The darkroom smelled of chemicals and secrets.
I'd converted the garden shed three years ago, when Daniel's therapy practice was thriving and I needed space to breathe. Red light bathed everything in the color of warning as I clipped the contact sheets to the line, watching images materialize like confessions in the developer.
Twenty-four frames of Daniel sleepwalking. Twenty-four pieces of evidence I couldn't unsee.
The photographs were sharp, clinical. Daniel at the back gate. Daniel on the forest path. Daniel standing at Dogleg Curve, arms loose at his sides, face tilted toward the moon like a flower seeking light.
I'd taken these three nights ago, but staring at them now, my memory felt fractured. Had I really followed him?
The images suggested yes, but my recollection was hazy, dreamlike. As if I'd been sleepwalking too.
Frame sixteen made my breath catch.
Daniel stood at the cliff's edge, exactly where Clara Nguyen had been found. But there was something wrong with the exposure—a ghostly double image, as if I'd photographed the same spot twice on the same frame.
I squinted at the contact sheet through my loupe. The second image was fainter, layered beneath the first like a memory trying to surface.
Same location. Same angle. But this time, Daniel wasn't alone.
A figure stood beside him. Smaller, slighter. Female.
My hands shook as I prepared the enlarger. I'd shot hundreds of double exposures over the years—accidental overlaps when I forgot to advance the film.
But this felt different. Deliberate. As if my camera had captured something my conscious mind had refused to see.
The enlarger hummed to life. I focused the lens, adjusted the exposure time, and slipped a sheet of paper into the easel.
Eight seconds of light. Eight seconds to reveal what I'd documented without knowing.
The paper went into the developer, and I watched the image emerge like a photograph surfacing from deep water.
Daniel. Clear and sharp in the moonlight.
And beside him, translucent as smoke, Clara Nguyen.
I gripped the edge of the counter, legs suddenly unsteady. Clara's face was turned toward Daniel, mouth open as if speaking.
Her hair whipped around her shoulders in wind that hadn't touched Daniel at all.
Impossible. Clara had been dead for three weeks when I took this photograph.
I held the print up to the red light, searching for technical explanations. Light leak. Chemical contamination. A flaw in the film stock.
But the image was clean, perfectly exposed except for the ghostly second figure.
My phone buzzed on the workbench. Daniel.
𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵. 𝘋𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘪𝘵 𝘶𝘱. 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶.
I stared at the text, then at the photograph. Love you. Such simple words.
But which Daniel had written them? The gentle man who brought me coffee in bed every morning, or the sleepwalker who visited graves in the dark?
I needed to see the other frames. All of them.
The next enlargement showed Daniel on the forest path, but the double exposure revealed him in the same location wearing different clothes. Day clothes. A blue shirt I recognized from two months ago.
Two months ago. When the first body was found.
Frame after frame, the pattern repeated. Daniel in the present, ghostly Daniel in the past.
As if my camera had been documenting his midnight visits for longer than I'd realized.
But I'd only started following him three nights ago. Hadn't I?
I closed my eyes, trying to reconstruct the timeline. When had I first noticed his restless sleep?
When had I started finding my camera moved from where I'd left it, the film advanced by frames I couldn't remember taking?
My memory felt like Swiss cheese—full of holes I couldn't explain.
The final enlargement made me step back from the easel. Daniel stood at the cliff's edge, hands extended as if reaching for something.
And in the double exposure, barely visible, another figure was falling.
Mark Tilden. The second victim.
I'd photographed Daniel pushing Mark off the cliff. I'd photographed murder and forgotten I'd done it.
Or had I?
The photograph trembled in my hands. I needed to think, needed to understand what I was seeing.
But the harder I tried to remember, the more my thoughts scattered like leaves in wind.
I grabbed my contact sheets from the past six months, spreading them across the workbench. Frame by frame, I searched for anomalies, for the ghostly double exposures that might reveal how long this had been going on.
There. A shot from August. Daniel in our kitchen, making coffee.
But the double exposure showed him in the same kitchen, holding something that gleamed like steel.
Another from July. Daniel reading in bed.
The ghost image revealed him standing over someone who lay still as death.
My phone buzzed again. This time, an unknown number.
𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘴.
I dropped the phone, heart hammering. The text disappeared even as I watched, as if it had never existed.
Another buzz. Same number.
𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳.
Delete. Gone.
𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘰.
I grabbed the phone, fingers flying over the keyboard. 𝘞𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴?
The response came immediately: 𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯. 𝘊𝘩𝘦𝘤𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘢 𝘣𝘢𝘨.
My camera bag sat on the floor where I'd left it, worn leather soft from years of use. I'd packed it after following Daniel, but I couldn't remember what I'd done with the roll of film.
The bag was empty except for my usual equipment. But tucked into the inner pocket, I found something I'd never seen before: a small brass key on a black ribbon.
The key was old, tarnished with age. The kind that might open an antique lock.
Like the lock on Daniel's hidden drawer.
But I'd picked that lock with a paperclip. I'd never needed a key.
My phone buzzed one final time.
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴.
I looked at the photographs scattered across my workbench—evidence of crimes I'd documented but couldn't remember witnessing.
Evidence of a husband who might be a killer and a wife who might be his unwitting accomplice.
Or his willing one.
The brass key was warm in my palm, as if it had been waiting for me to find it. As if it wanted to be used.
I thought about Daniel's text. 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵. The house would be empty. The drawer would be unguarded.
And maybe, finally, I'd find answers to questions I was afraid to ask.
---
The house felt different when I returned from the darkroom. Not empty—inhabited by shadows that moved just beyond my peripheral vision.
The journal's presence pulsed from the kitchen drawer like a heartbeat, steady and insistent.
I'd hidden the photographs in my camera bag, but I could feel them there, waiting. Evidence of something I couldn't name, couldn't remember, couldn't explain.
The brass key hung around my neck, hidden beneath my shirt. It felt heavier than it should, as if it carried the weight of secrets I wasn't ready to bear.
I poured wine with shaking hands, trying to steady my nerves. The kitchen was exactly as I'd left it, but everything felt shifted, rearranged by invisible hands.
The shadows fell wrong. The silence was too complete.
𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴.
What did that mean? Who else was forgetting? And why?
I thought about Daniel's reaction to Clara Nguyen's name, the way his face had gone blank and lost. The medication prescribed by a doctor he claimed not to remember.
The sleepwalking that carried him to places where people died.
What if his amnesia wasn't accidental? What if someone was making him forget?
What if someone was making me forget too?
The wine burned my throat, but it couldn't burn away the growing certainty that I was missing something crucial. Something that connected Daniel's blackouts to my own gaps in memory, his midnight wanderings to my unconscious photography.
I pulled out my phone, scrolling through recent calls and texts. Nothing from the unknown number that had contacted me in the darkroom.
But there were gaps—conversations I couldn't remember having, photos I couldn't remember taking.
Seven missed calls from a number I didn't recognize, all from last week. No voicemails. No memory of the phone ringing.
I called the number back.
"You've reached Ava. I can't come to the phone right now, but—"
I hung up before the message finished. Ava. The name tugged at something deep in my memory, but I couldn't place it.
The brass key seemed to pulse against my chest, reminding me of its presence. Of its purpose.
I finished the wine and climbed the stairs to Daniel's office. The locked drawer waited, innocent and ordinary in the lamplight.
But I could feel its contents calling to me, secrets begging to be revealed.
The key fit perfectly.
Inside, beneath the bloodstained journal, I found a manila envelope marked with my name in Daniel's careful handwriting. But the ink was different—older, faded.
As if he'd written it years ago.
My hands trembled as I opened it.
Photographs. Dozens of them. All of me.
Me sleeping. Me in the shower. Me walking through town, unaware of being watched.
The images spanned years, going back to before Daniel and I had even met.
At the bottom of the envelope, a note in Daniel's handwriting:
𝘐'𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘊𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘬. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘦, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶. 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘶𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵.
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦, 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘢. 𝘐𝘵'𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴.
𝘞𝘦 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳.
I sank into Daniel's chair, photographs spilling across his desk like accusations. The images blurred as my vision tunneled, the room spinning around me.
Haven Creek. The psychiatric hospital where I'd been treated as a teenager. Where I'd tried to kill myself and failed and forgotten most of what happened after.
Where Daniel had been my therapist.
Where someone had made us both forget.
Outside, gravel crunched in the driveway. Car doors slammed.
Voices carried through the night air—one I recognized as Daniel's, one I didn't.
I shoved the photographs back into the envelope, the journal back into the drawer. But I kept the key, tucking it under my shirt where its weight reminded me that some secrets were too dangerous to leave buried.
Footsteps on the front porch. The jingle of keys.
I ran to the window and peered through the curtains. Daniel stood on the front step, but he wasn't alone.
A woman waited beside him—tall, sharp-featured, wearing clothes that suggested authority.
Police. It had to be police.
Daniel looked up at the window where I stood, and for a moment, our eyes met across the dark yard. His expression was unreadable, but there was something in his posture that suggested resignation.
As if he'd been expecting this.
As if he'd been waiting for it.
The front door opened, and I heard Daniel's voice carry up the stairs, artificially calm: "Mara? We have a visitor."
I closed my eyes, feeling the photographs burn against my skin where I'd hidden them. The journal pulsed in its drawer.
The brass key weighed heavy as guilt around my neck.
And downstairs, someone who might have answers was waiting to ask questions I wasn't ready to answer.
Questions about Daniel. About the murders. About the photographs I'd taken and forgotten.
About what we'd both lost at Haven Creek, and what we'd gained.
And what we'd done together in the dark spaces between memory and forgetting.
---
𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘰𝘳, 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘱 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘐 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘵 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘴.
𝘈𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘴, 𝘐 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘋𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘭'𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘰𝘳𝘸𝘢𝘺, 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘭𝘪𝘵 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘩 𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵. 𝘏𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘴𝘶𝘢𝘭, 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥. 𝘈𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘥.
𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘮, 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳, 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘢 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨.
"𝘔𝘳𝘴. 𝘒𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘳," 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥, 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥. "𝘐'𝘮 𝘋𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘩. 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬."