He reached his workshop, a corrugated metal shed on the edge of town where he felt safest among his tools. He set the canisters on his workbench under the harsh hum of the fluorescent lights, his heart still racing. He had an old darkroom kit in the back, a relic from his hobbyist days.
As he began the delicate process of developing the first roll, the smell of chemicals filled the small, cramped space. It was a slow, agonizing wait as the images began to ghost onto the wet paper in the tray. Shapes emerged—blurry at first, then sharpening into the nightmare he had feared. The images showed the three girls, not in distress, but laughing inside the very car he had just pulled from the creek. They were passing around a bottle of soda, their faces lit by the glow of the dashboard. But in the backseat, barely visible in the shadows, sat a fourth person.
It wasn’t a stranger or the Mayor; it was Elias’s own older brother, Silas, who had died in a “tragic accident” two years later. Silas had told everyone he was working that night at the local mill, miles away from the fair. The betrayal felt like a physical blow to Elias’s chest.
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