Evan had never met Marissa. He was just the guy sent to clean out her rental after she stopped answering calls and the landlord filed a welfare check. The place was unnervingly quiet, untouched, as if no one had ever really lived there. The only thing left behind was a black-and-white photograph on the mantel—a faded image of a country house with a lone woman in a dark dress standing front and center, her face cold, her eyes strangely focused beyond the frame. Behind her, barely visible in the shadows, was a second figure. Blurred. Screaming. Evan didn’t think much of it at first, but that night he dreamed of creaking floors, dust-choked halls, and something moving just beyond his vision. When he woke up, the photo was somehow on his kitchen table, though he hadn’t taken it home. And something had changed—the screaming figure was gone, and the woman was no longer looking straight ahead. Her gaze had shifted… now angled, ever so slightly, toward where he would’ve been standing if he were in the frame. Each night, the dreams deepened: the house became clearer, the walls closer, the whispers louder. The woman began appearing in reflections—glass doors, television screens, even his phone’s black screen when it powered down. She never moved, just stared, as though waiting. Evan tried to throw the photo away, but it always came back, untouched. He tracked down the origin, a yard sale months earlier, and an old woman who warned him that “it watches who it wants.” Desperate, he found the house from the photo—real, decaying, and abandoned. Inside, the air felt heavy, like breath held too long. In a cracked attic mirror, he saw her behind him. Smiling. When Evan stopped answering messages, his neighbor reported a foul smell and strange flickering lights. The police found no trace of him. Just the photo—now showing three figures in front of the house. The woman in the black dress. Marissa beside her. And a new face—Evan’s—mouth open in a silent scream. In the upper window of the house, a shadow had appeared. Tall. Distorted. Unformed. Watching. Waiting. Growing.

To be Continued