by Darcy Coates
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.
Chapter Two
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 lin
e, 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.”
Bree reached over and mussed Jenine’s hair. “Oh, babe, that’s inescapable. If I curled up into a defeated little ball just because people didn’t like me—”
“How could anyone not like you?” Jenine laughed.
Bree mussed her hair harder.
Jenine sat up and pulled her knees under her chin. “Do you think we should show someone?”
Bree didn’t answer straight away, but stared at the corner opposite her, where the woman had been standing in the photograph. “Who would you show it to?”
“Ghost hunters? They’re real, not just on TV, right?”
“Sure. Anything can be a job, just as long as you can find someone who’ll pay you.”
“So we could take the pictures to one of them. Or maybe a photography expert? Or what about a journalist?”
Bree laughed. “Wouldn’t they just call it a hoax? We live in a world of Photoshop, babe. Anything can be faked.”
“So what if we got fresh film and gave them a live demonstration? That’d be pretty hard to argue with.”
Bree sucked on her teeth. “Yeah. Maybe. You want to be famous?”
“No.” Jenine paused, reached down and patted the cat at her side. “No, I mean—no. I guess I just… I want it to be someone else’s problem.”
“Yeah. So do I.”
They both turned to look at the corner, examining the neat plaster and trimming. Jenine wondered if the woman with the crooked knees still stood there.
“I still have some contacts in the photography business,” Bree said. “Someone will probably be able to rustle up some Polaroids. I don’t think there are many around anymore, but we’ll only need a few.”
Jenine was the first to look away from the corner of the room. “Do you think ours is the only camera that does this?”
“Ours?” Bree laughed. “It’s your camera, babe. Don’t lump me in with your problems.”
“Be serious. What do you think?”
“I think… well, it’s got to be a one-in-a-million—maybe one-in-a-billion—chance that it is. I don’t think this is the only one.”
“We might be able to find something about it online, then.”
“The majestic Google will answer our every question.”
“Come on, Bree. I’m trying to be serious.”
Bree snickered. “I am, I am. Google knows everything. Just type in ‘my camera takes pictures of ghosts, how do I make it stop, please,’ and it’ll answer you.”
Jenine threw her pillow at Bree, but she couldn’t stop herself from joining in the laughter. For a few brief moments, she imagined she was in middle school again, carefree and safe at a sleepover at Bree’s place.
Jenine woke shortly after nine in the morning. By the state of the kitchen and living room, she guessed Bree had already been up for several hours. She pulled herself to her feet, kicking aside stray cushions and chip bags.
> She found Bree in the spare room, practicing Pilates in a space she’d cleared in the floor. She was puffing and sweating and had her game face on.
Jenine shook her head and rubbed sleep out of her eyes. “Don’t you ever slow down?”
“Life’s too short to go slow.” Bree contorted her body into a pose that looked neither comfortable nor healthy. “Come, grasshopper, sit, and I will show you the wonders of early morning exercise.”
“I’m good. Don’t you need to be at work?”
“It’s a Saturday.”
“So? You always work on Saturdays.”
Bree shook her short mane out of her eyes as she rolled onto her back and began pumping her legs. “Decided I’d prefer to keep my weekends to myself. I called Nina. She doesn’t mind picking up the extra shifts.”
Jenine sat down on the floor and pulled her legs in under her. “You’re doing this so you can stay with me, aren’t you?”
“Well, I was going to play the role of the anonymous martyr, but if you must spoil my fun—yes.”
“Don’t, Bree, really. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Who says this is for you, doll?” Bree let out a huge puff of air and pulled herself into a sitting position. Jenine had always thought Pilates was a gentle, delicate sort of exercise, but Bree’s regime was significantly more taxing and aggressive than she had imagined. “If you want the pure and honest truth, I’m not so thrilled about this ghost stuff, either. You saw that gal in my shop. Hell, I don’t want to be sitting around there all day with just her for company.”
Jenine smiled. “Thanks, Bree.”
“I mean it. If I had to choose between spending the day with you and a ghastly, hideous being from another plane, you’d win. Just barely, though.” She winked and began folding up the blanket she’d been exercising on. “Got any plans for today?”
“Legal reading. But I don’t think I’ll get far with that.”
“Good, because I called one of my contacts, and he’s got a few packs of Polaroid film he’ll sell us. Give me a minute to shower and we can go get them.”