The rain had been falling for hours when James noticed that the front door of the old house at the end of the street was open. The house had been empty for years, and nobody in the neighbourhood knew exactly why. Curious, James stepped inside. The hallway was dark and covered in dust, but fresh footprints led across the floor towards the kitchen.
On the table, he found an old newspaper with an article about a man who had disappeared twenty years earlier. Before James could read the rest, he heard footsteps coming from upstairs. He slowly climbed the stairs and noticed photographs hanging along the walls. They showed people from the neighbourhood, but then he saw something that made him stop.
One of the photographs showed his own family. At the end of the hallway was a locked door. As James reached for the handle, a quiet voice whispered behind him, "You shouldn't have come here." He turned around, but there was nobody there. Suddenly, the door opened. Inside was a small room filled with dusty boxes. On top of one of them was a photograph of James, taken earlier that same day.
James ran out of the house and called the police. When they arrived, they searched the entire building but found nothing unusual. The photographs were gone, the footprints had disappeared, and the room was completely empty. Just as James began to wonder whether he had imagined everything, one of the officers handed him a small envelope. Inside was the photograph from the upstairs room. On the back, written in black ink, were six words: "Now you know where he disappeared."