Chapter 3: The Figure in the Old Photograph
The message was still on the screen.
“I’m under the house.”
Nhut stared at the words.
One question kept repeating in his mind.
No way.
Phong couldn’t be here.
Phong had said he was going back to Saigon.
Phong had called him.
But the sender…
Was still using Phong’s phone number.
Nhut sat motionless on the bed.
The room was dark.
Only the pale blue glow from his phone lit his face.
He wanted to call back.
But his finger wouldn’t press the button.
Part of him said it was just a prank.
Maybe Phong was hiding somewhere.
Maybe the whole group was being played.
But another part…
Kept remembering the voice from that afternoon.
The sound of water.
The sound of wind.
And the noise of something falling into the creek.
“Nhut…”
A voice rang out.
He spun around.
It was Thao.
She stood in the doorway.
Her face was deathly pale.
“You heard it too, right?”
Nhut didn’t answer.
He only held up his phone.
Thao looked at the message.
She said nothing.
But her expression had changed.
Because she had just received a message too.
Not from Phong.
From an unknown number.
There was only a photo.
Thao opened it.
The photo showed the house they were staying in.
But it was impossible to tell when it had been taken.
Because the angle…
Was from beneath the floor, looking up.
As if whoever took it had been lying directly under the house.
In one corner of the photo was a handwritten message:
“Don’t let there be four of you.”
The two of them looked at each other.
Neither could say a word.
A little while later, Tuyet came running out.
“Did you guys hear something?”
Nhut asked, “What did you get?”
Tuyet fell silent.
She opened her phone.
There was no message.
No photo.
But there was a missed call.
From Phong.
Call time:
2:00 a.m.
All three looked at the clock.
2:17 a.m.
Only seventeen minutes had passed.
Nhut stood up.
“We can’t just sit here.”
“We have to find out what’s going on.”
Thao grabbed his hand.
“No.”
“I think… the old man was right.”
Nhut looked at her.
“What do you mean?”
Thao looked out the window.
“Maybe from the moment we got here…”
“We stepped into something that had nothing to do with us.”
The next morning.
The three of them decided to leave the house.
But when they reached the main road…
The rental car from the day before wouldn’t start.
Their phones had no signal.
The map app couldn’t determine their location.
Everything seemed to have been cut off from the outside world.
Even stranger.
When they went back to the house to get their things.
The front door…
Was open.
Even though all three of them clearly remembered locking it the night before.
In the living room.
The old photograph on the wall had changed.
It was no longer a picture of the creek from 2014.
It was a different photo.
A photo of this very house.
And on the front porch…
Four people were standing there.
Phong.
Nhut.
Thao.
Tuyet.
The three of them were stunned.
Because the photo looked as if it had just been taken.
But on the back…
There was a date and a caption:
“The Day We Return.”
Nhut took the photo off the wall.
There was an old scrap of paper behind it.
The writing had blurred.
But it was still legible.
“Not everyone who goes missing has left.”
“Some people are only waiting for someone else to remember.”
That afternoon.
The three of them returned to the old man’s house.
This time, he wasn’t surprised to see them.
As if he had known they would come back.
“Where’s Phong?”
The old man’s first question sent a chill down all three of their spines.
Nhut stepped forward.
“You know what happened, don’t you?”
The old man looked at them.
Then sighed.
“Twelve years ago…”
“Another group of young people came here.”
Thao asked, “What group?”
He looked down at the water.
“Not a group of people.”
“People who had come looking for the truth about the boat incident that year.”
He brought out an old wooden box from inside the house.
Inside were scraps of yellowed newspaper.
One article had been cut out.
The headline read:
“Disappearances on the Cùm River: Questions Left Unanswered.”
Nhut read every line.
A family of three.
A boat.
One person suspected.
But there was one detail that had never been made public.
At the bottom of the article, it said:
“Before disappearing, the father called a friend.”
“The call contained only one sentence…”
The old man covered the rest with his hand.
Thao asked, “What did he say?”
He looked straight at her.
“He said…”
“Don’t let there be four of you.”
No one said anything.
Because they realized.
That sentence…
Was exactly like the message they had received the night before.
On the way back.
Tuyet suddenly stopped.
“Guys…”
The other two turned toward her.
She was looking down at the ground.
A small object lay in the mud.
A bracelet.
Phong’s.
Nhut picked it up.
There was a line of writing engraved inside the bracelet.
“Last Trip - Cùm River.”
But what frightened all three of them…
Was that this bracelet wasn’t Phong’s.
It was an old bracelet.
One that had been buried in the mud for a very long time.
The second night.
The house was quieter than ever.
None of the three slept.
None of them dared turn off the lights.
At exactly 2:00 a.m.
The old radio switched on by itself.
This time, there was no static.
Instead, a recording began to play.
A voice rang out.
Phong’s voice.
“Nhut…”
“I’m sorry.”
“If you’re hearing this…”
“That means I remember now.”
All three stood frozen.
The recording continued.
“I never left this place.”
“I never called you from Saigon.”
“Because the person who called you…”
“Wasn’t me.”
Static crackled.
Then the final sentence came through.
Very softly.
But clearly enough for all three to hear.
“In this house…”
“It’s not just the four of us.”