Page 26 of The House on Forgotten Hill

I laid the three articles side by side across my bed.

Three women.

Three disappearances in the same area.

All within the span of a couple of years.

Was it a coincidence?

Or something more?

Beneath the articles was a small spiral notebook, its cover yellowed with age. The moment I opened it, I recognized the handwriting.

It was my father’s.

A sudden thud echoed in my chest.

The first several pages were filled with the names of the three women in the articles, along with dates, locations, times, and a few notes.

The further I read, the more frantic the notes became.

Entire pages covered with questions.

Arrows connecting names.

Street names circled several times.

Ideas crossed out.

And the handwriting itself changed. It had been neater at the beginning, but was more hurried toward the end, as though he was desperate.

I turned another page and gasped, the book slipping through my fingers and slamming onto the floor. Hands shaking, I reached down and picked it up, my eyes locked on a name.

Preston Sinclair.

There were three question marks after his name and several circles around it.

No explanation.

No conclusion.

Just a name.

Why was his name been in my father’s notebook?

Flipping through the rest of the pages, they were all blank.

Had my father seen something, or figured something out, and confronted Preston? Was that the reason my mother said my father had been murdered?

I set the notebook down and reached back inside the box, my hand closing around a small metal canister. I lifted it into the light, exposing a roll of film. I turned it over in my hand, staring at it.

When my father was alive, photography was one of his favorite hobbies. One of his cameras had a powerful lens that allowed him to take pictures from hundreds of feet away.

If he’d hidden the other items in the box, there was only one reason he would have placed the roll of film with them. Whatever my father had seen, or spent his final weeks trying to understand, he may have photographed.

I tightened my grip on the canister, my thoughts fixed on the tiny strip of film hidden inside and the possibility that it might reveal whether my father’s death had been more than a tragic accident.

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