The Glow in the Frames

The day Liam turned fourteen was cold, the sort of cold that seeps into your bones and makes you forget what warmth feels like. It also happened to be the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a fact my grandmother always brought up at dinner, as if we needed a reminder of death. But for us, it was supposed to be a happy day, Liam’s birthday.

I have three brothers. That’s what I tell people. But sometimes, when I count them in my head, I stumble on the fourth. There’s Marcus, the oldest at nineteen, then Liam, the birthday boy, then me, Nora, I’m thirteen, then the twins, Oliver and Henry, who just turned five. And then there’s the one I don’t talk about: Thomas. He died when he was eight, in a car accident that nearly killed my mom and left Liam with a permanent scar on his forehead. I was just a baby, so I only know the story from my mom’s tearful retellings. I always saw him as a ghost, a name we whispered around the house.

On Liam’s birthday, my mom brought out her vintage camera, the kind that uses actual film. She was a collector, always snapping photos of everything: our breakfast, the dog, the leaves on the sidewalk. We rolled our eyes, but she insisted on capturing every moment. That morning, she clicked relentlessly as Liam unwrapped his presents, blowing out the candles on his cake, and even as he tried to hide his annoyance. By the end of the party, she had gone through three rolls of film.

A week later, she got the photos developed. We gathered around the kitchen table, flipping through the stacks, laughing at the candid shots. But when I got to the ones from the party, I froze. In every picture of Liam, there was a small, glowing orb hovering near his shoulder. It was a pale blue-white, like a tiny star that had lost its way. I held one up to the light, squinting. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

My mom leaned over, frowning. ‘Must be a lens flare or dust on the film.’ But she didn’t sound convinced. Liam looked at the photo, and his face went pale. He didn’t say anything, just stared at the orb. I noticed that in the photos where he was laughing, the orb seemed dimmer, but in the ones where he looked serious, it was brighter, almost pulsing.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the orb. It didn’t look like any lens flare I had ever seen. It was too defined, too deliberate. I snuck into my mom’s room and took the photos, examining them under the lamp. I noticed something else. In one photo, the orb was positioned right over Liam’s heart. In another, it was near his head, as if it were following him. I shivered and put them back.

The next day, Liam started acting strange. He would stop mid-sentence, staring at nothing. He complained of a cold feeling on his right side, even though the house was warm. That night, I heard him talking in his sleep, so I tiptoed to his door. He was whispering, but not in his own voice. It was a child’s voice, soft and pleading. ‘Let me in, let me in.’ I opened the door, and he sat up, eyes wide, but not awake. ‘He’s here,’ he said. ‘He wants to come back.’

I ran to my mom, but she dismissed it as a nightmare, a side effect of the head trauma he had as a baby. But I knew better. I started doing research. I looked up orbs in photographs, ghost stories, anything. I found a legend about ‘soul flames’, the remnants of children who died too young, who linger to find a host. They say if a person sees one, they become a beacon. I confronted Liam, and he admitted he had been seeing flashes of light in his peripheral vision since his birthday. He said he felt watched.

Then, on the anniversary of Thomas’s death, we were in the living room. The lights flickered. Marcus laughed, said, ‘Probably the storm.’ But there was no storm. Then, the photographs on the mantelpiece began to rattle. One fell to the floor, glass shattering. It was the photo of Thomas. I picked it up, and the glass was warm. Under the broken shards, I saw the photo had changed. Thomas was now slightly turned toward the camera, his eyes glowing with the same blue-white light.

That’s when I understood. Thomas wasn’t gone. He was trying to come back through Liam. The orb was his soul, seeking a vessel. And Liam, because of his birthday on the day of the bombing, was a perfect conduit. He was a door. And Thomas was knocking.

The next day, Liam woke up with a fever. He kept saying, ‘He’s inside me.’ I called my mom, but she was in denial. ‘It’s a bad flu,’ she said. ‘We’ll take him to the doctor.’ But Liam grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly strong. His eyes were glazed. ‘Nora, promise me you’ll tell Mom I love her. And I’m sorry. But Thomas wants to live again.’ Then he collapsed.

In the hospital, Liam’s heart rate spiked, and the machines went haywire. The doctors were baffled. I sat by his bedside, holding his hand. I felt a cold spot on his palm, slowly spreading. I looked at the heart monitor: it showed a steady rhythm, but then a second heartbeat seemed to overlay it, off-beat. I saw the orb materialize above him, brighter than ever. It pulsed, and I heard a voice, not Liam’s, but a child’s, echoing in my mind: ‘She knows. Let me in.’

I refused. I shouted, ‘No, Thomas, you can’t do this! He’s your brother!’ The orb flickered, dimmed. I felt a wave of sadness, then anger. The heart monitor flatlined. Liam’s body arched, and for a moment, I saw his eyes turn the same blue-white. Then he went limp.

The doctors revived him, but when he opened his eyes, they were normal. He looked at me, confused. ‘What happened?’ he asked. The cold spot on his hand was gone. But when I looked at the photo of Thomas on the nightstand, his eyes were no longer glowing. They were just a boy’s eyes, empty.

We took Liam home. He seemed fine, though he had no memory of the day. But weeks later, I was going through my mom’s camera, looking at the negatives. I developed them myself in the darkroom I’d set up in the basement. In every one from the hospital, there was a dark spot in the corner, always the same shape: a small, hunched figure. And in the last one, the figure was standing beside Liam’s bed, holding a hand over his forehead.

I showed it to no one. I locked it in a metal box. But sometimes, at night, I feel a cold draft in my room, and I hear breathing, not mine, and a whisper: ‘I’m still here, Nora.’ And when I turn on the light, there’s nothing. But the picture in the box glows through the metal, a faint blue-white. Thomas never left. He just found a new way to stay.