A rabbit darted across the road. Joel slapped his forehead with his palm. It was right there: KT had told Clark and Joel this morning that Dylan and his boy had gone away on their weekends together. But Garrett had been arrested with KT in Bentley on a weekend that KT and Dylan were both supposed to be out of town.

Joel sighed. Another theory for the scrap pile.

He tapped out a quick note to Clark on his phone, hit Send, wondered if it would ever reach her.

He thought of Dylan, of his brother telling Joel five days before his murder that he couldn’t sleep. Dylan had added that he couldn’t go to the bright lands anymore. And yet had Dylan gone to them regardless, whatever they were, the night he died?

“What we did was nothing compared to the shit that goes on in this town,” Wesley had said.

it’s like i hear this town talking when i sleep.

Broken men and frightened men. A missing shirt, a bloody jacket, a bloody sock. Escort ads and drugs and dick pics, oh my. Bag boys, old boys, golden boys, gone. A hate crime or a love crime. A shallow creek, an iron slab, a pit.

A warning etched with the point of a knife: GET OUT NOW FAG.

He drove until he found cell service and called Clark. The call went to voice mail. For the first time that day, Joel wondered just how powerful this darkness from the pit really was. Had it done something to Clark’s father so it could get her out of town? To get Joel alone, just like this?

Nothing seemed impossible anymore. If Clark’s mom was to be believed then they were dealing with a force a lot older than Bentley or Pettis County or this whole prejudiced country.

“This place is old, Whitley. It has rules.”

Joel googled Corwin Broadlock, the name Ranger had mentioned before abruptly shutting down. His phone’s browser choked and stuttered on the tenuous connection that reached him in the open country.

He was nearly back to town by the time he found the old newspaper article.

STAR PLAYER’S WHEREABOUTS REMAIN
UNKNOWN.

Joel read the story—it was little more than a blurry scan of an old page on the Waco Tribune-Herald’s website—and his heartbeat quickened.

On April 5th, 1976, Corwin Broadlock, the wide-receiver who brought the small town of Bentley such pride in their first championship game, ran away from home without warning. Mr. Broadlock has not been seen since.

The story stated that Broadlock’s parents had received a letter one month after his disappearance, urging them not to worry about his whereabouts. The letter bore a Miami postmark, but no trace of the boy had been found there. Corwin’s parents insisted that the content and tone of the letter sounded nothing like their son but there was little the police could do.

“It’s an absolute shock,” says Mr. Broadlock’s former teammate Grady Mayfield. Close friend Tom Parter adds, “I thought these were the best years of our lives. I can only hope Corwin’s found whatever he needs wherever he went.”