The Prize in the Frame

Our farmhouse stood alone in the valley, a relic of a time when the land was worked by hand. The upstairs corridor, with its peeling wallpaper and crooked floorboards, had always felt like the spine of the house—long, narrow, and holding secrets. When I was a child, I slept in the room at the end of that corridor, and I learned to fear the way the darkness pooled in its corners. Now my little sister, Emma, had claimed that room, but she refused to enter it alone. She would cling to my arm, her eyes wide, and whisper, ‘It watches me, Alex. It waits at the foot of the bed.’ I would roll my eyes, but secretly, I understood. The corridor itself was the problem, and at its heart hung a framed picture that made my skin crawl.

It was a medium-sized frame, with tarnished gilt and cracked glass. Inside was a photograph of my mother at a flower-arranging competition, holding a silver trophy, her smile frozen in a moment of pride. But every time I passed it, the image seemed to shift. The woman in the photograph—my mother—would appear decayed, her skin mottled and peeling, her eyes sunken pits of blackness. It was not a trick of the light; I would stop and stare, and the face would stare back, a twisted mockery of the woman I loved. I tried to tell myself it was a smudge, a shadow, but the longer I looked, the more detailed the corruption became. Her teeth would protrude through her lips, and her hands—where they held the trophy—would turn to claws, clutching a withered stem instead of a prize.

One evening, after Emma refused to go upstairs again, I decided to take a closer look. I stood before the picture, the corridor dimly lit by a single bulb at the far end. I reached out to touch the glass, and as my fingers made contact, the temperature plummeted. My breath fogged, and the image in the frame contorted—not just the mother, but the entire room behind her. The floral arrangements on the table withered and blackened, and the other people in the background blurred into monstrous shapes. I snatched my hand back, and the frame returned to its normal, benign photograph. I laughed nervously, convincing myself I had imagined it, but a cold dread had settled in my stomach.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my new ground-floor room, listening to the creaks of the old house. At 2 AM, I heard footsteps in the corridor above—slow, dragging, as if something was pulling itself along the floor. I grabbed a flashlight and crept to the stairs, my heart pounding. As I reached the top, I saw the frame at the end of the hall. The light from my torch caught the glass, and I saw not the photograph but a living reflection—a woman, rotting, her face pressed against the inside of the glass, her fingers scraping. I froze. She tilted her head, and I heard a voice, thin and reedy, like wind through dead leaves: ‘You won the prize for me. Now I must keep it.’

I backed away, but the voice grew louder, and the glass began to crack. The woman in the frame was pushing outward, her decayed hands emerging, reaching for me. I turned and ran, stumbling down the stairs, and I didn’t stop until I was outside, gasping in the cold night air. The house stood silent, but I knew it was not over. I looked up at the upstairs window, and there, silhouetted against the pale light, was that same woman, watching me.

Now, I am writing this from a motel miles away. My sister has not spoken a word since we left. But last night, as I tried to sleep, I saw a sheet of paper on the nightstand, folded neatly. On it was a drawing—a child’s crayon sketch of our house, with a woman in every window, all smiling with teeth. At the bottom, in Emma’s unsteady hand, were the words: ‘The prize is you.’