The Night the River Keeper Counted the Stones

It was late October, just before the clocks fell back, when I found myself on the shoulder of a county highway in eastern Oregon, a few miles south of a town called Fossil. My car had overheated on the long stretch between Bend and nowhere, and the only light for miles came from a small clapboard house with a porch lamp burning amber. The man who answered the door introduced himself as the river keeper. He said he watched over the John Day River, that he had done it for forty-seven years, and that he kept a ledger of every stone that tumbled downstream. I thought he meant it as a metaphor. He invited me inside, and I saw the books. Stacked on shelves, floor to ceiling, each page covered in handwriting so small and precise it looked like a map of capillaries. He showed me the names. Names of people I knew. Names I had almost forgotten. Names I had never heard but recognized anyway. The river keeper told me that when a stone stops moving, the person whose name it carries dies in the night. He was not finished. He had a new entry to make, and the date was already written. It was that night's date. And the name he wrote was mine. #LighthouseLogs #FexingoHorror #HorrorPodcast #RiverKeeper #JohnDayRiver #FossilOregon #TheLedger #October #CountyHighway #EasternOregon #Supernatural #SmallTownHorror #FolkloreHorror #AtmosphericHorror #SlowBurn #SoloNarration #Luna #Anthology Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo