CHAPTER 8 — THE PHOTOGRAPH
Mara waited until George returned from visiting Arthur Bell before continuing her own search of the house.
She could tell from his expression that the old man's answers had left him more disturbed than satisfied, but when she asked what Arthur had said, George only told her that they needed to be careful about who they trusted.
Mara didn't press him. Instead, she returned to the upstairs hallway and began examining the walls more closely.
The missing photographs had bothered her since the first day they arrived.
The rectangular marks where frames had once hung were too numerous to be accidental, and the fact that almost every personal photograph had disappeared suggested that someone had deliberately erased the family's presence from the house.
She ran her fingers along the wallpaper near the narrow locked door and noticed a slight unevenness in one section of the wall.
It was barely visible, but when she pressed against it, the panel moved.
Behind it was darkness.
Mara fetched a small flashlight and carefully pulled the loose wooden panel away from the wall.
A narrow cavity had been built between the wall studs, and inside it sat a layer of dust-covered debris.
She reached in slowly, expecting to find nothing more than old insulation or scraps of wood.
Instead, her fingers touched paper. She pulled out a small bundle wrapped in faded cloth.
Her heart began beating faster. She placed it on the floor and carefully unfolded the cloth.
Inside was an old photograph. Unlike the photographs they had found elsewhere in the house, this one had not been removed or destroyed.
Someone had hidden it. Mara held it beneath the light and immediately recognized the house in the background.
It was Blackwood House, but the photograph had been taken many years earlier.
Six people stood together on the front lawn, facing the camera.
They were dressed in ordinary clothes, and at first glance the scene looked almost peaceful.
But something about their expressions made Mara uncomfortable.
None of them were smiling. They stood close together, almost as though they had been instructed not to move.
Mara studied each face carefully. The photograph appeared to have been taken sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
The people were young enough to make the date difficult to determine, but the house itself looked almost exactly as it did now.
She recognized none of them immediately.
Then she noticed something disturbing. One of the faces had been deliberately scratched away.
Whoever had done it had used something sharp, dragging it repeatedly across the photograph until the person's features had almost completely disappeared.
The damage was too precise to be accidental.
Mara tilted the photograph beneath the light.
The other five faces remained untouched.
Only one person had been erased. She turned the photograph over, expecting perhaps a date or a name, but instead found a sentence written across the back in faded black ink: “We all agreed never to speak about what happened.”
Beneath the sentence were six signatures.
Mara read the first signature. It was difficult to make out.
The second was almost completely faded. The third appeared to belong to someone named Thomas.
The fourth was written in a hurried hand.
The fifth was only partially visible. Then she reached the final signature.
She stopped. The handwriting was unmistakable.
She had seen it less than an hour earlier on a piece of paper in Arthur Bell's house.
Arthur Bell. Mara stared at the name for several seconds.
Her first reaction was disbelief. Arthur had acted frightened when George mentioned Daniel Kant.
He had refused to explain what had happened at Blackwood House.
He had warned George to stop asking questions.
But this photograph suggested that Arthur's connection to the house went back much further than either of them had realized.
He hadn't merely heard stories about Blackwood Road. He had been there.
Mara sat down on the floor and looked at the photograph again.
Six people. One erased face. Six signatures.
A promise never to speak. She wondered who the missing person was and what had happened that night.
More importantly, she wondered why the photograph had been hidden inside the wall rather than destroyed.
Someone had gone to the trouble of concealing it, which meant someone had wanted it to survive.
Perhaps they had known that one day another person would find it.
Perhaps the photograph was evidence. She examined the erased face again.
Beneath the scratches, she could just make out the shape of an eye and part of a jawline.
The person had been standing slightly apart from the others, one hand resting against the railing of the house.
Mara suddenly remembered the newspaper photograph of Daniel and Helen Kant.
The position was different, but the porch railing looked strangely familiar.
She pushed the thought away before it could fully form.
George returned just before sunset. He found Mara sitting in the study with the photograph lying on the desk beside the calendar and brass key.
“What's that?” he asked. Mara looked up.
“I found it behind the wall.” George picked it up carefully.
His expression changed as he examined the group.
“Who are these people?” Mara shook her head.
“I don't know.” He turned the photograph over and read the sentence.
We all agreed never to speak about what happened.
Beneath it were the six signatures. George's eyes moved slowly from one to the next.
Then he saw the final name. “Arthur Bell.”
Mara nodded. “I recognized his handwriting.”
George lowered the photograph. For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
“Arthur told me he barely wanted to talk about this house,” George said.
“He didn't mention that he'd been standing outside it with five other people.”
Mara pointed toward the scratched face. “And he definitely didn't mention this.”
They began studying the photograph together.
George compared the house in the background with the current structure.
The porch railing, windows, and front steps were almost identical.
“This was taken here,” he said. Mara nodded.
“Definitely.” George looked at the erased face.
“Whoever that was, they were important.”
Mara traced the scratches with her finger without touching the damaged surface.
“Or dangerous.” George looked at her. “Why would someone erase only one person?”
Mara thought about Arthur's reaction earlier that day.
“Maybe because everyone else wanted to forget them.”
George turned the photograph over again.
“Six signatures.” He counted them. “Six people agreed never to talk.”
Mara looked toward the window. Outside, the last light was disappearing behind the trees.
“Then something happened that all six of them were afraid of.”
George nodded slowly. “And one of them is still alive.”
Mara looked at him. “Arthur.” George said nothing.
The room seemed suddenly colder. The photograph had transformed Arthur from a frightened old neighbor into a witness.
He had known something about Blackwood House decades before Daniel Kant disappeared.
Maybe he knew why the photographs had been removed.
Maybe he knew about the repaired basement floor.
Maybe he knew who had signed Daniel's name in 2001.
George picked up the photograph again and studied the scratched face.
“We need to find out who this person was.”
Mara nodded. “And we need to ask Arthur.”
George looked toward the hallway. “He won't tell us.”
Mara's eyes remained fixed on the six signatures.
“Then we find out why he won't.” She carefully placed the photograph back on the desk.
Neither of them noticed the faint mark beneath the photograph where the dust had been disturbed. It formed the shape of a small number.
17.
Mara saw it first. She looked at George. And suddenly, the date on the calendar no longer seemed like a coincidence.