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CAMERA
I knew what he was referring to. The Polaroid camera in the study.
“Thank you, Curtis.” As I whispered it, I realized I was never going to hear from him again. He’d told me everything he could. The rest was up to me. So before leaving the bells, I added a somber, sincere “I hope this frees you from this place. I really do. I hope you find peace.”
With that, I made my way up three sets of stairs, my joints creaking the entire climb. In the third-floor study, I found what I was looking for in the closet.
A blue shoebox full of Polaroids.
I sorted through them, seeking the ones I’d neglected to look at the day I discovered the box. Photo after photo of Curtis Carver’s increasingly haunted face. I wondered if, when he took them, he felt as helpless as I did. If he was as worried and racked with the same guilt that weighed on me.
The images of Curtis were so similar that I needed to look at the dates scribbled below them to indicate which ones I hadn’t already seen. July 12th. That was one was new. As were pictures from July 13th and 14th.
The last Polaroid sat facedown at the bottom of the box. Flipping it over, I saw that, like the others, the date it had been taken had been written across the bottom of the photo.
July 15th.
A year to the day since Curtis Carver killed himself.
My gaze moved from the date to the image itself. At first, it looked like the others. But a second glance revealed something different from the rest of the photos. Something deeply, deeply wrong.
Someone else was in the room with Carver.
A dark figure tucked into a far corner of the study.
Although Maggie had called her Miss Pennyface, I knew her by another name.
Indigo Garson.
She looked exactly like the woman in the portrait. Same purple dress and ethereal glow. The only difference between her painting and her ghost was her eyes.
They were covered by coins.
Yet it was clear she could still see. In the photograph, she stared at the back of Curtis Carver’s head, almost as if she could read his thoughts.
I was still studying the picture when a presence entered the room, invisible yet palpably felt.
“Curtis, is that you?”
I received no response.
Yet the presence increased, filling the room with a heat so strong it was almost suffocating. Inside that menacing warmth was something even more disturbing.
Anger.
It burned through the room like fire.
I grabbed the camera from the desk and took a self-portrait similar to the ones Curtis had taken.
The shutter clicked.
The camera hummed.
A picture slid out, its pristine whiteness slowly giving way to an image.
Me.
Arms extended. Staring at the camera. Expanse of study behind me.