The Photographer’s Apprentice

It was a lazy August afternoon when my friend Marisol and I decided to test out my new vintage camera in the field behind my house. The field was overgrown with tall grasses and dotted with the rusted remains of an old irrigation system, and we’d often joked that it felt like a forgotten movie set. Marisol was always the adventurous one, while I preferred to capture moments from behind the lens. We laughed and took turns posing among the dry stalks, the heat shimmering off the distant hills.

After an hour of goofing off, we wandered toward the abandoned farmhouse that sat at the edge of the property. It had been empty for decades, its windows boarded up, its porch sagging. We’d never dared go inside, but today Marisol dared me to take a photo of her standing in front of it. I raised the camera, focused, and just as I clicked the shutter, Marisol froze.

‘Did you see that?’ she whispered, her eyes wide, pointing toward the broken swing that hung from a dead tree nearby. ‘There’s a man standing right there, watching us.’ I lowered the camera and looked, but saw nothing. Marisol described him in detail: a tall man in his late thirties, wearing an old-fashioned gray suit, with a hat that obscured his eyes. He was just standing there, perfectly still, not moving even as we stared.

A chill ran down my spine. Her description matched someone I had glimpsed before, months earlier, when I was out here alone. I had written it off as a trick of the light, but now I knew it wasn’t. And there was more: the man looked exactly like a figure we had invented as kids, a ghost we used to scare ourselves with during summer nights. His name was Elias, and we had long forgotten him until this moment.

We decided to leave, but as I turned, I noticed something odd in the camera’s viewfinder. The image I had just taken wasn’t of Marisol in front of the house. It was of the man, standing closer than he had been before, his hand raised as if beckoning. I showed Marisol, and her face went pale. ‘He’s getting closer,’ she said.

We ran back to my house, but the feeling of being watched followed us. Through my window, I saw him again, this time in the field, closer to the house than before. He was not moving, but he was definitely there. And then I remembered: the camera. It was an old film camera, and I had loaded a roll of film that I had found in my grandfather’s attic. He had been a photographer, and the film was old, expired. I had thought it was a fun experiment.

That night, I developed the film in my makeshift darkroom. As the images emerged, my blood ran cold. Every photo I had taken that day had been altered. In each one, the man was present, but his position changed, as if he were moving closer with each shot. In the last photo, taken just before we ran, he was so close that his face filled the frame, his eyes black and hollow, his mouth open in a silent scream.

I couldn’t sleep. The next morning, I went back to the field, determined to confront whatever it was. The swing was still there, but the man was nowhere to be seen. I stepped onto the porch of the farmhouse, and for the first time, the door creaked open on its own. Inside, dusty and dark, I found an old trunk. Inside the trunk was a leather-bound journal, and on its cover was the name ‘Elias Grant.’ It was filled with photographs, all of the same man, each one with a date and a name written beneath. The last entry was dated 1952, and the photo was of a young woman, with a note that said: ‘She saw me. I will find her.’

I slammed the book shut and ran out of there. I never told Marisol the full truth, but she told me later that she had nightmares about a man in a gray suit standing at the foot of her bed. We never returned to that field, and I destroyed the camera, but sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see his face in the darkness, and I know that he is still watching, waiting for the next person who sees him to take his picture.