Chapter 1: The Gate in the Photo

"I'm about to tell you something, but you have to swear you won't tell a soul!"

Travis’s words hung in the air, sharp and urgent. Before I could answer, I noticed the way his hands gripped the edge of the chipped Formica table, knuckles white like he was hanging on for dear life. There was a desperate, raw edge in his voice that sent a chill down my spine—a tone I hadn’t heard since the night Lila disappeared.

"Honestly, even if you did, nobody would buy it."

I tried to play it cool, but my heart was pounding. We were just two old friends in a greasy-spoon diner, but man, the air was tense—thick enough to cut with a knife. I glanced around, half-expecting someone to be eavesdropping, but the only witness was the waitress stacking ketchup bottles at the counter, oblivious to our crisis.

Travis Morgan drained the last of his Bud Light. Hesitation flickered in his eyes. Then he let out a dry, self-deprecating laugh.

He stared at the empty bottle for a second, then set it down with a soft clink, almost like he was afraid of making too much noise. The overhead lights caught the lines on his face, making him look older than his thirty-six years.

"I know where Lila is!"

The words slammed down between us like a thunderclap. For a second, I forgot how to breathe. My heart stuttered, like it was trying to catch up to what I'd just heard. The diner faded away, and all I could see was Travis's haunted expression.

Travis's daughter was missing.

The memory of that night came rushing back—humid air thick with the smell of cut grass, Travis pounding on my door so hard I thought the hinges would give. His voice cracked, wild and ragged, as he shouted for me to open up. I stumbled out of bed, still in my boxers, and yanked the door open, only to find him sweating and shaking on the other side. The scent of sweat and panic hit me before his words did.

On a muggy summer night a few years back, Travis banged on my apartment door like a madman, demanding if I'd seen his little girl.

"Let me in, let me look around! She said she was coming over to your place after school. Did you see her?"

His hands were ice-cold, clutching mine like I was the last solid thing left in the world. His eyes darted around my living room, searching for any sign of Lila. I remember feeling useless, trying to reassure him, but the panic in his voice was contagious.

Outside my door, Travis clung to my hand desperately, wild-eyed and frantic.

Back then, there weren’t cameras on every corner. The cops checked a couple of street cams, missing kid flyers papered the whole town, but it was like Lila Morgan had vanished off the face of the earth—no trace, nothing.

Every telephone pole in Maple Heights was covered with her picture. The local news ran her story for weeks, but after a while, even they moved on. The town felt smaller, quieter, like everyone was holding their breath, waiting for a miracle that never came.

After that, Travis spiraled.

He stopped shaving, stopped going to work. I watched him drift through those days like a ghost, hollowed out by grief. When the usual leads dried up, all sorts of so-called "psychics" and "mediums" started showing up at Travis's place, but none of them were legit. He blew through his savings and still didn’t turn up a single clue about his daughter.

The living room in his apartment turned into a shrine—candles, incense, stacks of flyers, and piles of mail from strangers claiming they could help. It got so bad his landlord threatened to evict him more than once.

So when he told me he had news about Lila, my heart jumped. I could barely breathe.

I felt hope and dread twist together in my gut. I wanted to believe him, needed to believe him, even if every instinct screamed that it was impossible.

"Tell me now! Where is she? I’ll go with you!"

I didn’t mean to sound so desperate. I leaned across the table, my knuckles white. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so desperate for answers.

"We can’t go!" Travis’s face went pale. "Ben, you’re my only friend—Lila’s godfather. I’m only asking you for one thing! This is all so damn weird, but even if there’s just a sliver of hope, I have to try. If I don’t come back, there’s something for you in the second drawer of my bedroom."

He looked away, swallowing hard. I could see his hands trembling. The words hung in the air, heavy and final, like the last line in a will. My stomach dropped.

We sat in the darkest booth at the back of the diner. The summer night pressed against the windows, the glass almost black—so dark I could barely see his face. My eyes strained, trying to catch every twitch of his expression.

The air conditioner rattled above us, but it couldn’t cut through the heaviness in the booth. I stared at Travis, willing him to just spit it out. The silence was thick enough to choke on.

"Quit screwing around. Where’s Lila, Travis?" I was panicking—why was he being cryptic now?

My voice was sharper than I intended. I could feel my patience slipping, fear bubbling up. Travis just stared at the tabletop, tracing circles with his finger, lost in some memory I couldn’t reach.

Travis looked at me for a long time, his eyes hollow, fixed on something I couldn’t see.

He seemed to be somewhere else entirely, his mind running through a reel of images only he could see. The silence stretched, broken only by the clink of dishes from the kitchen.

"The photo!" Travis said, like he’d checked out of his own body. "Lila’s in the photo!"

His voice was so soft I almost missed it. I almost missed it. He fumbled with his wallet, pulling out a worn scrap of paper, hands shaking so bad he nearly dropped it.

"What photo?" I pressed. If I could just figure out where the picture was taken, maybe there was still hope!

I leaned in, my heart hammering. I was half out of my seat, ready to grab the photo from him if he hesitated.

"Ben…" Travis choked back tears, his hands shaking as he pulled out a folded clipping from the bottom of his wallet.

He handed it over like it was the most precious thing in the world. I could see the sweat on his brow, the way he held his breath as I unfolded the yellowed paper.

I took out my phone and used the flashlight to see better.

The light from my phone cut through the gloom, throwing harsh shadows across the table. I tried to steady my hands, but they were shaking too.

The paper was yellowed and brittle—it felt ancient, like it might crumble if I breathed too hard.

It felt like it might crumble in my fingers. The edges were frayed, and there were a couple of coffee stains that looked almost as old as the clipping itself.

The headline read: "Mirage Appears Over Maple Heights—Locals Stunned by Mysterious Structure!"

I read the headline twice, not sure I believed what I was seeing. My brain couldn’t quite process it—this sounded like something out of a tabloid, not the Maple Heights Gazette. But the date was there, clear as day. My stomach flipped.

But calling it a mysterious structure was putting it lightly. Its shape was downright bizarre:

It looked like something out of a fever dream—massive, imposing, and completely out of place against the backdrop of our sleepy Ohio town. I squinted, trying to make sense of it. It didn’t belong.

It was a massive bronze gate, hanging in midair, totally out of place in the small Ohio town. The thing was enormous, like it had just dropped out of the sky. It reminded me of those old fantasy movies we watched as kids—something you’d expect to see in Narnia, not on Maple Street.

Even weirder, by checking the trees and buildings nearby, the "gate" in the photo had to be nearly 130 feet tall. I’d studied architecture at Kent State—the biggest gate in the world is the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, and that’s 630 feet, but the proportions here just didn’t match anything real.

I did the math in my head, comparing the gate to the trees and houses in the background. There was no way this thing existed—not here, not anywhere. My brain struggled to fit it into the world I knew.

Right there on the grass in front of the "gate," the blurry silhouette of a little girl faced the camera.

My breath caught. She was tiny. Alone. Standing in the shadow of that impossible structure. Even though the photo was blurry, something about her posture, the set of her shoulders—it was all heartbreakingly familiar.

"Ben, look at this kid—her size, her clothes—doesn’t she look just like Lila?" Travis’s voice was rough and hoarse.

He jabbed his finger at the photo, his hand trembling so hard he nearly tore the paper. I could hear the hope and fear warring in his voice.

Clearly, the photographer’s focus was the gate, not the people. The zoom made everyone else tiny and out of focus—you could only vaguely tell it was a girl. But the more I looked, the more I saw little details—a flash of white at her collar, the way her hair caught the light. It was like staring at a memory, just out of reach.

"Look at her dress!" Travis jabbed at the photo. "Isn’t that the one Lila wore last summer?"

I squinted, trying to remember. Lila had a favorite sundress, blue with little daisies. The shape in the photo looked right—the hem, the straps. My mouth went dry. My head spun.

"And her hair! I braided Lila’s hair myself—I’d never mistake it!" Travis said, getting worked up.

His voice cracked, and I saw tears glinting in his eyes. He was falling apart. He was gripping the edge of the table so hard his knuckles were white. I put a hand on his arm, trying to calm him down.

"Calm down!" I tried to calm him down. "A mirage’s just a trick of light—it can’t show something that doesn’t exist! Even if this gate looks weird, it’s probably some camera glitch. We just need to scan the photo and search online—someone’ll know where it was taken."

I tried to sound logical, but my voice wavered. The truth was, I didn’t believe my own words. There was something about the photo that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

"You think I haven’t tried that?" Travis shook his head in frustration. He let out a short, tired sigh. "I’ve done everything."

He slumped back in the booth, rubbing his eyes. I could see the exhaustion written all over him. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

Looking at that faded color photo, a chill crept up my spine.

It was the kind of cold that started in your bones and worked its way out. I shivered, suddenly aware of how quiet the diner had become.

Travis looked at me, haunted. He spoke slowly, steadily:

"That newspaper’s from 1988."

His words hung in the air, impossible and undeniable. I stared at the date on the clipping, trying to make sense of it. My mind whirled, grasping for an explanation that didn’t exist.

Lila Morgan was eleven when she vanished in 2007—in 1988, she wasn’t even born. She didn’t exist.

I felt like the floor dropped out from under me. My thoughts raced, tumbling over each other. There was no way to explain it—no way to reason with what I was seeing.

Travis’s words hit me like a sledgehammer. His daughter, missing all these years, showing up in a newspaper photo from over twenty years ago. If I hadn’t seen the photo myself, I’d have thought he’d lost his mind.

I looked at Travis, searching his face for any sign he was joking, but all I saw was desperation. He looked like a man on the edge, clinging to the last thread of hope.

"Didn’t expect you to believe me," Travis said, seeing the doubt on my face. He gave a bitter smile. "Ben, sometimes I think I’m losing it too. I don’t care if that’s Lila or not—I have to go after her!"

His voice was raw, stripped bare. He wasn’t asking for my belief, just my help. I felt something inside me twist—guilt, maybe, or fear that he was right.

"How? With this old photo that might not even be real?" I snapped. Travis is my best friend—I want to find Lila too!

But I couldn’t help it. I didn’t mean to sound harsh, but the whole thing felt like it was spiraling out of control. I wanted to help, but I needed something real—something I could hold on to.

But how do you start a search with just a faded news clipping? Where do you even begin?

I turned the clipping over in my hands, looking for a clue—a photographer’s name, a location, anything. My mind raced through possibilities, but nothing made sense.

"If you’re going, I’m coming with you!" I said, dead serious.

I leaned in, ready to follow him into the dark if that’s what it took. I wasn’t about to let him do this alone.

"I’ve got my own lead. Just remember what I said—just help me this once." Travis stood, clapped my shoulder, and gave me a look that said not to argue.

He squeezed my shoulder, the way he used to when we were kids and he wanted me to trust him. I nodded, even though I wanted to grab his arm and make him stay.

I slumped in my seat. The diner buzzed with late-night chatter, but my mind was blank as I watched Travis walk out, wanting to call after him, but I stayed silent.

I watched him go, the door swinging shut behind him. The noise of the diner came rushing back, but everything felt muffled and far away, like I was underwater, everything distant and slow.

A few days later, Travis disappeared too.

It was like he’d been swallowed up by the same darkness that took Lila. His phone went straight to voicemail, and nobody had seen him since that night.

Back then, we made a deal—he’d text me every so often, just so I’d know he was alive.

He promised he’d check in, even if it was just a quick "Still alive." It was the kind of pact you make when you’re both scared but don’t want to admit it.

Three days ago, the messages stopped.

I stared at my phone, refreshing our chat every hour. Each time, the silence got heavier, pressing down on my chest.

My first thought was to call the cops—have them run a check, maybe ping his phone. But how do you explain to the police that your buddy vanished chasing a twenty-year-old ghost story?

I paced my living room, rehearsing what I’d say. Nothing sounded right. Every version sounded crazier than the last. I could already imagine the look on the officer’s face.

Would anyone believe that?

Probably not. But I had to do something. Anything was better than sitting on my hands, waiting for a miracle.

After a lot of pacing, I finally filed a missing person report. Desperate times, right?

I drove down to the station, filled out the paperwork, and tried not to sound like a lunatic. My hands shook as I signed my name.

The officer who took my statement looked about forty. I left out the real story, just said I couldn’t get in touch with Travis.

He gave me a tired look, like he’d heard it all before. He went through the motions, jotting down notes, but I could tell he didn’t think much would come of it.

He took down the basics, then told me to go home and wait for news.

He handed me a business card and told me to keep my phone on. I nodded, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink.