Luke couldn't help feeling that the campus was a little too quiet tonight.

He walked quickly in the nighttime chill, a reluctant Kenny trailing sullenly in his wake. The light, warmth and life of the Growler was a distant dream, taunting them with a faint echo of noise from across campus. The gnawing anxiousness had building inside him ever since they'd stumbled across Gore and DeVergne, a sense that he had one foot planted firmly into something bigger and stranger than he could imagine.

As he traversed the evening paths he couldn't help looking around, checking the shadows between the buildings, searching for those blazing eyes, or the ethereal glow. Or maybe even DeVergne? He wasn't totally sure what he expected to see.

In the end, he didn't find anything lurking in the night. The pair trudged along, the glass-walled exterior of the ELU library rising into prominence beyond the residence blocks. Open twenty four hours for the dedicated student (or the student who'd left their deadlines to the last second), it spilled light from all sides. Behind him Kenny blew into his hands, rubbing them together to ward off the chill. Despite his displeasure at heading to the library in the cold and the dark, in reality Luke's room mate hadn't taken much convincing to join their investigations.

"Gotta tell you," Kenny muttered. "This is not exactly how I thought our first semester was going to roll out."

Luke snorted derisively. "You and me both."

"That's the last time I'll take that shortcut, that's for damn sure."

As they approached the library he spotted Gabi pacing back and forth just outside the entrance, thumbs hooked through the straps of her backpack. When she spotted them she twisted to a halt, forcing a dubious smile onto her face.

"Hey," she said quietly as they met at the top of the stairs, the bright lights of the library glaring down on them from behind. A couple of other students wandered in and out, some clutching late-night coffees in weary hands.

"You all set?" Luke asked.

"Well, I think I'm as awake as I'm going to get." She flicked her head towards the doors behind her. "Shall we?"

"You sure you want to get in the middle of all this, Gabs?" Kenny asked, his face a picture of unease.

"I wouldn't be in the middle of it if you hadn't told me everything," Gabi retorted. "But you did tell me so, sorry boys, I'm afraid you're stuck with me. Now come on."

Luke exchanged a look with Kenny, shrugged, and followed her inside. With Gabi leading the way they showed their student IDs to the library guard, and passed through the secondary set of automatic glass doors. The library's main atrium sprawled out in front of them in a collage of cream-coloured walls, stark white shelving units and navy blue carpet.

They proceeded into the domain of the written word, with meticulously organised bookcases staring down on them as they walked. A few other nocturnal students were scattered around, at computers or stuffed onto couches with their laptops, most of them with headphones firmly jammed in place to lock out the rest of the world.

Luke beckoned the others to follow him, feeling decidedly furtive about what they were doing. He felt somehow underhanded, going behind Oaklynn's back to dig up information that might confirm his suspicions, rather than just speaking to her face to face. He looked from left to right as he walked, half-expecting her and Kasper to appear from behind the shelves.

To his relief, they remained unsurprised as he led the way up the second level, to one of the private pods designed for group projects. He supposed this qualified. Sort of. It was all primary colours and achingly white desks, with a quartet of university computers positioned in an outward-facing square. The trio slipped inside and Luke gratefully slumped down into one of the soft-backed chairs.

Gabi sank into the seat opposite him; Kenny opted for the couch, extending his legs and settling a laptop on his thighs. For a moment none of them spoke, leaving only the hum of computer fans whirring to life to fill the silence. Luke opened up his laptop as well, giving himself an extra screen to work with.

"Alright then," Kenny sighed. "Where do you two geniuses want to start? What exactly are we looking for?"

Gabi looked expectantly across the table. "Well, this was your idea, Luke."

"I'm aware." He frowned, pressing his lips together in thought. "I guess we look into the town first. We need to see if anything like this has ever happened in Lasquette Bay before." He glanced at Kenny. "Have you ever heard of something like this?"

His roommate looked affronted. "What am I, the town crier? I'm nineteen years old, man."

"You knew about the Burning-Eyed Man legend."

"Yeah, most of the people in town know that stupid story! That's a lot different to an actual psycho smashing people's heads in."

"Stories come from somewhere," Gabi offered. "Maybe there's something to it. From what you said about that little campfire story, it sounds kinda like what happened to that girl out there." She swallowed uncomfortably. "With... the brain and everything."

"It's just a story," Kenny replied wearily. "My dad told it to me when I was like ten years old to stop me sneaking out of the back window of the house."

"Let's just start with past similar occurrences," Luke interjected as the library computer booted up with a reluctant hum.

The others parked their debate for the time being. Silence descended on the trio, filled only by the clack of keys and the just barely audible fuzz of music bleeding from headphones. Luke set to work, heavy guitars blaring into his eardrums as he dug into the past of Lasquette Bay, trying not to think too much about what he wanted to find. He started generally, looking for any kind of murder in the town's history.

Nothing relevant crossed his screen. There were a handful of very nasty, very human incidents – bar fights gone wrong; abusive husbands who went too far; revenge killings; crimes of passion. None of them mentioned anything like the wound in the dead girl's skull. Minutes ticked into an hour.

The others didn't have much luck either. Kenny turned up much the same information as he did, nothing to tie any historical figures to this murder. Opting for a different tactic, he attempted to track down the name DeVergne with any connection to the town, but all he ended up with was a freight company based in New York. Luke doubted there was much relation.

Despite Kenny's misgivings, Gabi went down the road of superstition, trying to trace anything tangible about the so-called Burning-Eyed Man that haunted Lasquette's woods. For her hard work she ended up with a few articles on the local mythology that dismissed the legend as exactly that, treated with the same good-natured patience as the Sasquatch or the Yeti. Beyond that, there were half a dozen blogs that varied in degrees of craziness, from monster-hunting enthusiasts to rabid conspiracy theorists convinced the titular Burning-Eyed Man was the product of a failed government experiment.

Altogether, it added up to a ten-foot tall pile of nothing.

"Jeez," Kenny muttered as the clock ticked past midnight, rubbing his eyes with both hands. "I need coffee; do you guys want some coffee?"

"Cafe's closed," Gabi said absently, still engrossed in her screen.

"They've got vending machines."

Luke pulled a face. "That stuff's nasty."

"I'm not gonna hold you down and pour it down your throat." Kenny put his laptop aside and swung his legs off the couch in preparation. "Do you want some or not?"

"Go on then."

Gabi raised a hand. "Me too."

"Yeah, I thought so," he chuckled as he ambled out of the room.

Luke slouched back in his seat looking at yet another useless article from the local paper. A shiver of self-doubt crawled right up his spine and took root in his brain. What was he expecting to find here? Was he just desperate? Was he just obsessed? Young people were volatile. Oaklynn could have any number of reasons for shoving off with a different crowd. Maybe he'd built everything up in his mind when it had meant nothing in reality, like an idiot.

"Gabi?"

"Mhm?"

"I..." He shook his head. "Sorry, maybe this was all a waste of time."

"No, no, no, no." Gabi shook her head. "I'm not having you drag me down here just so you can bail while we stay here on the night shift. You laid it out and it was good enough for me to want a closer look. That means it should be good enough for you too."

Good enough for me.

His lips crinkled in thought as he stared at the screen and he nodded to himself. Her reaction to the murders had been no illusion – her and Kasper both. They knew something. Leaning forward sharply, Luke typed 'Oaklynn Cooper' into the search bar. He discovered a handful of Facebook and Twitter profiles, none of which looked like her, and a few other connected articles – all of it dead weight. That didn't surprise him unduly – he tried 'Oaklynn Cooper, ELU', followed by 'Oaklynn Cooper, Lasquette Bay'.

Again, nothing. Oaklynn seemed to be going to some lengths to keep herself off the internet.

At that moment Kenny reappeared, three plastic cups of steaming coffee clutched precariously in his hands. He lowered himself towards Gabi so she could extract one, then shuffled around the table to hand Luke his.

"Thanks." Luke inhaled deeply then took a sip. He instantly regretted it when the coffee scorched his tongue. Sucking in a frustrated breath through his teeth he set the plastic cup down and tried not to let on. Unsuccessfully.

"Careful now," Kenny chuckled as he walked back over to his couch. "You don't need to burn your taste buds off just because you don't like it."

Luke eyed him dangerously. "It's just fine, thanks."

"Guys?" Gabi interrupted between blowing on her coffee to cool it down. She leaned around the computer screen to look at him. "I think I might have found something. Can you come take a look at this?"

"Hallelujah," Kenny declared.

Luke kicked with his feet, rolling his chair around the corner desk and leaning in close beside her. Her perfume filled his nose with the scent of cinnamon and cloves, like Christmas. Hunching his shoulders and trying to ignore the pleasant smell, he turned his attention back to the screen.

"We couldn't find anything on similar occurrences in Lasquette," she explained. "So I widened the net a little bit, for the rest of the state, other towns on the lake. I found this."

She clicked. The next instant a newspaper article blared from the screen, a report from a paper called The Bay Chronicle. The headline instantly snared his attention.

MANHUNT UNDERWAY FOR 'PICKAXE MURDERER'.

"Where's this from?" he asked, feeling his shoulders tense with unease.

"A place called... Thunder Bay." Gabi bit her lip. "It's across the other side of Lake Superior – north-west bank."

Lead settled in Luke's stomach. "In Ontario."

"That's where Oaklynn's from, right?"

"She never said exactly where she was from," he replied, shifting in his seat. "Ontario's a big place."

"If you say so." Clearly this coincidence was more than Gabi was willing to overlook but she didn't press the issue, instead scrolling down to read the rest of the article.

Discomfort crept across Luke's skin as he scanned the pages. The newspaper detailed a brutal series of murders sweeping the bayside town over the period of a month; six people killed, all apparently with their skulls staved in by a pickaxe. Being a respectable publication, however, it didn't show any graphic images of the deceased – he couldn't exactly blame them for that. In this town nobody seemed to be blaming a glowing-eyed forest spirit for the deaths, though. Witnesses reported something decidedly more human being spotted fleeing the scene of two of the murders.

"What do you think?" Gabi asked.

Kenny shrugged. "It's a hell of a coincidence, that all going down in your girlfriend's home town, Luke."

"She's not my girlfriend." He shot Kenny an impatient glance. "And we don't know if she's ever been to Thunder Bay in her life."

"If you say so." He took an innocent sip of his coffee and nodded to Gabi. "Anything more on this?"

She nodded. "There's a whole heap of articles on it. Doesn't look like they ever caught the guy though. Eventually it all just ... stopped."

"When?"

"About two years ago."

"There's more news than the newspapers," Kenny suggested. "Check out the crazies."

"Oh, do we have to?" Gabi rolled her eyes with a groan. "I'd like to keep my braincells intact."

"I'm telling you, you want to find something weird that a 'proper' paper isn't going to write, you need your independent sources – blogs, websites, magazines – all that stuff."

"Alright, alright, alright." Her fingers flashed over the keyboard. A new search flashed up and she scrolled down, past the verified ads and official mastheads and into the dregs of the internet. With growing exasperation, she began clicking through them and Luke squinted over her shoulder as he read. Some were the expected trash, some were worse. Some, at least, made him laugh.

But when she clicked on a blog entitled, THE REPORTERS GRIM, all his levity faded.

Most people would have dismissed the blog as a hoax, nothing more than a grossly sensationalist corner of the internet desperate for reads. A few weeks ago, Luke would have been one of them, sneering disdainfully at the stylised grim reaper motif in the top right corner of the page and the corny gothic design of the page. When he looked at the head image of the article, however, he knew this was a whole lot more than that.

"Holy shit," Kenny muttered, hanging his head in disbelief.

"Is that...?" Gabi let the question trail away, looking up at them.

Luke nodded. "Yeah."

Stretching across the top of the page in a statement of intent, the intrepid blogger had managed to get a grainy but unmistakable photograph of one of the murder victims. That alone wasn't what sent Luke's gut churning, however. Even with the dubious resolution he could see the perfectly circular wound on the dead man's head, in the same place as the girl they'd found in the woods.

"And this thing... this is legit?" He made a vague gesture to the screen. "I mean, it is just some guy's blog."

Kenny sighed. "Probably more legit than your morning broadsheet, man."

"You think so?"

"Look at it."

Luke blew out his cheeks in a sigh and turned back to the blog, trying not to look at the photograph to closely. Below the image the blog headline read, 'Thunder Bay's Murder Season'. The subtitle went deeper:

RANDOM VIOLENCE, OR CALCULATED SPREE? WHAT DOES CONNECT THESE VICTIMS? THE ANSWER MAY SHOCK YOU.

"Well, I'm ready to be shocked." Kenny clapped his hands together with mock enthusiasm. "We're already right down the rabbit hole. What's another step?"

"Can't argue with that." Gabi shrugged. And clicked the link to read more.

The blog spilled down the page, gnarled white text planted on a slate-grey background making it awkward to read. They persevered nonetheless, digging their way through the colourful metaphors and occasional tirade that skated off on a tangent. Wading through all that, however, they eventually stumbled across a sentence that set alarm bells ringing in his brain.

Yes reader, believe it or not all six victims, whether distant or not, were indeed family. This is a blood feud, with emphasis on the blood.

Family.

The word shook him, a word that had been on Oaklynn's lips, skirting around every awkward conversation and evasive answer. On legs that felt like jelly, Luke walked slowly back to his computer and sat down. As Gabi and Kenny continued scrolling through the article, he placed his fingers over the keyboard and took a breath. There was a permutation he had not tried.

He typed into his search bar: 'Oaklynn Cooper, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Murders'.

"I mean, this can't be for real," Gabi scoffed, slumping back in her seat with a dismissive gesture to the screen. "You're really buying this, Kenny? All this 'unnamed source' and 'confirmed DNA testing' stuff? Anyone could make this up."

Luke wasn't listening to the response, watching the search results come spilling down the screen. The first thing that snagged his attention was an article unrelated to the murders, but instead referring to a new nature reserve to the north of Thunder Bay. An outlier from the other results, it intrigued him, and he clicked through, Kenny and Gabi still arguing over the veracity of the blog in the periphery of his mind.

His eyes widened when the article named the man spearheading the new reserve was named Frederick Cooper. Now that was too much of a coincidence. He leaned forward, looking instinctively closer as he read further. The new reserve was proposed to encompass a swathe of land to the north-east of the city. That in itself wasn't overly remarkable, but Luke kept reading. The application had been going through right at the height of hysteria in the city, when the fourth victim of the so-called pickaxe murderer had been claimed.

It wasn't until he finished the article that the gut punch came. A photograph of Mr. Frederick Cooper and his family had been added to round the piece off, a gleaming colour landscape against a backdrop of stunning Canada greenery. There were five people in that picture, and to his shock, Luke recognised one of them tucked away at the back. The girl almost escaped the shot but not quite. The image was a little shadowy, but the camera shot was too well taken to leave any ambiguity.

In Thunder Bay, two years in the past but with the same brutal murders surrounding her, stood Oaklynn Cooper.