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Looking down at the image, the first thing I noticed was that the exposure was way off. There wasn’t nearly enough light in the bedroom, and I’d been too woozy to change the lens settings, which were adjusted for an outside shoot in the sun. Everything in the picture was darker than it should have been, which meant the image should have been a black, underexposed rectangle.
But it wasn’t.
There was something there.
The air left my lungs completely, and my hands clenched the sides of the camera in a death grip.
What I had thought up to that moment was a bright splotch of light—in the woods with Ashleen, on the TV screen, and in front of the small house on the far side of town—was a ghost. The ghost of a girl.
But she wasn’t like any ghost I’d ever seen before.
She was moving.
In a photograph.
Her whole body flickered slightly, like a neon sign about to burn out. The flickering gave the impression of a glow around her, and her form was slightly blurred, like she was making a million tiny movements. And even in my photo…she was quaking.
She floated directly over my bed, her body crooked and broken, arms askew and neck bent to a horrific angle.
The pose looked like she’d fallen—but she was hovering in midair. Her hair swung raggedly in front of her face, almost reaching my pillow. Her left arm hung down, and her left hand held a bouquet of yellow roses.
And she was wearing the purple dress.
The same one I saw myself in. The same one Ashleen’s ghost wore.
Almost in a panic, I crashed into my dresser and then threw open my bedroom door, trying to get as far away from the ghost as possible. I ended up in the kitchen, with my back against the sliding door that led to our tiny patch of backyard.
“Lydia!” I whispered.
But Lydia didn’t pop out of thin air. How long did it usually take her to come, I wondered?
Holding my breath, I looked back at the picture, at the trembling figure.
And then—she turned her head. The ghost in the picture turned her head. And looked at me.
Except she didn’t have eyes. Where they should have been were just dark sunken patches of smooth skin, like two round shadows on her face.
But she saw me—I know she did.
Through a photograph.
I stood in shock, my breath coming in tiny puffs. I glanced at the hall, expecting to see a trembling cloud of white light float out of my bedroom.
Then I heard the sound again—vzzzzzzzz—coming from behind me.
Before I had the sense not to do it, I turned around and took another picture, looking out the glass doors toward the yard. She was there. And she was closer—she filled almost the whole frame.
I stared at her waves of golden hair—which, up close, were covered in dirt. Where her hair and skin met, the skin was begi
But the worst of it was the space where her eyes should have been.
It would have almost been better if there were disgusting empty eye sockets, because at least that would have been real—but this hollow smoothness was like something from a nightmare. It was impossible and horrible and yet it was right there in front of me—staring me down.
I thought, I don’t know if I can do this.
“What—” I choked. “Who are you?”
I raised the camera and took another photograph. In this image she’d begun to lean forward through the sliding glass door, and her head and face and dress and flowers were actually coming right through it, as if the glass were nothing but a sheet of falling water.
I stepped back and snapped another picture.
Now she was in the kitchen with me.
“Wait—” I took one last photo and looked down at it.
She was smiling, revealing a mouth of blackened teeth, sharpened to points. Her gums were gray and decaying.
The vzzzzz seemed to waver and change, until it was a new sound:
Hisssssssssssssss
And suddenly I understood something, down to the core of my being—
This was not a good ghost.
I swallowed hard, letting the camera fall to the end of its strap. My voice trembled like a flag in a windstorm. “Go…away.”
Then she laughed—the horrible, musical, maniacal laugh.
That’s when it clicked for me. Every time I’d heard that laugh—every time I’d seen the light—this thing had been there. This horrible, disgusting thing…this thing that had been in my bedroom—hanging over me—watching me.
In a burst of terror, I turned and ran, desperately trying to get away from the laughter and the teeth and the non-eyes. But the laughter came with me, like it was playing through headphones that were glued onto my ears.
I skidded around the corner and down the hall toward my room, gasping in shock as I saw another figure standing in my path.
At first I thought it was Lydia.
But this figure was solid, and I ran into it, and both of us went flying, and the next thing I knew, my sister was sputtering beneath me like an angry cat.
“What are you doing?!” she demanded, pushing me off her and getting to her feet.
I didn’t answer because I was too busy looking behind me. The laughter was gone, but that didn’t mean that she—it—whatever it was—wasn’t still following me, hovering, gri
“What’s going on?” Kasey asked. “You look like you just saw a…”
I turned to her. I don’t know what my face looked like, but her expression changed as though someone had flipped a switch. She went from irritated to dead serious.
“Lexi,” she whispered, shaking her head. “What exactly are you doing?”
“Nothing,” I said.
She looked in the direction of the living room.
“No,” I said.
She whipped her head toward me.
“Kasey,” I said. “Don’t. Just go back to bed. Please.”
She glanced past me toward the end of the hallway. Her eyes came back to meet mine, and we stared at each other for a long, terrible minute.
Then, so fast her nightgown swished around her legs, she turned and stormed into her bedroom.
I got into my bed, but I didn’t sleep. I just sat there with the light on.
I was so tired that I began to see swirls of color in my vision, but I didn’t lie down, didn’t rest my head.
Didn’t even close my eyes longer than it took to blink.
For the whole night.
THE NEXT DAY, I got to school early and went to the yearbook office, where I found Chad hunched over a layout, as usual.
When I sat down at one of the open computers, I found that the internet was blocked.
“What’s up?” Chad asked. “There’s a lot of disgruntled sighing coming from your side of the room.”
My sleepless night left me feeling like the world’s grouchiest zombie. “I’m trying to look something up,” I said. “But I can’t.”
He wheeled his chair over and looked over my shoulder before I thought to minimize the screen.
“‘Supernatural yellow roses,’” he read. He sat back and looked at me.
“It’s…a band,” I said. “My cousin’s punk band.”
He thought about it, then nodded. “Catchy name. Do they have any songs out?”
“Probably nothing you’ve heard of.”
He shrugged and reached for the mouse, going through a series of menus and typing in a bunch of long codes. Then he sat back. “Chad rules, firewall drools. Cyberstalk crappy bands to your heart’s content.”
“Thanks,” I said. But none of my searches pulled up any relevant results. Nothing was written about a ghost that could move, or about ghosts wearing clothes other than the ones they died in.