Hidden Photograph

Tucked inside a box of dust, hidden beneath the weight of years, I found it—a photograph. Its edges were curled, its surface clouded with time, but the image within was clear enough to unsettle me. There were faces I didn’t know, standing in a yard of brittle grass. And there, at the center, was me—or someone who looked too much like me to dismiss. Her hair fell in the same waves as mine, but lighter, sunlit in a way my own never was. Her eyes held something sharp, something knowing, as though she had seen more than I ever could. She wore a red dress, one I’d never owned, standing beneath a sky I couldn’t place. The trees behind her were skeletal, their branches clawing toward a horizon painted in ash. I turned it over. The back was bare, save for a smudge of black ink, as if someone had started to write and then thought better of it. My stomach twisted. The air in the room felt wrong, heavy. The photograph seemed to hum faintly in my hands. That night, I left it in the attic, buried again among the relics of forgotten lives. But sleep didn’t come easily. When I closed my eyes, I saw her smile, wide and uncanny. I heard the faint rustle of leaves, though the windows were shut. Dreams dragged me to a place I didn’t know but somehow remembered—to that yard, that sky, those clawing trees. I woke in the dark, heart pounding. My hands shook as I reached for the bedside lamp. When the light spilled across the room, my breath caught. The photograph was there on my dresser, though I hadn’t brought it down. The girl in red was still smiling, but now, the background had changed. The skeletal trees were closer, their shadows reaching for her shoulders. In the silence, I heard it: a faint, deliberate tapping from the attic above.