Ghost Camera

By Darcy Coates

© 2014

Cover © Phycel Designs 2014

DESCRIPTION

A small number of cameras have the ability to capture ghosts on film. This gift comes at a steep price; the ghosts are resentful and hungry, and the cameras offer them a rare chance to reach their favourite prey… humans.

Jenine doesn’t know any of this when she finds an abandoned Polaroid camera in a lighthouse. At first she assumes the ghostly shapes in the photos are a glitch or a prank – but then the spirits begin to hunt her down, and she’s forced into a deadly race to free herself from the camera’s curse.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter One

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 nearly a decade before. A strangely sticky dust, infused with salt by the wind that swept over the bluff, covered every surface and made her shoes gum to the floor.

The now-defunct light hung in the centre 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 sneaker bumped something small and solid.

Someone had abandoned a black-and-grey 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 photo.

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 took a step back as an aging, sour-looking man blocked her way.

“You aughtn’t be up there,” he said, and paused to spit on the ground. “It’s not safe. Little boy fell from the landing a few years back. Died.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Jenine whispered. She gazed up the length of the tower, and unease dribbled down her back. She felt strange, knowing she had likely been standing where a child had spent his last moments on earth.

She looked back down to see the elderly man shuffling away from her, towards the groundskeeper’s cottage behind the church. “Sorry,” she called, but if he heard her, he didn’t give any sign of it.

Jenine hurried to join the other guests, arriving 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 raw meat 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 pyjama 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 colours of a Polaroid, but showed the wedding reception relatively clearly. Jenine had half-expected the film to be a dud 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 crazy spinster aunts in the mountains, and 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 balls 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. The three aunts 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 upwards, 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 shriek. She grabbed at her covers, disturbing the nearest cat and causing it to roll over with a yawn. She huffed in a few tight breaths as she oriented herself, then turned on 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 aunts still indulged in the relaxing powers of champagne, and the photographer was still hustling the bridesmaids into a line—but there was no boy.

Jenine exhaled deeply and rubbed the chin of the largest cat, which was kneading her thigh. Something about the photograph was definitely off, though, and after a moment, Jenine realised what it was. 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 sat 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 towards the lighthouse.

Jenine threw the picture onto her bedside table and clambered out of bed, careful not to disturb the cats again. She pulled on a dressing gown and slippers and looked at her clock: 4:00 a.m. Too early to call Bree.

She went into the kitchen, turning on every light in her path. She filled the kettle and turned on the radio, then made toast to while away the early-morning hours.

Bree opened shop two hours before anyone else Jenine knew. Rosie Posy, Bree’s floristry, was a tiny corner store near the centre of their rural town. Although it was small, 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 ticked over 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 flower scents hit Jenine’s nose as she pushed open the door. Bree was already behind the counter, preparing home-grown daisies while she waited for the bi-weekly delivery of fresh flowers.

Jenine and Bree’s friendship was the quintessential attraction of opposites. Jenine was reclusive and passive; 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 colours to her pixie-cut of black curls. 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?” 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 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 a picture at Helen’s wedding yesterday, and some weird things have shown up on 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, putting on a fake-concern face. “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 mock horror. “Jenny, you stole? I can’t believe it! Oh, lordy! 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 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.

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 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.”

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.”

Chapter Three

They took Bree’s car, a tiny pink thing with ads for her floristry plastered across the doors. Bree’s phone rang not long after they left the suburbs.

“Should we answer that?” Jenine asked the second time it played the Kpop ringtone.

“Nope.” Bree’s face could have been made out of granite.

“Is… is it Travis?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.” Jenine stared at the ringing phone as it flashed inside Bree’s bag.

Bree and Travis had argued before, sometimes having huge screaming matches, but they’d always made up quickly. Travis would come around with a bunch of flowers he’d stolen from the neighbour’s garden or bring tickets for an indie band, and Bree would keep up the pretence of anger for two minutes, tops. Their most recent spat was different, though. Bree was really, truly mad at him in a way Jenine had never seen before.

“Have you spoken to him since yesterday?”

“Yep. Don’t ask.” Bree turned the radio on and grinned. “Oh man, I love this song.”

That put a stop to the conversation for the rest of the hour drive.

They arrived at a house with a garden choked with weeds, an empty, crooked birdbath, and peeling paint. Piles of dead, rotting vegetation sat in the corner of the yard.

“This is it?” Jenine asked.

“Looks like it.” Bree was in high spirits as she bounded out of the car and up the driveway.

The transaction took less than a minute. An aged, balding man answeredF the door, and he seemed genuinely happy to see Bree. He handed over an envelope in exchange for a handful of cash then waved them off.

They sat in the car while Jenine opened the packet and fit the ten Polaroids into the camera.

“We’d better test it,” Bree suggested. “Take a photo of the house. It looks ancient, and I’ll bet there’s a pile of spirits hanging around.”

Jenine aimed the camera and clicked the button. Bree took the Polaroid that it spat out and tucked it into the glove box before the light could damage it. “Want to stop somewhere on the way home?” she asked as she put the car into gear.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Doesn’t matter to me. The beach. A park. Disneyland.”

“Disneyland?” Jenine laughed. “As if I could afford the ticket. We can’t all be rich like you.”

Bree scoffed, but her face was serious. “It’s cool. I’ll shout you.”

“What? Absolutely not.”

Bree pursed her lips but didn’t push it.

Jenine stared out the window at the houses speeding by. The fresh, hot day had just enough breeze to stop it from being unbearably warm. The weather was too nice to spend the day indoors, but Jenine suspected that wasn’t why Bree had suggested they stop somewhere.

“You really don’t want to talk to Travis, do you?”

Bree considered her answer carefully. “No. I think we might be over this time.”

“Because of the prank?”

“No.” Bree shook her head, and even though she was smiling, tears gathered in her eyes. “No, no, this was just a… a culmination, I guess.”

Jenine waited, letting the silence stretch out as a gentle encouragement to continue.

Bree wiped her eyes, smudging her makeup. “He called me this morning, before you woke up. I… said some stuff I shouldn’t have. He blew up. Started dragging up all these things I’d thought we were over. Old stuff. I got mad. He called me crazy. Said I’m a psycho. That I’m ruining his life.” She fell silent, dragging in thick gulps of air. Her mascara was smearing, and her fingers twitched on the wheel from agitation.

Jenine tried to say something helpful, but her mind was blank. She managed to mumble, “I don’t think you’re a psycho.”

Bree laughed and rubbed at her eyes. “You’re alright, babe. You know that? You’re alright. Let’s go somewhere. You pick.”

They ended up taking a detour to a seaside park. Bree stopped the car under a tree and stretched, rotating her shoulders to loosen them. “You’re lucky I bring an emergency picnic kit in the back of my car.”

“Seriously?” Jenine squirmed to look behind her. “Where do you even keep it?”

“Where the spare tire should be. Hey, did you want to check the photo before we get out?”

Jenine opened the glove box and pulled out the square card. One part of her expected to see ghosts milling about the building as they had been at her home. The other part expected the photo to be empty, just a boring, aged house in a boring, aged suburb.

What was actually in the picture made her shudder. A woman, all pale greys and blacks, was pressed up against the car window. Her hands were splayed against the glass, ending not in fingernails, but in yellowed claws. Thin hair floated about her wrinkled face, and her white, sightless eyes stared intently. Her mouth was open wide in a silent scream, much wider than it ever could have opened in life, and the blackness inside seemed to go on forever.

Bree grimaced. “Euch. Lovely. I guess at least the camera works.”

“Right,” she replied automatically, staring at the woman’s dress, which looked incredibly familiar. Her mind turned back to the very first photo she’d taken with the camera. A woman with a shock of white hair had been standing beside the cake table, wearing a dress with a very similar floral print. She couldn’t possibly be the same woman, could she?

Bree got out of the car and stalked to the boot. “Give me a hand, won’t you?” she yelled, wrestling her picnic basket out.

Jenine shoved the photo back into the glove box then turned to open the door. She froze. Two hand prints had been left on the glass. Surely it couldn’t be…?

Bree called her again, and Jenine scooted out of the car as quickly as her feet could move her.

Bree had been surprisingly resourceful when setting up her emergency picnic basket, which was stocked with canned soup, packet biscuits and long-life fruit juice. Jenine couldn’t help but imagine it was intended to double as supplies for an apocalypse.

The large park was shady, and one side overlooked the ocean. They found a tree in a relatively empty corner and unpacked the basket. Bree had brought every type of cutlery imaginable except for a can opener, so they ate the biscuits and drank the juice while watching a group of children play tag at the other side of the park.

“This is nice,” Jenine said to break the silence. “We haven’t done this for ages.”

“I know. You’re always too busy with the law books.”

Jenine choked on her biscuit. “What? When have I ever turned down a chance to hang out? You’re the one who spends all day in your store.”

“You hardly ever visit me, either.” Bree sighed, throwing herself backwards onto the grass. “You think you’re too good for me now that you’re getting your big ol’ lawyer degree.”

Jenine took a second to realise her friend was teasing. She laughed. “Solicitor. And you know I love you.”

“You skipped my last birthday party!”

“Left early,” she corrected. “I stayed as long as I could. You know I hate crowds.”

“You didn’t notice when I got my hair cut.”

“I did, too!”

“Nearly two weeks after the event, babe.” Bree laughed and poked Jenine’s thigh. “I swear, you’re worse than Travis.”

Jenine couldn’t stop herself from pouting. “Fine. You got me. I’m a terrible human being and you’re the reincarnation of Buddha.”

Bree grinned as she rolled onto her stomach. “Don’t sulk. I can’t help it if I’m perfect in every single way.”

“And very humble, to boot.”

“You know it.”

Jenine gazed at the families who were slowly filling up the park for lunchtime. She found herself thinking about their futures, wondering how many of the couples would still be together in twenty years, which of them would die prematurely, and how many would still be talking to each other in a decade. Half, maybe?

“We’re good friends, aren’t we?” she asked Bree.

“The best.”

“I wish we could keep doing this forever.”

“Who says we can’t?” Bree sat up and wrapped an arm around Jenine’s shoulder. “It’s not like I’d let something silly like mortality get in the way of our friendship.”

“I was being serious.”

“Okay.” Bree kicked her feet out in front of herself. “Maybe we won’t always be together. Maybe you’ll get that cool job in the big city. Maybe I’ll start a new floristry in Antarctica. But I’d like to think that we’re the kind of friends who could meet up one day when we’re eighty and talk like we’d just seen each other yesterday.”

Jenine rested her head on Bree’s shoulder and smiled. Bree seemed to have a knack for verbalising exactly what Jenine needed to hear. She closed her eyes and listened to the wind whipping through the branches above them and the shrieking children in the play area. She felt comfortable. Safe.

An ice-cold finger grazed Jenine’s neck. She jerked forward and clamped her hand over where she’d been touched.

“What’s up?” Bree asked.

Jenine swivelled around, but there was nothing behind her except the tree. “I thought - I thought I felt something.”

“Insect, probably.”

Jenine kept her hand clamped over the back of her neck. Her skin tingled as though she’d been zapped with a low-voltage electric current. “Do you want to stay much longer?”

“Nah,” Bree said. “It’s about time we got going. You mind if I stay with you again tonight?”

“That would be nice.” She helped Bree pack her picnic basket and shove it into the boot. The sun was hot and the air smelled of summer, but she couldn’t stop shivering, even after she got into the overheated car.

Bree got into the driver’s seat and turned the engine over. Jenine reached out a hand to stop her. “Hang on. I want to try something.”

She pulled the camera out of the glove box, aimed it at the tree they’d been sitting under, and took a photo.

“Ready to go?”

Jenine tucked the undeveloped Polaroid into her pocket. “Sure.”

“I’ll pick up some clothes from my place on the way home,” Bree said as she exited the freeway. “Your stuff doesn’t fit me properly, anyway.”

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault you’re a bean-pole,” Bree teased. “I’ll grab my order forms while I’m there. I can use this weekend to make a list of everything I’m running low on.”

“You don’t need to be in the store for that?”

“Huh? No. I’ve got it memorised.”

Jenine sucked her teeth ruefully. She needed a to-do list if she had more than three tasks on her plate.

Bree’s apartment sat above the floristry. The street was quiet for a Saturday afternoon; a handful of parked cars were scattered down the curb, but most stores were already closed. Bree drove past two free spots in front of the floristry without slowing down.

“Aren’t we stopping?”

“Changed my mind,” Bree said. Her tone was abrupt and her mouth had set into a thin line.

Jenine swivelled in her seat to watch the floristry disappear behind them. “Hey, isn’t that Travis’s car?”

Bree didn’t reply, and Jenine felt acutely uncomfortable. “Oh.”

She wondered how long he’d been waiting there for Bree to come back. Bree hadn’t answered her phone all day. He had to be worried, and it wasn’t like Bree to ignore him for so long.

“I might have to borrow your clothes again, babe,” Bree said. Her voice had softened, but a frown had set in above her eyes.

“Yeah, sure. Are you—I mean—”

“I’ll talk to him eventually,” Bree said. “Just not right now.”

“And… and you didn’t need the order forms?”

“I’ll do them Monday.”

They got back to Jenine’s place late in the afternoon. The air was still hot, but the humidity had dropped to a more comfortable level. Bree turned the kettle on while Jenine put the camera on top of the fridge. The three cats wove themselves about her legs, mewling and bumping against her.

“Okay, okay, slow down,” Jenine whispered as she got their food out of the fridge.

The mattresses and blankets were where they’d left them that morning. Jenine didn’t see any point in putting them away if they were just going to come out again in six hours, so she kicked them into alignment and picked up the empty chip bags and glasses from the coffee table.

“What do you want to do first?” Bree asked. “Take some time to study or look up a ghost hunting expert?”

Jenine rubbed a hand over the still-chilled part of her neck. “Let’s find the expert first. They probably won’t be able to come out for a few days, anyway.”

“Laptop?”

“In my bedroom.”

Jenine got out two mugs and poured the boiling water into them while Bree fetched the computer. She made tea for herself and coffee—extra strong, no sugar and lots of milk—for Bree. Her friend had set up the laptop on the kitchen table and was opening Google by the time she brought the mugs over.

“Is there a technical name for someone who investigates ghosts?” Bree asked, fingers poised over the keyboard.

“If there is, I haven’t heard of it.”

“We’ll start with ‘ghost researcher,’ then.”

Surprisingly, the search brought up quite a few results. Bree opened the top link, which led to the blog of a researcher named Richard Holt, who lived about an hour away.

“Ghosts… damned or desperate?” Bree read, scrolling down the page. “The truth about the Mallory Haunting. Haunted Items vs. haunted locations. Hey, this could be good.”

“Does he have a contact number?”

“Yeah.” Bree opened the Contact Us page. “Looks like he charges an hourly fee, though.”

“Okay, sure.” Jenine felt silly for expecting someone to help them for free. Her funds were tight, but she could probably get a loan from the bank or sell the TV she didn’t use.

Bree had her mobile out and was dialling the number. “We’ll split it.”

“What? Hey, no. You don’t have to—” Jenine withered under Bree’s glare.

“We’ll split this thing fifty-fifty. That means any profits from interviews or book deals or whatever, too. Sound fair?”

“Oh, sure, okay.” She doubted they were likely to make a profit off the camera, but the idea was tempting. She still couldn’t shake the feeling that Bree was doing her a favour, though.

“Yes, hello?” Bree said into the phone. “Okay, great. Sorry for calling on a weekend. My friend and I have a ghost problem we’d like to talk with you about.”

Bree put the phone on the table and pressed the speaker button just in time for Jenine to hear: “Well, that’s my specialty. Haunted item or haunted location?” Richard’s smooth voice reminded Jenine of the relationship advisor who had a segment on evening radio.

“Item,” Bree said.

“Good. They’re normally easier to deal with. Would you like me to make a house call, or would you prefer to visit my office?”

They exchanged a glance. “House call would be easier, if you’re travelling by us. We’re in West Harob.”

“I have a few clients down that way. That shouldn’t be a problem. I have Tuesday afternoon free, if that suits you?”

Jenine whispered, “What about the floristry?”

Bree waved her away. “Tuesday’s great.”

“Excellent. I’ll take a few details, if you don’t mind. What’s the item, and how long has it been a problem?”

“It’s an old Polaroid camera my friend found two days ago. The pictures all have ghost… spirit… things in them.”

The line was silent. Jenine and Bree exchanged a glance.

“Uh… hello? Still there?”

“I won’t be able to help you,” the man said. The mellow tone had disappeared from his voice, which had become curt and vaguely defensive. “I recommend you destroy the camera.”

“Wait, what? So you can’t get here on Tuesday? We can reschedule—”

“I won’t be able to help you,” he repeated, his tone lower, colder. “The best thing you can do is break and burn the camera. Goodbye.”

The line went dead. Jenine sat back in her chair and rubbed at her arms, feeling prickles trail up her neck.

“What the hell?” Bree snapped, tossing her phone onto the table. It bounced but didn’t break. “What a jerk.”

“Maybe we should try someone else.”

“Yeah, we’re going to do that. We’re going to find someone who isn’t a total jerk to prospective customers.”

Jenine cringed. “Hey, maybe cameras are out of his area. Maybe he only does cursed dolls or whatever.”

“Yeah, uh-huh.” Bree was mad. Jenine had seen her similarly angry a few times, mostly because of Travis, and she knew it was best to stay quiet while her friend worked through it.

That day, Bree’s method of working through it seemed to involve finding an alternative ghost expert as quickly as possible.

“Here,” she said, pulling up the second result. “Irene Sumner. Looks like… okay, so she specialises in haunted houses, but she should be able to handle a little camera, right?”

Irene answered quickly, and Bree put the phone on speaker. “Hey,” she said, unaware she was letting anger seep into her voice. “We have a camera that takes pictures of ghosts. Could you look into it for us?”

“Oh, oh,” Irene said. She sounded like an older woman, and her voice was so soft that Bree had to increase the phone’s volume. “I’m sorry, darling, I really only handle haunted buildings. I haven’t had all that much success with haunted objects, I’m afraid.”

“Okay, thanks anyway.” Bree spoke through gritted teeth but managed to put a bit of cheer in her voice. “Have a lovely evening.”

“I could recommend someone, though.”

Bree’s jaw unclenched, and she leaned forward. “Yeah? That would be great.”

“There’s a gentleman who specialises in this area. He’s done a lot of work, published some great theories, and he lectures at one of the local colleges. He’s got a website you can look through, too. His name is Richard Holt.”

Bree’s smile returned to its plastic state. “Right,” she said. “Is there anyone else you could recommend?”

“Sorry, dear, he’s really the best. I mean, I would have suggested Jackson. He was a lovely fellow, really knew how to speak to spirits, but he moved to Canada last year.”

“Okay. Great. Thanks for your help.”

Bree hung up and turned to Jenine with a grim expression. “Richard Holt is a jerk,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m not calling him again. I’ll find someone else.”

“Sure. I… I’ll make us some fresh drinks.”

Jenine listened in on the next two phone conversations while she waited for the kettle to boil and made a tea for herself and coffee for Bree. The first call was with a middle-aged woman who breathed heavily and spoke with a nearly incomprehensible accent. She and Bree couldn’t understand each other, and Bree ended the call with an exasperated sigh. The call to the next ghost hunter seemed promising, until he brought up Richard Holt’s name.

To Bree’s credit, she remained polite and calm until she’d hung up. Then she threw her hands in the air with an exasperated groan. “Why’s everyone in love with this Holt jerk?”

Sensing Bree’s bad mood was breaking, Jenine brought over the cups. She sat forward in her chair and leaned her chin on her hands. “Maybe he really is the best.”

“Why hang up on us, then?”

Jenine shrugged.

Bree blew a gust of wind through her pursed lips. “Okay. We’ll call him again. Not that he deserves it.”

He answered on the second ring. The smooth tone was back into his voice as he said, “Richard Holt speaking. How can I help you?”

“Hey, yeah, we called you a bit earlier. We’ve got a problem with our camera.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course.” The tightness returned to his voice, but he didn’t try to hang up. “Did you destroy it?”

“Hell no. We don’t want it broken. We just want to know what’s happening. And we thought it might, I dunno, be useful for your type of people. Ghost investigators, that is.”

“No, I’m afraid it won’t. The best thing to do is break it apart and burn it.”

Bree pursed her lips as she glanced at Jenine. “Oh yeah? What’s making you say that? Do you have a camera of your own that you’re doing experiments on? Are you trying to stop us from stealing your thunder?”

She got a frustrated sigh in response. “Not at all. I’m trying to help. Destroy the camera.”

“Yeah, well, maybe we’ll take this straight to the media. I’m sure they’d love proof of life after death.”

“Don’t.” His voice was sharp. “Whatever you do, don’t give it to the media. Don’t show anyone else. Just… please. You have to trust me. What you have is a dangerous, sick aberration. It needs to be destroyed before it can do any further harm.”

“I’m going to level with you, Holt,” Bree said. She leaned over the table, placing one spread hand on either side of the phone as she loomed over it. “I don’t like you, and I don’t trust you. Both of those facts are making it pretty hard for me to want to follow your instructions. If you can help us, go ahead, but otherwise I’m going to have to hang up and do whatever I damn well please with my camera.”

Richard was silent for a very long time. Bree sat back in her chair, folded her arms and waited.

“Okay,” he said at last. “All right. You win. What’s your address?”

Chapter Four

Yawning, Bree stretched her arms above her head, reminding Jenine of one of her cats. “Well, I’d say that went alright. Mr Holt got to eat crow, and we get the supposed expert popping around this afternoon. Win-win.”

“For us, at least. He didn’t sound very happy.”

Bree stood up and carried her empty coffee mug to the sink. “I’ll bet it’s because he’s got his own camera. He doesn’t want us showing him up.” She paused and pursed her lips. “On that note, we’d better hide the camera. He’s a little too obsessed with its destruction for my liking.”

Jenine picked the camera up and turned it over in her hands. “In a drawer?”

“Works for me.”

Bree stashed the camera inside the coffee table’s drawer then rubbed her hands over her jeans. “You got anything else planned for today?”

“I’ve really got to do some reading,” Jenine apologised. “I’ve got an assignment on Wednesday.”

“It’s cool, babe. I can place orders for the store. Mind if I borrow your laptop?”

Bree set up the computer on the coffee table and sat on a cushion in front of it. Jenine made good headway on her reading, and Bree was considerate enough to move quietly whenever she refilled her coffee mug, which was often; Bree’s creative output was heavily dependent on how much caffeine was in her system.

It was nearing dinnertime and Jenine was close to wrapping up her work when she felt a breeze on the back of her neck. The sensation was as cold as a gust of air from the freezer, and it sent goose bumps along her skin. She jerked away from the chill, but the room behind her was empty.

Soft fingers brushed her arm, raising the hairs there. “Bree?” she called, jumping up from her seat and rubbing her hands across where she’d felt the sensations. “Bree, I’m freaking out.”

“What’s up, babe?” Bree leaned back from the computer, a pencil balanced between her upper lip and her nose. She had at least twenty tabs open to packaging sites and was holding a piece of paper covered in neat notes.

Jenine sat down next to her. “Things keep touching me. I don’t know what.”

“What, like—” Bree frowned as she made the connection. “You don’t mean ghosts, do you?”

“I don’t know!” Jenine combed her fingers through her hair. “Something cold. Like fingers. It happened at the park and again here.”

“Do you think a photo might show something?”

Jenine glanced at the drawer where the camera was hidden. Part of her wanted to try it, but the thought of glimpsing more of the entities sharing her home made her feel sick.

Bree wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s probably just that you’re on edge. You’re reacting to every little noise, every breeze, and wondering if it might be a ghost. Just try to relax, if you can. Can I get you something else to drink?”

“No.”

“Okay then, how about you help me pick out some new ribbons. I’m low on gold.”

Jenine nodded and tried to focus on the screen as Bree rattled through the options. She was grateful for the company. The warmth of Bree’s shoulder, the sound of her voice, and the simple fact that she didn’t have to spend the night alone was enough comfort to make her feel drowsy. She would have to do something about dinner soon, though. She considered taking the easy route and having a pizza delivered. She could even splurge a little and get the cheesy garlic bread Bree liked.

Fingers ran through her hair, grazed over the nape of her neck, and trailed over her shoulder. Her skin burnt cold where long fingernails scratched her.

Jenine jerked forward. “Bree! Cut that out!” Her voice was higher and more frantic than she had intended.

Bree stared at her in shock. “What, you don’t like the ruffles?”

“Don’t scratch me like that. It’s a horrible joke.”

Bree’s eyes were wide. “I… I didn’t.”

Jenine glanced down at Bree’s hand—her nails were short. Whatever had scratched her had been long and sharp. She touched a hand to the burning part of her neck, and her fingers came away with a smear of blood on them.

“Oh… oh…” She felt as if she was about to be sick. Her throat closed up, making it hard to breathe, and tears stung at the corners of her eyes. “Oh…”

Bree’s face was set in hard angles. She wrenched open the coffee table drawer, snatched up the camera, pointed it at Jenine, and took a picture. It spat out the undeveloped image, and she slid it into the drawer then hooked one arm under Jenine’s and pulled her to her feet. “Come on.”

Bree must have sensed Jenine was queasy, because they made it to the sink just in time. She held Jenine’s hair back and rubbed her shoulder as she gagged and retched.

“You okay?” she asked as Jenine slumped, shivering, onto the counter. She nodded, and Bree offered her a glass of water to rinse her mouth. “Listen, Jenny, I don’t know what happened back there, but it’s going to be okay. That expert jerk will be here soon. He’ll know what to do. Just don’t freak out on me, okay?”

“Okay,” Jenine mumbled, allowing Bree to lead her to a kitchen stool. Bree squeezed her arm then went to retrieve the laptop and the photo.

Jenine leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and willing her heart to slow. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see the photo.

Wait…

She’d completely forgotten about the photo she’d taken at the park. She stood and fumbled in her pocket for it.

It had come out well. She’d taken it from inside the car, facing the tree she and Bree had been sitting under, about twenty feet away. A couple of the picnicking families were visible at the edges of the picture, fishing food out of their baskets and playing with their toddlers. The ocean was mostly hidden by the thick bushes that grew along the park’s fence. Two spirits were present in the picture. A boy peered out from behind the trees Jenine and Bree had eaten under. He was watching the camera but seemed to be trying to hide.

The second spirit was a tall, gaunt man walking towards the car. He looked as though he belonged on a farm where they pumped water out of the well every morning and waited for the weekly mail delivery to hear about the life outside their secluded world. He held an axe one hand; its handle was long and its blade looked wickedly sharp. He’d been taking long strides towards the car when Jenine photographed him, and the skin around his bleached eyeballs was creased in a scowl. A stain on his overalls, large and dark, splattered up from his waist across his shoulder, leaving flecks of dark liquid on his cheek.

Jenine slapped the picture upside- down on the counter. She could feel her heart thundering in her ears as she rubbed her sweaty hands together.

“Feeling any better?” Bree slipped into the seat opposite. She’d brought the Polaroid she’d taken, but placed it face-down, out of Jenine’s reach.

“Of course,” Jenine lied. She waved a hand at the picture. “Did you look at it?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it… is something there?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I—”

“Nope.” Bree’s tone rejected argument. “Not when you’re this stressed, at least. It’ll only make things worse.”

Jenine leaned her arms on the table and cradled her head in them. Her heart was slowing, but the tightness in her chest wouldn’t relent. “This sucks.”

“It sure does.”

Jenine jumped as someone rapped on the door. She froze, wide-eyed, trying to imagine who would be visiting her at 6pm on a Sunday, then she remembered Richard Holt.

“I’ll get it,” Bree said, disappearing from the kitchen.

Jenine thought of the camera, and jumped up. Bree had left it on the coffee table, so she stashed it back in the drawer as Bree opened the front door.

“Mr Holt?”

“Yes, hello.” The man’s voice was tense, tight. “May I come in?”

Flustered, Jenine sat on the lounge and tried to smooth her hair back as Bree led an older man into her living room. In his black slacks, cardigan, and glasses, he looked like an old-fashioned British professor. His face was developing wrinkles but seemed mild and gentle.

He rubbed at his pants as he sat. “Thank you.”

“I’m Breeanna,” Bree introduced them, “and this is Jenine. Apparently you’re some sort of expert on ghost stuff.”

“Ghost stuff.” He chuckled, but it was a hollow sound. “Yes, I am considered an authority. I’ve worked on a few cases that made it to the news. Which one of you found the camera?”

Jenine raised her hand. “At a wedding. It had been left in a lighthouse.”

“I see. Have both of you taken photos with it, or…?”

“Both,” Bree said. “But Jenny more than me. Why?”

“May I see the photos?”

Bree glanced at Jenine, who nodded. Bree fetched the pictures from the kitchen table and handed them to Richard. He placed each picture on the coffee table after glancing at it then pushed the pile towards Bree when he was finished, almost as if he didn’t want to touch them.

“You have what I like to call a ghost camera,” Richard sighed. “It’s the third one I have come across in my career.”

Jenine sat forward on her chair. “Really? But… I’ve never heard of them before. If they’re as common as that, why aren’t they publicised? Tested? Displayed in museums?”

“They have a rather dark history, I’m afraid,” Richard said. He crossed his legs and placed both hands on the top knee, a pose that was simultaneously relaxed and guarded. “People who know about them tend not to discuss them. It’s… I suppose you would call it bad luck.”

“That’s crazy,” Bree said, gesturing towards the pictures. “We have certifiable, reproducible proof of ghosts. Why wouldn’t people be interested in it?”

Richard wet his lips and inhaled deeply, as though he wished he could avoid continuing. “The ghost camera has unique properties. Not only does it make the spirit world visible to us, but it makes us mortals visible to them.”

Jenine glanced at the pictures. More than half of the ghosts were looking directly at the camera.

“Normally the spirit world and the mortal world are intangible to each other,” Richard continued. He held one palm out flat and laid his other on top to illustrate his point. “We share the same space. We cohabitate without realising it. Like light and air, two substances can take up the same space without having any effect on each other. Well, barely any effect, anyway.”

Jenine glanced at Bree. She no longer looked accusatory, but fascinated. Richard’s natural charisma commanded the attention of the room. Definitely an ex-uni lecturer, Jenine thought.

“When I say light and air don’t interact, that’s not strictly true. Light can warm the air, and air can slow the progress of light. That’s similar to the human realm and the ghost realm. The vast majority of the time, they’re intangible to each other, but there will be little instances, micro-events, that you may not even be aware of, where they influence our world. You might wake up in the middle of the night and not know why. Perhaps small items move when you’re not in the room—never by much, just a few centimetres at a time—that you don’t realise. Or your pets will stare intently at a wall—just an empty wall—as though they can see something you can’t.”

As if on cue, the largest of Jenine’s cats leapt onto the lounge. Jenine reached out to rub its head, kneading the thin skin over its skull.

“Imagine two pieces of paper, one sitting on top of the other. This is a flawed analogy, mind, but please bear with me.” Richard shifted forward in his seat, the natural excitement to teach burning through his initial reluctance. “Those pieces of paper are close, very close, so that when you look at them they might appear as one. Yet they’re separate. You can slide them, move them, divide them. Now imagine that a single drop of water falls onto the top page. It seeps through to the second page, binding them together. Yes, they can still be peeled apart, but not as easily. It almost, not quite but almost, fuses them together. That can happen in life sometimes. The spirit world will, in patches, sync with the earth and allow ghosts to interact with us. Of course, the drop of water dries quickly. It may take a few hours, or even a day or two, but it will dry, and the pages will separate again.”

Bree was scowling, but her eyes were fiery. “You’re saying that’s what happens with the ghost camera?”

“I’m getting to that. Keeping with my analogy, everyday paranormal events are light sprinklings of water. Sometimes a location can be tainted when a life that passes over is so troubled that it drips water on the paper, so to speak, and creates a haunted location that, depending on the strength, can last for decades. These are your classic haunted houses.” He sighed. “What you’ve found, the ghost camera, is like a glass of water that tips onto the paper every time you take a picture.”

Jenine drew her cat into her lap and massaged along its back. It purred in response: a comforting, safe sound. The enthusiasm was dying out of Richard’s voice. He was sounding, and looking, older, as though the enjoyable part of his lecture was over. “Each additional photo dampens the paper further. Breaks down the fibre. Makes it harder to separate. I apologise—I’ve carried this analogy much too far, haven’t I? Essentially, from what I have been able to deduce, the ghost camera makes the user visible to spirits. It marks you. Not just temporarily, like water on paper, but permanently. The more photos you take, the easier it is for them to find you.”

Shivers snaked up Jenine’s back. She petted her cat more vigorously, desperate for the warmth and comfort between her fingers.

Bree was at the edge of her seat. “Okay. Why is that bad? What happens when they ‘find you’?”

Richard opened his mouth then closed it. He swallowed and glanced around the room, looking everywhere except at the two friends. “They kill you,” he admitted.

“What the hell?” Bree stood up, towering over the sitting man. “Bull. You’re lying.”

He continued in a rush, as though she hadn’t spoken. “That’s why you have to destroy the camera. Don’t show it to anyone. Don’t give it to anyone. Destroy it. That’s the only way to stop others from being tainted with its curse.”

Jenine felt as if her world were collapsing. She didn’t realise she was squeezing her cat until it bit her hand and scurried off with a hiss. “You… you can stop it, though.”

“Yeah.” Pacing the room, Bree pointed one finger at Richard but refused to look at him. “You said you found two cameras before, right? You know how to beat it.”

Richard sucked air in through his nose. His voice wavered as he stumbled over his words. “The first person came to me two days before his death. We destroyed the camera, and I thought that would be enough to stop it, but he still died. Official diagnosis was a heart attack. The police found him hiding in the cupboards under his sink.”

“Bull,” Bree repeated, seemingly unable to stay still. Jenine’s hands felt empty without the cat, so she picked up a cushion instead.

“When the second victim came to me, I tried everything within my power to free her. And I mean everything.” Richard’s face was drawn. Beads of sweat had developed on his forehead and cheeks. “Bathing in holy water, exorcisms, expulsions. Blessings by Romanian white witches. We burnt sage everywhere. We tried to hide inside churches, in rural areas, anywhere. We did experiments on the camera and tried to communicate with the ghosts, and I called every expert I thought might be able to help. Only three were aware of ghost cameras, and none knew of any cure. She died as well.”

“So, so, so…” Bree’s panic was visible on her face and her voice was tight and high. She stopped pacing. “What do we do?”

Richard finally met her eyes. His were sad and resigned. “Depending on how many photos you’ve taken, you may still have a few days or a few weeks. Maybe as much as a month, if you only took one picture. You’ll know it’s near the end when you feel them touch you.”

Jenine’s fingers fluttered to the part of her neck crusted with dried blood.

Richard continued, “At that point, I would suggest taking a few sleeping pills.”

Bree looked from Jenine to Richard. She had her arms folded, fists balled under her armpits, and her eyes were huge. “Will that help?”

“No, but you won’t be awake for the end.”

Both Jenine and Richard jumped as Bree’s anger exploded out of her like water rushing through a broken dam. “You’re lying!” Bree threw herself at Richard and grasped the front of his cardigan in her fists.

“No!” Jenine yelled.

Bree shook him hard, as though he might change his story with enough coercion. Jenine grasped Bree around the waist and tried to haul her back. For a second she thought Bree might really hurt the man, but then she relaxed, released her hold, and let Jenine draw her back.

Bree’s face was as white as a sheet and her cheeks were wet. She stared at Jenine for a second then looked back at the professor. “Oh… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—I’m so sorry.”

Richard adjusted his cardigan and smoothed back his grey hair, which had come loose from its careful comb-over. His lips were tight and pale, but his voice was even when he answered. “It’s alright. I understand. It’s difficult news to receive, and I certainly don’t like giving it.”

“There’s got to be something you can do,” Jenine said. She sat next to Bree and wrapped an arm around her friend’s shoulders. She could feel them trembling—she wasn’t sure if fear or anger was the cause—but Bree remained mute.

“I wish there was. I truly, truly do. But I didn’t lie when I said I tried everything. I had an entire week with the last case, and when we weren’t trying new methods of breaking the curse, I was researching. Ghost cameras aren’t a new phenomenon; I found evidence of them as far back as the early 1900s. They’ve become rarer with the invention of digital cameras -for whatever reason, ghost cameras are only analog - but they still pop up every now and then. Every single case of a person using the camera to take a photo has resulted in death. The more photos they took, the sooner and more violent their deaths were.”

Bree shuddered and leaned forward to rest her head in Jenine’s lap. She grasped Jenine’s hands in hers and squeezed them tightly, rubbing the palms with her fingers. Jenine squeezed back.

Richard looked at them, and his mouth tightened. He looked as though he were on the verge of crying, but he maintained a steady voice when he spoke. “You took a large number of pictures. I’d strongly recommend the sleeping pills when they start to touch you. You don’t want to see what happens after that.” He stood and turned towards the door.

Bree raised her head and glared at him with red-rimmed eyes. “That’s it? You’re just going to leave us to it?”

He hesitated in the doorway, shoulders hunched and eyes on the floor. “I wish I could help,” he repeated.

“No. There’s got to be a way to beat this!”

He turned back to them, emotions struggling over his face. “Look. I’m sorry. I really, really am sorry. You seem like nice people. I wish to hell this hadn’t happened to you. But I can’t help you any more than I could help someone with an incurable disease. Goodbye.”

The door slammed as he left and Jenine’s legs gave out. She flopped onto the carpet and hugged her knees to her chest. Bree sat down next to her and placed her arm around Jenine’s shoulders.

“I don’t want to die,” Jenine said stupidly.

“Oh, babe.”

Neither of them seemed to have anything else to say, so they huddled and shivered together as thunder crackled in the distance. A single raindrop tapped the roof, then a second and a third, and soon the sound of single drops blended together into the steady drum of rain.

Chapter Five

Jenine very rarely saw her best friend vulnerable, frightened, or without answers. Bree was a perpetual achiever: obstacles only existed for her to knock over. Seeing Bree look so helpless and alone was a new experience for Jenine, but there it was; proof that Bree Abernackle was human.

As she sat on the floor with her arms around Bree, Jenine tried to come to terms with her new knowledge. She was going to die. Not in fifty years, when she was old and had lived a full life, but in the immediate future.

She tried to take stock of her emotions, and found they were missing. She felt numb, as if she were watching herself act in a movie. The professor-looking man had strolled into her life, told her she was a dead woman walking, then strolled out, leaving her to shrug at the camera. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t possibly be real.

Bree seemed to be dealing with the news in a very different way. She rocked on the floor, gripping Jenine’s arm, her eyes dull as she stared at the floor. She looked sick.

“Bree…”

She shook her head and pulled herself out of Jenine’s arms. She stood, stumbled, then walked to her bag in the corner of the room and pulled out her mobile. Jenine stood up, uncertain what she should say or do.

Bree disappeared into the bedroom. When she came out two minutes later, her face was all hard angles and covered in a sheen of sweat. She dropped the phone into her bag and leaned her hands on the kitchen counter, breathing deeply through her nose.

Jenine approached Bree from behind and placed a hand on her shoulder. Bree turned, offered a watery smile, and said, “He didn’t answer.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Jenine wanted to smack herself as soon as the words left her mouth. Of all the things she could have said to someone who’d just found out she was about to die, “I’m sorry” had to be the most useless and insipid choice.

Bree scrunched up her face and pulled Jenine into a hug. “Don’t be. Not your fault. Anyway,”—she pulled back—“we’re not done yet. Holt doesn’t want to help us, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do.”

Just like that, Active Bree was back.

“Here’s the plan,” she said, turning on the kettle and picking up the laptop in one deft sweep. “We’re going to get a cup of tea. We’re going to do five minutes of meditation. Then we’re going to find a solution to this. So what if we don’t have help from the ‘expert’? There’s got to be a way to beat this, and we’ll figure out what it is. I promise.”

Jenine nodded, mostly just relieved to let Bree take over.

Jenine and Bree sat down next to each other at the coffee table. Bree was researching the cameras. Jenine guessed it wasn’t going so well, based on the quiet grumbles and hisses of frustration.

Bree had given Jenine the job of examining the photographs and noting down anything significant or unusual. Bree reasoned that Jenine had a better eye for detail, but Jenine suspected her friend’s motives were more self-centered. Bree always floundered when she felt out of control, and, right then, control for Bree meant being in charge of the research.

Jenine didn’t mind. She wouldn’t know where to look if it had been left up to her. The photos, though unsettling, were at least familiar. She’d gathered every picture she could find—they had taken nine—and laid them out in front of her in chronological order, starting with the picture of the wedding reception. She counted twenty-eight ghosts in total.

She rubbed her hand across her face and suddenly realised she was missing one of the pictures. “Hey, Bree, where’s the photo you took earlier today?”

“There.” Without looking up from the computer, Bree pointed to the Polaroid on the kitchen counter.

Jenine fetched it and took a long look. Her own face took up a lot of the picture: pale, frightened, wide-eyed. A ghostly hand grasped at her shoulder. The hand belonged to an impossibly tall man, so horribly bony that he reminded Jenine of a prisoner of war who had been starved. His mouth was open, and every visible tooth had been sharpened to a fine point.

She grimaced and placed it in the correct spot at the end of the list.

You’ve got this, she told herself. Think of it as a law school assignment. Find the evidence. That’s what your professors are always saying: evidence is everywhere; it’s just got to be found.

The first thing she thought might be significant was the ghost’s attention. In the first picture, none of the ghosts were looking at the camera. In the second picture, the one taken in the floristry, the single ghost was staring at the back of Jenine’s head, not at the camera. Out of the pictures taken in her home, the ghosts only seemed to start paying attention to her partway through the series. The turning point was the set of photos taken in her bedroom. At first, the ghosts hadn’t acknowledged her presence, but in the second photo, all three of them were watching her intently.

After that, every single ghost was either looking at or trying to approach her or the camera. That matched what Richard Holt had said: the more photos she took, the easier the ghosts could find her.

Then she noticed the recurring ghosts. In the photo she’d taken from inside the car, the ghost—the woman who had left finger smudges on the window—looked remarkably similar to one of the women in the wedding photograph. This raised several interesting questions: how did ghosts travel? Did they just walk, or did they teleport? Maybe if I keep running, keep moving, they won’t catch me?

For a second, she thought she felt a cold breath drift across the back of her neck. She swiped her hand over the area but couldn’t feel anything. Bree glanced at her, a silent question creasing her eyes, and Jenine smiled reassuringly.

She turned back to the pictures. She found a second instance of a duplicate ghost quickly—a man at the wedding appeared later at the park. The second ghost in the park photograph was also familiar. A child stood behind the tree, his empty, white eyes wide and his hair tossed about his head.

Jenine picked up the wedding photo to compare and was vindicated to see it was the same boy who had crouched behind the tree at the park. At first she didn’t see any other duplicates, but then she came across a third instance of the boy, in the photo taken in the floristry, half of his face was visible outside the window. Intrigued, she searched for him in the other pictures, and her skin began to crawl.

The boy appeared in eight of the ten photos. Never featured prominently, he was almost always hiding or peeking around a large object or through a window. He was unmistakable, though. Wide, hollow eyes beneath thin hair being blown by non-existent wind watched the camera in every single photo.

Jenine was simultaneously repulsed and heartbroken. Why is he following me? And why does he hide?

Jenine picked up the wedding photo again. She’d wondered if he might be the owner of the camera, hoping to reclaim something he’d lost.

“Jackpot,” Bree whispered. Jenine put aside the photos and scooted close enough to look over her friend’s shoulder. “Check this out. Among the droves of fiction, Photoshopped pictures, hoaxes, games and irrelevant crap, there’s a forum thread that matches our camera perfectly.”

Bree had found a paranormal forum. Jenine skimmed the first post, which was from 2008. The author described a situation similar to Jenine’s. He’d found a camera abandoned in the attic of a house he’d inherited, and had taken some pictures. He’d attached them to the post, and Jenine suppressed a shudder.

They were eerily similar to the pictures she’d taken. Pale figures stared at the camera with empty eyes, some reaching out. One appeared to have a rope around her neck.

The replies varied from curious to downright incredulous. Jenine supposed that was to be expected. The fifth post took it more seriously, though:

“An old colleague of mine used to talk about photos like this,” it read. “He called them ‘death pictures.’ He collected them as a hobby.”

Jenine scanned the rest of the post, but it focussed on analysing the pictures and coming up with theories about the ghosts’ former lives. A few others continued the conversation for about a week, but the original poster never replied.

The thread picked up four years later, with a post by a girl who called herself Becca:

“Hello, sorry to revive an old thread, but it’s very relevant to my situation. I bought a lovely vintage camera from a garage sale (previous owner is deceased), and it shows ghosts in both of the pictures I developed. It’s freaking me out! Is there anyone I should be contacting about this? One of the pictures was taken inside my home, and there are these white, ghostly people everywhere. Would a medium help?”

A reply had been left the next day:

“Hi. Full disclosure here, I know nothing about the paranormal. A friend sent me the link to your post, thinking I might be able to help. I’m a professional photographer with thirty years of experience. I’ve heard plenty of wild tales in my time, and that includes stories about ‘ghost cameras’ (or ‘death cameras’, as some call them). They’re not only meant to show ghosts, but supposedly the user always dies shortly after taking them. Personally, I think it’s an entertaining story, but ultimately just that—fiction. If such a thing really existed, it would be all over the news.”

The post after said:

“Unless there’s an industry-wide cover-up. The conspiracy theorist in me is going wild, LOL.”

Becca replied soon after:

“Thanks for the industry advice. It’s pretty hard to discard it as fiction when I’m staring at pictures of dead people, though. Should I not take any more pictures? Is there anyone I can get in touch with about this? I’ve been searching the internet and I’m desperate for help.”

Shortly after, there was a new post from a user called RHParanormal:

“Hi Becca. I may be able to help. I’ve extensively studied the area of possessed items, and I have had contact with one person previously who had used a ghost camera. Where do you live? Don’t use the camera again, but call me, and I can talk you through what to do next.” His phone number followed the post.

“Hey, is it just me, or is that number familiar?” Jenine asked.

“Bloody hell,” Bree muttered. “RHParanormal. Richard Holt. I suppose that’s the second person he claims he tried to help.”

There were no more posts in the thread. Jenine rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms. “What do we do now?” she asked.

“Keep looking.” Bree was already back on Google, searching for “ghost camera” and “death camera”.

Jenine glanced back at the pictures laid out on the table and felt queasy. The people in the forum had only taken a couple of shots. She’d taken eight. She stood up and stretched her shoulders, trying to look nonchalant. “Actually, it’s past dinner. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think with an empty stomach. How about I get some food while you keep on there?”

Bree shot her a smile. “Sounds good.”

“Anything you want?”

“Whatever you have, babe. I’m not fussy.”

Jenine started rifling through her cupboards. She grabbed a tin of tuna, intending to make tuna sandwiches, then hesitated. What if this is my last meal? Do I really want it to be tuna on toast?

She tossed the fish back onto the shelf and picked out a packet of nachos and a tub of salsa. She dumped them both in a bowl, poured the remains of a packet of shredded cheese on top, and put it in the microwave.

Bree was muttering to herself again, which meant she’d found something good. Jenine peered at the computer screen, but it was too far away to read. She turned back to her task and grabbed a tub of sour cream out of the fridge. She was peeling away the seal when an invisible hand grabbed her arm. The touch burnt like a thousand ice-cold needles being pressed into her skin, constricting the flesh and muscles, and sending jolts down into her elbow and up into her shoulder.

Jenine screamed and dropped the sour cream, which splattered over the tiled floor and her jeans, but she hardly noticed. The hand hadn’t let go, and every second it held on, the pain increased. She jerked back and smacked her free hand at where the invisible wrist should be, but she touched only air. The grip tightened, and the ice spread through her body, rushing up her arm and into her chest.

She threw herself back, trying to find relief. Eyes squeezed shut, she screamed. Then, as abruptly as it had grabbed her, the invisible hand let go.

She found herself on her back, lying in the spilled sour cream. Bree was yelling her name and shaking her shoulders. Jenine felt sick, but she doubted she had enough in her stomach to bring up, so pulled herself to her knees. A headache, the kind she got when she tried to eat ice, gnawed at her head.

“Jenny?” Bree’s voice was unsteady. “Talk to me, Jenny. What happened? What can I do?”

‘I… I…” Jenine rubbed her hand over the aching skin. A bruise was forming, shaped like a palm and fingers.

Bree looked down and let out her breath in a hiss. She hooked one arm under Jenine’s shoulders and pulled her up. “C’mon, we’re getting in the car.”

“Huh?”

“I found something that might help, but we can’t do it here. Hang on. I’ll get the camera.”

Jenine hovered in the hallway, waiting for Bree. The hairs on her arms were raised and she had goose bumps down her back. The house felt suddenly ice cold. She let her eyes rove over the furniture, the fixtures and the photos she’d hung in the hallway. They felt alien, as though a stranger had come in the night and replaced everything with imitations. It was surreal. She rocked onto the balls of her feet and wrapped her arms around her chest, panting.

Bree reappeared, holding not just the camera but also a slip of paper. One look at her face told Jenine she’d made a decision. Bree’s panic from before was gone, replaced by sheer determination. “Into the car, quickly,” she said, ushering Jenine to the door. “We’re going for a drive.”

The rain was coming down in thick sheets, flattening Jenine’s hair and sending a trickle crawling down the small of her back. They ran for the car, feet slapping on the cooling pavement, Jenine’s breath coming in short, hard bursts. Bree pulled open the passenger door and practically threw Jenine in, then slid around the front and into the driver’s seat. She started the car, set the heat to high, and switched on the radio, turning up the volume until it was loud enough to drown out the drum of the rain.

“Where are we going?” Jenine asked as the car split away from the curb.

“To see the jackass.”

Jenine frowned. “We’re going to Travis?”

Bree snorted in laughter. “The other jackass, babe. The one who’s going to help us whether he wants to or not.”

“Richard Holt?” Jenine shook her head. It felt fuzzy, as if someone had stuffed it full of cotton candy. “I don’t understand…”

“I found a blog that was talking about ghost cameras. This woman has a theory that you can talk to the ghosts, to find out what they want. EMF tools, sensitive audio devices, whatever you can use to pick up their voices. She thinks some of the ghosts will help us if we can just communicate with them.”

Jenine glanced at the bruise on her arm. It had turned a dark, mottled blue. If that was how they communicated, she wasn’t sure she wanted more of it. “Has she ever tried it?”

Bree’s laugh was shorter and harsher than before. “Nope. It’s the best I could find, though.” She handed the slip of paper to Jenine. “I wrote his address down. Can you put it in the GPS?”

Jenine’s hands were shaking so badly that the task took her several minutes. She could feel Bree watching her and was grateful she didn’t say anything.

The rain had only gotten worse by the time they reached Richard’s home on the outskirts of the suburbs. It looked a lot like its owner: tall, meticulously neat, and very dull.

Bree parked on the street and opened her door, but Jenine hesitated. “Are you sure we should do this?”

Bree closed her door. “You don’t think we should?”

“He wasn’t very happy to see us last time. Even if he has equipment to hear ghosts, he may not let us use it.”

“I’ll convince him.”

Jenine hazarded a smile. “You’re not going to threaten him with your tape gun, are you?”

Bree laughed and got out of the car.

Chapter Six

Richard opened the door, then closed it immediately. Jenine had just enough time to see he was wearing a heavy red dressing gown—his professor-ish streak ran deep, apparently—and that his face blanched as soon as he saw them.

“Come on!” Bree yelled, banging on the door as the rain plastered her hair across her forehead. “Please, talk to us for a minute. It’s raining! You can’t just leave us out here!”

He certainly can, Jenine thought, wondering how long Bree would persist in the face of a locked door—but after a minute, Richard relented and opened the door with a heavy sigh.

He didn’t look happy, but he carried himself as professionally as he could in an oversized maroon dressing gown. He gestured for them to come into the foyer and said, “Wait here,” then disappeared into a side room.

Jenine gazed around the foyer. It was filled with expensive-looking decorations. She and Bree stood on a plush rug, to their left was a dark wooden stand, and large paintings hung on the wall.

The paintings seemed wrong somehow, and Jenine approached the nearest one for a closer look. It showed a nineteenth-century family picnicking beside a scenic river. The man and woman leaned against the trees to their backs, while the boy was on his stomach, gazing into the river. After a second, Jenine realised what was wrong: the people were dead. Gaunt and grey, they stared, slack-jawed, into the distance with empty eyes. It was as though the artist had taken three bodies from the morgue, dressed them in luxurious clothes, and arranged them into casual positions before laying out a rich feast of fruit, breads and wine as a twisted joke.

Jenine jumped as the door behind her opened. Richard returned, carrying two towels. He handed one to Bree and the other to Jenine.

“I’m not getting rid of you, am I?” he asked, resignation thick in his voice. “I don’t blame you, but really, truly, there’s nothing I can do.”

“Don’t be so sure of that.” Bree towelled her hair aggressively, making it spike up at odd angles. She paced about the room, glancing at the paintings on the wall. “I found something that might work. Do you have audio equipment that’s sensitive enough to pick up ghosts’ voices?”

Richard snorted. “Of course I do. But if you’re hoping to talk to the spirits, I’m afraid that won’t work. I already tried with my last client. Ghosts don’t think like us. I expect you’re hoping to reason with them, but they’re far too… what’s the word? Instinctual, for that.”

Bree raised her eyebrows questioningly. That was all the prompting Richard needed.

“Ghosts are no longer human. You have to remember that, above everything else. The best way I can explain is that they’re like imprints of emotion. If someone is murdered, dies tragically, or goes insane and kills themselves, the emotions and thoughts experienced immediately before death will be what makes up the ghost. Once they’re created, they have no ability to learn or grow. A man who finds his wife has cheated on him, kills her, then turns a gun on himself will only ever be able to feel those last few strong emotions. Wild rage, resentment against women—especially women who resemble his wife—and self-loathing. He will never be able to let it go. Not until his energy becomes too weak to sustain him, and he dissipates.”

“You lost me,” Bree said as she leaned against the wall.

Richard shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. “Ghosts are, essentially, energy. It’s the same sort of energy that makes us alive, compared to, say, a rock. If a human experienced a significantly strong emotion as they died, it’s often enough to imprint their energy on the spectral plane. However, it will slowly dissolve. Depending on the strength of the initial energy imprint—and how much energy it can find to consume—the ghost may last for a few years or a few decades. Very rarely do they last more than a few hundred years. This is why we don’t have any caveman ghosts. They simply dissolved over time.”

Jenine nodded, thinking about the ghosts in the photos. A few looked as though they’d come from the ’20s or ’30s, but otherwise they were dressed in modern clothes.

“So you’re saying they won’t want to talk?” Bree asked.

“Exactly. They’re energy—pure, raw, instinctive emotion. They’re past reason.”

Jenine could see Bree chewing that over. Their gazes met for a second, then Bree frowned and grabbed Richard’s elbow. “Can we talk? Let’s talk. Come on.”

She ushered him through the door to their left as Jenine watched in stunned silence. She could hear their voices—Bree talking animatedly, almost frantically, and Richard’s subdued responses—but she couldn’t make out any words. She turned back to the paintings as she waited.

The woman by the river had turned to face the painter, her lips peeled back to show rotting teeth. Jenine started, took a step back, then leaned forward again for a better look. Hadn’t she been gazing into the distance before?

Jenine quickly looked at the other paintings. The one to the right showed two puppies lying on the ground, eyes closed. They looked as though they were sleeping. Had they not been juxtaposed with the corpse picnickers, Jenine wouldn’t have looked twice. She leaned closer, and a shudder of disgust rolled through her stomach as she saw the small cluster of flies gathered about the puppies’ eyes.

The door behind her opened and Bree and Richard came back into the room. Bree looked relieved; Richard seemed to be trying hard to keep emotion from showing.

Jenine was glad for a distraction from the morbid images. “Hey,” she said to Richard, trying to lighten the mood, “do all ghost investigators own horrible paintings?”

“Huh?” He blinked at her as though she’d disturbed him from an important train of thought. “You don’t like them?”

Maybe he doesn’t see anything wrong with them, Jenine thought as Richard led them out of the foyer and into a dining room. Maybe he thinks they’re ironic or high art or something.

The dining room was decorated in luxurious style similar to the foyer. A large mahogany dining table, a modern kitchen, and several large sculptures adorned the room. The sculpture nearest Jenine featured a mostly-nude woman with a snake wrapped around her torso. She was caressing the serpent lovingly, even though its fangs were embedded in her neck.

“Wow,” Bree said, turning in a circle to admire the room. “If ghost hunting is this lucrative, maybe I should change my career.”

Richard laughed. “Actually, I started out in the stock market. I got lucky, and now my investments pay the bills. Paranormal investigating was initially only a hobby, but now that I can afford to, I do it full-time.” He began pulling boxes out of cabinets on the wall. “This will just take a minute to set up. Would it bother you if I asked about the camera?”

Bree was instantly defensive. “What about it?”

“I take it you haven’t destroyed it yet,” Richard said with a heavy sigh. He pulled a large, old-looking machine out of one box and placed it on the table, then glanced at the purse Bree had tossed into the corner of the room. “Do you have it with you right now?”

“Maybe.”

“Go and put it in my study. Second door to the left in the foyer. It’s better not to have the camera anywhere near this.”

Bree picked her handbag up, but otherwise didn’t move. “Why’s that?”

“Remember what I said about the camera being like water that connects the paper?” Richard was plugging cords into the machine. “It’s a channel for hundreds, possibly thousands, of ghosts. Having it in the same room would be like trying to hear a whisper in a rock concert. Better to put it away, so that you can only hear the ghosts that are fixated on you.”

“Fixated?”

“The ones you photographed.” Richard turned on his machine, and it let out a high-pitched whine that subsided when he adjusted some knobs. “They’ve seen you, and now they’re following you. There are plenty of other ghosts around, but they don’t know you’re there until you take a picture of them, or until—” He stopped, coughed, then busied himself adjusting various sliders.

“Until what?” Jenine leaned forward.

“Never mind. It’s nothing to concern yourself with.”

“Oh, no, I think it is,” Bree said. “How will the others be able to see us?”

“Let it drop.”

“No.”

Richard let a sigh out between his teeth and frowned at her. “As this… curse, I suppose you might call it. As your curse progresses, you’ll move closer and closer to their dimension, until they’re able to see you, even without the camera.”

Jenine swallowed. “Is that… bad?”

“We’ll take care of it before it reaches that stage,” Richard said. “If this doesn’t work, you can take a few sleeping pills so you won’t have to feel them—or see them.”

He broke off and stared into space. Something in his tone sounded like grief.

Jenine took a stab in the dark. “That last girl, Becca, she didn’t take any sleeping pills, did she?”

Richard jolted at the mention of the girl’s name. His face scrunched up as though he were trying to repress memories. “No, no she didn’t. I was with her at the end. There—” He took a gulp of air and moved to get another box out of the cupboard. “There wasn’t anything I could do to help. I’d tried, I’d made promises, but she still… I hope you understand that it has been very hard to help you ladies. After Rebecca—well, it’s a situation I’ve explicitly tried to avoid.” He paused then turned to Bree. “Please. Put the camera in the study.”

Bree chewed her lip for a second, then she nodded, tossed her bag over her shoulder and marched into the foyer. Jenine sat on one of the kitchen chairs to wait, her towel draped over her lap and her damp hair sticking to her neck.

“Can I ask you something?” Jenine leaned forward and lowered her voice. “After everything you went through with Becca, what did Bree say to change your mind? She didn’t… threaten you or anything, did she?”

Richard let his face relax into a wry smile. “Unless emotional blackmailing counts, no.”

“What then? Why didn’t she want me to hear?”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “She said she couldn’t stand knowing she’d encouraged you to take more pictures. She said she wanted to try anything, no matter how slim the chance, to buy you some time. She said she didn’t want to die with your blood on her hands.”

Jenine groaned. Stupid, sweet Bree. If she had any sense, she would have been spending her last days with Travis.

“This isn’t going to work, is it?” she asked Richard.

He considered his answer carefully before speaking. “It’s not impossible…”

“But you don’t think it will work.”

“No.” He looked ten years older than he had that afternoon. “No, I don’t believe it will.”

The door swung open and slammed against the wall as Bree re-entered. She was towelling at her hair, which was wet again. Apparently she didn’t trust Richard enough to leave the camera in his study. “Did I miss anything?”

“We’re just about ready now.” Richard plugged in the last cable, which was connected to a microphone. “I built this device myself nearly a decade ago. Under normal circumstances, it’s not strong enough to pick up much more than faint sounds, but—well, I don’t expect that will be a problem tonight.” Sweat beading on his forehead, he glanced at Jenine and Bree. “Speak clearly when you ask questions, and try not to interrupt them when they’re talking. That seems to make them angry. And keep your voice quiet. They don’t have any trouble hearing whispers.” He pressed a button and the machine hummed into life.

Jenine and Bree scraped their chairs closer together. In the silence, Jenine could hear the rain roaring through the trees’ leaves and drumming on the windows. The machine was making a faint, almost inaudible whirring. Then a third noise became audible: a woman’s voice, speaking rapidly.

“You don’t understand. You do not understand! You don’t understand…”

Richard motioned for the friends to stay quiet, then he leaned close to the microphone. “My name is Richard Holt. Can you hear me?”

The voice abruptly fell silent.

Jenine counted the seconds: One, two, three, four, then the woman spoke again. “You don’t understand.”

“Tell me what I don’t understand,” Richard said, keeping his voice slow, clear and calm.

“Who are you? I don’t talk to you. I want the girl.” The voice was winding up, becoming higher and tighter.

Jenine could hear a rumble in the background but couldn’t make out what it was.

“I am her friend,” Richard said. “She would like to know why you follow her.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Explain it to me, then.”

“Give her to me.” The voice was stronger, harsher and demanding.

Richard paused for a second before replying. “She would like to end this business with your realm. She wishes to be left alone.”

Silence for a second, then the voice broke out into something resembling laughter. It was the single worst sound Jenine had ever heard; a twisted mockery of the real thing. The steady “ha, ha, ha, ha,” was completely devoid of joy, but filled with cold intent. The woman kept making that same sound, like a broken record, and the rumbling noise in the background grew in volume, becoming clearer. Other voices—dozens, maybe hundreds of them—added their empty laugher and cold voices to hers, until it grew into a cacophony of noise.

“She will never be alone again.”

“She is ours.”

“Give her to us.”

“We want her.”

“Cool her flesh. Break her bones.”

“Give her to us!”

Richard pressed his finger to his lips, urging Jenine to stay silent. Bree hooked one trembling arm around Jenine’s shoulders and pulled her closer. The lights around them flickered and the bulb directly above the machine burst in a shower of hissing sparks. Jenine shrieked, and as if she’d flicked a switch, the machine was silent again.

They froze, barely breathing, as they waited to see if the machine was still working.

“Give her to me,” the woman hissed, and Jenine jumped. The voice was no longer anxious, but hungry. “Give her to me, and I will take such good care of her. Such good care. Like one of my own babies. See how much I loved them? My neighbours didn’t understand my love. They didn’t understand at all. But you will, darling, and I will free you, too.”

Richard was trembling, but he kept his voice composed. “She isn’t yours to take. She belongs here, among the living.”

The ghost’s shriek ripped out of the machine, swallowing the room in the wailing noise. Jenine clamped her hands over her ears and squinted as two more lights blew out in a burst of sparks.

In the flickering, struggling light cast by the remaining bulbs, she saw a tall, gaunt woman standing behind Richard. Her hair framed a wild halo about her head. Outstretched arms ended in long, cruel nails, and she had blood smeared up to her elbows.

Her eyes locked onto Jenine and she crowed in a voice that became deeper and fiercer, “Come, my darling. I will take such good care of you. They didn’t understand, but you will, my darling. I will make you understand.”

Jenine shrieked and kicked away from the table. She landed on her back and scrambled away from the nails of the wild-eyed woman. Her back hit something and she looked up to see the statue of the woman with the snake biting her neck. The snake was alive, twitching and pulsing as it tightened its grip and dug its fangs deeper. Blood, bright and hot, dribbled out of the wound and dripped onto Jenine’s shoulder. She shied away and covered her head, frightened to look, afraid to close her eyes, feeling as if her heart might give out at any second.

“Jen!” Bree shook her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

Jenine opened her eyes. She could still hear the ghosts, but the woman was gone. She looked into Bree’s eyes and saw the confusion and fear swimming there. Bree hadn’t seen the ghost. Bree hadn’t seen the statue move. Is it all in my head?

“Up,” Richard said briskly, looking pale as he gripped Jenine’s arm and pulled her to her feet.

Bree wrapped her arms around Jenine’s shoulders. “What’s happening to her?”

“She can see them,” Richard said, his mouth a thin line, his eyes huge with fear. “I hadn’t expected her to be this far along, or I would never have agreed to—”

The voices became louder in Jenine’s head, drowning out Richard and Bree and making her ears buzz.

“Find her. Find her.”

“Strip her flesh. Shut out her light.”

The bulbs fizzled again, and in the flickering shadows, the ghosts became visible. Six nondescript shapes appeared near the far wall, then two vanished, only to be replaced by another dozen on the next light flicker. The woman was no longer looking at Jenine, but was turning about the room, staring blindly, searching for her.

Richard turned to face the room while Bree huddled against Jenine. He raised his voice above the roar of the rain and the screaming voices. “Leave her be!” he yelled, arms outstretched. “She is not yours. She does not belong with you! You can take the camera, but you cannot have her!”

The clearest ghost, the woman, turned in response to Richard’s voice and opened her mouth to hiss at him. The lower jaw distended far past where it should have, and blood pooled over her tongue and dripped down her lips.

“Leave her!” Richard yelled a final time, and the ghost launched herself at him.

Chapter Seven

Jenine felt her heart skip a beat as the ghost and Richard made contact.

The impact forced Richard against the wall, and he let out a gasp of shock and pain as the ghost sought his neck with her teeth.

He struggled as lightning flashed through the curtained window. In that second of intense light, Jenine saw that the room was full of the otherworldly beings; tall, thin and decaying, they crowded around Richard, their mouths open in hungry howls.

A drop of blood hit Jenine’s cheek, and she muffled a shriek. This is happening because I’m here, she realised. I’m attracting them. I’m letting them touch him.

She grabbed Bree’s arm and began dragging her towards the door. Bree was in shock, staring at Richard, her mouth open. She wasn’t moving, and Jenine had no choice but to let her go and bolt for the exit alone.

Her legs didn’t want to carry her. She got through the door to the foyer and stumbled, catching herself on the table. The faint light was just sufficient for her to see the paintings, which had changed again.

The puppies could no longer be mistaken as asleep. Their flesh sagged off their skeletons, splitting in places to allow maggots and bone to peek through. Their empty eye sockets stared at each other.

The picnicking family had also moved. The mother and father were crouched over their child, holding his head under the stream’s flow, their mouths splitting open into twisted smiles.

“No,” Jenine whispered. As she backed away from them, the puppies raised their heads to look at her, slivers of mangy skin falling off their skulls.

A hand clapped Jenine’s shoulder. She spun, nearly slipping on the marble floor, to find Bree panting behind her.

“What’s happening?” she gasped, her eyes bulging. “He’s— he’s—”

“I need to get out of here.” Jenine turned towards the front door. “Can… can I borrow your car?”

“Borrow? I’ll drive you.” Bree grabbed her hand and ran with her. Lightning flashed, and suddenly, the wild-haired woman blocked their path.

Bree didn’t—or couldn’t—see the spectre, and she kept running. Jenine yanked on her friend’s arm to pull her back and managed to twist them out of the way just before impact.

She hadn’t anticipated how quickly the ghost would move. It flickered to the side then was on top of her before she could dodge. Long fingernails dug into Jenine’s forearm, and she screamed. Bree turned, shocked, and Jenine threw her weight at her, pushing them both out the door. The ghost held her grip and opened her maw to expose rows of teeth, which she plunged into Jenine’s arm. Jenine felt the blinding, icy pain, then they were stumbling out of the house and tripping down the front steps to land in a puddle of water on the lawn. Lightning flashed and the ghost was gone.

“Car,” Jenine gasped, clawing her way to her feet.

Bree grabbed her elbow and ran her through the pounding rain to her Mini. She threw Jenine into the passenger seat, then climbed into the driver’s side and slammed her door.

Jenine looked out the window. Lightning crackled, and she could see the ghost through the thick sheets of rain, still on the porch, crouched on all fours like an animal. It was searching for them, its teeth exposed in a snarl.

“What the hell?” Bree gasped, fumbling to get her key into the ignition. “What the hell happened there?”

Jenine opened her mouth but didn’t answer. The ghost’s eyes had locked onto their car, and it was scuttling towards them like a malformed insectile abomination. “Drive,” she hissed, watching the ghost race towards them.

Bree turned the key in the ignition, but the engine stalled. The ghost hit the vehicle like a charging bull. The car rocked wildly, and Jenine gripped her armrests while Bree swore. The woman reared up to press her hands and face against the window on Jenine’s side, opening her mouth in a silent scream as her empty eyes bored into Jenine.

Bree turned the key again, and this time, the car roared to life. She floored the accelerator, skidding down the lane and kicking up spray as the tires shot through puddles. Jenine glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw the woman scuttling after them, but losing ground. She closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing.

“What was that?” Bree asked as they rocketed down the road, narrowly missing parked cars. “Can you… see them?”

“Yeah.” Jenine wanted to explain more, but she felt drained. Her arm ached; she glanced at it, and nausea washed through her. The spirit’s teeth had broken the skin and hot red blood was dripping off her elbow.

Bree looked at the blood and exhaled through her nose. “I’m getting you to a hospital.”

Jenine leaned back in her seat and swallowed, trying to clear her head. “Do you have your phone?”

“Yeah, in my bag.”

Jenine reached down with her good hand and fished out the phone. She dialled the emergency hotline, gave them Richard’s address, and said, “Send an ambulance,” then hung up.

She wished she could do more, but going back would only make the situation worse. She fervently hoped the ghosts had disappeared once she was away from his house.

The rain wasn’t easing. They passed a few people hurrying through the storm, some struggling to keep umbrellas the right way up, others just making a dash for their destination. The clouds were thick enough that the streetlamps had turned on, but their light didn’t extend far through the downpour.

Jenine turned to look out the window. Her vision was blurry, and maybe she really was hallucinating, but they seemed to be passing strange shapes. “Bree?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“Can you pull over a minute?”

Bree did as requested and parked the car by the side of the road. They were still in a residential area, where tidy suburban houses lined the street. A man was rushing through the rain, a suitcase in one hand, holding his business jacket held over his head with the other. Calmly walking past him was a ghost.

“Do you see that?” Jenine pointed at the spirit.

Bree squinted through the window. “The man?”

“No, behind him.”

The ghost had stopped and turned to look at Bree’s parked car. He began walking towards them, lengthening his strides as he got closer. He had more definition than the ghosts in Richard’s home.

“Keep driving,” Jenine whispered. The man broke into a jog and his face twisted in rage. Another ghost came out from under the awning of the house across the street. A third, an elderly man, came from the opposite direction.

“Drive!”

Bree pushed the car into gear and sped down the road. A teen’s ghost ran to block their path and the car screeched past him just in time.

“Shoot,” Jenine whispered, closing her eyes. She didn’t know what would have happened if the ghost had been in the way of the car. She didn’t want to know. They seemed to interact with physical objects like regular humans when they were around her.

Sickness welled up inside her, and she clamped a hand over her mouth as she retched.

“There’s a bag in the back if you need it,” Bree offered. “Hang on. We’re almost there.”

A voice in the back of Jenine’s head objected to the idea of hospital, but she couldn’t think why. A pounding headache had started, and her stomach muscles were convulsing from chills. “Can we have the heater up?” she asked through numb lips.

Bree flicked the switch up as high as it would go, but the hot air did nothing to warm Jenine. Her vision swam as Bree skidded into the parking lot of the hospital, and her anxious feelings were suddenly validated.

What place has a greater concentration of suffering and death than a hospital?

As the car turned towards the emergency entrance, Jenine reached out her good hand to grasp Bree’s wrist and stop her. “No, no, no, no.”

Ghosts wandered aimlessly through the car park, stopping to stare at Jenine as the car passed. She looked at the glass doors of the hospital and saw a concentration of them inside, turning to watch her with blank eyes as she neared. “No, Bree, we have to get out of here.”

“What?” Bree’s eyes were wide with fear and anxiety. “Jenny, you need help—”

“They’re everywhere.” She forced the words through her rapidly-closing throat. “They’re coming for me.”

“Dammit,” Bree muttered. “You better not be hallucinating, babe.” She put the car into gear and began to turn as an orderly exited the hospital’s front doors.

The open doors released a spectral tide. Dozens upon dozens of spirits poured through the opening as soon as it was wide enough, weaving around the oblivious orderly and racing for the car.

“Go!” Jenine screamed, her voice high and tight.

Bree put her foot on the accelerator and the car skidded, wheels spinning. Jenine saw shapes falling and looked up in horror. Ghosts were jumping from the upper levels of the hospital, exiting through open windows and leaping off the roof. They swarmed towards the car and dozens of hands pressed against the windows and bonnet. Jenine screamed and covered her face with her hands as their pressure began to tip the car.

Bree felt it, too, and floored the accelerator. The car jerked sharply as the ghosts blocked their exit. Jenine instinctively pulled her feet off the ground as the spirits disappeared under the car, and immediately, she wished she hadn’t. Nausea and rigors washed over her.

The car broke through the wall of ghosts and shot out of the hospital parking lot, attracting stares from the patients getting into their cars and prompting a wave of ghosts to clamber over each other in single-minded pursuit.

“Jenny. Jenny, can you hear me?” Bree’s hand was on Jenine’s shoulder, shaking her, trying to wake her from her stupor.

Jenine forced her eyes open to look at her friend. Bree’s face was as white as a sheet, and her eyes were round with terror. “Babe, I need you to help me help you. What do you need? Where do you want to go? Do you want to try another hospital?”

“No,” Jenine managed. “No hospitals. Go somewhere—no people. Try the mountains.”

“The mountains?”

“No ghosts there,” Jenine said. “I hope.”

Bree obediently turned the car towards the forests to the north. The mountains were sparsely populated, and only a few roads ran through them, connecting the two cities on either side. Jenine hoped a smaller population would mean a lower number of ghosts.

She closed her eyes and tried to brace against the bumps and turns of the car. She was shivering uncontrollably, her vision was blurred and the pounding in her head had been replaced with a strange emptiness, as though the contents had been sucked out.

“You don’t look good,” Bree said, glancing at Jenine out of the corner of her eye.

“I’m fine,” Jenine muttered. Sweat poured down her face and soaked her already-wet clothes. Her legs had started twitching. “Just need somewhere quiet. Rest.”

Jenine lost consciousness shortly after they left the town. One moment, she was squinting, checking that the road was clear. The next, Bree was shaking her awake. For a second the shaking felt exactly the same as driving over the ghosts. The car had bounced across them as if they were real people. Did they feel pain? Fear? Is it possible to kill a ghost?

Then Bree’s voice, panicked and desperate, filtered through the fog. “Babe, please, wake up. You’ve got to stay with me. C’mon, Jenny. Wake up.”

Jenine tried to say “I’m awake,” but it came out as a mumble. She heard a strange whistling noise, and a second later, she realised Bree was hyperventilating.

“I should take you back,” Bree muttered. “You’re sick. You need a doctor.”

“No, not back,” Jenine said. She opened her eyes properly and saw that they were in the mountains, weaving through the narrow, bendy roads. Bree was driving far too quickly to be safe in the heavy rain.

“I’m so sorry, Jenny.” Bree turned the car into a driveway—the first she’d seen for miles, probably—to reverse direction. “Even… even if we stay at the outskirts of town and call an ambulance, maybe—”

“No,” Jenine said. She tried to move, but her body felt leaden. She twisted her head to look at Bree, and the movement took far more energy than it should have. “No.”

Bree’s face was white. Jenine could see the conflict in it. Fear about what would happen if she went back to the city vied with fear about what would happen if she didn’t.

Jenine felt like she was dying. If she was, she wanted to do it peacefully and quietly in the woods, not amongst the grasping ghost hands in the city, to be overwhelmed and drowned in them. If she was going to die, it would be on her own terms.

“No, Bree,” she mumbled.

Bree let out a choked sob through clenched teeth. Tears were running down her cheeks, and she turned the car back towards the city. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to help, Jenny. Let me help.”

The car was moving too quickly. The narrow road was full of sharp bends, and only a thin railing protected them from the drop-off to one side. Jenine tried to reach over to tell Bree to slow down or even just stop for a few minutes.

Something moved into the road.

Jenine’s eyes widened as she saw the ghost—an elderly woman with long hair frothing about her face as her lips twisted into a snarl—plant her feet firmly in the centre of the road and extend her hands to stop the car.

Bree didn’t see. Couldn’t see. Kept driving.

“No,” Jenine choked. “Stop.”

If anything, Bree pressed harder on the accelerator.

Jenine felt as if time were playing in slow motion. The car got closer to the woman, then closer, too close for Bree to stop even if she had wanted to, and at the last second, Bree saw her. She let out a shriek, applied the brake and swerved. The car clipped the ghost, sending it bouncing off the bonnet and pavement in a way that made Jenine recoil as though it had been a real person. Then the car hit the railing and barrelled through it, and they were falling down the side of the mountain.

The next few moments were all motion, noise, blinding pain and a light that refused to stop. Bree screamed but was abruptly cut off. Jenine tried to lift her hands to protect her face but found she could barely move them. Her seatbelt locked and jerked her body back with it, whipping her head forward and sending bright light shooting across her vision. Pain sliced into her face and arms as the windshield shattered. Tree branches, dirt and underbrush poured into the car.

After a final, agonizing jolt, the motion stopped. The car was tipped at an angle, nearly on its side, wheels stuck in the brush of the side of the mountain. Jenine’s door was jammed against the tree that had stopped the car’s descent.

Jenine gasped, trying to draw breath into her burning lungs. Tears mingled with the sweat coursing down her face.

“Bree,” she whispered, trying to turn her head against the strain of gravity. “Bree?”

No answer. She managed to twist her head around far enough to see Bree slumped in her seat, as loose as a ragdoll. Blood dripped from the tip of her nose and landed on the clutch.

“Bree!”

She didn’t respond. Jenine tried to unhook her seatbelt or reach across to feel for her friend’s pulse, but her muscles had stopped obeying her commands. Slowly, gruellingly, against her will, her head flopped back down to rest against the strained seatbelt.

Each inhale felt like lifting a weight, and the more she did it, the weaker her muscles became.

Then she saw the camera. Bree had put it back in the car, after all; she’d probably hidden it in the backseat somewhere, and it had been thrown forward during the crash. It balanced precariously on the dash beside the crushed windshield. Beyond it, a shape was moving.

A pale, ghostly being was picking its way through the underbrush towards her. She tried, and failed, to close her eyes. She didn’t want to watch it as it came for her, but her muscles refused her bidding. Her eyelids stayed open, her body stayed still, and for a moment, she thought she wasn’t going to be able to breathe, but then she managed a thin drag of air.

As the ghost stretched its hand through the windshield, reaching towards her, she saw that it was the little boy who’d owned the camera. He extended a long and slender finger, but stopped just short of grazing her skin.

Her pain was fading as darkness began to creep into the edge of her vision. The boy looked down at the camera. He picked it up, examining it like a child inspecting a lost toy. Then he looked back at Jenine. He placed his fingers into the crevices around the lens and strained. There was a pop and a crackle, and the camera broke into three pieces.

Jenine felt as if a heavy cloth had been lifted from her body. She suddenly had energy again—not much, but enough to draw in a deep, long, hungry gasp of air. The motion jarred her body and pain returned in waves, washing over her and making her writhe. It wasn’t the sluggish, cold pain, though; it was sharp and bright and told her that she was very much alive.

The boy only glanced at her briefly before returning to his work on the camera. Bit by bit, he picked it apart, pulling out the blank film, smashing the lenses, pulling chips of plastic off the case and emptying the insides. With each snap and break he became fainter, until he faded to just a pale outline, a hint of a person. Then he dropped the camera and was gone.

Jenine lay in shock. Pain roared through her, jarring her neck, head, and ribs, making her whimper. Voices reached her, floating down from the road far above, then she heard a siren. She blacked out just as the first rescue worker reached Bree’s car.

Chapter Eight

Carrying a bouquet of vivid-red tulips, Jenine entered the hospital room and approached Bree’s bed. It was a quiet Tuesday afternoon, just after lunch, and warm sunlight dripped through the window. Travis was sleeping in a chair next to Bree, snoring quietly. Jenine stepped closer and cleared her throat.

“Did you bring me chocolates?” Bree asked, not even bothering to look up from her laptop.

Jenine shuffled her feet. “Um. No. Flowers.”

“Dammit, Jenny.” Bree rolled her eyes in an exaggerated fashion. “Honestly, I don’t know what goes through your head sometimes. I’m a florist. Bringing me flowers is like giving an Eskimo a snow cone.”

Jenine flushed bright red. “Sorry.”

Bree glanced up from her laptop long enough to flash a wicked smile. “I’m kidding with you, babe. I love them. Put ’em in a vase somewhere and pull up a seat.”

Stepping around Travis, careful not to wake him, Jenine found a vase in one of the cupboards and filled it with water from the sink. “How are you feeling?”

“Looking forward to getting this thing off.” Bree tapped her neck brace. “Doubly so for the leg cast. But the docs say I’ll make a full recovery. How about you?”

Jenine sat down. “The cuts are healing okay. They say I’ll have some scars, but nothing major.”

Bree closed her laptop with a click. It was the first time they’d been able to talk privately since the accident, so Bree’s next question wasn’t a surprise to Jenine. “What happened? I’m guessing that, since you’re still here, things are… okay?”

“Seem to be.” Jenine rubbed her arm, where the marks from the ghost’s teeth were still fading. She briefly explained what had happened after the car crashed, ending with, “And he just disappeared. I haven’t seen or heard any ghosts since, so whatever he did, it must have broken the curse.”

Bree chewed her lip. “Richard said he’d tried breaking a camera, though. It didn’t work.”

“I guess it did this time,” Jenine said. “I think it was because a ghost did it. Like he could break parts of it, the parts that belonged to the ghosts’ realm, that we couldn’t.”

“Why do you think he did it?”

“I can guess,” Jenine said. “He owned the camera when he was alive. He was chased, or pushed, from the top of the lighthouse by the ghosts that were attracted to him. I think he was afraid of the other spirits, or he didn’t like them. That’s why he hid all the time. But he followed me and broke the camera… maybe because he didn’t want the same thing happening to us.”

Bree looked away to gaze out the window. “I guess that makes sense.”

“I wish I could thank him,” Jenine said. “He saved us.”

“Wish he could have saved us a bit sooner,” Bree grumbled. She started suddenly. “Oh, damn, I completely forgot. How’s Richard? Any news?”

“Yeah, he got out of ICU this morning. I went to visit him. He asked you to stop sending flowers. He says he’s in danger of drowning in them.”

Bree grinned. “Oh, good. I asked Nina to send everything we could spare. We owe him big time.”

Jenine nodded in agreement. She would guarantee Richard a lifetime of free legal advice, at the very least.

Travis snorted and shifted in his sleep.

Jenine jabbed a thumb in his direction. “What about—”

“Jerkface? We’re back together.” Bree had a smug, self-congratulatory tone in her voice. “You should have heard him. Couldn’t stop apologising. I’ve got him whipped, poor dove.”

A smile slid across Jenine’s face. “I’m happy.”

“Yeah, so am I. I’m not a fan of the bed rest, but damn if I haven’t had a chance to sort my inventory out.”

Jenine laughed and leaned on the edge of the bed to talk and joke with Bree. Travis’s snoring created a gentle backdrop as they discussed ribbons, their pasts and their futures.

Unseen by the women, the small boy stood at the back of the room, bronze hair drifting about his head as his vacant eyes watched the scene. His slack lips twitched into a smile as he closed his eyes, allowing himself to evaporate into a cloud of invisible dust.

The End

Author’s Note

Hello, gorgeous reader! I hope you enjoyed this story.

Reviews are invaluable for helping new readers find my books. Please consider leaving one on Amazon if you have a moment: www.amazon.com/dp/B00M9CTQ3O

Looking for something new to read? You can find a complete list of my stories at my Amazon author page: www.amazon.com/author/darcycoates

Or keep reading for links to some of my favourite stories.

And don’t forget to visit my website for a free short story collection, Eight to Midnight: www.candlebreak.com

Much love,

Darcy Coates

If you liked Ghost Camera, you’ll love…

The Haunting of Gillespie House

Elle can’t believe her luck; she’s spending a month house-sitting the beautiful Gillespie property. Hidden near the edge of the woods and an hour’s drive from the nearest town, its dark rooms and rich furniture entice her to explore its secrets. There’s even a graveyard hidden behind the house, filled with tombstones that bear an identical year of death.

If only the scratching in the walls would be quiet…

The house’s dark and deadly history quickly becomes tangled with Elle’s life. At the centre of it is Jonathan Gillespie, the tyrannical cult leader and original owner of the house. As Elle soon learns - just because he’s dead, doesn’t mean he’s gone.

Available on Amazon:

http://amzn.to/1dFzEOd

Quarter to Midnight

Quarter to Midnight contains nine chilling short stories by award-winning horror author Darcy Coates, including…

The Watcher: Three friends set a challenge for the new girl in town—watch the woods for an hour at midnight. It’s a simple dare, but has horrifying consequences.

Dead Call: A man’s phone rings, but he only hears silence when he answers.

Sub Basement: When Matt is tasked with retrieving an old file from his company’s derelict sub basement, he’s not prepared to be confronted with horrific evidence of an abandoned asylum behind a forgotten door…

Available on Amazon:

http://amzn.to/1JH7q05

The Mannequin

When Mark agrees to rent the basement, he knows it has problems. It’s dark, has no mobile reception, and is cluttered with storage boxes. But it’s cheap, and there’s no lease – which is perfect for a college student who’s been kicked out by his ex-girlfriend.

Well, nearly perfect.

There’s a mannequin hidden behind some old boxes that gives him the creeps. Sometimes it throws its dust cloth off. Sometimes he feels it watching him when his back is turned. And sometimes it moves while he’s asleep…

Available on Amazon:

http://amzn.to/1DKPsaM