I never thought I'd see half the town show up to bury a man nobody actually liked.

Ricky Haldon wasn't a monster or anything.

He was one of those loud, broad-shouldered firemen who made every story about himself.

The kind of guy who'd tell you about a house fire he'd put out in 08 like it was Vietnam.

Still, he'd been part of the fabric of this place, and in small towns, even the people you don't love feel like pillars.

But the mood at his funeral wasn't grief.

It was fear.

There were no tears.

Instead, people watched on, whispering, glancing over shoulders at shadows that weren't

there.

To the side, Mrs. Highland kept repeating.

It's earlier than last time. Two older men stood behind me near the tree line,

speaking low as the past that droned on. It started again, 27 years like clockwork, thought

would get more time. I pretended not to hear.

I grew up listening to this kind of nonsense.

Stories about the black cycle,

about the curse, about how every 27 years

someone would die in a way that didn't belong to the world.

To me, it was always just superstition layered over tragedy.

Small towns loved patterns, even if they had to invent them.

But this time, this time felt different, because nobody had an explanation for how Rick burned to death

inside an empty grain silo.

...