Chapter 3: The Willow Creek Gazette

Chapter 3: The Willow Creek Gazette

Logic was a sinking ship, and Leo was going down with it. He hadn't slept. He hadn’t dared to drink. The thirst was a constant, grinding agony in the back of his throat, a desert inside him that mocked his fear. His house had become a minefield of reflective surfaces, each one a potential window for her sorrowful, empty eyes to peer through. He’d thrown a blanket over the television and taped a towel over his bathroom mirror.

He couldn't stay here. Isolation was a pressure cooker, and his sanity was starting to fracture. He needed facts. He needed an anchor in reality, something tangible to fight the rising tide of the impossible. If the woman from the pool was real, she had to have come from somewhere. She had to have a history.

The Oakridge Town Library was his last resort. It was a squat, brick building that smelled of old paper and floor wax, a bastion of quiet order that felt a world away from the drowning chaos of his life. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up, hiding his haggard face, and pushed through the heavy wooden doors. The chill that had become his second skin seemed to deepen in the library’s air-conditioned silence.

A young woman sat at the main circulation desk, a pencil tucked into a messy bun of dark, curly hair. She looked up as he approached, her gaze sharp and intelligent behind silver-rimmed glasses.

“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice warm and clear.

Leo’s own voice came out as a dry rasp. “I need to look at old town records. Newspapers, maybe. From a long time ago.”

A flicker of genuine interest lit up her eyes. “That’s my favorite section. What are you researching?”

“The community pool,” he managed, the words tasting like ash. “The land it was built on. I need to know what was there before.”

The woman, whose name tag read ‘Elara Vance’, tilted her head. “That’s specific. The pool was built in the late fifties. Most of the paper archives from that era are on microfiche. A bit archaic, but it gets the job done.” She stood, her vintage-style cardigan catching on the corner of the desk. “Follow me. I practically live in the archives.”

She led him to a small, windowless room in the back, dominated by a clunky, beige machine that looked like a prop from a spy movie. The air was thick with the scent of dust and decaying paper.

“This is our reader,” she explained, flipping a switch. A sickly yellow light illuminated the screen. “The cabinets are organized by publication and year. We’ve got the Oakridge Town Crier and the Willow Creek Gazette. The Gazette had better local coverage before it folded. I’d start there.”

For a moment, Leo just stared at her, a knot of desperation tightening in his chest. “What if I’m looking for… something bad? An accident. A death. Someone who went missing.”

Elara’s warm smile didn't falter, but her eyes held a new seriousness. “Then you’re in the right place. History is filled with sad stories. You just have to know how to listen for them.” She gave him a brief tutorial on the machine's clumsy controls then left him with a quiet, “Let me know if you find anything interesting.”

Leo’s hands trembled as he threaded the first roll of film—The Willow Creek Gazette, 1955. He started scrolling, the wheel clunky and loud in the silence. Headlines, advertisements for products that no longer existed, and grainy photos of smiling strangers flew past the screen. The thirst was a physical presence beside him, whispering that this was useless, that he was just a crazy kid chasing shadows.

He searched for keywords in his mind: drowning, accident, body, missing. He scanned articles about zoning permits for the new community pool project, local politics, a prize-winning pumpkin. Nothing. He moved on to 1956, then 1957. The process was mind-numbing, his eyes burning from the screen's harsh glare.

Every time the screen went dark as he changed a roll of film, his own reflection would surface for a split second, and he’d flinch, half-expecting her pale face to be superimposed over his. The fear was making him sloppy, his focus fraying.

Just as he was about to give up, convinced this was a dead end, a small headline from the summer of 1958 caught his eye. It was buried in the back pages, a minor story overshadowed by a county fair announcement.

LOCAL GIRL MISSING, FEARS GROW

His breath hitched. He frantically adjusted the focus knob, the blurry text sharpening into focus.

OAKRIDGE – Authorities are continuing their search for 19-year-old Seraphina Raine, who was reported missing three days ago. Miss Raine was last seen by her family on Tuesday evening. Her father told this paper she was a quiet, gentle girl who enjoyed walking near the banks of Willow Creek. A search party found a single woman's shoe near the water’s edge, but no further trace of Miss Raine has been discovered. Police are asking for anyone with information to come forward.

Seraphina Raine. The name felt like a tolling bell in the silent room. Willow Creek. The very spot where they’d built the pool a year later. They’d filled in the creek bed, flattened the land, and poured concrete over it.

His heart pounded a heavy, panicked rhythm. He kept reading, scrolling forward through the weeks. There were a few more brief mentions. The search was scaled back. She was presumed to have run away or fallen into the fast-moving current and been washed downstream. And then, nothing. Her story just… ended. She was forgotten, a footnote in a dusty old paper.

But there was one last article. A follow-up piece from a month after her disappearance, a human-interest story lamenting the town's lost daughter. And with it, there was a photograph.

It was grainy, faded, and poorly reproduced, but it was enough. It was a high school portrait of a young woman with a soft, hopeful smile. Her hair was dark, styled in the fashion of the era. But her eyes… Leo’s blood turned to ice water.

He was staring into the same eyes.

Behind the youthful hope in the photograph, beneath the grainy texture of the old newsprint, was the same profound, hollow sorrow. The same bottomless pits of darkness he had seen in the deep end of the pool. It was her. Before the rage, before the water, before she was twisted into a thing of vengeance. This was Seraphina.

A choked sound escaped his lips. He slammed his hand back from the focus knob as if burned. The room suddenly felt claustrophobic, the air thick and heavy, carrying that faint, phantom scent of rot and pond water.

This wasn't a random haunting. This wasn't a concussion-fueled nightmare.

This was a story. A story that had been buried, paved over, and ignored for over sixty years. And for some reason, it had chosen him to hear it. The woman in the water had a name, and he was standing on her grave.