The Shape of Rust: Chapter 3
The Watcher
This is a multi-part story, with new chapters released every two weeks. Follow along to uncover the mystery as it unfolds.
Make sure to have read the Prologue, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2
The forest in my dreams is not like the woods outside Kayro. It’s dense, the trees standing too close together, their trunks twisting like bodies frozen mid-contortion. There’s no wind, yet the leaves rustle faintly, whispering secrets in a language I can’t understand. Everything feels mirrored, as though I’m walking through a reflection of the world I know — but warped, wrong.
Kayro is quiet now, even quieter since Sam’s death. It’s like the windmill’s shadow has grown, stretching over the town until it seeps into every corner. People speak softer, look over their shoulders more often. And me? I keep seeing things. Figures at the edge of my vision, flitting between trees or standing motionless on the hill. Watching. Waiting.
Morning came slow, dragging sunlight into the empty streets. Usually, by this hour, you’d see farmers tending to their fields or the grocer setting out crates of fresh produce. Today, the town square was silent.
I walked through it, the gravel crunching under my boots. A rooster crowed in the distance, its call unanswered. The air felt heavy, like everyone was still asleep — or like they didn’t want to wake up and face whatever might be waiting.
My path led me to the windmill. I didn’t mean to go there, but my feet carried me forward. The sheriff’s deputies were already there, standing in a loose circle around the base of the structure. They weren’t doing much, just staring at the ground, their hands in their pockets.
Kayro’s never had a real murder before. Not one like this. The deputies looked out of their depth, shifting their weight from foot to foot like kids caught breaking a window.
I stood on the edge of the scene, my mind flickering between memories.
The scream.
The run up the hill.
Sam’s body, broken and still.
And the windmill — its blades turning slow and deliberate, though the air had been still.
Sally telling me the windmill took her friend.
I’d had a drink or two the night before, not enough to cloud my judgment. Or so I thought. But now, with the deputies milling around like lost sheep, I started to question myself. Had I seen what I thought I saw? Had I heard what I thought I heard?
The sound came softly at first — a faint creak, like old wood shifting under an unseen weight. It seemed to echo from nowhere and everywhere at once, carrying with it a murmur of whispers that grew and swirled, too indistinct to understand but impossible to ignore. They pressed into the edges of the silence, filling the air like a thought you couldn’t quite grasp, before fading all at once, leaving behind a stillness that felt heavier than before.
I left the windmill and headed straight to the sheriff’s office. My phone was long gone, lost somewhere in the chaos of the night before, and I needed to tell someone — anyone — what I’d seen. The place was quiet when I arrived, the kind of quiet that felt wrong. Steve was at his desk, leaning back in his chair, lazily tapping at his keyboard, the faint glow of the monitor lighting his face.
“Steve,” I said, shutting the door behind me, my voice tighter than I intended. “It’s Sam. She’s dead. At the windmill.”
The chair squeaked loudly as Steve shot upright, the motion jerky and abrupt. “What?” he stammered, his voice cracking slightly as the words caught in his throat. His hand darted to the monitor, fumbling to shut it off, the screen going dark with a click that echoed too loudly in the small space. His reaction was so quick it almost seemed suspicious, but his wide-eyed look told me he was just as rattled as I was. “When did this happen?”
He didn’t hesitate. He grabbed his phone, his fingers unsteady as he punched in the numbers. Holding it to his ear, he waited for a beat before speaking, his voice trembling. “Sheriff,” he said, the words shaky. “We’ve got a situation. You’d better get down to the windmill.”
By the next day, the rumors had spread like wildfire. Like I said before. You couldn’t go anywhere in Kayro without hearing whispers. People leaned over their coffee cups at Suzie’s, clustered near the canned goods at the general store, or huddled in the dim corners of Joe’s Bar, their voices hushed but urgent. They spoke of curses, of bad omens tied to the windmill, of a dark history that no one could quite recall but everyone seemed to sense.
Sam’s family hadn’t been allowed to see her body. The sheriff claimed it was “for the best,” though his reasoning was vague, his tone uneasy. What little detail emerged was haunting — her body hadn’t looked right, they said. That something about the fall didn’t add up. People speculated, their theories growing more outlandish with each retelling, but none of it felt like the truth.
I started asking questions wherever I could, hoping to make sense of it all. Most people just shook their heads or muttered vague warnings about leaving it alone, their eyes darting away like they were afraid the topic itself might summon something. But not everyone. There were a few who lingered, their gazes steady but uneasy, and their answers — those stayed with me long after the conversations ended.
There’s an old man who sits on the porch of the general store every day, his chair creaking softly as he rocks back and forth. I’d seen him a thousand times but had never paid him much attention until now.
“You’ve been here a long time,” I said, leaning against the porch railing. “You know anything about that windmill?”
The old man didn’t look at me, his eyes fixed on the distant hills. “Seen more than one poor soul claimed by that hill,” he said finally.
“Not the windmill?” I asked, confused.
“No,” he replied, his voice low and steady. “The hill.”
His words hung in the air, heavy with meaning I couldn’t grasp. He didn’t mention the windmill again, as though it didn’t matter — or as though it mattered too much to speak aloud.
The day after Sam’s death, Suzie’s Diner was quieter than I’d ever seen it. Like I said before. The usual hum of conversation had dulled to a whisper. People shuffled in and out, their heads bowed, their voices low, as if speaking too loudly might break something fragile. There was a new guy who sat at the counter, pretending to nurse a cup of coffee, eyes scanning the room, catching fragments of the hushed dialogue that drifted through the room.
“They won’t let the family see her,” a woman murmured from one of the corner booths, her tone uneasy. “Sheriff says it’s better that way.”
I noticed him sitting at a booth near the back, a notepad in hand, his pen moving steadily across the page. I’d never seen him before, and in a town like Kayro, that meant something. Sure, there are plenty of folks here I don’t know by name, but his face didn’t fit — not in the way locals do. There was something about him that felt off, like he didn’t belong. His posture was too relaxed, his movements too precise, and his clothes — clean, pressed, and a little too sharp — stood out against the worn flannels and faded jeans that filled the diner.
Another customer, an older man with a faded ball cap, shook his head gravely. “I heard it wasn’t just the fall,” he said, his voice low but clear enough to carry. “Something about the way she looked…”
The clink of a coffee cup on a saucer broke through the murmurs, the soft sound louder than it should have been in the heavy quiet. For a moment, no one spoke. Even the whispers seemed to dissolve into the oppressive silence, the kind that made every breath feel like it carried the weight of the room.
Then there was Mikey.
“You know, I saw Mikey the other night,” Ronald said, leaning forward slightly across the booth. His voice was low, careful, like he wasn’t sure how much to share with the stranger sitting opposite him.
I spotted the stranger again at the bar, not long after that first time at the diner.
He tilted his head, waiting for him to continue.
“He wasn’t himself,” Ronald went on, fingers tapping idly against his glass. “He was jittery, you know? His eyes kept darting around like he expected something to jump out at him.”
“What’d he say?” the stranger asked, his tone casual, though his expression betrayed his curiosity.
The local shook his head slowly, like he was replaying it in his mind. “He told me… said something was watching him. ‘I can feel it,’ he said. ‘Always there… watching.’ It was like he didn’t want to say it too loud, like just speaking it would make it worse.”
“Did he tell you what he meant?”
“Not exactly.” Ronald paused, taking a slow sip of his drink. “I asked him what he was talking about. I mean, I already had a pretty good idea, but still… I wanted to hear him say it. He didn’t. Just got up, hunched his shoulders like he was carrying something heavy, and walked out. Didn’t even say goodbye.”
The stranger’s brow furrowed, and the local sighed, leaning back in his seat. “I wanted to tell myself he was just grieving, just scared out of his mind after what happened. But the way he looked, the way he talked…” He shook his head again. “Deep down, I knew it wasn’t that simple.”
The second time I saw him was at the bar, a week after Sam’s death. He introduced himself as Ben Hanlon, a journalist looking into “small-town mysteries,” as he put it. His handshake was firm, his tone practiced and even, but there was something about the way his eyes darted around the room — like he was searching for cracks in the walls or secrets hiding in the shadows.
“Ben Hanlon,” he said, taking a seat across from me. “I’ve been poking around town for a few weeks now. Heard about what happened to Sam. Figured it might be… connected to some of the other stories I’ve come across.”
I didn’t respond right away, letting the words settle as I studied him. His clothes were neat, unremarkable, but his notepad and pen — already in hand — gave him away. He wasn’t here for the diner food or the gossip.
Later that evening, there was a knock at my door — sharp and urgent, cutting through the quiet of the night. When I opened it, Ben was standing there, his expression drawn tight, a flashlight clutched in his hand.
“I need to show you something,” he said without preamble, his voice carrying a mix of excitement and unease that set me on edge. “It’s at the windmill.”
By the time we reached the hill, the air had grown heavier, the windmill creaking loudly in the evening breeze. Each groan of its aged wood seemed to echo in the quiet, a sound that didn’t feel like it belonged in this century. The crunch of gravel under our boots marked our slow approach, and I could see the faint beam of Ben’s flashlight cutting through the dimness, fixed on the windmill’s weathered door.
“This wasn’t here before,” he said, stepping aside so I could see it. The symbol was simple yet deeply unsettling — a circle split cleanly in half by a single line, etched with precision into the splintered wood.
“What do you think it means?” I asked, my voice barely louder than a whisper. The wind had picked up, carrying a strange, low moan that seemed to tangle with the groan of the windmill blades, the sound filling the air with an eerie tension.
Ben shook his head, his jaw tightening. “I don’t know,” he admitted, his voice low. “But it wasn’t there before.”
As night fell, the windmill stood tall against the darkening sky, its blades unmoving now, but no less menacing.
The town below seemed smaller from up here, its lights flickering weakly like they might go out at any moment. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming, something bigger than any of us could understand.
The windmill has always been here, a silent sentinel watching over Kayro. But now, it’s different. Now, it feels cursed.
I don’t know what that symbol means, but I know this: whatever is out there, whatever is watching us… it’s feels familiar.
“The windmill didn’t just stand apart — it demanded attention. Even when it wasn’t in sight, it lingered in your mind, heavy and unshakable.”
‘That symbol on the windmill’s door,’ Ben said, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘It wasn’t there before.’
The next chapter will be released in two weeks. Stay tuned to uncover the secrets of Kayro.
Up Next: The Shape of Rust: Chapter 4
