The Fourth Exposure

The first time I noticed the gap was when I picked up the prints from the pharmacy. I’d been sorting through my grandmother’s old things after she passed, and I’d found a disposable camera in her desk drawer, half-used. I thought it would be a nice tribute to finish the roll—pictures of the garden, the dog, the house I grew up in. I even took one of my freshly repainted study, the dark red walls a far cry from the faded floral wallpaper of my childhood.

When the photos came back, there were twenty-three prints in the envelope, but the sticker on the back said twenty-four. I spread them out on the kitchen table and counted again. Twenty-three. The last one, the one on the spool, was missing. I dug for the negative strip, holding it up to the light. There it was: frame 24, a shot of my study, but the image was wrong. Instead of the cozy room I knew, there was a thick, sickly yellow haze hanging in the air like smog. Through it, three figures stared out at me. They weren’t human—their faces were smooth, featureless except for deep hollows where eyes and mouths should be, like theatrical masks left out in the rain.

The first face hovered right at the lens, huge and distorted, as if it had pressed its face against the camera. A wide, gaping smile was frozen on it, hollow and mocking. The second was smaller, standing near the doorway, its head tilted in a downward arc, a frown carved into the void. The third was farthest back, by the window, its posture straight, face blank, watching.

I told myself it was a double exposure, a trick of light. But that explanation felt flimsy. The light in that room was never yellow like that. I called my grandmother’s old friend, Mrs. Alvarez, who lived next door and knew her secrets. She said my grandmother had a ‘visitor’ who liked to play with cameras. She warned me to burn the camera and the negative. I laughed it off, but that night I couldn’t sleep. Every creak of the house was one of them moving.

The next morning, I decided to finish the roll anyway. I took a picture of the garden, the roses my grandmother had tended for decades. I used the last frame on my own reflection in the hallway mirror, a sort of self-portrait to keep me grounded. When I dropped the camera off at the same pharmacy, I asked for two sets of prints.

When I went to pick them up, the clerk behind the counter looked pale. He handed me the envelope without meeting my eyes. ‘We had a problem with one of the photos,’ he said, ‘it was blank.’ I opened the envelope right there. The first set was fine—garden, mirror, all normal. But the second set had an anomaly: on the print titled ‘Mirror Self-Portrait,’ I wasn’t alone. Behind my shoulder, a yellowed figure stood with a hollow face, its mouth stretched in a silent scream. And its hand rested on my shoulder, faint but unmistakable.

I didn’t go home that night. I checked into a motel and left the lights on. But when I looked in the bathroom mirror to brush my teeth, I swear I saw a yellow haze forming behind me. I whirled around—nothing. The air was cold.

I tried to calm myself, telling myself it was just my imagination. But then I noticed the disposable camera I’d brought from the desk was in my bag. On a whim, I took a photo of the empty motel room. I waited, holding my breath, then developed it in the bathroom using a one-hour service down the street. The print came back with a twist: the room was flooded with that yellow light, and four faces now stared at me—the three from before, and a fourth emerging from my own chest, its hollow eyes meeting mine.

I threw the camera in the trash. I burned the prints. But the faces didn’t disappear. They started appearing in my peripheral vision—in the corner of my apartment, in the reflection of my computer screen, in the steam of a hot shower. I haven’t taken a picture since. But I know it doesn’t matter. I’ve seen the faces, and they’ve seen me. And the lights in my house flicker at night, and I feel a cold hand on my shoulder, and I know they’re not ghosts. They’re spectators, waiting for me to take one more photo, to complete their collection.

I’m writing this now, not to confess, but to warn you. If you ever find an old camera with one shot left, that’s not a coincidence. It’s an invitation. And whatever you do, don’t look at the prints. Because once you see the faces, they never stop seeing you. I see them now, standing behind my chair, hollow faces leaning in. One is close, laughing. One is by my bed, frowning. And one is by my closet, with no expression at all.