It was exactly the size of Sam’s closet—but without the doors. The walls were the same white-painted drywall, and at one end there was a built-in ladder made of two-by-fours. It extended to a floor covered with the same carpet as the bedroom and closet. Other than the ladder, the space contained only two things: a small table, and on top of it a fax machine. It looked about like every fax machine Sam had ever seen. Whatever made it secure was probably just some special circuitry inside it.

Sam noticed that the broad, rear wall of the hidden space had tiny holes in it, where screws or bolts had been removed. The holes formed lines about three and six feet above the floor. They corresponded exactly with the heights of the closet’s shelves.

“This was the closet,” Sam said. “Originally, I mean. When Pierce first moved in, this space must have been the closet for this bedroom. He built a new closet in front of it—he even moved the shelves.”

Dani nodded, then directed her focus to the fax machine. So did Sam. He saw a phone line and a power cord sticking out the back. Both were patched into the house’s wiring through a ragged hole in the drywall.

Sam stared at those details for only a second, then turned his attention to the machine’s receiving tray, and the stack of faxes piled there.

“I wonder what those are about,” Dani said.

“Let’s find out.”

They descended the two-by-four ladder and crossed to the machine. Sam was immediately struck by how few faxes there were. From high above he’d assumed the stack was half an inch thick—the things had been piling up in the tray for at least as long as Pierce had been missing.

But it wasn’t half an inch thick. It had no thickness at all. Sam picked up the pages and separated them; there were only two.

“That’s impossible,” he said. “There would have to be at least all the ones I heard arrive, which must be half a dozen by now. But really there should be hundreds, if it’s been getting them since last summer.”

“Look at the date on it,” Dani said.

She pointed to it, written in tiny digits along the edge of the most recent page: July 13, 1988—last year.

For a moment Sam didn’t understand. And then he did. He reached under the hinged receiving tray and lifted it. Below was the feeder tray for blank paper. It was empty.

“It must’ve run out within days of when he disappeared,” Dani said. “All it had was two blank sheets left. So these messages are a year old.”

Sam nodded. Then he rearranged the faxes to put the earlier one on top, and together they began to read them: