The drive home from Uncle Dan's was a blur. Every shadow between streetlights seemed to hold a deeper darkness, every flicker of movement in my peripheral vision made my hands tighten on the wheel. The thing in the photo had a name now, whispered by my uncle between ragged breaths: The Watcher.
It was an old family story, one he'd barely remembered. A tale his own grandmother had told him about a presence that attached itself to their bloodline, a shadow that appeared in photographs just before a tragedy. He thought it was just a story. Now, he wasn't so sure.
When I finally stumbled back into my apartment, the silence felt different. It was no longer just watchful; it was expectant. I locked the door, bolted it, and leaned against it, my heart hammering. My phone felt heavy in my pocket, a cursed object I was too afraid to look at but too terrified to be without.
I had to know more.
Pushing away from the door, I went to the old cardboard box in my closet where I kept my own childhood photos. My hands were still shaking as I lifted the lid, the smell of old paper and memories filling the air. I dumped the contents onto my living room floor, a chaotic mess of faded colors and smiling faces.
I started sorting, my breath catching in my throat. Birthday parties, family vacations, school plays. I scrutinized every one, my eyes scanning the backgrounds, the edges, the spaces between people.
And then I found it.
It was a picture from my seventh birthday. I was grinning, a chocolate-smeared face beneath a pointed paper hat, about to blow out the candles on a cake. My parents stood behind me, their hands on my shoulders, smiling. And there, in the darkened hallway just beyond the bright circle of the dining room light, was a tall, familiar shadow. It was less defined than in the graduation photo, barely more than a smudge of darkness, but it was there. The same impossibly tall, thin silhouette. The same feeling of being observed.
A cold nausea washed over me. It hadn't started with Aunt Carol. It had been here all along.
I tore through the rest of the photos, a frantic, desperate archaeologist unearthing a terrible history. I found it again in a picture from my high school graduation, a dark stain in the upper bleachers of the auditorium. I found it in a vacation photo from a beach trip, a stark shadow against a bright sunset where no person stood.
There was a pattern. It was there for the milestones, the big events. But was that all?
My phone buzzed on the floor beside me, making me jump. It was a notification from a cloud storage app I rarely used. "On This Day Memory," it cheerfully announced.
With a sense of dread, I tapped it.
The photo that loaded was from five years ago. It was a selfie I had taken with Aunt Carol at the county fair. We were both squinting against the sun, sharing a giant cloud of pink cotton candy. It was a happy memory. A perfect moment.
My eyes, now trained to see the unseen, went immediately to the background. To the darkened entrance of the funhouse behind us. There, in the gap between two distorting mirrors, it stood. The Watcher. Closer than ever before. Its form was clearer, more defined. And this time, it wasn't just watching.
One of its long, shadowy arms was outstretched, its hand—if it could be called a hand—resting lightly on Aunt Carol's shoulder.
She was smiling in the picture, but her eyes, which I had always remembered as bright with laughter, now looked wide. Strained. Just like in the graduation photo.
The warning hadn't been about a future danger. It had been an explanation of a past one. The thing in the photos didn't just watch. It touched. It influenced.
And it had been touching our family for a very, very long time.