their hinges, twisted like warped metal, gaping mouths in a silent scream. A morbid curiosity, a journalist’s instinct honed by years of chasing shadows, pulled me forward. But it was something else, something far more visceral, that snagged my attention on the road ahead.