MY BROTHER FROZE WHEN I ASKED ABOUT THE PHOTO FROM 1998
I picked up the faded photo from the dusty shelf and felt a sudden chill go down my spine.
It was tucked behind old books, the corners soft and worn. Everyone in the picture looked happy, except… who was that? The date on the back was scribbled faintly: summer, 1998. A date I knew meant something terrible, but I could never remember what.
I walked into the living room where my brother sat watching TV, the air suddenly feeling heavy and thick. The second he saw the photo in my hand, his face went instantly pale, then flushed bright red, and his hands started shaking violently.
“Where did you get that?” he hissed, his voice a tight, strangled sound. “Throw it away! You shouldn’t have found that! Don’t ever ask about it again!” I just stared at him, clutching the picture tighter, my own heart beginning to pound.
“Tell me,” I whispered. “Tell me what happened. You were there. What did you do?” He stood up, knocking over his drink, his eyes wide with an animal fear I’d never witnessed. The scent of spilled soda filled the air.
Just as I braced myself for his answer, my phone buzzed with a text message saying, “They know you have it.”
👇 Full story continued in the comments…His eyes darted to the phone in my hand, then back to mine, the animal fear replaced by a cold, sickening dread. He snatched the phone from me, reading the message again, his face contorting.
“No, no, no,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair, mussing it wildly. He grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly strong. “We have to go. Now.”
“Go where? What are you talking about? Who sent this?” I pulled away, still clutching the photo.
“It doesn’t matter! They know you found it! That photo… it wasn’t supposed to ever be found!” His voice was low, urgent, a desperate plea. “Okay, okay, sit down. I’ll tell you. Just… don’t ask anything else until I’m finished.”
He practically shoved me onto the sofa, pacing erratically in front of me. He took a deep breath, the air thick with tension and spilled soda. “It was the summer of ’98,” he began, his voice barely a whisper. “Remember when we were at the lake house? With the Millers and the Johnsons?”
I nodded slowly, a vague memory of sticky sunscreen and endless afternoons by the water surfacing.
“There was this girl,” he continued, his gaze fixed on the photo in my hand. “New in town. Sarah. She wasn’t really part of our group, just kind of tagged along sometimes. We… we were down by the old quarry, where Mom and Dad told us never to go. We were just messing around, daring each other. And then… Sarah slipped.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, a shudder wracking his body. “She fell. Into the water. It was deep. We… we panicked. We were just kids. We didn’t know what to do. We looked for her, but she was gone. Just… gone.”
My blood ran cold. This was the terrible thing I couldn’t remember. Not a personal trauma, but something witnessed, something buried. “The photo…” I whispered, looking at the faces, young and carefree. The unknown girl, Sarah, was standing slightly apart from the others, a shy smile on her face.
“That was taken just before,” he confirmed, his voice raw with pain. “By Billy Miller’s dad. He took pictures of all of us down by the lake that day. We didn’t even realize she was in that one until later.”
“But… what happened then?”
“We ran back to the houses, terrified. Told the parents we couldn’t find her, that she’d wandered off. When the police came, we stuck to the story. All of us. The parents… they knew. They knew we were at the quarry. But they protected us. Orchestrated it all. Said she must have run away, she was new, didn’t fit in. Her parents were… they didn’t have much. No one pushed too hard.”
“So you… you covered it up?” The words felt foreign and terrible on my tongue.
“We were kids! Terrified kids! And the adults… they made the decision. For us. For them. To bury it. Forever. They made us swear we’d never talk about it. To anyone. Not even to each other, really. We were given different stories to tell if anyone asked. And that photo…” He pointed a trembling finger at it. “It was proof she was with us. Proof we were at the quarry. Billy’s dad found it later, after everything. The parents collected every copy they could find. Burned them. Hid them. They swore no trace would remain.”
“They?” I asked, the cryptic text message suddenly making terrifying sense.
“The other parents. The Millers, the Johnsons. And their kids, the ones who were there. We’re ‘they’ to each other now, bound by that secret. They’re paranoid. Always have been. Afraid one of us will crack. Afraid the truth will get out. If they know you found that picture… they’ll think I told you everything. Or that you’ll expose it.”
He finally stopped pacing, looking at me with haunted eyes. “That’s why they sent that text. They’re watching. Someone saw you find it, or heard you asking. They don’t want the past disturbed. They’ll do anything to keep it buried.”
A heavy silence fell between us, the weight of a twenty-year-old secret pressing down. I looked from my brother’s terrified face to the smiling faces in the photo, to Sarah, frozen forever in that last moment of innocence. The chill I felt earlier was no longer just from a dusty photo; it was the cold dread of knowing that the terrible thing from 1998 wasn’t just a memory, but a living, breathing threat, now shared between us, and attracting unwanted attention from those who had buried it so long ago. We weren’t just siblings anymore; we were co-inheritors of a dangerous truth.