The Girl in Yesterday’s Photograph – Chapter 9
Marcus Flint Knew the Killer
Adrian barely noticed the rain anymore.
By midnight the storm had become part of Bellmere itself — constant water running through gutters, thunder shaking windows, fog swallowing streetlights until the entire town felt submerged beneath darkness and static.
Inside the motel room, the cemetery photograph remained spread across the desk beside the old Minolta camera while Marcus Flint’s grainy newspaper images stared upward from the bed like fragments of a life someone tried desperately to erase.
Adrian Vale paced slowly through the room replaying the security footage again and again inside his head.
Evelyn wasn’t haunting the camera.
She was trying to communicate through it.
Trying to warn Marcus before he disappeared.
And now warning Adrian.
That changed everything.
Because ghosts repeated.
Warnings required awareness.
Evelyn knew something.
Or had known something before she died.
The problem was the final figure in the cemetery footage.
Tall.
Male.
Watching Marcus from behind.
Adrian couldn’t see the face clearly through the distortion, but instinctively he knew one thing already:
Marcus Flint recognized him.
That was why the photographer vanished three days later.
He got too close.
A sudden knock at the motel door shattered the silence.
Three slow knocks.
Adrian froze instantly.
Another knock followed.
Not aggressive.
Patient.
The clock beside the bed read 12:43 AM.
Nobody should’ve been outside in this storm.
Slowly, Adrian approached the door without making noise. Rain and thunder muffled most outside sound, but he could still hear faint breathing from the other side.
Then a woman’s voice quietly spoke through the wood.
“You shouldn’t stay here tonight.”
The same voice from the telephone.
Adrian’s pulse quickened.
“Who are you?”
Silence.
Then:
“He knows you have the camera now.”
Cold dread spread immediately through his chest.
Adrian unlocked the chain carefully and pulled the door open.
The walkway outside stood empty beneath the rain.
No woman.
No footsteps.
Nothing except water pouring from the motel roof into flooded pavement below.
Then Adrian noticed the envelope lying near the doorway.
Brown paper.
Soaked by rain.
His name written across the front.
He stared at it for several seconds before finally picking it up and stepping back inside the room.
The envelope contained only one item.
A photograph.
Older than the others.
Edges yellowed with age.
Adrian’s stomach tightened the moment he saw Marcus Flint standing inside Bellmere Police Station holding the Minolta camera beside a bulletin board covered with missing teenagers from 1998.
But that wasn’t what mattered.
Someone else stood visible in the background.
Bellmere Sheriff Daniel Mercer.
Current age according to the article: late sixties.
But in the photograph he appeared much younger.
And staring directly toward Marcus with unmistakable hostility.
Adrian slowly turned the image over.
Handwriting covered the back completely this time.
MARCUS FOUND THE SIXTH PHOTOGRAPH
THE SHERIFF TOOK IT BEFORE EVELYN DIED
HE SAW HER IN THE BACKGROUND
THAT’S WHEN THEY SILENCED HIM
Adrian felt his heartbeat becoming painfully loud.
They.
Not one killer.
Multiple people.
The room suddenly seemed smaller.
Because if this message was true, then Bellmere’s sheriff —
the man currently running the town —
had direct connection to Evelyn Cross, Marcus Flint, and the disappearances.
Then Adrian noticed the final sentence written smaller beneath the others.
Almost like whoever wrote it added the words afterward in panic.
CHECK ROOM 14 BEFORE HE REMEMBERS YOU’RE HERE
Thunder exploded overhead hard enough to shake the motel windows.
Adrian looked automatically toward the row of rooms outside through the rain-covered glass.
Room 14 sat at the far end of the motel walkway.
Dark.
Door slightly open.
And for one brief second beneath the flickering blue motel sign—
Adrian saw Evelyn standing inside the doorway staring directly at him.