Page 109 of Creeping Lily
I think about what it’ll take for Goliath to get through it all. Every name. Every date. Every ugly, blood-soaked line of ink. Verifying each one, matching it to the bodies, the disappearances, the cold cases nobody wanted to admit were unsolved. For some families, it might bring closure. For others… forty years is a long time to wait for answers. Some of them will never hold their loved ones again.
Lily’s hands tremble around the book. “Do you… want me to keep going?” she asks, voice unsteady.
I shake my head and take it from her, the leather warm from her grip. The sound of it slamming shut is louder than I expect, sharp in the stillness of the cabin. I set it down on the side table like it might burn through the wood if I hold it too long.
“It’s fine,” I say. A lie. Nothing about it is fine, but I’m not about to watch her eyes glass over with tears because of something I dragged into her hands. This book is poison. It could stain her in ways she’d never scrub clean.
I stand, stretching the stiffness from my legs. My arms lift over my head, pulling my hoodie up just enough to expose the ink curling across my ribs. Her gaze flickers there before she can stop it, quick and sharp, like she’s caught herself looking somewhere she shouldn’t. I bite back a smirk and let my arms drop, saying nothing as I take a step away.
“This is what you do?” she asks after a beat. “You slay demons that prey on the vulnerable?”
“I’ve never killed a man who didn’t deserve it.” My tone is flat, factual.
Her eyes narrow slightly. “And the woman?”
I know exactly who she means. Sheila Shine. Larry’s wife. People thought she was the victim. They didn’t know the half of it.
“Sheila Shine was the mastermind,” I tell her. “Larry started it, but Sheila? She perfected it. She brought the torture. She found the victims. She was worse than him—meaner, colder. She made sure their screams went unheard.”
Lily swallows, like she’s weighing what I’ve just told her. “How do you find them? The Shines of the world?”
“It’s my job,” I say. “You pull one thread, it leads to another, then another… until you’ve got the whole ugly knot in your hands.”
Her voice softens, curious, wary. “And what is it that you’re looking for, Titan?”
I meet her eyes and hold them there, letting the silence stretch until it almost hurts. “Redemption.”
The word tastes wrong in my mouth. Too clean for what I really mean. It’s not salvation I’m after—it’s the kind of redemption written in blood. The kind that stains as much as it saves. And the more I chase it, the more I know…
I’m not sure which side of the ledger my own name belongs on.
56
LILY
The air in the cabin changes—tightens—like a storm cloud rolling in without warning. The silence between us hums, thick and watchful, as our eyes stray back to the ledger lying on the side table. It’s not just a book. It feels alive, like it’s listening.
Titan’s gaze lingers on it for a beat too long before he straightens, deciding—without a word—that it’s time to take a walk. I watch him as he pulls out his phone, tilting it one way, then another, moving toward the window and back again like he’s fighting with the air itself. Every few steps, he lifts the device higher, chasing a signal that refuses to be caught. His expression is unreadable, but the tension in his shoulders tells me the fight isn’t really about the phone.
When he finally steps outside, I drift toward the armchair. My eyes keep darting to the ledger until my hands—both cautious and curious—wrap around it. The leather is cool, the spine stiff in my grip, like it’s resisting me. I sit, holding it in my lap for a moment before opening it, as though I’m about to slip into someone else’s nightmares.
This is what drives him. These pages are his fuel, the reasonhis hands are stained. Titan may be a killer, but he isn’t aimless. Every strike he makes has a target. Every name has a reason. That doesn’t make him less lethal—it just makes his violence organized.
I begin to read. Skimming first. Names blur into dates, dates into locations. I don’t know what I’m looking for, only that I need to see for myself. Maybe he doesn’t want me to go further because it’s ugly. Maybe he wants to protect me. Or maybe there’s something in here he doesn’t want me to know.
Page after page, I flip through the years. The 1980s bleed into the ’90s. The names start to feel closer somehow—more familiar. These are people from my time, my generation. Some of them I recognize instantly: the missing kids whose faces once stared out from milk cartons, the women whose cases still pop up in true-crime documentaries, the tragedies the internet refuses to let fade.
One entry from 1998 makes me stop. The ink is different—darker, fresher—standing out against Larry Shine’s usual tidy handwriting. A note beside a name. A child he had sold. Later went missing. He underlined his innocence in the second disappearance, as if scribbling the words could wash his hands clean. But the original entry still damns him:destination unknown.
I keep going. The entries are mercifully short—facts without flourish, a bullet to the point. I fall into the rhythm of them, each page a little cut that draws me deeper in. The hours slip away. Afternoon light filters through the windows, bending across the floor in gold and dust.
Every so often, I pause and listen for Titan. The cabin remains quiet. I frown, realizing how long it’s been since he left. Still, there’s no panic. He’s out there somewhere—watching, waiting, moving in his own deliberate way.
And I know with a certainty I can’t explain: he’ll come back.
“Twelfth April 1999
Heddy Fielder, 61 Bilbao Street, Turongo
