Phantom Image by Kat Ellis
On a walk one weekend, along a path she's taken countless times, Lara finds the husk of an old camera, a daguerreotype, pointing at the trees along a disused railroad track. It looks like it's been sitting there for ages, yet she's never seen it before. She peers through the hole, imagining what the camera would've once seen, but as she does, she feels a burning streak down her back. Lara turns, expecting to see someone behind her, but no one is there. She touches her back and her hand comes away smeared with ash, or maybe it's just makeup? Lara leaves the camera and heads back to the path toward home.
Lara walked another way home for the next few weeks, not really thinking about the daguerreotype or the ashy smear on her back that was probably nothing at all, but then she got an assignment in her art class, to make a video using photographs to depict the distortion of time. Well, she's going to have to use the daguerreotype for that. It would be perfect.
Lara, a little freaked out because really, the daguerreotype in the middle of nowhere looking at nothing is a little creepy, gets to work. She photographs the daguerreotype first and then sets her camera inside it, lining up her lens with the hole in the frame. She looks through and sees shadows moving in the trees, but can't see it with her naked eye. She sets her camera to automatically take shots, then runs around and gets into position. … Then she feels like someone is behind her… And then she smells smoke. Nah dog, time to get outta there. Lara grabs her camera and runs.
Lara feels pretty ridiculous when she gets home and looks through all the photos. Nothing in them was out of the ordinary. She just freaked herself out for no reason. She's determined to go back the next day to get more photos to complete her project, and she does. And everything's fine. The creepy feeling she gets on her neck is just the wind. The smell of smoke is just from someone's fireplace… even though there are zero houses nearby. Seriously. It's fine. And that breathing she heard from behind her? … Nah, it's nothing!
Lara added more pictures to her project, but after reviewing the video, she realized she still didn't have enough and would have to go back out another day or two. As she's closing her editing app, she accidentally slows her video down and she does not like what she sees. What she thought were just shadows or smoke were not just that at all. Watching slowly, the smoky shadows seem to take the shape of a person. A person with arms and legs and a head. Getting closer. … Closer. … Right behind Lara. … Looking at the camera. !!
Lara shows her video to a classmate and she tells Lara she definitely has to go back because the smoke-monster or whatever it is probably would've hurt her by now if it was going to, and it really looked like it was going to reveal something, getting so close like it was. Lara agrees and goes back to the daguerreotype for what she tells herself is the last time. Ominous thought. Lara sets up her camera as the dark clouds overhead unleash a rumble of thunder and a crack of lightning.
In the reflection of her camera lens, with the lightning flash, Lara sees the smoke figure behind her, then she feels it grabbing her neck with a searing, scorching grip. She tries to pull the burning monster off of her, but it consumes her. She kicks off a shoe as she tries to escape, but it's no use. The last thing she hears is a voice saying “Burn with me.”
A detective now stands where Lara’s camera and shoe were found next to a pile of ash vaguely in the shape of a teenage girl. The camera's battery is dead, but surely there will be something of use on the memory card. Something to shed light on what happened. While the detective ponders, knowing that things are going to be worse than they have any right to be, another officer approaches with an idea.
The officer suggests that this could be a staged prank based on the old scary story about the Ash Man, you know, the one with the photographer who was caught in a storm? A tree nearby where he was photographing was struck by lightning, caught on fire and fell on him, engulfing him in flames and pinning him in place as he burned to death, leaving nothing but a pile of ash. Maybe this is just a social media stunt and the kid is just hanging out at a friend's house waiting to go viral.
The detective thinks it could be a possibility, but then smells smoke and discovers a smear of ash on his back. He doesn't know what happened, a prank or something much worse, but they'll just have to wait until they see what was captured by the camera.
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