Silver Sight (Completed)

Chapter 8

Cooper couldn't stay in town after they took her.

He couldn't look anyone in the eye.

He couldn't bear to be in that place where he had found and lost her.

His heart was in tatters there wasn't much that he could take anymore.

It hurt too much.

It felt like all his nerves were alive, firing at once. And there wasn't a single thing to do to stop it.

He drove.

He drove with no direction.

But like all times before, he didn't end up at Ruelle's memorial.

He didn't end up at his house.

Or even the hotel.

Cooper ended up at the cabin. He needed his father's counsel. His silent disapproval to help him find the right path.

Whatever path brought him back to Ruelle.

The car door bangs shut echoing through the forest. It's been a long time since Cooper has been up at the cabin. For many reasons, firstly because it was a hunting cabin, and Ruelle was strictly against hunting. Once he lost her, he stayed a few nights while he was in the forest searching when it was too cold and dark to continue searching but couldn't shake the fear that she was watching and judging him so he stopped staying there.

The truck is parked nearby. So, his father's still up there.

Cooper stand and stares at the cabin, it seems too quiet up here and for the first time he realizes that there was no animal life that came close to this cabin. That realization gave him shivers and made him even more nervous was before.

There's a slight whooshing sound and when he turns he finds that an owl has landed on the roof of his car. It's large, with giant silver horn like tufts on its head. It's a dappled grey kind of owl, like a great horned owl, except there's no brown to camouflage it with the bark. It's bright eyes are golden like two giant coins. Cooper can't stop staring at them.

It's in that moment that a memory flashes in front of his eyes.

His father's truck. On a rainy night. On the stretch of highway where Ruelle had gone missing.

The memory sucker punches him.

The breath leaves his body and he finds himself staggering back from the car as if it's on fire. The owl is startled by this movement and takes flight while Cooper finds himself forcing himself to take ragged breaths in.

He knows without a shadow of a doubt that the memory is from the night Ruelle went missing. His father was there? How had his father been there and not said anything?

Trepidation washes over him as he turns back to the cottage.

The realization comes to him suddenly.

The cottage has the answers. He knows it. But he's afraid to go inside.

Afraid to ask those questions.

He forces himself to go to the door. He doesn't knock, just lets himself in. The door has never had a lock.

His father would say: No one is stupid enough to just walk into the Sherriff's cabin, and if they were then they probably needed help of some sort.

His father isn't there.

The forest has seemingly come instead.

Like it's reclaiming the cottage, branches stick in through various windows, the back door is completely blocked. A tree must have come down in the storm.