The Girl in Yesterday’s Photograph – Chapter 5
Bellmere Doesn’t Talk About 1998
Adrian barely slept.
The storm continued through most of the night while police lights flashed endlessly across the motel curtains outside his room. Every time exhaustion started pulling him under, he saw the dead girl’s face again beneath the rain staring directly toward him from the parking lot pavement.
By morning, Bellmere looked washed out and colorless beneath thick fog drifting through the streets.
The body was gone.
So were the police.
It almost felt like the entire night had quietly erased itself from town memory before sunrise.
Adrian Vale sat inside the small motel diner stirring cold coffee while trying to process the impossible chain of events surrounding the camera. The fresh photographs remained hidden inside his coat pocket, though he could still feel their weight against him like living things.
The waitress avoided eye contact while refilling his cup.
Everyone in Bellmere seemed nervous today.
Not grieving.
Uneasy.
As if the storm had awakened something the town spent years trying not to discuss.
Adrian finally asked carefully, “The girl who died last night… did anyone identify her?”
The waitress stopped moving for half a second.
Then quietly answered:
“No.”
Too quickly.
Like the response had already been prepared.
Adrian leaned back slightly. “People outside seemed like they recognized her.”
The waitress immediately looked toward the diner entrance to make sure nobody else was listening.
Then she lowered her voice.
“You should leave Bellmere.”
Same warning.
Different person.
Adrian’s chest tightened slightly.
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
The waitress hesitated for several long seconds before finally whispering:
“Because strange things happen when people start asking about 1998.”
The number settled heavily into Adrian’s thoughts.
“That footage on the motel television…” he said slowly. “Was it from then?”
The waitress physically paled.
For a moment Adrian genuinely thought she might walk away without answering.
Instead she whispered:
“Don’t say that too loudly.”
Then she hurried toward the kitchen before he could ask anything else.
Adrian sat silently with the cold coffee in front of him while fog pressed heavily against the diner windows outside.
Twenty-three years earlier.
Same motel.
Same girl.
And apparently Bellmere had buried whatever happened afterward deeply enough that even mentioning the year frightened people.
That alone told Adrian this was no ghost story.
It was a cover-up.
And cover-ups were something he understood very well.
An hour later, Adrian found himself standing outside Bellmere Public Library beneath overcast skies while rainwater still dripped from rooftops around town. The building looked ancient compared to the surrounding streets — narrow stone architecture, tall windows darkened by age, and ivy spreading heavily across the walls like veins.
Inside, the library smelled like dust and wet paper.
A single librarian sat behind the front desk reading quietly beneath dim yellow lights.
She looked up the moment Adrian entered.
And for one brief second—
fear crossed her face.
Not curiosity.
Recognition.
“You’re staying at the Red Pine Motel,” she said softly.
Adrian stopped walking.
“How do you know that?”
The woman hesitated before answering. “Everyone heard about the girl this morning.”
Adrian studied her carefully. Mid-thirties. Tired eyes. Calm voice hiding visible anxiety beneath it.
“I’m looking for newspaper archives,” he said. “1998 specifically.”
The librarian immediately closed her book.
“You won’t find much.”
“Why?”
Another long pause.
Then she quietly answered:
“Because most of it disappeared.”
That sentence instantly sharpened Adrian’s attention.
“Disappeared how?”
The librarian stood slowly from the desk. “Bellmere had several disappearances during the late nineties.” She kept her voice low. “Teenagers mostly.” Her eyes briefly flicked toward the library windows. “The town buried it after the sixth victim.”
Victim.
Not runaway.
Not accident.
Victim.
Adrian’s pulse quickened.
“And the girl from last night?”
The librarian looked directly into his eyes now.
“That girl died in 1998.”
Silence swallowed the library.
Adrian felt cold disbelief creeping through him again. “That’s impossible.”
“She was seventeen.” The librarian swallowed slightly. “Her name was Evelyn Cross.”
The name settled into the silence heavily.
Evelyn Cross.
Finally real.
Finally human.
The dead girl in the photograph wasn’t anonymous anymore.
But the truly horrifying part came next.
Because the librarian slowly added:
“And somebody already photographed her death once before.”