Chapter 2: The Photograph in the Attic
By noon, Daniel had moved the broken reindeer into the garage.
The damage was worse than he’d first thought.
The plastic frame had cracked in two places, one leg had separated from the base, and the electrical wiring had been pulled loose.
Emily arrived before lunch.
She took one look at the reindeer and stopped in the garage doorway.
“Dad…”
Daniel nodded.
“Karen.”
Emily didn’t ask which Karen.
There was only one.
The woman had been involved in neighborhood disputes for years. She complained about basketball hoops, trash cans, barking dogs, driveway repairs, and once even a child’s chalk drawings on a sidewalk.
But vandalizing someone’s property was different.
Daniel told Emily what had happened.
He also repeated Karen’s final words.
Emily became quiet.
“Everyone else already did?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Did she explain what she meant?”
“No.”
Emily looked toward the house.
“Maybe we should find out.”
Daniel wasn’t sure he wanted to.
He had lived in the house for twenty-two years. He knew its rooms, its floorboards, its quirks. He knew which window rattled during winter storms and which kitchen cabinet refused to stay closed.
It had been his and Margaret’s home.
After she died, the house had become quieter, but it had never stopped being home.
The idea that someone was trying to frighten him out of it felt deeply personal.
That afternoon, Emily helped Daniel inspect the decorations.
The wooden Santa had survived.
The reindeer had not.
While moving a box of old decorations in the garage, Emily noticed something tucked behind a stack of Christmas lights.
A photograph.
She pulled it free.
It showed the neighborhood twenty years earlier.
The houses looked familiar, but the people standing in front of them were not.
Daniel took the photograph.
Then he saw the address written on the back.
His address.
Underneath it was a handwritten date from 2005.
“What is this?” Emily asked.
Daniel couldn’t remember ever seeing it.
They went inside.
The attic was the last place Daniel wanted to search. Margaret had stored years of photographs, receipts, letters, and old home documents there.
They climbed the narrow stairs.
Dust floated through the beam of Daniel’s flashlight.
After nearly an hour, they found a box labeled simply:
HOUSE — ORIGINAL
Inside were renovation receipts, old property documents, photographs, and correspondence.
Then Emily found a folder with several names written across the front.
Daniel recognized every one.
They were names of former neighbors.
People who had lived on the same street.
People who had moved away over the years.
Emily spread the documents across the floor.
One letter was from a former homeowner named Thomas Bell.
Another came from a woman named Ruth Harris.
Both letters contained the same basic complaint.
They had received pressure to sell their homes.
Not from the city.
Not from a bank.
From a private development company.
Daniel frowned.
“Why would I have these?”
Emily looked at the date.
“Dad, these are from before we bought the house.”
Daniel remembered the seller.
An elderly man named Harold Pierce.
Harold had seemed nervous during the sale.
At the time, Daniel had assumed he was simply emotional about leaving.
Now Daniel wasn’t so sure.
At the bottom of the folder was a faded map.
Several houses on the street were marked with red circles.
Daniel’s house was one of them.
Emily stared at it.
“Dad…”
A floorboard creaked behind them.
They both turned.
Nothing.
Just the old house settling.
But neither of them returned to the documents immediately.
Because suddenly, Karen’s strange threat didn’t seem so strange.
Someone had wanted this neighborhood emptied before.
And apparently, someone still did.
