They Found a Photo of My Childhood on a Stone in the Forest, but When I Saw the Date, Lily’s Smile Disappeared

At the moment when I pressed my hand against the image of my childhood face on the stone slab, my eight-year-old son became so frightened that he dropped the basket onto the ground.

“Dad, is that you?” Ryan asked, opening his eyes wide.

I could not answer. The wet earth of the forest was soaking my knees, and moss clung to my fingers. A small ceramic photograph was set into the surface of the stone—a child’s face, round eyes, bowl-cut hair, and a faded yellow shirt.

That child was me.

Below it was written only one date: January 29, 1984.

My birthday.

“Travis, take your hand away,” Lily grabbed me by the arm. Her voice was quiet, but she could not hide her fear. “We have to leave right now.”

Our Doberman, Brandy, stood beside the stone and growled in a low voice. At his paws lay a small doll, sewn from coarse fabric, with two black beads instead of eyes. Three more such dolls swayed from a tree branch hanging in the wind.

An hour earlier I had thought this forest was peaceful and beautiful. Lily, Ryan, and I had gone out to look for mushrooms, because after moving from the noise of Texas to Maine, it was our first free Saturday together as a family. Now every tree seemed to be hiding something.

“This is impossible,” I said at last. “I have never been here.”

“Maybe it just looks like you,” Lily told me.

“No. That is my shirt.”

I had seen that yellow childhood shirt in only one photograph. In my mother’s old album. An album that a fire had destroyed in the attic of our house in Texas when I was twelve. That was what I thought, at least.

Ryan pointed at something behind the stone with his finger.

“There is something else written here.”

I carefully cleared away the earth. A name was engraved beneath the photograph, but sand and moss covered almost everything. Only several letters were visible: “El… M…”

Lily took out her phone.

“I am calling the police.”

At that moment something broke a branch deep in the forest.

Brandy raised his head all at once. His ears stiffened, and then he rushed toward the bushes. Instinctively, I pulled Ryan tightly against me.

“Brandy! Come back here!” Lily shouted.

The dog’s barking slowly moved farther away and suddenly stopped.

The forest fell silent again.

Lily looked at my face.

“Are you hiding something from me?”

Her question hurt me more than seeing the stone had.

“I do not know what I would be hiding from you. I myself do not know what is happening.”

When we returned home, Brandy emerged from the bushes. His leather collar was dirty, and a small copper object hung from it. He had not had this object before.

At home, Lily opened the object with a knife at the kitchen table. Inside she found a folded piece of paper. Only one sentence was written: “The one who should have been in the grave is still breathing today.”

Ryan’s breath caught.

“Dad, is this about you?”

The paper fell from my hand.

That evening we went to our neighbor, old Harvey Blake. He knew where the forest’s old cemetery was. When I showed him the photograph, the color left his face.

“That place has been closed for a long time,” he said. “No one goes there anymore.”

“Do you know this stone?”

Harvey stared at me for a long time.

“I know your face, boy. I saw it forty years ago too.”

Lily pressed her hand against the table.

“What did you say?”

The old man opened his mouth, but could not speak. At that moment headlights came on outside the house. I went to the window and saw a black truck standing at the end of the yard.

Harvey quickly turned off the light.

“Close the curtains,” he whispered to me. “If he has returned, he already knows that you were at the stone.”

“Who?”

Instead of answering, he opened an old cabinet and took out a brown folder. My birth date was written on the folder.

Harvey unlocked it. He took out the first sheet and extended it toward me. At that exact moment the door handle slowly went down, while my hand reached toward the folder…

Harvey’s hand gripped my wrist.

“Do not open it until you understand whom you are looking at,” he whispered.

The door handle moved once more. Lily hid Ryan in the corner of the kitchen, while I picked up a heavy iron candlestick from the table. My heart was beating so hard that I thought the man outside could hear it too.

“Harvey, open the door,” a man’s voice sounded. “I know you are home.”

Harvey froze.

“This is Gideon Vale,” he told me so quietly that I could barely hear him. “He looks after the graves. And he does much more than look after graves.”

“I will call the police,” Lily said.

“Not yet,” Harvey shook his head. “If he realizes that the folder is with you, Ryan will be the first one he uses.”

A blow sounded on the door. The glass on the table trembled.

“Harvey!” the man outside roared. “I frightened you once today already. I will not warn you a second time.”

Ryan’s face turned white. I stood in front of him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You are with Dad,” I whispered. “Nothing will happen.”

But I did not believe my own words either.

Harvey opened the back door for us. Rain had already begun, and mud pulled at our feet in the yard. Brandy stood by the car, looking toward the house. When I started the engine, I saw a small pile of sand on the front windshield. Someone had written one letter on the glass with a finger: “E.”

No one said a word the entire way.

As soon as we got home, Lily placed the folder on the table.

“Now we read everything,” she said. “Do not hide anything from me anymore.”

“I have nothing to hide.”

“Maybe you do not, but someone does.”

The first document turned out to be an old birth record. The mother’s name was written: Nora Mercer. The father’s field was blank. Child’s name: Elias Mercer. Date of birth: January 29, 1984.

My hands went cold.

“I am Travis Hale,” I said.

Harvey lowered his head.

“That name was given to you by your adoptive family.”

Lily pushed her chair back.

“Your adoptive family?”

No one had ever told me that I had been adopted as a child. I always asked my father why I did not look like him. He laughed and said that faces changed over time. And my mother would fall silent.

On the second sheet in the folder was a clipping from an old newspaper. The headline could barely be read: “Mercers’ Little Boy Considered Missing After Fire.”

The house was burning in the picture. A woman stood in front of the door—Nora. Her face was a copy of mine.

“My mother?” I whispered.

Harvey closed his eyes.

“Nora did not die that night. Gideon told people that the child had died too. But the child was alive.”

“Where was I?”

Harvey did not answer. He took a small wooden medallion from the folder. Half-erased letters could be seen on it: “E.M.”

I knew this object. It had hung around my neck in childhood. Then my father told me that I had lost it.

The telephone rang.

It was an unknown number.

“Do not answer,” Harvey told me.

But the call ended, and immediately a voice message arrived. I played it.

My own childhood voice sounded. There was only one sentence: “Mother, I am not dead.”

Tears filled Lily’s eyes.

“Where did they get this recording?”

Harvey looked toward the window. The black truck was still standing at the end of the street.

“Now I know why they brought you back here,” he said. “They want you to open yourself what they hid beneath the cemetery.”

“What did they hide?”

Harvey opened the folder’s last pocket, but there was only a sealed envelope inside. Nora Mercer’s initials were on the seal.

Lily reached toward the envelope.

At that moment the sound of tires was heard outside, and Harvey shouted:

“Get down on the floor!”

The window shattered from a bullet. The envelope flew into the air and fell right at my feet. I bent down, opened the seal with my fingernail, and took out the paper, but before I could read the first sentence, the lights went out…

In the darkness I heard Ryan crying.

“Dad!”

“I am here!” I called and ran toward him.

Lily turned on a flashlight. Its pale light fell directly on the envelope. Nora’s handwriting was on the paper, like the handwriting I remembered from the few old cards that had survived the fire together with the childhood album.

“If you are reading this, Elias, it means that Gideon could no longer hide the truth.”

My knees gave way.

“I am Elias,” I said.

Harvey lowered his eyes.

“Yes.”

There were three sheets and a small photograph in the envelope. In the photograph young Nora sat on a bed and held a newborn. A wooden medallion hung around the baby’s neck. The same one that was now in my hand.

Lily caught her breath.

“Why did no one tell you this?”

Harvey said quietly:

“Because Nora knew whom she was fighting.”

Everything was written on the second sheet. Nora’s father, Gideon Vale, owned a funeral home in the town and was connected with local doctors. When Nora decided to escape from her violent father, Gideon took her four-year-old son. That same night he set the house on fire and prepared an empty coffin.

But he took the child to Texas and gave him to the Hales family for money. They had recently lost their own child and raised him under the name Travis. Nora searched for years, but Gideon told everyone that the woman was losing her mind.

“I was kidnapped,” I said, and the word broke bitterly in my mouth.

Harvey nodded.

“I was a young policeman then. I had suspicions, but no evidence. When Nora collected the records, Gideon had her placed in a psychiatric clinic. A short time later Nora died.”

“And the grave?”

“It was empty. She left your photograph on the stone so that you would return someday and find the truth.”

A car door slammed outside.

Lily looked toward the window.

“He is here.”

Harvey placed a small recorder on the table.

“This is from Nora too. She recorded a conversation with Gideon. I hid it for years because I was afraid.”

I turned on the recorder.

An old hoarse voice sounded.

“You cannot take my son away from me.”

Then Gideon’s cold voice:

“People already believe that the boy is dead.”

“One day he will find out himself.”

“If he returns, he will die because of you.”

The recording ended there, but his threat remained in the room.

A blow sounded on the door.

“Travis,” Gideon called. “Or should I call you Elias? Open the door. You and your family will not come out of this story alive.”

Lily stood beside me.

“I have already called the police.”

“How long until they come?” I asked.

“Seven minutes.”

Gideon shook the door.

“Harvey, you were silent your whole life. Now you have become a hero because of one family?”

Harvey looked at the recorder.

“No. At last, I became a witness.”

I picked up the phone and sent the recording to the police, the lawyer, and another address written on Nora’s letter. A reply came immediately, but not from the police.

“Elias, this is Dr. Mira Souza. Your mother left another recording with me. It is not about Gideon, but about your real father. If you want to know why Nora hid you from your birthday, come to the clinic alone.”

I stared at the screen.

At that same moment Gideon smashed the glass of the back door and reached his hand into the room.

But his entering was not the only dangerous thing. At the end of the message it said that Dr. Mira had been considered dead for twenty-five years, while her clinic was in the old tunnels beneath that same forest…