Chapter Fifty-Seven
Amber
Iremember the research project from my senior year of high school.
Three other students and I created a ten-minute skit summarizing the Manhattan Project, which eventually led to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
I’ve always liked the library because every newsworthy story, no matter how relevant, locally or nationally, was kept on microfiche and archived in a special section of the fortress of a building I now enter.
I make my way toward the far back corner, where the old technologies, such as physical newspapers, are kept.
I’m required to show my photo ID and pay a nominal fee of ten dollars, which allows me to view any articles I desire, with the option to print up to one hundred pages before I have to pay an additional fee.
The microfiche is stored electronically, which is nice because it allows me to search for the pages I need, and with the press of a button, a robotic arm delivers the film-stored pages like a CD in a jukebox.
The whole process takes me ten minutes. I find every article from every local paper ten years ago.
The downside to sifting through printed pages is that I can’t perform any sort of word search or shortcut.
I literally have to read page after page until I hopefully find what I’m looking for.
It takes me nearly six hours and three lattes, but later rather than sooner, I eventually land on the one I need.
A man fitting Declan’s description down to his slightly crooked front tooth did go missing. Just as the pages on the internet suggested, the authorities have no idea what happened. There was an accident, but not the one involving a train. This accident occurred days later in the middle of nowhere.
I note the source and move on to the next paper published on the same date.
It too tells the story of a man gone missing following an accident.
So does the next paper, and the next, and the next.
There’s mention of a previous accident as well as Declan’s almost comical near-death experience, in which he wasn’t even involved.
Then I read something unusual. The local authorities reference another missing person, Daphne Brooks, who disappeared almost ten years prior. She, too, was never found.
Strangely, what stands out the most about all the stories, each reported by the same source, is the mention of the other person found at the scene of the accident. A retired psychiatrist. Emmanuel Campos. My hand lets go of my fourth latte, sending burning hot liquid down my chest and into my lap.
I must speak to that doctor.