A damn Sarah Hatley is dangerous.

She's been dousing for dead animals ever since the last of the winter snow melted.

The Hatley girls always carrying that same crooked bit of Willa branch.

Sarah holds it out in front of her.

She closes her eyes and she makes faces like she's detecting something invisible in the

air.

She calls it her sensing stick.

A senior digging things up too.

She's telling everyone who asks that she can make these little corpses feel better again.

I'll admit that I've noticed strange abundance of squirrels and blue jays in the parklands

this year.

Maybe that's just an eerie coincidence though.

The recent winter snowfall in Ashland was also irregularly heavy.

Sometimes things are related and sometimes they aren't.

Speaking of things that might or might not be connected.

Almost a dozen people went missing this winter.

Not a single one of them was returned.

The Ashlander otherwise has been found.

The police are starting to think these incidents might all be related.

In the papers it's been theorized that a single unknown assailant might be living here

in town.

They started calling this unknown person the Ashland Flare.

...