The Hunter

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Content Warning: This series includes violence, ritual harm, bullying, and psychological trauma involving teens. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

Read carefully. In Antigua Falls, even stories have teeth.

In this episode: The hunt for answers leads deeper into the dark heart of Antigua Falls. As Ned Carter combs through evidence and Dr. Larson pulls the last records of a missing girl, an old crime presses at the edges of the investigation.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Interlude

DATE: November 14th, 2025
TO: Dr. Tyron Larson, DDS
BrightSmiles Family Dentistry
Antigua Falls, OK

Dear Dr. Larson,

OSBI is currently conducting an active investigation into the disappearance of Lyla Hill (DOB: 03/12/2011). In order to assist with identification efforts, we are requesting complete dental records, including but not limited to:

• Patient charts

• Bitewing and panoramic radiographs

• Notations of fillings, sealants, crowns, or orthodontic work

• Any models, impressions, or photographs on file

Both of Lyla’s legal guardians, Chet Hill (father) and Tracy Martin (stepmother), have provided written consent for the release of these records. Copies of their signed authorization forms are attached.

Please release the requested records to:

Detective Ned Carter
Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation
(405) 555-0133
ncarter@osbi.gov

He will arrive in person with proper identification to retrieve the materials.

Thank you for your cooperation in this urgent matter.

Sincerely,
Detective Thomas Wallace
Homicide Division
Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation
Badge #214

“Dr. Larson? He’s here.”

The overhead lights were off, the room dark except for a dim desk lamp and the glow of his monitor. A large manilla envelope was on his desk. He tapped it, and Marie walked over.

“Make sure you get his ID. Her parents consented.”

He double-clicked an image on the screen, zooming into an X-ray of an open mouth. The teeth were pocked with bright white dental fillings. Marie stopped in the doorway.

“Have you ever done this before?” she asked.

“It’s a small town. Bad things don’t usually happen around here,” he said, and forced a smile.

She looked relieved, clutched the files to her chest, and walked out the door. He waited for the clack of her heels to fade. The last time he had to pull records for a cop, they had been paper. His receptionist had to dig through drawers of files to find the right films.

1983? No, it was 1984, like the book.

How could he have forgotten the year that put Antigua Falls on the map? The year that turned the town upside down.

It was one of those odd one-offs of the job, something they didn’t talk much about in dental school. Fill cavities, pull teeth, identify corpses.

At least you made it all this way old man. These poor girls—

A headache grew at the edges of his eyes, and he took off his glasses and shut them against the glowing monitor light.

Just because she’s dead doesn’t mean it’s the same.

Nothing could come close to the darkness they had uncovered in 1984.

People die. People kill. Do your job and let it go.

The room blinked black for a moment. He could see it flash behind his closed lids. He opened his eyes and looked around, pulse racing. There on the monitor were Lyla Hill’s last X-rays.

It was a panoramic view. The shot was meant to display all of her teeth in two neat rows. Only this one was wrong. Strange, sticky black was splattered on one of the images, like someone had taken a paintbrush and flicked it against the monitor. Her jaws were wide open, a black hole where the ridges of her neck vertebrae should have been.

She’s screaming.

“What is this,” he said out loud, and scooted his chair back away from his desk.

A metal leg caught in the carpet, and for a moment, he was balancing in midair, arms flapping in an attempt to right himself. His own mouth opened, and he imagined that he was Alice through the looking glass, falling, and falling. His head hit the ground hard.

“Dr. Larson?” Marie called from the front office. “Everything okay?”

He rubbed his throbbing head, and looked back up at the screen. The jaw was closed, top teeth clenched against the bottom. Everything was as it should be. He could feel a goose egg rising.

“Yes, I’m alright. Just fell is all.”

He stood up, placed the chair upright with shaking hands. He was glad to be retiring. This time next year, he would be island hopping with Sheila on a cruise ship. Palm trees and white sand beaches. Pina coladas and naps in the afternoon. That made him feel better.

He walked to his desk, dragged his fingertips across the monitor, and examined them. They came back clean.

You’re imagining things.

Dr. Larson leaned over, and cleared Lyla Hill’s imaging from the screen. His mind, only moments ago filled with terror, gradually replaced those images with postcards of paradise. He and Sheila would have a wonderful time.

He uncapped his red sharpie, and crossed another X off of his countdown calendar.

“Marie, I think I’ll head home. I have a hell of a headache.”

***

When Ned woke up that morning, he couldn’t get the memory of his last hunt out of his head. Senior year of high school, and his father had decided the family cabin was the place for a last hurrah. It was something they both enjoyed, but had never been good at.

Coffee in the deer stand. Hours of sitting, whispering in the morning dark. But that day felt different.

“We’re going to snag a buck this year. I can feel it,” his dad had said.

Ned could feel something too, deep in the pit of his stomach. He was excited by the thought of actually getting a deer. The whole drive on the dark winding road into the forest, he let that feeling grow stronger, let it grow vines and wrap around his innards.

When he closed his eyes, he could see the animal in his mind. Twelve points. Months of meat.

It was mid-morning when he saw his vision manifest in the forest. He heard it first, careful footsteps in the fallen, autumn leaves.

“Steady,” his dad whispered breathless, and Ned had raised his rifle to shoot it.

Most people say that’s the hard part. You have to calm your nerves before you pull the trigger. But Ned wasn’t nervous. He knew before they arrived that the buck was his. It was like destiny.

The excitement came after, when they field dressed it. They had dragged it to a small hill before cutting.

“That way the blood and fluids will drain out.”

His dad’s words all those years ago pinged around his skull. Ned sat up in bed.

No blood on the ground. No blood in her body. No blood.

He felt something in his stomach. Not excitement. No, not exactly. It was the old feeling from that day with the deer. It meant he was on a path, one that he couldn’t leave even if he tried. The vines of fate grew in his stomach, and squeezed tight.

Whoever killed her must be a hunter.

Ned looked at his phone. 4:53 a.m. He wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. He threw back the covers, showered and dressed.

He needed to see the photographs.

***

Ned’s cup of coffee sat cold on his desk. The sun had just risen outside, and golden light shone through the plastic blinds of the office, casting lines of shadow across the lineup of crime scene photos.

The hand with its fingers, inky black. Forensics had swabbed them, and dropped the sample into an evidence bag. Her sternum cut, the ribs cracked to expose the chest cavity. Her organs, missing.

Probably in a gut pile in the woods.

Thirteen teeth wedged into the spot where her heart should be.

He stared at the images for a moment, then wrote what came to him on a yellow legal pad. Writing long-hand always helped him think.

F-I-E-L-D D-R-E-S-S-E-D.

No footprints. No fingerprints. Dog hair.

Organized killers were known for their meticulous planning and execution. They often left not one crime scene, but three. The place where a victim was approached, the location of the murder, and then the stage: the place where a killer got to send a message to police, or indulge in a kink.

H-U-N-T-E-R?

The body had been mutilated. It looked as if the limbs had been ripped, rather than cut, from the torso, like some wild animal had gotten to it. That was possible of course. The body had been in the woods for days. It wasn’t something he would recognize. The body farms he had studied at weren’t in the habit of allowing scavengers to eat, though he thought he should write to them and make the case that it would be good for scientific exploration.

D-O-G?

He wrote, then chewed on the pen, and added a word before it.

H-U-N-T-I-N-G DOG?

He shuffled the photographs and looked at her legs. They had been an afterthought. Torn, but otherwise undamaged. One of her feet looked dirty. Dried blood was smeared across the edge of her heel. She had walked through the woods before being killed. That meant the location of the killing was somewhere in the wild.

H-U-N-T-I-N-G C-A-B-I-N?

Ned tapped his pen against the desk, and felt the inspiration dry up. He wished to god he would have landed a job in a big city. Big Tom was a great detective, one of the best around here. But he was on probation, and that meant Ned’s experience would be limited. For the near term, it was Podunk, Oklahoma as far as the eye could see.

That’s why you have to do well on this. This is a big case. It could be your breakout moment.

Or it could break him. Big Tom was still drinking. Ned could smell it on him the first day in Thirteen Pines. Working with a renown but disgraced homicide detective wasn’t how he had planned his career progression.

But if you solve this?

Ned closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. He needed to solve it. He saw her face then. Round, with big dark eyes and darker hair. She didn’t smile, but her mouth was open just enough for him to see the edges of her teeth. He put his pen to the paper and wrote her name blind.

L-Y-L-A

“Have you slept?”

Ned jumped. Tom stood in the doorway, watching him. Ned straightened up, and rolled his shoulders back.

“Not much. How long have you been here?”

“Not long,” Tom said, and walked over to him.

He looked over Ned’s shoulder at the photographs, and sighed.

“At least we found her,” said Tom.

“Yeah, pieces of her,” Ned replied.

“Any update on her clothing?”

Ned turned in his swivel chair.

“No. Not a shred. Initially we thought hypothermia. Paradoxical undressing. Figured she must have dropped her clothes in the woods. But the search turned up nothing aside from the shoe.”

Tom leaned against the wall and scratched his chin.

“What about the teeth?”

“Animals, most of them. A canine, a deer, something small, like a rabbit. Two came back human.”

“She’s missing two. Autopsy will tell us if they’re hers,” Tom said.

Ned nodded, and looked back at the photographs.

“It’s a strange thing to do. Pose her body like that. Given the lack of DNA evidence, I would say the killer is organized. But this kind of overwhelming violence—” Ned trailed off.

“Killers aren’t like the textbooks. There can be overlap. Sometimes nothing they do makes sense,” said Tom.

"I know. But there’s no blood.”

“Insanguination,” said Tom.

“Exactly. I got to thinking Big Tom—remembered a hunting trip I went on. What if the the killer field dressed her?”

“Like a deer?” Tom asked.

Big Tom’s eyes were closed. He was rubbing at his temples.

“You okay?” Ned asked.

His face looked red and puffy, and a slick line of sweat was percolating at his hairline.

“Yeah, just a headache is all. Hunting you say?”

“Yes, hunting. When you field dress an animal, you always drain the blood and fluids before you take out the guts.”

“But what would the point of it be?” Tom asked.

“It’s not like the textbooks,” Ned said to him, smiling a little. “But it would explain why she was out in the woods. Her foot makes me think she was walking for quite a while out there.”

Tom looked at the legal pad.

“It’s not a bad guess. Hunters know public lands better than anyone.”

Ned fought the urge to smile bigger.

“So what do we do with that theory?”

“It’s not a theory exactly. More of a hunch, but one of the most important parts of the job is trusting your instincts, Ned. Let’s follow it. See if there are any hunting cabins or deer stands in the area. A trail cam might show something.”

“Or someone,” said Ned.

Tom nodded. “Did the lab come back on that black substance?”

“They couldn’t identify it.”

Tom stared at the photograph of Lyla’s hand. “Parents?”

“Sheriff said they’ve been calling. They want confirmation.”

“After the autopsy,” Tom said.

Marcy appeared in the hallway beyond the open door. Her glasses hung on her nose the way they did when she was reading something.

“Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a woman here who wants to speak with you.”

“A woman?” asked Tom.

She stared at a piece of paper, then answered.

“Her name is Miss Robinson. She said it’s about Lyla Hill.”

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