The Unwound Reel

The house on Cedar Lane was my grandmother’s, a creaking, drafty Victorian that my husband, Leo, and I inherited after she passed. We moved in last autumn, and with the cold, wet weather, we’d taken to keeping our greyhound, Biscuit, in the study. It was his room now, a den of mismatched armchairs and the lingering scent of pipe tobacco.

At the far end of the study stood a walk-in closet, a deep, dusty cavern where I’d stashed my grandmother’s canvas of half-finished poems, our children’s misshapen pottery, and a battered steamer trunk that had been my grandfather’s. Among his things—sextants, logbooks, a brass compass—I found an old film camera, a Kodak Retina II, with a roll of Kodachrome still inside. I didn’t think much of it; I tucked it in a shoebox and shoved it to the back of a shelf, behind a stack of National Geographics.

One morning, I woke early, the rain lashing against the windows. I shuffled to the kitchen, started the percolator, and let Biscuit out into the soggy yard. As I lit a cigarette on the back porch, I noticed something glinting on the weight bench in the corner of the study. It was the camera, sitting there as if someone had deliberately placed it. I frowned—I was sure I’d left it in the closet. I picked it up, turned it over, and set it on the mantelpiece, vowing to ask Leo if he’d moved it.

A few days later, I found the camera on the kitchen table, the lens cap off. Inside, the film advance had been wound to the next frame, as if a photo had been taken. My skin prickled. Leo swore he hadn’t touched it, and the kids were at school. I put it away in the closet again, this time in a locked drawer.

That night, I dreamed of salt water and the groan of a hull. In the dream, I was standing on a foggy pier, watching a small boat drift away. I could hear my grandfather’s voice, tinny and distant, calling my name. I woke with a start, my heart hammering.

The next week, things escalated. The camera appeared on the bathroom counter one afternoon, the film advanced again. I decided to get it developed, hoping the photos might reveal something, though I was terrified of what I might find.

At the pharmacy, the clerk, a young woman with a kind face, handed me a packet of prints along with the developed negatives. I waited until I was in the car, my hands trembling, to flip through them. The first few were blurry shots of my grandmother’s garden, her roses in full bloom, decades old. Then came a photo of my grandfather on a fishing boat, grinning at the camera. Tears welled in my eyes. But as I reached the final photo, my blood ran cold.

The last image was a close-up of a face pressed against a window, its features smeared and wrong, the eyes too wide, the mouth stretched into a grotesque grin. And behind it, barely visible, was the interior of my study—I could see the weight bench and the mantelpiece. The photo was dated three days ago.

I dropped the prints, the photo sliding to the floor. I felt a chill spread through me, and I looked around, half-expecting to see that face in the windows of the pharmacy. I gathered the photos and drove home, my mind racing.

That evening, I confronted Leo. ‘You’ve been messing with me, right?’ I asked, my voice shaky. He looked at me with genuine confusion. ‘No, Lucy, I haven’t. I’ve barely touched the thing.’ I showed him the photo, and he turned pale. ‘What the hell is that?’ he whispered.

We decided to burn the camera and the negatives. We built a small fire in the backyard, the rain having let up for a moment. The flames licked the metal casing, and the film curled and blackened. As the camera melted, the oddest thing happened: a high-pitched whine, like a dying animal, echoing from the closet. We both froze. Then, from inside the study, we heard a soft click, like a shutter closing.

I ran to the closet and threw open the door. On the floor, in the middle of the room, lay the camera, whole and unharmed, the film spooled forward as if a new photo had been taken. I felt a presence behind me, the air suddenly thick with the smell of salt and rot. A voice, low and grainy, whispered in my ear, ‘You can’t burn what’s already developed.’

I turned slowly. Behind me, the door to the closet was closing, and I caught a glimpse of a figure in the darkness—the same figure from the photo, its face pressed against the glass of the window, but now it was inside the house, its grin splitting wider. The camera lay at my feet, and I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that it would never stop taking pictures, and that soon, it would take one of me.