Chapter 2: Evidence

I woke to the sound of my car alarm going off in the parking lot below.

The digital clock read 6:23 AM, and pale sunlight was already streaming through my window. I'd fallen asleep reviewing footage, my laptop still open beside me.

I threw on clothes and ran downstairs to find a crowd gathered around my rental car. Sheriff Birch Henley, a weathered man in his fifties, was examining the vehicle with professional interest. Pete from the front desk looked nervous, and Sage stood slightly apart from the others, her expression unreadable.

"What happened?" I asked, clicking off the alarm.

"Vandalism, looks like," Sheriff Henley said. "Someone slashed all four tires and poured something into your gas tank. Sugar, maybe, or sand."

I stared at my car in disbelief. The tires were completely destroyed, sidewalls cut with surgical precision. The gas cap hung open, and I could smell something chemical and wrong coming from the tank.

"Who would do this?"

"Hard to say. We don't get much crime in Spring Water, but sometimes visitors rub locals the wrong way." Sheriff Henley's tone was sympathetic, but I caught something calculating in his eyes. "Don't worry, though. We'll get you sorted out."

"How long will repairs take?"

"Well, that's the tricky part. Closest tire shop is in Carson City, about two hundred miles. And if they contaminated your fuel system, that's a more complicated fix. Could be a week, maybe two."

A week. The timeline felt too convenient, too perfectly timed to extend my stay in Spring Water.

"I'd like to file a police report," I said.

"Of course. Stop by my office this afternoon, and we'll get the paperwork started."

The crowd dispersed, leaving me alone with Sage and the ruined car. I took photographs from every angle, documenting the damage for insurance purposes and my own records.

"I'm sorry this happened," Sage said quietly. "Spring Water isn't usually hostile to visitors."

"Usually?"

"Most people who stay here do so by choice, eventually."

There was something ominous in the way she phrased that, but before I could ask for clarification, Pete appeared beside us.

"Ms. Walker, I took the liberty of extending your reservation through next week. No additional charge, of course, given the circumstances."

"That's very considerate." I tried to sound grateful rather than suspicious. "Pete, do you have security cameras in the parking lot?"

His expression went blank. "Security cameras? No, ma'am. Never had need for them in Spring Water. Like the sheriff said, we don't get much crime."

After Pete left, I turned to Sage. "This is awfully convenient, isn't it? Mysterious car trouble stranding another visitor just when a storm might close the roads anyway."

"You think this was planned?"

"I think Spring Water has a system for keeping people here longer than they intend to stay. Tourist dollars, maybe, or something more complicated."

Sage was quiet for several moments, studying my damaged car. "Fern, what if I told you that leaving Spring Water isn't as simple as fixing a car?"

"What do you mean?"

"Walk with me. There's something you should see."

We left the inn and headed toward the edge of town, past the last row of houses to where the desert began. The morning air was cool and clean, scented with sage and creosote. In daylight, Spring Water looked less ominous—just a small desert community trying to survive in an unforgiving landscape.

But as we walked, I noticed troubling details. Gardens full of vegetables that seemed too lush for the climate. Children's toys in yards where I hadn't seen any children. Cars parked in driveways that looked like they hadn't been moved in months.

"How many people actually live in Spring Water?" I asked.

"Depends how you count. Permanent residents, temporary residents, people who are... in transition."

"In transition to what?"

Instead of answering, Sage led me to a small cemetery on a hill overlooking the town. The headstones were a mix of old and new, dating back to the 1800s but including recent graves from the past few years.

"Read the names," Sage said.

I walked among the headstones, noting the inscriptions. Many of the recent graves belonged to people who'd died far too young—men and women in their twenties and thirties, children who'd barely lived at all.

But what caught my attention were the epitaphs. Instead of typical phrases like "Beloved husband" or "Rest in peace," these graves bore stranger messages:

"He tried to leave but couldn't find the way." "The desert claimed her, as it claims us all." "She saw the truth too late."

And on a small marker near the back: "Sarah Chen, Documentary Filmmaker. She came seeking answers and found them."

I stopped breathing. "Sage, when did Sarah Chen die?"

"Three years ago. She came here making a film about supernatural phenomena, just like you."

"What happened to her?"

"Car trouble, at first. Then she started investigating things she should have left alone. Eventually, she just... stopped trying to leave."

I pulled out my camera and began recording, both the headstones and Sage's face as she spoke.

"Are you threatening me?"

"I'm warning you. People who come to Spring Water looking for the truth usually find more than they can handle."

"What kind of truth?"

Sage looked out over the town spread below us, then back to Sarah Chen's grave. "The kind that changes everything you thought you knew about how the world works."

We walked back through town in tense silence. I was processing what I'd seen—the damaged car, the cemetery, the implications of another documentarian who'd died here. Spring Water was either running a very sophisticated long-term con, or something genuinely supernatural was happening.

At the library, Sage invited me inside. "If you're determined to investigate, you should at least understand what you're dealing with."

The Spring Water Public Library was surprisingly large for such a small town, with tall windows and comfortable reading areas. But most striking was the local history section—an entire wall devoted to books, documents, and photographs about the town's past.

"Spring Water was founded in 1887 as a mining community," Sage explained, pulling out a leather-bound volume. "Silver deposits in the nearby mountains, fresh water from natural springs. For about ten years, it was a booming town."

The photographs showed a much larger community—busy streets, crowded saloons, children playing in dusty yards. The population must have been several thousand at its peak.

"What happened?"

"Mine collapse in 1897. Killed forty-seven workers, including most of the town's adult men. The official cause was structural failure, but survivors reported hearing voices in the tunnels before the collapse. Warnings to get out."

Sage turned pages, showing me newspaper clippings from the period. Headlines about the disaster, but also stranger stories—reports of ghostly apparitions, unexplained disappearances, people who walked into the desert and never returned.

"The town never recovered economically. Most families left, but some stayed. The ones who stayed... they began to notice patterns."

"What kind of patterns?"

"People who tried to leave Spring Water sometimes couldn't. Their wagons would break down just outside town. Horses would refuse to go farther. Eventually, most stopped trying and accepted that they belonged here."

I photographed the documents as Sage spoke, building my evidence file. "So the town has been trapping visitors for over a century?"

"Not trapping. Holding. There's a difference."

"What difference?"

Sage closed the history book and looked directly at me. "Traps are designed to catch something. Spring Water doesn't catch people—it keeps them. Like a sanctuary."

"Sanctuary from what?"

"From whatever they were running from when they arrived."

That afternoon, I interviewed several long-term visitors at the diner. Dale the truck driver had been fleeing a messy divorce when his engine failed. The Henderson family had been moving to escape medical bills after their son's cancer treatment. The businessman, Roger, had been running from embezzlement charges.

Each story was different, but they all shared common elements: people in crisis, seeking new lives, finding themselves unable to leave Spring Water even after their original problems were resolved.

"Don't you miss the outside world?" I asked Roger.

"Sometimes. But out there, I was always looking over my shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Here, I'm safe. We all are."

"Safe from what?"

"From ourselves, mostly. From making the same mistakes that brought us here in the first place."

After the interviews, I found Sheriff Henley at his office to file the vandalism report. The police station was small but well-organized, with missing persons flyers covering one entire wall.

I counted at least fifty photos of people who'd disappeared in the area over the past twenty years. The sheer number was staggering for such a small community.

"That's a lot of missing persons cases," I observed.

"Desert's dangerous. People underestimate the heat, the distances, the wildlife. They wander off hiking trails or break down on back roads. Not everyone gets found."

"Sheriff, did you know Sarah Chen? The documentary filmmaker who died here three years ago?"

His pen paused on the paper. "I knew Sarah. Nice woman. Dedicated to her work."

"What happened to her?"

"Heat stroke. She went out to the old mine shaft one afternoon in July and didn't come back until after dark. By then, she was dehydrated and disoriented. Died at the county hospital two days later."

"That seems like an unusual mistake for someone who'd been living here for weeks."

"Desert can fool anyone, Ms. Walker. I'd hate to see you make the same error."