"Jack Russtle, official town photography, coming through" I said walking to the front desk.

"Alright Jack you've seen our library, and now the rest of the world will see what you do too, he he" said the librarian.

"Pleased as always to film such historical landmarks" I said, winking.

"You haven't traveled the entire world unless you've been here" said Misty the librarian as she scuttled off by habit to finish off another pointless task.

The job was half chit chat, now It was quiet time, time to focus. The library was one floor, very small, four photos captured everything.

"I'd like a better one for the entry way please," she asked.

"Here's photos five, and six here for you Misty"

"Good, they look really good. Ok I'll have these up on our website tonight, and don't forget to return your books it's been months” she said typing away.

"Great, and sorry about that, things have been getting crazy for me".

"Just drop them off outside any day dear, hopefully not burned up, if you take too long i'll have to come over and get them myself" she teased.

"Of course" I stuttered.

I exited into the sharp winter air that helped to cool off my red face. Trucks with massive snow plows formed a gathering larger than the library in the parking lot outside. Steve clung to the top, climbing out of the one non lifted truck of the pack.

"Can you believe they think we did it Jeffrey?" he bellowed.

"Hoo hoo ha ha!" laughed the galley.

"Hey Jack! You better stay away now because we are major suspects, every one of us that ain't rich that is" he stared down at me

"yeah Rusty Rustler why don't you move back home real quick. Back to Massachusetts with rich mommy and daddy, and away from all us no good outlaws" laughed the man in a red flannel, and sheepskin hat.

"Ho ho good one Jeffrey, pass the time" said another.

I hopped into my rust bucket SUV that I was driving around courtesy of the town. It wasn’t such a good deal with it not passing inspection, as well as adding weight to my local nickname. The car rumbled out of a small intersection and down a quiet snow dusted road. The coyotes cry against the wolf moon already out on the edge of sundown.

Rural living in a time when a person had to be a digital person in order to call themselves a part of society, when five or six tech companies increasingly consolidated their digital monopolies, every tech employee could now work from home from anywhere in the world, all the billionaires wanted to live here too, and you could not afford an old souls lifestyle anymore. A growing hate against the aristocrats. A growing hate in everyone's hearts to find the hidden culprit that had to be lurking behind the scenes making life so much harder for everyone than it ever had to be. Everybody was dazed and confused with a bombardment, an overload of opinions from bad faith nihilistic actors who wanted to win short term victories, and amass their fortunes at any cost.

The next day in a lonely little office by the old broiler room now used for storage. Major Deputy "Majar" Thomas Elsberth sat behind his cold steel desk, wind whacked against the window behind him as the cast iron radiator began to heat up his bones. It was old school setup, practical just like himself. He sat behind his police computer finishing this week's biggest report: A snowmobile rider had been killed in a head-on collision with a tree. A man who lived down the road had smelled burning oil and ran out to find him there. Plenty of signs pointed to this not being a drive or death done in solitude. With so many tracks spread out all around then all turning around just where the man had crashed. Good bet this daredevil had some real lousy friends that would leave him to die in the ditch of a trail; his sled falling down a banking above the train tracks, bursting up on impact. In the dead of night Martin "4 ball" Page had been trapped on top of a metal pyre burning up.

"Morning Majar" I said, pouring myself coffee sitting on an old oak table just outside his office.

"Jack, good job with photos there today again" , said the Deputy looking up as I walked in.

"Grim stuff" I said with a grimace.

"Indeed, I've seen many of these now and they always get more rough with each one" he replied, tilting back in a blocky leather squeaking chair from the 1970's.

"You're the one who calls the next of kin about death?"

"Yes, for at least the last five of these now, the hardest part of my job" said Majar as he leaned back in thought before eventually remembering what he had meant to have typed.

"You know his wife was the same woman that a Felt had tried to financially ruin her life with a frivolous lawsuit, the very same Felt that now owns the big burn pit up there on Maybell island" I said.

The deputy gave me a stern look "I'm aware, I was living here when it all went down, and I'm sure you think this death, the husband, is connected to it all?"

"Who knows?" I said, rolling my eyes, then stammering "A major jeopardy".

He frowned back "I'd never met Martin until after he was dead, but until there's any evidence to the contrary his only crime was speeding that machine his way too fast" said the deputy. "We'll leave it at that".

Of course I had seen the dead body that morning, and the other tracks. I was sure that Martin Foulmoth had been one of many arsonists, now silenced with his own funeral fire on a backwoods trail.

It was Feb 3rd when I drove into the widow's yard. A thick blanket of snow tucked over many long abandoned side projects. The siding of aged wood shingles painted over a dozen times is now colored green with paint and mold , and a bent snow-covered roof on one quarter of the building sagged, probably leaking. I got out of my car to knock, but the house lights were off, nobody was going to be in the mood to talk. So I took out my pen and paper writing:

"Ms. Foulmoth I'm very sorry about your loss, I work for the town and we are thinking of running a memorial page for your husband on our online pages only with your permission of course. If you would like us to display a favorite image of him as well as a short bio you can get me at 659-8899 stay safe -Jack Russtle". Depositing it sealed and signed in a plastic zipper bag in her frosted mailbox before I left.

The next morning my room was colder than an ice fishing house. It was going to be hard leaving the covers, when the cabin hadn't been properly insulated against the harsh winter, and with the heat of a lovely woman pressed against me.

Regardless I had to get up at some point today, in order to get myself to the seashore, and shoot some seagulls for the small nonprofit fishery's latest government funded social media outreach. Over an hour had passed by the time I trudged out to heat up and clean off the snow-covered car before making it out of the covered driveway en route to the fish pier.

The rocks along the shore were covered in thick slabs of sea ice cracked every so often. The sky was overcast, the sunlight snuffed, and the fog thick. My car entered an empty lot above the ocean on the pier where a single street light wasted electricity above almost fully consumed by the mist. A solitary truck was idling away in place beside the bait shed, and a cold drop to the ocean. A seagull gobbled up a salted fish corpse before flapping its wings and shitting all over everything just as I managed to get a shot of it with the camera.

"Gotcha!" I shouted as the wind picked up.

I noticed bright lights located somewhere in the bait shed had flashed on. It was then that the hulking shadow with a massive pitchfork walked out. My low beams left on marked up a masked face in the fog, his clothing dark hidden under black rubber oil pants, attached with red straps, boots with thick blood smears running off them. It was then the second figure exited and I heard the crackling of wood burning, smelled the smoke in the air, saw the reflection of flames in a window, saw my camera fixed on the approaching masked men, saw a sharp pitchfork holding dead fish as they closed the distance to my sitting car, as I got into it. Speeding back in reverse, smashing into something as the car fell down into a hole. Struggling out of the vehicle as the wind and snow both picked up.

I limped over a dead street, under the cover of thick underbrush, escaping into frozen woods where I found myself alone on a trail covered in a thick sheet of ice. The spruce violently swayed and squeaked, threatening to snap in half any second from the ripping winds. I limped along checking my smashed cell phone one last time for signs of life, all I had working was my camera. What will I do if they have followed me in? I have to keep running and find a safe house, car, even a doghouse to hide my wounds in before it's after dark.

"Welcome back to your local news, channel 8 MHSW. School is back in session after another big snowstorm, Mariner's raised money for a lost seaman's family, and Mat will let you know what the next winter storm coming this weekend has in store for us, but first tonight: Loony police say they're looking for a suspect for questioning, after a vehicle was found crashed near a burned bait shed. The shed belonging to Horsemax inc lobster (a New York company) said the fresh bait inside was a complete loss due to the fire, and the police told us there has been a tip line set up if you have any information about this or anything else suspicious" .

"Right now it's an open investigation, we are mapping everything out, hopefully we will soon know what happened here".

"That was the sheriff Majar of Crust County and Jimmy Fowler reporting for Tv9 ''.

"Wow Matt things have really been heating up in Looney, with the fires, a heatwave, and the girls high school basketball competition".

"Chuckle I don't think we should be calling it a heatwave just yet, as temps will be dropping back down into the teens later tonight”

“Your full weather forecast will be coming up, but first we have a report from Bob Fowler on the fishing zones shrinking again to an even smaller size next year".

A power saw interrupted the broadcast taking place in the workshop below the cold metal stairs running over and across water-damaged walls lined inside of the large steeple. As I crouched a floor up with leather boots wet and squishy, but I had managed to remain undetectable so far.

I was hiding in the museum after running from the masked man. I was crawling up the stairs hand by hand at a time, as I could hear rattling above. Numbed by a slow ever burning pain coming from my lower limb injured in the crash. A cold marble entrance must mark what must be the 3rd floor in the dark before I went fumbling through an open doorway made of carved up glass. Behind me stands a maze of small dark walls dissecting the once open church floor now cut into many sections.

Flashlight by camera flash, illuminating a museum of stuffed bugs, stood crawling still up close. The next click: stuffed bats' with fangs sat in place then moments later beautiful butterflies captured canned in still air. A crow sounded off from somewhere it had nestled up above as the saw resumed growling deep below the building's cellar.

Flash. With that the crow had flown down from the rafters right into my face. I flashed the camera again and again in strobe panic as I saw the crow exiting the door with one flap of its wings. Now behind where it had just flapped, wafts of thick smoke bellowed down, trapping me in.