Glancing round, Robin saw the walls littered with more photos—all local and most pertaining to the tunnel. But there wasn’t much he hadn’t already seen, so most didn’t hold his attention—that was until he looked above the fireplace and saw there was a picture of a group of people sitting around a room that looked like the one he was in right now. He strained to look, but knew he would have to get up to see properly. Slowly, without drawing attention to himself, he slipped out of his seat and walked toward the fireplace, careful not to disturb the golden retriever.

The picture was of the Standedge Five. In this room—the basement of The Hamlet. Robin’s eyes widened and he slowly looked around, matching details up.

They looked almost identical to how they looked in the picture he found online. Tim Claypath, Rachel Claypath, Edmund Sunderland, Robert Frost and Prudence Pack were seated around a table in front of the fire—it seemed they had arranged all the small tables to create a bigger one. The dog was sitting on Rachel Claypath’s knee. Scattered across the table were poker chips and hands of cards. They were all looking at the camera and smiling—even Edmund’s looked genuine this time. Matthew was nowhere to be seen.

Finding a framed photo of the five missing friends on the wall in a pub and taken in this very room—it made the disappearance seem realer. Five people. Vanished.

Robin looked at the faces of the Five with sadness. Tim and Prudence were waving at the camera. He realized they both had something on their wrist, some kind of black scrawl. A tattoo or some kind of writing. And by the looks of it, the marks were both the same. Robin got even closer but couldn’t for the life of him make out what it said.

Slowly, he took his phone out and switched the camera on, holding it up to the picture. As soon as he pressed the button, he was blinded by a split second of dazzling light. The flash. The room must have been dark enough to trigger it. He blinked away sunspots and realized the room had gone silent.

He looked around. Every single person in the room was looking at him. Everyone had looked up from their conversations and were staring—two people near the stairs who looked like they were on a date, two elderly men who seemed to be trying to outdrink each other, three women on a girls’ night out and even the family in the corner—all eyes trained on him.