The Girl in Yesterday’s Photograph – Chapter 7
The Sixth Victim Never Had a Funeral
The archive room sat beneath the library in a narrow underground level that smelled strongly of mildew, wet cardboard, and old paper slowly rotting with age. Dim fluorescent lights buzzed weakly overhead while rainwater tapped somewhere inside the building walls beyond the shelves.
The librarian led Adrian through rows of forgotten newspaper boxes and sealed storage cabinets without speaking much. Her nervousness had become obvious now. She kept glancing toward the staircase behind them like she expected someone else to enter at any moment.
Or something.
Adrian Vale followed quietly while holding the Minolta camera inside his coat pocket. Ever since learning Marcus Flint once owned it, Adrian couldn’t stop imagining the missing photographer standing exactly where he now stood twenty-three years earlier asking the same questions.
And then vanishing.
The librarian finally stopped beside a rusted filing cabinet near the back wall.
“This is everything that survived.”
She pulled open one drawer carefully.
Inside sat dozens of yellowed newspaper clippings tied together with string.
Missing teenagers.
Bellmere disappearances.
Storm season murders.
Adrian immediately crouched beside the cabinet and began sorting through the files while the fluorescent lights flickered softly overhead.
The first victim disappeared in March 1998.
Seventeen-year-old Lucas Harrow.
Last seen walking home after school during heavy rain.
No body found.
The second victim vanished three weeks later.
Then the third.
Then the fourth.
All teenagers.
All disappeared during storms.
And every article mentioned the same strange detail buried somewhere near the end:
Witnesses reported seeing someone taking photographs near the disappearances shortly before each victim vanished.
Adrian’s pulse slowly quickened as he continued reading.
The town blamed a drifter at first. Then a serial killer. Then eventually nothing at all after panic spread through Bellmere badly enough to damage tourism and property prices.
The disappearances simply stopped being discussed publicly.
Until Evelyn Cross.
The final victim.
Adrian found her file near the bottom of the stack.
Unlike the others, Evelyn’s body had actually been recovered.
Near the Red Pine Motel.
During a thunderstorm.
Exactly where Adrian saw her die the previous night.
Except according to the article—
she died in 1998.
Adrian stared at the black-and-white newspaper image showing police officers surrounding the same motel sign from the night before.
The same parking lot.
The same rain.
The same body position.
Cold dread spread through him slowly.
He hadn’t witnessed something new last night.
He had witnessed something repeating.
Then he noticed another detail.
The newspaper clipping included a smaller photograph near the corner of the page showing a young man being questioned by police beside the motel.
Camera hanging from his shoulder.
Marcus Flint.
Adrian leaned closer toward the article.
The headline beneath the image read:
LOCAL PHOTOGRAPHER CLAIMS CAMERA CAPTURED VICTIM BEFORE DEATH
His chest tightened instantly.
Marcus saw the same thing Adrian saw.
The camera photographed Evelyn before she died.
The realization settled heavily into the room around him.
The librarian quietly spoke behind him.
“Marcus Flint tried warning people.”
Adrian looked toward her.
“He became obsessed after Evelyn disappeared,” she continued softly. “He claimed the camera kept producing photographs connected to the victims.” She hesitated briefly. “Nobody believed him.”
“What did police think?”
“They thought he was involved.”
Adrian’s stomach tightened.
Of course they did.
Missing teenagers.
Crime scene photographs.
Paranoid accusations.
Marcus probably looked guilty as hell.
“And then he vanished,” Adrian whispered.
The librarian nodded once.
“Three days after Evelyn’s funeral.”
Adrian frowned immediately.
“Funeral?”
Something changed in the librarian’s expression.
Unease.
“No,” she corrected herself quietly. “Not funeral.”
She slowly pulled another newspaper clipping from deeper inside the cabinet and handed it to him.
Adrian read the headline.
Then felt coldness spread down his spine.
BODY OF EVELYN CROSS STOLEN BEFORE BURIAL
Silence swallowed the archive room.
The article explained that sometime during the night before Evelyn’s closed-casket burial, someone broke into Bellmere Funeral Home and stole the body.
No suspects were identified.
The case was buried alongside the disappearances shortly afterward.
Adrian looked up slowly from the article.
“The body was never recovered?”
The librarian shook her head.
Then quietly whispered:
“That’s why seeing her last night terrifies everyone.”