They examined the rest of the contents together under the kitchen light. The WWII draft card listed the emergency contact number for Artie Finch as a single, archaic digit: Phone 4. Consumed by a mix of fear and intense curiosity, the two friends spent the next three days acting like amateur detectives.
They pored over modern genealogy databases, scanned public archives, and reached out to the local historical society, hunting for any record of Arthur "Artie" Finch. But the paper trail went completely cold. According to the town's historical archives, the entire Finch family had vanished from the local tax records and property rolls shortly after the war ended in 1945. There were no marriage certificates, no death notices, and no obituaries.
They were left completely stranded with a ghost who looked exactly like Mark, with absolutely no logical explanation for the impossible connection.