"No Man’s Land," by Jocelyn Detar: November 2024 1st Place

On a misty evening, a stranger arrived in our quiet town. He appeared out of nowhere, as though the fog itself had formed him. Tall and draped in a long coat, he walked with a peculiar gait that made you think he’d traveled distances beyond measure. People noticed him immediately, mostly because of his eyes—dark, searching, as if reading the very air around him.

The stranger went by the name Corin. He never said a word about where he came from, but he knew the town as if he’d lived here his whole life. Corin knew the narrow alleys winding behind the old bookstore, he knew which stones creaked underfoot on the church steps, and he knew precisely how to call our cats and dogs, who followed him everywhere he went.

The rumors spread quickly. Some said he was an inspector sent to survey our land for

mysterious government work. Others thought he was a ghost or an omen, a spirit returning to settle unfinished business. But what made people more uneasy than anything was the way he would stand in the town square at dusk, hands in his pockets, eyes locked on the setting sun.

It was young Theo who finally asked him, “Why are you here?”

Corin looked down at the boy and smiled—a strange, knowing smile. “I’m looking for something,” he replied, his voice like gravel.

“What?”

“A memory. Something I left behind a long time ago.”

That night, a tremor shook the town. People rushed outside, only to see Corin standing by the old sycamore tree, his hand resting on its bark. Then, as silently as he had come, he vanished.

In the morning, they found a brass locket embedded in the roots of the tree, bearing a faded photograph of our town from over a hundred years ago, with a young man who looked remarkably like Corin in the background. We never saw him again, but on misty nights, some say you can still see him near the sycamore, searching for what he left behind.