Picture Perfect
Sterlin, Colorado, is where my grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousin live. My mom and I often go there for vacation, since we get free lodging, and I love to sit in the basement with my family and tell ghost stories.
We went around 6 p.m. to the store to get some food for the evening; when it got dark, we planned to descend into the haunted basement to tell our real ghost stories. I loaded up the cart and helped pick out the snacks for the night.
The bill rang up to $66.06, but a computer error made it read $66.6. I exchanged a look with my grandmother and grinned. If ever there was a sign that tonight was the perfect night for telling ghost stories, there it was.
We popped some popcorn and went downstairs when we got back, eager to start the storytelling. My grandmother started, regaling us with tales of her old haunted house deep in the South. I took my mom's camera from her purse and snapped a picture with the flash on. I hit review.
There was nothing in the picture.
I frowned and snapped another picture, peering through the viewfinder to make sure that I could make out my aunt's face in the four candles we had lit at the corners of the room. Yet again, nothing showed up on the review.
Throughout the night, I kept snapping pictures, and finally stopped reviewing them, figuring I'd check them later. When the stories wound down and we were ready to head off to bed, I looked at the last one I'd taken.
A face, a perfect face, was staring straight at the camera from inside a room that was pitch black, its face illuminated so that all its features were perfectly visible but nothing around it could be seen.
I shuddered and hit delete. I was eleven, and no one was going to believe me if I told them I'd taken a picture of another room while sitting there the entire time.
When I fell asleep, it was with the perfect face burned on my eyelids.
