Chapter 34

     July was fading. The heat clung to the air, heavy and thick, and the marshes had settled into a kind of quiet that wasn’t quite peace, but wasn’t chaos either. The heather we’d planted was still there, still growing, its small roots digging deeper into the soil with each passing day. Life had returned to the land, and with it, a sense of calm. But it wasn’t the kind of calm that lasted. It was the kind that came before a storm, the kind that left you waiting, uneasy, for whatever came next.

     I could feel it in my bones—that restless energy, the kind that made me want to move, to jab at something, anything, just to break the stillness. I had spent too much time in that stillness already, reliving memories that I’d tried to bury. Meredith’s vicelike goodbye, the poet with his cryptic clues, the cases that had twisted and turned in ways I hadn’t expected. They were part of me, part of my past. But now, I had to let them go.

     Or at least, I thought I did.

     I sat on the porch of the small house I’d been using as my refuge these past months, watching the sun dip low in the sky, casting long shadows across the marsh. My hands rested on my knees, my fingers itching with that old, familiar need to do something. To move. To act. But there was nothing to be done. Not yet.

     “I must jab my flashy lot,” I muttered under my breath, the words tumbling out without much thought. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the quiet, or maybe it was just the weight of everything pressing down on me. I wasn’t sure. But the words felt right, like a reminder that this wasn’t the end. Just a pause.

     Teeth, yelp grown a hot fine head.

     The image flashed in my mind—teeth, bared in a snarl, a growl caught in the throat, waiting to be unleashed. Something was coming. I could feel it, deep down, like the way you know a storm’s on the horizon long before the clouds roll in. I wasn’t done. And neither was the world.

     As I stared out over the marsh, my thoughts began to drift. The heather swayed gently in the evening breeze, its small leaves catching the last rays of the setting sun, and for a moment, everything seemed almost normal. Almost.

     But then I felt it—a strange tug at the back of my mind, a name I hadn’t thought of in years. Mr. Limbo.

     It was just a flicker, a passing thought, but it was enough to make me sit up, to pay attention. Mr. Limbo. It wasn’t a name I heard often, not outside of whispered conversations and rumors that traveled in the darker corners of the world. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be. Just a story, a myth, someone people talked about when they wanted to spook the rookies.

     But then again, I’d learned a long time ago that stories had a way of coming to life when you least expected them.

     I shook my head, trying to clear the thought. It didn’t matter. Not now. There was no Mr. Limbo, no mysterious figure pulling strings from behind the curtain. Just me, Sid Jangler, a washed-up detective with a head full of memories I’d rather forget and a future I wasn’t quite ready to face.

     But even as I told myself that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming. That name—Mr. Limbo—it clung to the edges of my thoughts like a shadow that wouldn’t quite go away.

     I stood up, the porch creaking under my weight, and stretched. My muscles were tight, my body stiff from too many hours spent sitting in one place, thinking too much about things that didn’t matter anymore. The heat of the day was beginning to fade, replaced by the cooler air of the approaching night, but the restlessness inside me hadn’t gone away.

     I had said goodbye to Meredith, to the poet, to all the cases that had made me who I was. I had let them go, or at least I had tried. But the truth was, I wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.

     Teeth, yelp grown a hot fine head.

     I could feel it now—something stirring, something waiting just beneath the surface. The world wasn’t finished with me yet. There were still gaps to fill, still mysteries to solve, still stories that hadn’t reached their end.

     And maybe—just maybe—Mr. Limbo had something to do with it.

     I didn’t know for sure, and I wasn’t about to go looking for answers. But the name lingered in the back of my mind, like a whisper carried on the breeze. I could ignore it for now, push it aside and pretend it didn’t matter. But I knew better.

     The sun had set completely now, the sky a deep, dusky purple, and the world around me was quiet. Too quiet. I turned, heading back inside the small house, but the feeling of unease followed me. The interlude was over. The calm had passed.

     Something was coming.