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Jenine tackled the lighthouse stairs two at a time, her lanky legs eating up the distance. The air was cooler there, hidden from the summer sun, and the thick stone walls muffled the noise from the wedding reception.
She wanted to get to the top and take a photo before the cake cutting. She wasn’t the official wedding photographer, but the hired man was only taking posed photos. If she got some good candid shots, she could make an album as a present for Helen when she returned from her honeymoon. A photo from the top of the lighthouse would be perfect for the cover.
Jenine reached the top of the stairs winded but elated. The trapdoor was already open, so she slipped into the room above.
The lighthouse hadn’t been used since shipping companies changed their routes decades before. A strangely gummy dust, infused with salt by the wind that swept over the bluff, covered every surface and made her shoes stick to the floor.
The now-defunct light hung in the center of the platform, taking up most of the room, with a narrow stone walkway running around it. The waist-high brick wall was periodically studded with support beams, and Jenine had a perfect view of the wedding reception below. She scooted around to find a good angle then took her photo. As she stepped back, her shoe bumped something small and solid.
Someone had abandoned a black-and-gray Polaroid camera. Judging by how dirty it looked, it hadn’t been touched in years. Jenine picked it up and examined it gingerly. Other than the dust, it seemed in good condition. Out of curiosity, she raised the camera to her eye, angled it at the wedding guests, and took a picture.
To her delight, it clicked, whirred, and spat out a black-and-white square. Jenine put it in her pocket to develop, slung the Polaroid’s strap around her neck, snapped a second photo with her digital camera, then raced down the stairs.
She opened the door at the base of the lighthouse and pulled up short. An aging, sour-looking man blocked her path. His face was weathered and covered in gray stubble, and his eyelids were so heavy she could barely see the pupils behind them.
“You oughtn’t be up there,” he said, and his voice sounded like sandpaper felt.
Heat raced across Jenine’s face. “Sorry, I didn’t know it was off-limits. I just wanted a photo—”
“It’s not safe,” the man said, his face stony. “Little boy fell from up there a few years back.
Died.”
“Oh,” Jenine whispered. She gazed up the length of the tower, and unease dribbled down her back. There was only one place someone could fall from: the walkway around the light, where Jenine had taken her photos. She’d likely been standing where the child had spent his last moments on earth.
She looked back down to see the elderly man shuffling away from her, toward the groundskeeper’s cottage behind the church. “Sorry,” she called, but if he heard her, he didn’t give any sign of it.
Jenine broke into a jog to get back to the other guests and arrived just in time to photograph the cake cutting. As she waited for the caterers to pass out the plates, she touched the Polaroid camera hanging around her neck. She wondered if it had belonged to the little boy. The thought made her feel queasy, and she pulled the camera off and hid it in her bag.
***
It was dark by the time Jenine got home. She opened the door to three mewling, disgruntled cats.
“I know, I know,” she whispered as she turned on the lights and waded through the rubbing, crying felines. “I wouldn’t like being left alone all day either. How about I give you a special treat to make up for it?”
She dished up three plates of wet food then went to her room to change her clothes. She’d dressed casually for the wedding, but slipping out of the slightly-too-tight jeans and into her pajama pants still felt good. Before throwing her jeans into the laundry, she frisked the pockets to make sure they didn’t hold any tissues or stray coins.
“Huh,” she muttered, pulling out the Polaroid. She’d forgotten about it in the buzz of the wedding.
The picture wasn’t bad, she supposed. It had the inherent graininess and off colors of a Polaroid but showed the wedding reception relatively clearly. Jenine had half expected the film to have gone bad after so long.
She smiled and pinned the picture to the corkboard above her bed. The board stored happy memories: train tickets from her trip to visit her quirky spinster aunts in the mountains. Zoo passes from when she and her best friend, Bree, had spent an afternoon watching the penguins. Letters, photographs, and trinkets hung above her head to give her pleasant dreams.
The three cats, finished with their dinner, filed into her room one by one and took their places on her quilt. Jenine showered quickly, then crawled into bed between the warm lumps of fur.
***
She dreamed about the photo. It was perfectly clear in her mind: the happy bride hanging onto the groom’s arm, talking to her father. A cluster of women gathered around the drinks table, already on the verge of being tipsy. The professional photographer arranging the bridesmaids in a line in front of the cake.
At the forefront of the picture stood a little boy. Blood ran down his distorted face from where the top of his skull had been crushed. He stared upward, directly at the camera he had once owned, oblivious to the wedding reception behind him. While the rest of the Polaroid was grainy, his eyes were sharper and clearer than any modern camera would have been able to achieve. They were completely white, bleached of iris and pupil.
Jenine woke with a smothered gasp. She grabbed at her covers, disturbing the nearest cat and causing it to roll over with a yawn. She sucked in a few tight breaths as she oriented herself, then reached for her bedside lamp.
The photograph hung from the corkboard directly above her bed. She carefully unpinned it and held it up to the light. To her relief, the boy was not there. The bride and groom were still talking to her father, the women still indulging in the relaxing powers of champagne, and the photographer still hustling the bridesmaids into a line—but there was no boy.
Jenine exhaled deeply and rubbed the chin of her largest cat, which was kneading her thigh. Something about the photograph was definitely off, though. She squinted and held it up, straining to make out the details.
Because the picture was so grainy, she hadn’t noticed it at first, but pale figures stood among the crowd. She counted six of them. Some were partially obscured by people or tables, and some seemed to be huddled among the partygoers, joining their conversations.
Jenine brushed her finger over the clearest figure, trying to understand it. The woman was transparent, looking almost like a human-shaped wisp of smoke.
Then she spotted a seventh figure. Crouched behind one of the shrubs that bordered the church’s lawn was a little boy, his knees pulled up to his chin and his arms wrapped around them. He was hidden so well that he was barely visible except for his head, which was turned toward the lighthouse.
Jenine threw the picture onto her bedside table and clambered out of bed, trying not to disturb the cats again. She pulled on a robe and slippers and looked at her clock. It was just past four in the morning. Too early to call Bree.
She went to her kitchen, turning on every light in her path. She switched on the radio before heating some milk over the stove, then sat on the edge of a wooden chair, mug clasped between unsteady hands, and waited out the early morning hours.
***
Bree opened shop two hours before anyone else Jenine knew. Rosie Posy, Bree’s flower shop, was a tiny corner store near the heart of their rural town. It was small, but the shop was brightly lit and overflowing with bunches and boxes of flowers. Bree had forgone university and used her life savings and a substantial loan from her parents to open the shop when she was nineteen. It got by reasonably well, making her enough money to pay her bills and her part-time assistant, Nina.
The distinctive smell of pollen and sap mingled with floral scents hit Jenine as she pushed open the door. Bree was already behind the counter, preparing homegrown daisies while she waited for the biweekly delivery of fresh flowers.
Jenine and Bree made an unlikely set of best friends. Jenine was reclusive and thoughtful; Bree was loud and active. Jenine was ungracefully tall and wore her tawny hair long and straight, but Bree, who was short and stocky, frequently added colors to her black undercut. That morning, it was streaked with pink.
Bree broke into a grin when she saw Jenine. “Morning, Sprocket! I missed you at the after-wedding party last night.”
“Sorry, I was tired. Was it fun?”
“Absolutely. What could be more fun than watching Vince throw up all over Tiffany while they were slow-dancing?” Bree leaned forward conspiratorially. “Because that totally happened.”
“Eww. See, that is the exact reason I don’t do parties.”
“Clearly, your fun-o-meter is broken.” Bree pointed her scissors at a stool, indicating Jenine should take it. “Talking about things you don’t normally find fun—how come you’re up so early?”
Jenine pulled up the stool to sit at the counter opposite Bree. “Actually, I wanted to ask you about a photograph I took at Helen’s wedding yesterday. Some weird things have shown up in it.”
Bree continued to hack at the daisies, pulling off leaves and trimming stems. “Do we mean weird in a hilarious way or weird in a creepy way?”
“Creepy. Definitely creepy.”
“Sweet,” Bree said. “Let’s have a look. Ooh, nice angle. Where’d you scurry off to?”
“The lighthouse,” Jenine said, watching Bree scan the image, waiting for her to notice the pale shapes.
“Damn, girl, clever thinking. Hey, there I am!” Bree jabbed her finger onto an orange-and-red blob near the bride.
Jenine forced herself to be patient. “Notice anything odd?”
“Hell yeah. Why did you downgrade your Nikon to a Polaroid? It’s the twenty-first century, Jenny. People use digital now.” Bree glanced up and placed one hand over her heart, feigning concern. “Are you in trouble? Do you need money?”
“Be serious,” Jenine said, waving the picture in Bree’s face. “I found the camera in the
lighthouse. But look at these!”
Bree, determined to play out her joke, clapped her hands to either side of her face in horror. “Jenny, you stole? I can’t believe it! Oh, it can’t be! Poor, sweet, innocent Jenny has been reduced to a life of crime!”
“Hnnng.” Jenine dropped her head onto the counter in frustration. “The picture, Bree. I think there are ghosts in the picture.”
“And she’s hallucinating too!” Bree cried, but she picked up the Polaroid to have a second look.
For the first time since Jenine had entered the store, Bree lapsed into silence. Her smile faded into bewilderment, which in turn morphed into intrigue. Without saying a word, she set the photo on the counter, then disappeared into the storeroom at the back of the shop. She returned carrying a square magnifying glass. She placed it directly over one of the pale shapes in the photo and put her eye to it. Jenine held her breath while her friend examined the image.
“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 recognize any of these people. I never forget a face, and I swear, I’ve never seen these people in my life.”
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 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 was 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 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 male 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 him—it looks like he’s really there. With double exposure, two images are juxtaposed, and you’ll get all the awkwardness that goes along with that. Objects will be the wrong size; people will be floating in midair. But he’s not. He’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. “Do you still have the camera?”
“Oh, yeah.” Jenine pulled it out of her bag and handed it to Bree.
“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 cause any damage. “Mind if I take a picture?”
“Go for it.”
Bree pointed the camera at Jenine and clicked the button.
The light blinded Jenine for a second, and when she blinked, white blobs floated across her vision. “Harsh flash.”
“Quit your whining.” Bree grinned, placing the undeveloped picture under her desk’s place mat 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 picked up a roll of ribbon, which she began to cut into lengths. “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 him.” Bree threw the empty ribbon roll toward 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 chili sauce he could find and slathered it all over my sandwich without telling me. It burned so bad I thought I was dying. That butt-face filmed the whole thing and says he’s going to upload it and watch it go viral.”
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 turned it around. 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 colors Polaroids specialized in saturated the picture.
The only colorless 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 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. 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. Just bringing the flowers.” Burke, the deliveryman, 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, Breanna,” Burke said as Bree hurried to get his pay out of the till.
“Thanks. See you Tuesday?”
“Sure as rain. You ladies have a good day now.”
Bree waited until his truck had rumbled to life and driven away before speaking. “You’d better go.” Her voice was steadier, but her fingers still trembled faintly 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, girl. 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 realized she hadn’t fed them that morning. Cooing apologies, she fished food from the cupboard and divided it onto plates. As her cats ate, Jenine’s gaze turned toward the photos.
She pulled out her law books instead. She was nearly two years into the three-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 the textbook while the photos in the envelope tugged at her mind.
Could the camera be a prank? Maybe it was 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 new images appropriately, but that was still within the realm of digital ability, right?
Jenine slammed her book shut and picked up the envelope. She reached for the seal, hesitated, put the envelope 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 organized; 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, focused 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 were 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 was fake, there would be clues. All she had to do was find them, which was easier said than done. The Polaroid was
grainy and the colors looked like they’d been applied with a 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 its transparent face matched the store’s lighting. The edge of the counter covered the lower half of its body.
Jenine caught her breath. There was a second ghost in the photo. The picture caught the edge of the window overlooking the street. On the other side of the glass was the boy from the wedding—the boy who Jenine was sure had owned the camera. His face was barely more than a faint smudge in the glaring light.
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 images 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 loud enough to override the anxious thoughts spinning through her mind.
Then she went back to the kitchen to retrieve the bottle of wine her aunt had given to her as a gift when she’d graduated from college. 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 the audio from a home renovation competition while she stared at the wall, trying to ignore the camera.
***
Just after seven o’clock that night, Jenine heard the front door to her apartment rattle open. Even without turning around, she knew who it was. Bree was the only person she trusted enough to have a spare key.
The house was lit up as bright as Jenine could make it, and the news was blaring from the TV. Bree put two shopping bags onto the kitchen counter and leaned over the back of the couch where Jenine was slouched. “Hey, hon. I tried calling but you didn’t answer. Rough day?”
Jenine 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 understanding flashed over her face. “You took more photos, didn’t you? ...
