The house at the end of Blackwood Lane didn't just look empty; it looked hungry.
Elias, a professional estate photographer, didn't believe in hauntings. To him, peeling wallpaper was just "vintage texture" and damp basements were "structural character." But as he stepped into the foyer of the Thorne Mansion, the air felt thick—like exhaled breath that had never been cleared away.
The First Frame
He began in the parlor. Through his viewfinder, the room looked different than it did to the naked eye. In the corner of the lens, he saw a tall, thin figure standing by the window. When he pulled his face away from the camera, the corner was empty.
"Dust motes," he muttered, though his hands were shaking.
The Developing Dread
As Elias moved to the second floor, he noticed something strange: every mirror in the house had been painted over with thick, black acrylic. He scratched at the edge of the one in the master bedroom, peeling back a flake of paint.
He didn't see his own reflection. He saw the hallway behind him, but it wasn't the empty hallway he had just walked through. In the mirror, the walls were dripping with something dark, and the figure from the parlor was standing directly at his shoulder.
He spun around. Nothing. ### The Final Shot
Panicked, Elias headed for the front door, but the layout of the house had shifted. Every door he opened led back to the same windowless dining room.
He looked down at his digital camera to check his shots, hoping for a logical explanation. He scrolled through the images:
The Foyer: Empty.
The Parlor: The figure was closer.
The Hallway: The figure was reaching for his neck.
The Last Photo: It was a photo Elias hadn't taken yet. It showed him, slumped in a chair in this very dining room, his eyes painted over with the same thick, black acrylic as the mirrors.
The lights flickered and died. In the absolute darkness, Elias heard the distinct, metallic click of his own camera taking a photo.
When the real estate agent arrived the next morning, the house was silent. The only thing they found was Elias's camera sitting in the center of the dining room table.
Every single photo on the memory card was blank—except for the last one. It was a high-resolution shot of the front door, locked from the inside, with a caption scrawled in the metadata: "Stay a while.