Ghost Camera (2 page)

“Damn, Jenny.” When Bree looked up, she had an odd expression on her face: half nervous and half excited, with a hint of exhilaration. “I don’t recognise any of these people. I never forget a face, and, I swear, I’ve never seen these people in my life.”

Encouraged by her friend’s bewilderment, Jenny pointed to the child crouched behind the hedge. “The lighthouse keeper said a boy had died falling off the lighthouse. I think this is him. And… I think the camera was his, too.”

Bree let her breath out in a whistle. “If you weren’t such an adorkable stick in the mud, I’d think this was a prank.” She fixed Jenine with a hard glare. “It’s not, is it?”

“Cross my heart.” Jenine made the sign of a cross over her chest; something she and Bree had done all the time when they were children. “I came to you because you took that course in photography last year. I thought you might be able to tell if it were a glitch or something.”

Bree picked up her scissors and began attacking the daisies afresh. She put a little more force behind her snips than she had before. “Well, for starters, Polaroids don’t ‘glitch’ in the way you’re thinking about. That’s all digital. What can sometimes happen, though, is that there can be double exposure, or sometimes light will get on the picture and damage it while it’s still developing. So, yes, this could just be a big mistake, but really—look at it.” She paused in her cutting just long enough to jab a finger onto one of the female ghosts. “This isn’t some blob of light. It’s a fully formed, somewhat-transparent person.”

“Someone who definitely wasn’t at the wedding.”

“Exactly. I mean, I might suspect double exposure, but look at her—it looks like she’s really there. With double exposure, two images are juxtaposed, and you’ll get all of the awkwardness that goes along with that. Objects will be the wrong size, people will be floating in mid-air. But she’s not. She’s the same size as everyone else, standing on solid ground like everyone else. Heck, that little boy is even interacting with the shrub. It’s either the luckiest coincidence I’ve ever seen, or we’ve got something pretty significant on our hands.”

Finished with her daisies, Bree scooped them up and propped them in a bucket of water. She then pulled out rolls of ribbons and began cutting them into lengths for wrapping around bouquets. “Do you still have the camera?”

“Oh, yeah.” Jenine pulled it out of her bag and handed it to Bree, who put down her scissors to examine it.

“It’s an old model. Looks like it’s from, what, the eighties?”

“That’s what I thought.”

Bree opened the film slot just long enough to check inside then closed it before the light could damage the film. “Mind if I take a picture?”

“Go for it.”

Bree pointed the camera at Jenine and clicked the button.

The flash blinded Jenine for a second, and when she blinked, white blobs floated across her vision. “Harsh flash.”

“Quit yer whining.” Bree grinned, placing the undeveloped picture under her desk’s placemat to protect it from light. “These things take, what, four minutes to develop?”

“You’re the expert on cameras.”

“Only on proper cameras. Digital ones. Not these dinky relics.” Bree handed the camera back to Jenine and returned to her ribbon snipping. “Do you have any plans for tomorrow?”

“No. What about you?”

“Just work. Saturday’s a slow day, so I was thinking of closing early and catching a movie.”

“You weren’t going to visit Travis?”

“Ugh, don’t even mention that jackass.” Bree threw an empty ribbon roll towards the bin. It missed and clattered to the floor.

Bree and Travis had been dating for nearly four years. At times they were inseparably in love, and at other times they hated each other with a scalding intensity.

Jenine found their relationship bizarre, confusing, and extremely fascinating. She drew her knees up to her chin. “What’d he do?”

“He bought the hottest chilli sauce he could find and slathered it all over my sandwich. Can you believe that? It burnt so bad I thought I was dying. That butt-face filmed the whole thing and says he’s going to put it on YouTube.”

Jenine resisted asking for the link and mumbled a commiseration instead. Travis loved pranks almost as much as Bree did. Their next argument would undoubtedly be about Bree’s revenge.

Bree finished her second roll of ribbon and threw the scissors down with more force than necessary. “Photo should be done by now, right?” She pulled the picture from under the mat and stared at it. Her eyes grew wide.

“What? What? Let me see,” Jenine hopped off her stool to look over Bree’s shoulder.

The picture showed Jenine sitting behind the desk, smiling awkwardly at the camera. The bouquets and boxes of flowers in the background were fuzzy, and the odd tints and colours Polaroids specialised in saturated the picture.

The only colourless part of the photo was the woman standing behind Jenine. Long hair hung limply around her gaunt face and empty eyes as she stared at the back of Jenine’s head.

“Oh,” Jenine whispered. “Oh.”

An itch crawled up and down her back, making her hair stand on end. She knew the answer, but she still had to ask: “There wasn’t anyone behind me when you took the photo, was there?”

Bree gave a wild, high-pitched laugh. “Babe, no. Especially not looking like that. Oh, hell.”

“Do… do you think she’s still there?”

“Shoot, babe. She’d better not be. Not in my store.” Bree looked up at Jenine, her eyes filled with frantic energy. “You want to get out of here?”

“Would you come with me?”

The door slammed open before Bree could answer. They both jumped, and Jenine shrieked.

“Don’t mind me, ladies. Just bringing the flowers.” Burke, the delivery man, backed into the room, guiding a trolley carrying a dozen boxes of fresh flowers, which he set in front of the counter. Jenine placed her hand on her heart, waiting for its pace to slow.

“That’s the lot, Breeanna,” Burke said as Bree hurried to get his pay out of the till.

“Thanks. See you Wednesday?”

“Sure as rain. You ladies have a good day now.”

Bree waited until his truck had roared into life and driven away before speaking. “You’d better go.” Her voice was steadier, but her fingers trembled as she picked up both Polaroids. She placed them in an envelope and sealed it before handing it to Jenine. “I know you’ve got exams you need to study for. Go do that, and promise me you won’t look at or think about these photos while you’re doing it, okay?”

“Okay,” Jenine whispered. She felt as if she were back in middle school, being lectured by the older Bree on how to eat lunch properly.

“And, Jenine, if I were you, I’d burn them.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Bree swept her into a tight hug. “Stay safe, babe. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Sure,” Jenine said, hugging back and wishing she could avoid ever letting go.

Jenine dropped the envelope onto her kitchen benchtop. Three cats coiled around her legs, and she realised she hadn’t fed them that morning. Cooing apologies, she fished food from the fridge and divided it onto plates. The photos sat on the counter, waiting for her attention.

She pulled out her law books instead. She was nearly three years into the four-year course to become a solicitor. She’d been doing well in class, well enough to have a decent shot at getting into one of the two local offices, possibly even one of the bigger firms in the city if she could get a good referral. She scraped her chair up to the counter and opened Bryan Garner’s
The Elements of Legal Style
while the photos in the envelope tugged at her mind.

Could the camera be a prank?
she wondered.
A toy carefully styled to look like a Polaroid camera, but with the digital capabilities to add the ghostly figures?
It would need to identify the shapes in the photos to place the images appropriately.
But that’s still within the realms of digital ability, right?

Jenine slammed her book shut and approached the envelope. She picked it up, hesitated, put it down, then picked it up again. Bree had told her to ignore it, and Bree’s advice was usually solid. She was the one who had her life organised; she had a business, her own home, and a
mostly
steady boyfriend. Bree was arguably the more mature of the pair. That meant her opinion should carry more weight than Jenine’s.

Jenine tore open the envelope and picked out the second picture. It was exactly how she remembered it: her own face, blinking at the camera, the start of a goofy smile at the corners of her mouth. Directly behind her stood the being with limp hair, hollow cheeks and dead eyes.

It was more than a digital trick. The ghost was looking directly at the back of Jenine’s head—not just in her general direction, but directly at her, focussed on her with the intensity of a predator stalking prey.

Jenine placed the photograph flat on the kitchen counter and rested her chin in her hands, pressing her fingers over her mouth.

What are the possibilities? It could be a prank.
Some clever, well-designed, well-devised prank.

Or the camera could show actual ghosts, walking among humans, invisible except when captured on film. She bowed her head until it touched the top of the counter. It was cool and solid, something real she could concentrate on.

Ghosts. Real ghosts. Around me constantly.
She raised her head and picked up the photo again. If it were fake, there would be breadcrumbs. All she had to do was find them, which was easier said than done. The Polaroid was grainy and the colours looked straight out of an Instagram filter, but, as far as she could see, the image was seamless. The ghost seemed to be standing about two feet behind Jenine. The shadows over her transparent face matched the store’s lighting. The edge of the counter overlapped the lower half of her body.

Jenine caught her breath. On the other side of the window that faced the street was the boy from the wedding—the boy who had owned the camera. His face was pale. Serious. Familiar.

Jenine put the photo down with shaking fingers. The camera was in her bag. It still had film in it.
I could take another photo, just to see.
Just to see if the photos were real. Just to see if the boy had followed her home. Just to see if anything else was in her house, standing behind her, perhaps, watching her with dead eyes.

She put the photo back in the envelope and hid it on top of the bookshelf, out of sight, then turned the TV on and set the volume just loud enough to provide background noise.

She went back to the kitchen to retrieve the bottle of wine her aunt had given it to her as a gift when she’d graduated from high school. Jenine had never opened it, but she was jittery and anxious, and half a glass of wine might help her calm down.
Just half a glass.

She poured the wine into a water tumbler and sat at the kitchen counter. The law books lay forgotten beside her and the TV played noise from a bland reality show while she stared at the wall, trying to ignore the camera.

Bree let herself into Jenine’s house shortly after seven o’clock. Every single light was on and the news was playing on the TV. Bree put her shopping bags onto the kitchen counter and leaned over the back of the couch where her friend was slouched. “Hey babe. Rough day?”

Jenine looked up and hazarded a watery smile. “The worst. I’m sorry. I looked at the picture.”

“Oh, Jenny.” Bree wrapped her arms around Jenine’s torso, giving her a rough hug. “Look, we’ll figure this out.”

“That’s not all.” Jenine pulled her legs up and hid her face behind her knees.

Bree let go of her, rounded the couch, turned the TV off, and flopped onto the lounge next to Jenine.

“Tell me your sins, child, for I am greatly forgiving,” she intoned.

Jenine snorted with suppressed laughter then quieted. “I got drunk.”

“Still drunk now, babe?”

“No, no, well, not much.”

“So what happened?” Bree’s smile disappeared as realisation flashed over her face. “Oh, you took more photos, didn’t you?”

“There were five Polaroids left. I used them all.” Jenine picked up a pillow and began toying with its tassels, blinking tears out of her eyes.

“Can I see?”

“They’re in the kitchen.”

Jenine waited for Bree to find them. She focussed on the cushion she was holding, feeling the soft fibres of the tassel between her fingertips and tugging on a loose strand.

Bree sat down next to her. She flipped through the photos, pausing to absorb the details of each snapshot. “Oh, hell, babe. You should have called me sooner.”

Jenine shrugged, avoiding her friend’s eyes. “It’s not like you could have done anything. There’s nothing that
can
be done. I can’t—I can’t get away from them. There aren’t ghost-free zones.”

Bree sucked on her teeth as she looked through the photos more slowly. Jenine’s fattest cat jumped onto the arm of the lounge and sat, watching them with disdainful eyes.

There were five photos: one from the living room, two from the bedroom, one from the bathroom and one from the hallway, looking into the kitchen. The snapshot of the hallway didn’t show much. The hall itself was empty, but a whisper of white in the kitchen, mostly hidden by the wall, suggested the motion of something trying to hide itself a moment too late.

The photo of the living room only had one being in it. A woman stood in the corner, facing the wall. Her shoulders and knees were bent as though she had a skeletal disease. Her long nightdress was stained in places, and her bald head was turned just enough that the camera caught the glint of one eye. Bree quickly moved to the next picture.

The shot of the bathroom showed Jenine’s face, scrunched, anxious and flushed from the wine, reflected in the mirror. Two other beings, both male, appeared in that photo. The first—old, bald and repugnant—was lurching towards the camera, an outstretched hand reaching for Jenine, while a toothless leer spread across his puffed cheeks.. He was shirtless, and a sheen of sweat coated his transparent skin. The second ghost, a young man with tattoos across his shoulders and the sick pallor of a drug addict, was sitting in the tub, eyes turned to the ceiling, mouth drawn in a long line, face unnaturally thin. The water he sat in was tinged red.

Two photographs from the bedroom captured a scene. Jenine’s bed, unmade and messy from where she’d abandoned it after her nightmare the night before, in the centre of the room. In the first photo, one of the cats was licking itself on the carpet while a small child stood in the corner and watched it. The child, a girl with a grey dress and hair done into a harsh braid, had a sallow, joyless face and blank eyes that suggested a life of neglect. An opulently obese man lay prone on the bed, his singlet barely covering the rolls of fat under his puckered skin. He had one hand raised, gesticulating as if he were speaking.

The second bedroom photo had been taken no more than a few seconds after the first. The man on the bed seemed to have become aware of the camera and looked directly towards it, his face contorted in anger. A new figure had come into view: a woman who had stepped from behind the cupboard where she’d been hidden. Her Victorian dress, with a high neckline and a low hem that fell over her boots, was spattered with dark stains. Her face was cold and severe as she stared at the camera.

The girl was no longer watching the cat and stood directly before the camera, staring up at it. Her mouth was agape in a silent howl, revealing rotting teeth sticking out of dark gums.

“Shoot,” Bree whispered. “Oh, babe. You really should have called me. I could’ve closed the shop early. I could’ve.”

“To do what?” Jenine asked. She threw the cushion towards the blank TV. It fell short and flopped to the ground.

Bree wrapped her arms around Jenine’s shoulders and pulled her into a fierce hug. “Moral support, idiot. And wine. We can drink lots and lots of wine and forget about that stupid camera.”

Jenine chuckled. “I think I’ve had enough wine for today. It made me feel sick.”

“Well, then, we can watch cheesy romantic comedies and eat junk food and talk about how sucky my idiot boyfriend is. And we can have a sleepover. I can borrow your jammies, right?”

“Hmm,” Jenine replied, leaning against Bree. “It’s been years since we’ve had a sleepover. That would be nice.” She hesitated. “As long as you’re okay with it. I mean, I know I wouldn’t want to sleep in a place with photos like… that.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it.” Bree shrugged awkwardly. “Hell, that camera has taken pictures at three different places, and all of them were blighted by the walking dead. What makes you think my apartment would be any cleaner? It’s older than this place, so it’s probably lousy with ghosties.”

“But still. It makes a difference when you’ve actually seen them.”

“Yeah,” Bree admitted. “That’s true. But, hey, safety in numbers, right? C’mon, let’s get a party happening.”

For the next hour, they did just that. Bree tuned the radio into a station that played songs Jenine had never heard of then pulled bag after bag of sweets and chips out of her shopping carrier. She’d obviously anticipated that comfort food might be required.

They avoided Jenine’s room—the photos were still too fresh in their minds—and pulled spare mattresses and blankets into the living room, which had been relatively ghost-free in the photos.

Bree chose a romantic comedy, but they turned it off halfway through because it reminded Bree how much she hated Travis. They lay on the mattresses, staring at the blank screen, letting the silence wash over them. Two of the three cats had curled into tight balls on their blankets during the movie, and Jenine scratched at the nearest one’s head.

“I’ve heard animals can tell when ghosts are around,” Jenine said at last.

Bree rolled over. Her hair no longer fell into the tidy, well-groomed pixie cut, but stood up in patches. “I guess they’ve gotten used to them. If—and this is a big if—the camera really does show ghosts, then I think we can safely say there’s a lot more of them about than we thought.”

“Not everyone who ever died,” Jenine said, “or there wouldn’t be enough room for them to stand. But, yeah, a lot. Maybe just the ones who have unfinished business.”

“Or who were unhappy in life. None of them looked very cheerful.”

They stared at the ceiling for a long moment. The third cat arrived and flopped into the space between them.

“They’ve probably always been there, and we haven’t been able to see them,” Bree said. “Like cockroaches. They’re horrible, and you don’t want them about, but you don’t lose sleep over them if you don’t know they’re there.”

“Do you think they can hear us?”

“Dunno. The bedroom photos make it look like they react to the camera.”

“Yeah.”

“They’ve got to be harmless, though. No way could people be oblivious to that number of spooks if they were dangerous.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

Jenine exhaled in frustration. “It’s like—I mean, they look angry. Especially that man on my bed. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel comfortable sleeping there again. He looked furious. Like he hated me.” She rolled onto her stomach. “I don’t want people to hate me.”