At the grocery store, someone glanced at the poster and gave her a soft, sympathetic smile. At the library, a passerby simply shook their head and whispered, “So sad.” People didn’t ask questions. They assumed what had happened—and their pity only made Samantha feel more hollow inside.
When she got home, exhausted and windburned, she opened her laptop and wrote a post for the town’s Facebook group. She recounted everything—the scream, the shadow, the flash of white. Her fingers hesitated at the end before typing, “Please let me know if you’ve seen anything at all.”