Camp Verity had been shut for nineteen years. The cabins smelled like wet paper and the dock sagged under your feet. Mara set the recorder on a tree stump while Devon clipped on the mics and Priya filmed the dead waterfront of Signal Lake. "Episode one," Mara said. "Why does a whole town pretend this place never existed?" Then they noticed something weird. When Priya yelled across the water, the lake gave back no echo at all.

Priya wandered toward the main lodge with her camera. The front door hung open. Inside, the walls were covered in old camp photos, except every single face had been scratched out with a key or a knife. "Guys," she called, her voice shaking. "You need to see this."

Mara pulled one photo off the wall. On the back, in faded pen: SUMMER SESSION, FINAL HEADCOUNT. The number had been crossed out three times, each one lower than the last. "Campers went missing," she said slowly. "And they kept changing the count to hide it."

They drove to the county records office before it closed. A clerk found one yellowed file on Camp Verity. The closure report blamed "a drowning," but a sticky note inside, in different handwriting, read: SIX FAMILIES. ONLY FIVE GRAVES. Mara photographed it. "One kid was never even buried," she said.