I’m going to continue telling you a story

It’s going to involve some vanishing photos

And the lengths two women will go to solve a mystery

Oh and maybe a hint the dead taunting from the grave

Welcome to the Aurora Wasteland

Connections are a funny thing. You can start the day not knowing someone and be at their funeral later that week.

With little in her pocket, Mollie moved to Canada to escape the stupidity of the British conservatives as she put it. She couldn’t believe how much they were able to fuck up a country so regularly.

With little to her name, she took a job at an oil and gas company. Not her first choice, but the pay was adequate, and she got to watch The X-files while at work. She’d loved that show since she was little. It had got her through her parents’ passing, a marriage, and divorce. But once she’d run through the episodes a few dozen times, she needed something else to scratch the itch of the unknown. So she hit the internet hard and stumbled across a website called the Aurora Wasteland.

She read all the posts and watched all the videos. The possibility that any of this was real fascinated her. Actual paranormal, weird events right here near where she lived - it was almost too much.

She filled out an application to be an investigator and waited, then waited some more. Finally, after a few months, she received an email from an Aurora Wasteland admin. They had a likely fake case to investigate, but all their active researchers in the area were busy. She happened to live nearby, so they asked if she could stop by and ask some questions.

The next day she was knocking on Doloris’ door.

With shaky nerves and a cup of tea, she asked Doloris to explain what had happened, which Doloris hesitantly did. They talked about Doloris’ walks with her friends around the lake. Most importantly, they talked about the tower of bodies in the water.

Doloris left out her dream from the night before. Not because she wanted to withhold any information, she just didn’t think it was important. Who wouldn’t have nightmares after witnessing something like that?

As the tea and story came to a close, Mollie had a notebook full of information and even more questions, which she started asking Doloris. Most of these were basic, and likely unneeded. A seasoned Aurora Wasteland investigator would have known exactly what to ask. Mollie was new and didn’t know what was a waste of time and what wasn’t.

But the one question that stumped Doloris was when Mollie asked if she recognized any of the faces. At the time, she didn’t, but in her dream, she did. Had her dream informed her of what she'd actually witnessed? Or was her brain just fucking with her? So she simply replied with, she didn’t think so. But her own answer didn’t sit well with her. In fact, it brewed inside her as Mollie asked her next question. What had she actually witnessed? Had her husband been there, and she didn’t notice? What sort of a wife doesn’t notice? Was she supposed to do something?

Before Mollie could finish her next question, Doloris blew up at her. She was mad that this Aurora Wasteland group could send someone so junior to help her. But in reality, she wasn’t mad at Mollie, and both of them could tell.

In an effort to re-establish a working connection with Doloris, Mollie brought up what the Aurora Wasteland admin had told her. It was common for people to submit missing individuals to the Aurora Wasteland website. It was even more common that those people weren’t really missing. Some people just get lonely and will make anything up to get attention, just to have someone to talk to. And while it’s sad that they have to result to these lengths, it was important for Aurora Wasteland researchers to determine if claims were real or not.

Doloris asked if Mollie believed her. If she thought she was one of those lonely people.

Mollie shook her head and told her that she believed her. She wanted to help Doloris figure out what had happened. She wanted to take her back to the lake.

After one more cup of tea, the two women prepared for their hike, but a phone call halted their journey. One of the women Doloris walked with every morning had died, peacefully in her sleep the night before. The night after the walk.

Shaken, and unsure if two events were linked, the two women set off for their walk.

The car ride to the lake was filled with chatter about where they both were from and the hobbies they shared. The primary of which was gardening, though Doloris favored vegetables and Mollie flowers.

But once they got to the lake, their conversation faded, and the walk turned silent.

Doloris was worried that what she’d witnessed previously wouldn’t be there anymore, and what that might mean.

Mollie, on the other hand, was worried that if what Doloris had seen was real, what that would mean, and she was worried if she could handle seeing it. A tower of bodies seems like something you can handle until you have to actually handle it.

Their walk took them the opposite direction of Doloris’ initial hike, since what she witnessed was much closer to the end than the beginning. They didn’t want to waste time.

Minutes later, they reached the edge of the lake. To Doloris, the water looked dark red, just as it had before. To Mollie, it was green.

As they reached the same location where Doloris had witnessed the bodies before, her eyes welled up. It was still there. The tower of bodies, reaching for her. This time she was sure they were moving, wanting to reach her. She covered her mouth. She wanted to scream.

Mollie said nothing. She took her phone out and snapped a few pictures in the direction that Doloris was looking. She checked the phone, the pictures matched what she was seeing which was green water and nothing else.

Without saying a word, Doloris took a step out into the water. She had to get closer. She had to see if her husband was out there. Mollie stopped her before taking another step. Whether what she was seeing was real or not, she couldn’t let this 90-year-old woman walk out into this lake.

Upset at the situation and Mollie’s reluctance to let her go out in the water, Doloris stormed off back to the car. Abruptly ending their investigation.

The ride back was done in silence. Doloris said nothing because she was angry, Mollie said nothing because, well, she was new to this and didn’t know what to say. She questioned how she’d handled the situation back at the lake. Had she done something wrong?

After dropping Doloris off at home, Mollie stopped for a drink at a bar she frequented often. The bartender knew her by name, knew her drink, and she knew her bedroom. Which they knew they would be visited after closing that night.

Late that night, after the bartender had gone home, Mollie checked her phone for messages from Doloris. There were none. She wasn’t even sure if Doloris had the ability to text to message her. So she checked her email. There was nothing new. So she pulled up the original email request she’d received from the Aurora Wasteland to investigate Doloris’ case. It had a phone number and email address given as contact information for Doloris.

She stared at the email address. Then opened a blank email and started typing. It was to Doloris. She apologized for earlier and attached the pictures she’d taken at the lake. It was short but to the point.

Still unable to sleep, she posted an update on the Aurora Wasteland website. She posted the pictures and a brief update of what she’d learned from Doloris and their trip to the lake. She hit submit and went to bed.

The next morning she woke up to a dead cell phone. After a few minutes of searching for the charger in her work bag, she plugged it in and was greeted with a few hundred replies to her post. A large number of people had taken the pictures and fieldwork she had done and analyzed it.

Firstly, they’d found information about the lake for her, as it turns out an abnormally large number of dead bodies have turned up there over the years.

Second, and more important, some people claimed to be seeing the tower of bodies Doloris was seeing.

Excited with the new information, Mollie called Doloris, but only managed to reach her voice mail. So she left her a message. Several messages later, over the course of several hours, Mollie started to worry.

So she jumped in her car and raced over to Doloris’ place. Her brain couldn’t stop worrying that maybe Doloris had died that night like one of Doloris’ walking compadres had the day before. She kicked herself for leaving Doloris alone.

By the time she reached Doloris’ house, Mollie was a wreck of emotions. She burst through the front door, calling Doloris’ name. There was no answer. Mollie searched every inch of the house and found Doloris nowhere. At this point, she started calling the list of contacts that Doloris had posted near her phone. None of them knew where Doloris was. She hadn’t gone on the walk that morning with the other women. None of them knew where Doloris was. She was missing, and Mollie didn’t know what to do.