Chapter 5: The Blackwood Archives

Chapter 5: The Blackwood Archives

The drive back to Blackwood Creek was the longest two hours of Leo’s life. It wasn't a retreat; it was a surrender. But surrender didn't mean defeat. It meant accepting the new, terrifying rules of his existence. He was leashed to this thing, this decaying woman in blue. The concrete stare she had given him at the petrol station was a silent, unarguable declaration: Wherever you go, I am.

If he couldn't run, he had to fight. But how do you fight a ghost?

He pulled into his gravel driveway, the sound of the crunching stones no longer comforting, but grating. He walked into his house, not as a homeowner seeking refuge, but as an investigator entering a crime scene where he himself was the primary evidence. Buster stayed glued to his side, a warm, trembling presence that was the only real thing in Leo's world.

The fear was still a living entity inside him, a cold knot of dread that pulsed in time with his heart. But something else was stirring from its long slumber, pushing through the layers of burnout and cynicism. It was the old instinct. The relentless, obsessive need for the truth that had once defined him. It was a cold, clear rage.

He couldn't fight her physical form, but he could fight the anonymity she was trapped in. He could find out who she was. He could give the horror a name.

His laptop, once a tool for churning out soul-crushing technical prose, became his weapon. He sat at the kitchen table, the same spot where he’d tried to eat a normal meal a lifetime ago, and his fingers flew across the keyboard. The muscle memory was still there. He wasn't searching for solace anymore; he was hunting for facts.

“Blackwood Creek unidentified female body.” “Missing persons Blackwood County 1950s 1960s.” “Jane Doe catastrophic head trauma rural.”

He cross-referenced search terms, dug into digitized newspaper archives, and scoured cold case databases. For hours, he fell down one rabbit hole after another, the sun arcing across the sky outside his window unnoticed. The results were a barren wasteland. Blackwood Creek was a town that kept its secrets buried deep. There were no sensational Jane Doe cases, no unsolved murders of women that matched her description. It was as if she had never existed in any official capacity. Her memory, like her body, had been erased.

By late afternoon, his eyes burned from staring at the screen, and the initial surge of adrenaline had given way to a grinding frustration. Digital records would only get him so far. He needed paper. He needed dust. He needed the places where the town's forgotten history was left to rot.

The Blackwood Town Hall was a stern-looking brick building that seemed to disapprove of the modern world. The archives were, predictably, in the basement. The air that hit him as he descended the creaking wooden stairs was thick with the smell of mildew, decaying paper, and time itself.

The archivist was a man named Elias Thorne, a wisp of a man with a cloud of white hair and glasses so thick they magnified his pale, watery eyes. He looked up from a massive, leather-bound ledger as Leo approached, his expression a mixture of mild curiosity and deep-seated weariness. People didn't come down here unless they were tracing a deed or a bloodline.

“Can I help you?” Elias’s voice was dry as autumn leaves.

“I hope so,” Leo began, trying to sound casual, like a hobbyist historian. “I’m researching local history. Specifically, I’m looking for any records of a young woman who might have died tragically in the area. Sometime in the mid-20th century. Maybe an accident, or an unsolved crime.”

Elias blinked slowly. “That’s… rather broad. Do you have a name? A date?”

“No,” Leo admitted, the word tasting like failure. “I don't. All I have is a description. She would have worn a pale blue dress or… or a gown.”

The archivist’s watery eyes narrowed slightly. He adjusted his glasses, a flicker of something unreadable in his gaze. It wasn't recognition. It was caution. The practiced stonewalling of a small-town gatekeeper. “I can’t say that rings any bells. We have coroner’s reports, of course, but without a name or a year, you’d be searching for a needle in a haystack made of needles.”

Leo’s frustration simmered. He was being shut down. He changed tactics, falling back on an old journalistic trick. Don’t ask about the secret; ask about the things around the secret. “Okay. What about local landmarks? Places with a… a dark history. Any place that might have generated stories over the years.”

Elias Thorne pursed his thin lips, leaning back in his creaking chair. He seemed to be weighing Leo, judging his intent. Finally, he gave a slow, deliberate shrug. “Well, every town has its stories. Most folks talk about the old Hemlock Estate, up on the ridge. Lots of money, lots of tragedy. But the real bone-chiller, if you’re into that sort of thing… that would be the old Blackwood Asylum.”

Leo felt a cold prickle at the base of his neck. “Asylum?”

“Decommissioned in the seventies. Sat up on Miller’s Hill, overlooking the creek. State-of-the-art in its day, they said. A place for the troubled and the… inconvenient.” The archivist’s gaze drifted to the dusty shelves, as if seeing ghosts himself. “Place had a reputation, long before it closed. Stories the kids would tell to scare each other. You know how it is.”

“What kind of stories?” Leo pressed, keeping his voice even, betraying none of the frantic urgency clawing at his insides.

Elias let out a dry, rustling chuckle. “The usual nonsense. Lights in the windows. Screams on the wind. But there was one they always came back to. A patient from the old days, back in the fifties.” He lowered his voice, leaning forward conspiratorially, the practiced tone of a storyteller sharing a local legend.

“They called her ‘Bluebell’.”

The word hung in the dusty air between them. Leo’s heart hammered against his ribs.

“Never knew her real name, of course. That’s just what the kids called the ghost. Said she got the name because of the pale blue dressing gown she always wore. A real sad case, the story goes. A young woman from a wealthy family, driven mad by grief, or so they said. Died there. An accident. A terrible fall, they called it.”

Leo’s hands clenched into fists at his sides, his knuckles white. The caved-in skull. A catastrophic head wound. A fall.

“They said you could sometimes see her,” Elias continued, lost in the telling. “Walking the grounds at dawn, barefoot in the mist, searching for a way out. Just a story, of course. A bit of local color to spook the tourists.”

But Leo wasn't a tourist. And he knew, with a certainty that was as terrifying as it was absolute, that it was not just a story. The clicking jaw. The rotting smile. The concrete stare. He wasn't chasing a ghost story. The ghost story was chasing him.

“Bluebell,” Leo repeated, the name feeling alien and yet profoundly important on his tongue. “The Blackwood Asylum. Do you have records from there? Patient files?”

Elias Thorne’s folksy demeanor vanished, replaced by a sharp, official stiffness. “Patient files from a state-run medical facility? Those would be confidential. Sealed. If they even still exist.”

It was the answer Leo expected, another wall. But it didn't matter. He had it. The first solid piece of a puzzle assembled from nightmare and dread. He was no longer fumbling in the dark. He had a location. He had a time period. And he had a name—not a real one, but a whisper, a legend. A thread.

He thanked the archivist, his voice a low, steady rumble that belied the storm inside him. As he walked up the creaking stairs and back into the fading daylight, the terror was still with him, a cold passenger in his soul. But now, for the first time, it had a companion: purpose. He was going to find out what happened to Bluebell. He was going to find her real name. And he was going to find out who was responsible for the fall that had shattered her skull and chained her to him.