After my schizophrenic grandmother died, I was given her old digital camera. The one she got in 2005, the year I was born. She had originally gotten it to take pictures of me, her first grandchild. Over the years, though, it became more than just that. She went everywhere with that thing. Never left it behind. Thousands of recordings and images were on it. The first few hundred were of me. I remember my mom telling me when I was younger about how my grandmother saw things that were never there. Heard voices that no one else could. My mom would tell me that my grandmother said that every time she took a picture of me, there was someone in the picture with me, even if I was the only person in the room when the picture was taken. When the picture was inspected by my mother, though, nothing was there. Or so she said. I decided that, now that the camera was mine, I'd take a look at the pictures. I turned on the camera. Still had charge on it from the last time she'd used it, just hours before she suffered a fatal heart attack. The first picture there was the most recent one. Her and her younger sister. I scrolled right once and it brought me to the very first picture ever taken on that camera. December 19, 2005. 9 days after my birth. It was me, cradled in my mother's arms. I looked around the background of the image. Scanned for anything abnormal. Then I saw it. It was almost invisible. Translucent. An outline. A figure. Tall and slender. The face, twisted and dark, a smile bearing rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth. I almost dropped the camera. I kept scrolling. The same figure in every picture of me, that twisted smile taunting me. My grandmother wasn't schizophrenic. I confronted my mother the next day. "Where did you get that camera? I asked that it came to me," she stammered when I showed it to her. I ignored the question. "Look at these pictures. I thought you said nothing was there." I scrolled through each image, tears welling in my eyes. I tried to stay calm, but I was shaking at the thought of that… that thing being around me my entire life. "You shouldn't have seen that. You were never supposed to see that. I was trying to protect you." She looked at me with a sense of genuine concern. "Because now… now, it's after you." Thanks for reading! Please follow, ❤️ and ⭐️! Should I do a part 2? Stay Gold, love, lia ❤️
