NK: Were you driving?
JB: No.
NK: Was anyone with you after downtown?
JB: No.
NK: Someone dropped you off?
JB: [Pause.] Maybe. I…I remember walking a long way.
NK: Were you going up or down the stairs?
JB: Up. I think. I saw him…I saw him above me. Coming down.
NK: Jeremy Tuttle?
JB: Yes.
NK: And—
JB: [Suddenly distressed.] And he shot me! He pulled out a gun and he shot me. I…I ran down the stairs.
NK: Okay, okay. Just — okay, just lie back. Did you see him after that? Did he follow you?
JB: I looked back to see if he was coming down. He was ststanding there. [Emotional.] He…was looking at me.
NK: Did he say anything?
JB: He said, “I’ll do this. You don’t have to. Go.”
NK: You heard that clearly?
JB: Yes.
NK: Why would he say that?
JB: I don’t know.
NK: Do you know what he meant?
JB: That I should go.
NK: What was he doing then?
JB: He turned and he…went up. There was light. In the trees.
NK: Like a flashlight?
JB: No. More. Different. He went up into it. To them.
NK: Them?
JB: [Cries out suddenly, clutches temples.]
NK: It’s okay. You’re okay. Do you want to—
[Indistinct voice of Detective Colby.]
NK: Okay. Who was there? Who were “they”?
JB: [Long pause, sobbing, labored breath.]
NK: Jen, who was with him? Who were “they”?
JB: Not…no, no, no, no one. There…there was a bird.
NK: A—
JB: I want to stop, I want to stop now I want to stop now I want to stop now stop now.
Forensic assessment by Janine Paxton, PSM, 3935D12, September 10, 2022:
The close-range gunshot wound to Jen Bigelow was possibly self-inflicted based on muzzle proximity, trajectory, and wound position. All consistent with recovered Ruger LCP. Exit wound, slug not recovered.
Addendum by Detective David Colby: Only Bigelow’s prints on the weapon, no others. Ruger LCP retrieved at the scene, 11:51 p.m., September 9, 2022. Blood belonging to Bigelow at the presumed shooting site, intermittent blood trail continuing down the Benton Avenue stairs and along Gladys Street northwestward, southwest on Ronacky, south on Gale to the intersection with Sebring Furnace Extension. Ruger LCP registered to Jen Bigelow. No evidence of any other persons, items, or activity on Benton Avenue up to Halfirth or in the surrounding area, which is heavily wooded.
2012 Chevrolet Cruze registered to Jeremy Tuttle found parked along Gladys Street, approx. 140 feet southeast of Benton Avenue entrance. Nothing unusual in or around vehicle.
Tuttle’s whereabouts remain unknown.
Text of “Sweeping,” song by The Dire Janes, April 2023:
Why’d you do it, Molly Mae?
Why’d you go so hurtfully?
Did the music tell you to?
Did the night bird call to you?
Yeah, we won and lost for keeps.
So the rolling ocean sweeps
The footprints from the sand away.
And you couldn’t, couldn’t stay,
Molly Mae, Molly Mae.
That’s the way it had to be.
Every Path Taken NICHOLAS KAUFMANN
“Can a human brain continue to function outside the body?”
In her seat in the lecture hall, Emily Bannerman looked up from her laptop, her curiosity piqued by the strangeness of the question one of her classmates had asked.
Professor Vaughan, a bearded, slightly balding man in his late forties with a taste for the argyle sweaters that seemed to be the unofficial faculty uniform at Vermont’s Middlewood University, had just wrapped up his lecture. “As an organ, the brain is only three pounds of tissue, but it’s responsible for everything that makes you you.” As he spoke he aimed his laser pointer like a magician wielding his wand at the SMART board behind him, where a detailed cross-section of a human brain was projected on the screen. “It houses all your memories, everything you’ve learned, your hopes and dreams, everything you love and hate. In essence, you are your brain, and your brain is you.”
Next to Emily, her boyfriend Sean thumbed a text message covertly into his phone and hit send. It appeared silently in a window on the screen of her laptop. Can I come over again tonight? She glared at him, annoyed at the intrusion, but he grinned and his gray eyes flashed. Those sharp, inquisitive eyes were the first thing she’d noticed about him, and they were still hard to say no to. She nodded, then forced herself to focus on the notes she’d been taking. She couldn’t let herself get distracted. It was important she pass Professor Vaughan’s pre-med neuroscience class. She’d kept her nose to the grindstone all year making sure her grades remained good enough to get into a decent medical school after graduation and she wasn’t about to let it slip now.
Professor Vaughan glanced at his watch. “We’ve got a few minutes left. Are there any questions?”
The students in the lecture hall looked at each other as though daring anyone to delay their escape. No one ever asked questions.
And then she heard it.
“Can a human brain continue to function outside of the body?”
But when Emily looked up from her laptop, Professor Vaughan was still looking expectantly at his students, and the students were still looking around in the hopes of being dismissed early. It was as though no one had spoken.
“No questions? All right, then,” Professor Vaughan said, switching off the SMART board. “For next time, read chapter six in Brain, Mind, and Behavior. You’re dismissed.”
Emily frowned. She could have sworn she’d heard a voice. A woman’s voice.
I can’t see anything. Everything is dark.
I try to blink, but I have no eyes.
I try to listen, but I have no ears.
It’s as if I don’t exist. But I do. I’m here. I’m real.
Where am I? Is anyone else here? These are the questions I want to shout, but I have no mouth.
As a senior faculty member at Middlewood, Professor Vaughan had his own office far from the faculty building the other teachers had to share. It was inside a small stone cottage that sat at the far end of the student parking lot, a private office he’d decorated with shelves of books, framed degrees, and an antique, single-lensed brass microscope from the 19th century that Emily thought was beautiful in its simplicity. She felt bad about taking up the entirety of the professor’s office hours after the lecture, but no other students came by and Vaughan didn’t seem to mind. She’d been taking notes on her laptop all through their discussion but had stopped halfway through when she noticed the door in the wall. Now she couldn’t stop looking at it. Every time she looked up from her computer at Professor Vaughan, she found herself sneaking peeks at the door, squinting at it, trying to figure it out.
It was a perfectly ordinary-looking door. There was nothing special about it, except for the fact that she could have sworn it had never been there before. What’s more, she couldn’t figure out where it could possibly lead. There was nothing on the other side of the wall except the little cottage’s stone exterior. If she were to open that door, it would lead directly outside, but even that didn’t make sense. There was only one door into this building. There had only ever been one door.
“Miss Bannerman, are you paying attention?”