Chapter 4 - The Attic Discovery
The dripping white stuffed bunny lay on the kitchen counter, resting on a folded paper towel while a small puddle of dirty rainwater pooled around its base. Lily sat at the kitchen table, her big blue eyes fixed on the soggy intruder while she clutched her own dry bunny tightly to her chest.
"It's cold," Lily whispered quietly, her voice cutting through the heavy silence in the kitchen. "She left it out in the rain because she didn't want it anymore."
"Don't touch it, sweetheart," Sarah instructed gently, crouching down beside her daughter to check her temperature. Her hands were ice cold. "We're going to go upstairs in a minute and get you some dry clothes, okay?"
"We need to look at the old photo albums," David said abruptly, walking back into the kitchen from the hallway. He had traded his green sweater for a dark zip-up hoodie, his face pale under the harsh LED flashlight glow.
Sarah looked up, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. "Photo albums? David, what are you talking about? Why would we look at photo albums right now?"
"Because that house across the water wasn't always abandoned," David said, his voice dropping into a urgent register. "My father told me stories about it when I was a kid. Before the valley was flooded for the reservoir project, families lived over there. Real families. And I distinctly remember him saying something about the original owners... a family with a little girl."
"That was thirty years ago, David. People move away."
"Not all of them," David insisted, heading toward the staircase at the end of the hall. "The county records are up in the attic in that old metal trunk. If there's a connection between that girl and our family—or if someone is playing a sick, elaborate joke on us—the papers will tell us."
Sarah hesitated, casting a nervous glance toward the dark front hallway before nodding. "Okay. But we're not leaving Lily down here alone. She comes with us."
They ascended the narrow wooden stairs to the attic, the beam cutting through dancing motes of dust and cobwebs. The attic smelled of old paper, cedar, and damp insulation. David walked over to the heavy metal trunk tucked beneath the eaves, throwing the rusted latches open with a sharp metallic clatter. He began tossing old tax forms, school yearbooks, and loose photographs aside until his hand struck a heavy leather-bound ledger.
He pulled it out, shining the flashlight directly onto the yellowed paper inside. As he flipped the first page, a loose newspaper clipping fluttered out and landed face up on the dusty floorboards.
Sarah knelt down to pick it up, holding the flashlight steady. The headline from a local paper dated October 1994 stared back at them in stark black ink: TRAGEDY AT THE LAKEVIEW ESTATE: MISSING CHILD PRESUMED DROWNED. Beneath the headline was a black-and-white photograph of a six-year-old girl with straight light brown hair, wearing a teal knitted sweater, clutching a white stuffed bunny.
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David dropped his flashlight, the beam rolling across the floor as he stared at the clipping in absolute horror.
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