#ppsf2024

She rubbed the sleeve of her sweater against the camera, trying to clear off some of the dust, and she heard that familiar grinding sound from turning the thumb wheel. The sound was so familiar it made her want to cry, and she turned it a few more times. There wasn’t any film in the camera so Beca could wind it for as long as she wanted. 

How many times had she heard that during their college years? 

That along with the high pitched whine of the flash getting ready, and the dull clunk the shutter made when the photo was taken. 

The button on top was shiny, permanently oily from years of use, and Beca could see other spots on the camera where Chloe’s fingers had left their mark. 

It was things like this that always hit Beca the hardest. The physical, tangible things left behind. The hair in her hairbrush, fingerprint smudges on the remote control, a smear of lipstick left on a glass that Beca couldn’t bring herself to clean. Echoes of the person who used to be there, like footprints left behind in the snow. 

No, not snow. Snow was fleeting. Temporary. These were like the footprints left behind on the moon. They would be there until someone got rid of them. 

“Mom? What are you doing up there?” Riley called from the bottom of the ladder that led up to the attic. Beca jumped and almost dropped the camera. She hadn’t heard her daughter come back from school. 

“Just looking for something,” Beca replied. 

“Looking for what?”

“Your Mom’s Christmas ornaments from when she was a kid.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “It’s October.”

“I’m well aware,” Beca said. She pulled her gaze away from Chloe’s old camera and cast her eyes around the rest of the dark and dusty attic. There were at least a dozen boxes still to search through. “You can come and help if you want.”

“Ew, gross, it’s like spider central up there. Probably full of ghosts too.”

Our whole house is full of ghosts, Beca thought. “I’m sure there aren’t any ghosts up here. Definitely spiders though.”

“Are you going to be able to get down on your own?”

“Yes,” Beca replied. “I got up here, I’m sure I can get down again.”

“Then I’ll pass,” Riley said. 

Beca carefully replaced Chloe’s camera back in the shoebox where she found it. She decided she’d look for the decorations another time and, with the shoebox held securely in one hand, she descended the ladder. She wobbled slightly, her leg cramping up, and she felt Riley’s steadying hand on her back. 

“Careful,” Riley said. “Have you been crying?”

“No,” Beca replied. She wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not. Crying used to feel like such a big deal to her. It used to be something she did rarely, and she’d found the whole act embarrassing. Now it happened so frequently she hardly noticed. “It’s dusty as hell up there.”

“Did you find them?”

Beca shook her head. “They’re up there somewhere but I can look later.”

“Why do you want them?” Riley asked, watching as Beca struggled to lift the ladder so she could push it back through the hatch. Riley, already a head taller than her Mom at 15-years-old and much more physically capable, took it from her and slid it back into place with ease. The hatch closed behind it.

“Thanks,” Beca said. She was past the point of getting frustrated with her new-found physical limitations. She was just grateful she had a kid that was willing to help her do the things that she couldn't since the accident. “Your Grandma called, she asked if she could have them back. Your Mom made them when she was a kid.”

Riley nodded, and then her eyes fell on the green shoebox in Beca’s hand. “What’s that?”

“Oh, just your Mom’s old camera from when we were in college,” Beca said, opening the box to show her. 

Riley pulled a face as she picked it up. “Did you guys go to college in the 60s?”

“No, smart-ass,” Beca said. “It was old-school back then, it’s basically an antique now. Be careful with it.”

“I will,” Riley said. She turned it over in her hands. “It doesn’t even have a screen, how did you know what you were taking a picture of?”

“You looked through there,” Beca said, tapping the viewfinder. 

Riley held it up to her eye. “How did you know if the picture came out good?”

“You didn’t,” Beca said. “You just had to hope for the best and wait until it got printed. Half of the photos of me as a baby had my dad’s finger covering the lens.” She pointed to the button on top of the camera. “Press that to take a photo, then you’d wind that underneath if you wanted to take another one. That number at the top is how many shots you had left on the roll of film, and this button turned the flash on.”

“Cool,” Riley said, looking it over. “What else is in the box?” 

“Some rolls of film,” Beca said, opening the box again and showing Riley the small canisters. “Your Mom mustn’t have gotten them developed.”

“How come?”

“Beats me,” Beca said with a shrug. “Maybe she meant to but just never got around to it.”

She thought she had all the time in the world. We all did.

“Oh,” Riley said. “Could we get them developed?”

“Uh, maybe,” Beca said, looking into the box again, counting five canisters of film. “It can be a little expensive.” Riley’s face fell slightly. “I’m not saying no,” Beca said, quickly. “Let me look into it.”

“It would be nice to see them,” Riley said, putting the camera carefully back in the box. “Kinda like seeing the world through Mom’s eyes.”

“Yeah,” Beca said. “I’d like to see them too. I just need to-”

“Check the budget spreadsheet. I know,” Riley said, rolling her eyes but grinning. 

“Mock all you want,” Beca said, trying not to smile. “But you’ll be grateful for that spreadsheet when we’re eating turkey and not drywall for Thanksgiving.” The budget spreadsheet had become something of a running joke between them in the last year. Their finances had taken such a hit following everything that had happened, and Beca had found herself scrimping and scraping just to be able to make ends meet. She’d turned it into a joke because she hadn’t wanted Riley to know how dire things really were. 

“I hate turkey anyway,” Riley said, heading for her bedroom. “It’s too dry.”

“And drywall isn’t?”

“Good point,” Riley replied. “I don’t know why we aren’t just going to Grandma’s this year like usual.”

“Your Grandma…” Hates me. Still blames me. Can’t forgive me. Won’t forgive me. “She said she isn’t doing Thanksgiving this year.” Not a lot to be thankful for when your only daughter is dead.

“That’s what she said last year,” Riley said, her voice now carrying from her bedroom. Beca would lose her soon to her video games, and she couldn’t really blame her. She wished she had a different world she could escape to. 

“Last year…” Beca trailed off. Last year was a write-off. Last year was insurmountable grief and pain.

“I know,” Riley said, not needing Beca to complete her sentence. “I just thought she might want her family around this year.”

I’m not her family, Beca thought. Not anymore. 

Beca had hoped Chloe’s Mom would have seen past her dislike of her in order to maintain her relationship with her granddaughter, but it was looking like that wasn’t the case. 

“She might change her mind,” Beca said. “But for now, it looks like it’ll be just us and a dry-ass turkey.”

“Yum,” Riley said. Beca heard the familiar sounds of her daughter’s computer booting up and left her to it.

“I’ll be in my office if you need anything,” she said, before turning and leaving the hallway.

Beca put the shoebox down on her desk and wiggled her mouse to wake up her computer.

She dealt with some emails from work and pulled up her budget spreadsheet. 

Things were tight but she had a little breathing room.

She’d intended to add any extra money to her savings, but she couldn’t deny that getting these rolls of film developed was appealing.

She wondered why Chloe never had. It struck her as odd that there were multiple rolls that had just been left. Shoved in a shoebox with her beloved camera and never touched again. 

She vaguely remembered Chloe telling her that the rolls of film had gotten too expensive which is why she’d stopped using the camera, but she didn’t know why she’d stopped getting the photographs printed.

That night they ate leftover spaghetti in front of the TV, and Beca told Riley she would get the rolls of film developed.

The look of excitement on her daughter’s face was worth the money, but it still didn’t stop her baulking slightly when the CVS employee told her her total was $85 for the five rolls of film.

“Come pick them up in 10 days,” he said.

Beca felt slightly sick as she left the store, and was texting her boss about overtime before she’d even reached the bus stop.

During the 10 days it took for the photographs to be developed, Beca found herself back up in the attic searching for those Christmas decorations. She finally found them, hidden in a box stuffed in the corner behind Chloe’s old dressmakers’ dummy that she’d gotten in her theatre costume phase. Beca had been avoiding that corner because the dummy had always freaked her out, and it made her jump every time she turned the light on in the attic. 

She’d also found an old envelope of photographs that Chloe must have gotten developed but had never put into albums. This was something else Beca found strange.

Chloe had always put her photos into albums. She treated each one as if it were the prized exhibit at an art gallery, even if the photo wasn’t of anything particularly interesting. Why would she have left these ones up here?

Beca grabbed them too, and carried both down the ladder. As she was climbing down her left leg cramped, as it so often did these days, and she slipped and fell down the last three steps. 

It wasn’t a high fall, but it knocked the wind out of her as her back hit the floor. 

The Christmas ornaments managed to stay inside the box, but the envelope of photos flew open and the pictures were scattered across the landing. 

Beca took a second to catch her breath and let her heart rate settle.

You’re okay. You just got a shock. 

Beca could still conjure up Chloe’s voice in her head, and that was the voice she used when she needed reassuring or comforting. It made her feel less alone somehow.

She knew Riley would be home soon, and Beca didn’t want her to find her like this, so she forced herself to sit up.

She checked the contents of the box and was relieved to find everything still intact before she grabbed the photographs and stuffed them back into the envelope. She dropped both the box and the envelope in her office, and then fought with the attic ladder until it finally clicked into place and she could push them up and away. She hoped she wouldn’t be back there for a while.

She was stiff and aching and a little rattled, and what she really wanted to do was lie down for an hour, but instead she pulled out her phone and sent a text to Chloe’s Mom to let her know she’d found the decorations, and that she could come pick them up whenever she wanted. 

Janet Beale replied almost immediately to say she was in the neighbourhood and would be straight over. 

It didn't give Beca much time to mentally prepare, but at least it would get it over with.

Beca didn’t need to ask why Janet was in her neighbourhood. The cemetery where Chloe was buried was only a 30 minute drive from where Beca lived, and Janet was there more often than not. 

Before long, Beca’s phone buzzed with a message to say that Janet was outside, and Beca grabbed the box from her office and walked out of her house and towards the car. Her leg was still stiff and sore from the hour she’d spent searching the cramped attic, and her limp as she walked was more pronounced than usual. 

“Here,” Beca said. Janet took it from her without a word of thanks. “Um, so did you want to come in for a coffee? Riley will be home from school soon, and I know she’d love to see you.”

“No,” Janet replied, placing the box carefully in the passenger seat. 

Beca sighed. “Look, you hate me, I get it. I’m not my biggest fan either. But Riley hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s your granddaughter, don’t punish her for something she didn’t do.”

“I said no.”

“I’m not asking you to forgive me, I’m asking-”

“Forgive?!” Janet all but spat at her. “I will never forgive you. My only daughter is dead because of you.”

“It was an accident,” Beca said, her throat tightening. 

“I know that,” Janet said. “And I don’t care. You were the one driving. And maybe Riley is innocent but she looks too much like you, and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand to look at you when Chloe should be here instead.”

Beca had nothing else to say to her, so she turned and left, swallowing her anger and feeling it scald her throat. 

The anger and hurt were building so quickly that if she didn’t get away from her she feared she’d explode in a fit of rage and tears. 

Janet’s words were cruel, but what hurt her the most was that she was right. 

Chloe should be here instead of her. It had been Beca’s fault. 

She’d taken her eyes off the road for just a second too long and then…

Beca shook her head, trying to clear away the thoughts and memories.

She couldn’t do this again. 

The police, the doctors, her therapist, even Riley, they’d all told Beca it wasn’t her fault. 

A freak accident. 

But if her eyes had been on the road…

The sound of the front door opening caused Beca to jump. 

“Mom? Was that Grandma's car I saw pulling away?”

“Yeah,” Beca said, quickly dabbing at her eyes before she turned around. “She came for those ornaments.”

Riley nodded. “She didn’t want to hang on and say hi to me?”

“She had somewhere to be,” Beca said.

Riley rolled her eyes, and it took Beca’s breath away how much she looked like her in that moment. She could almost understand why Janet couldn’t look at her. 

“Sure,” Riley said. 

“Riley…” Beca trailed off. She didn’t know what to say. 

“I don’t know why you’re lying to protect her,” Riley said. “I get it, she doesn’t want to see me. We’re not really family.”

“You’re still her family, she just-”

“But I’m not though, am I? Not by blood.”

“And since when has that ever mattered?” 

“It clearly matters to grandm- to Janet,” Riley said. She was trying to sound unbothered, but Beca could hear the hurt in her voice. “It’s fine, I get it. Mom isn’t here anymore so she doesn’t have to pretend to care.”

“Riley, your Grandma’s just hurting-”

“I’m hurting!” Riley snapped, cutting her off. “You’re hurting. We’re all fucking hurting.”

Riley stomped off to her room without another word, and Beca let her go. She didn’t know what to say to her anyway. 

Back in her office Beca finally had a moment to look through the photographs she’d found in the attic, and it became immediately clear to her why these ones had never made it into the albums. 

The first one was of Chloe’s Mom and Dad, taken at their 25th wedding anniversary party, only a few weeks before her Dad had died. 

The entire envelope of photos were ones that had been taken at that party. Beca figured Chloe must have taken to get them developed in the time between their party and his death, and then upon receiving them back had shoved them in the attic.

It looked like the photos hadn’t come out particularly well either. Each one had weird black marks that partially obscured the subjects of the pictures. The only ones that had come out clean were ones that didn’t have any people in them, like the photo of the cake. 

Beca smiled sadly as she thumbed through the rest of the photos. There was one of Chloe standing between her Mom and Dad, all of them beaming at the camera, and Beca couldn’t help but feel even more for Janet. She had lost two of the people in that photo. The two who were meant to be with her until the end. 

Her eyes filled with tears as she saw a photo of Stacie - who had worked with Chloe’s Dad at the accountancy firm and so had naturally gotten an invite to the party - grinning and raising a glass to the camera. 

Beca hastily wiped her eyes and moved onto the next photograph.  

It was one of her that Chloe must have taken without her realising. In the photo, Beca was smiling, talking to one of Chloe’s kid nephews, Freddie. 

Neither of them knew it yet, but Beca was pregnant in this photo. They would take the test that night and their joy would be unmatched by anything that had happened in their lives so far. 

Their joy wouldn’t last long, as Chloe would lose her dad only weeks later, and she would spiral downwards harder and faster than Beca would have thought possible. 

It was only the birth of their daughter that brought Chloe back to her. 

Beca shook her head and tried to chase away the bad memories. Tried to replace them with the good ones. 

It was a difficult task, and one that she wasn’t really up to, so she did what she always did when things got hard. She pulled on her headphones, turned the volume up to an uncomfortable level, and worked until she could barely keep her eyes open.

She slept badly that night, tossing and turning as in her dreams she relived the worst night of her life.

“I love you.” 

Chloe’s voice had caught Beca off guard, and she frowned and glanced away from the road.

“I love you too,” Beca replied, confused.

This was something they said to each other constantly, so it was the tone in Chloe’s voice more than her words that had caused Beca to look away from the road.

It was a tone she’d never heard from Chloe before. It sounded like defeat.

“You guys will be okay,” Chloe said. 

“Chlo’, what are you talking about?”

“Without me. You know, when I go, you’ll be okay.”

Beca’s hands had tightened on the steering wheel.

“Are you…” Beca swallowed, her throat tightening. “Are you leaving me? Leaving us?”

“No,” Chloe replied. She reached across and squeezed Beca’s hand that had been resting on the gear stick. “Of course not.” She didn’t even sound shocked that Beca had thought that. Her voice just carried the same tone of resignation. 

“What’s going on?”

“When I die, you and Riley will be okay,” Chloe said. “Eventually, you guys will be okay. You have to be.”

“You aren’t going to die.”

“Beca, where have we just come from?”

A funeral, Beca thought. One of our best friend’s funerals. 

“You aren’t going to die,” Beca repeated, her eyes leaving the road again. “Stacie… She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That doesn’t mean that you-”

“Beca!”

“Mom!”

Beca jolted awake and shot out of bed before her mind had even caught up that she was awake. Her head was filled with the sound of screams and crunching metal and it didn’t fade until she reached her daughter’s bedroom.

Riley was thrashing in her bed, crying and calling out, and Beca wasted no time in pulling her into her arms.

“Hey, you’re okay,” Beca said, struggling to keep hold as Riley fought against her. “It’s just a dream.”

“Mom?”

“I’m here.”

Riley opened her eyes, and Beca knew by the look on her face that she wasn’t the Mom that Riley was crying out for.

It felt like a thousand knives being stabbed into her chest, but she refused to let the pain show on her face.

“I know,” Beca said. “I dream about it too.”

Riley hadn’t been in the car - and if Beca believed in God she would have thanked him for that every day - but she had heard enough of what happened that it had plagued her dreams ever since.

A deer in the road that Beca had swerved too late to avoid hitting. 

Its body crashing through the windscreen, antlers piercing Chloe’s stomach and then ripping it open as it fought to free itself. 

When it ran off it left a trail of Chloe’s blood that glistened on the road like oil. 

A freak accident that Beca would never stop blaming herself for. 

“It isn’t fair,” Riley sobbed into Beca’s chest. 

“I know,” Beca repeated. “I’m so sorry.”

Riley cried until the early hours of the morning, and it became clear neither of them would be going back to sleep. 

As Beca adjusted their position on the bed she felt something shiny under Riley’s pillow.

“What’s this?” Beca asked, pulling out a photograph.

“Oh, I found it on the landing,” Riley said, sounding a little embarrassed to have been caught with it under her pillow. “I hope it’s okay that I kept it.”

“Yeah, of course it is,” Beca said, squinting to make it out in the cool early morning light. “I must have dropped it, I found some of your Mom’s photos in the attic earlier.”

The photo was of her and Chloe from the night of that engagement party. They were sitting side-by-side at a table, Chloe’s arm around Beca’s shoulder as they smiled up at the camera. Beca remembers Chloe asking her dad to take it as he passed by.

“You guys look really young in it,” Riley said, looking at the photo too. “But there are these weird marks, look.” She turned on her lamp, and Beca blinked at the sudden brightness of the room. “There, can you see them?”

Beca could, it was the same dark marks that had been on all the other photos.

“There must have been something wrong with the roll of film, the other pictures had them too,” Beca said.

“Look at the one on Mom, though,” Riley said. “It’s kinda freaky where it is.”

Beca looked again. The dark mark was over her stomach. She had to close her eyes as the room before her was replaced with the sight of her wife dying in the car. Her hands over her stomach, blood spilling through her fingers and from her mouth as she’d tried to comfort Beca.

“It’s okay.”

“No…”

“Weird, right?”

“Yeah,” Beca said, feeling suddenly light headed. “Weird.”

She put the photo on Riley’s nightstand, not wanting to look at it for another second. 

“Fuck, Chloe, what do I do? I don’t know what to do! I don’t have any fucking service!” 

The road they were on was deserted, and it was close to 1 am. 

Beca could tell her leg was broken just by looking at it, but she knew she’d need to get out of the car and get help. She’d have to find someone.

“Wait here,” Beca said, as if Chloe had any other choice. “Just… Just hold on, okay? I’m gonna get help.” She managed to force the door open, but just trying to move her leg had caused lightning bolts of pain to shoot through her, and she cried out in agony and frustration.

“Beca, stop,” Chloe’s voice was weak. “Please. Please don’t leave me.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“I won’t. I promise, I won’t. But you have to hold on. Help will come and… I can’t lose you, Chloe. Riley can’t lose you.”

“Yeah. Sorry I’m just… I miss your Mom a lot.”

“Me too.”

“Tell our girl that I love her.”

“Chloe-”

“Promise me.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Riley said, knowing that Beca was lost in her memories of that night. “I know Grandma thinks it was, but it wasn’t.”

“I know,” Beca said. It wasn’t Riley’s job to comfort her, so she fought every urge she had to contradict her. 

“Do you?”

Beca sighed and pressed a kiss to her daughter’s head. “Get some rest. No school tomorrow so you can sleep in.”

Rather than returning to her room, where Chloe’s absence was felt the strongest, Beca went back to her office. Her tired eyes fell on the envelope of photos she’d gone through earlier, and she started to look through them again.

There was nothing she could do to distract her, so she decided to embrace the pain.

She looked back at that first photo of Chloe and her parents. Her eyes found those black marks again.

One over Chloe’s stomach. One over her dad’s chest. One over Janet’s left eye. 

Beca blinked and felt something cold run down her back.

Chloe’s dad had died from a heart attack.

Suddenly feeling wide awake, Beca began looking through the other photos.

Every picture had that black mark.

It was always over Chloe’s stomach.

Always over her dad’s heart.

Always over her mom’s eye.

Beca shook her head.

This was crazy. 

She was just overtired and emotional.

It was a coincidence.

A fault with the roll of film.

Beca stuffed the photos back in the envelope and shoved them into her bottom desk drawer.

She left the office and went back to her bedroom, and her eyes fell on the photo on her nightstand.

It was her and Chloe on their wedding day and she smiled in relief at the sight of it.

It was completely unmarked, as she knew it would be.

Chloe looked radiant in her white dress, and not a spot of it was marred by a black shadow.

There, Beca told herself. Just a coincidence.

She climbed into bed and fell asleep almost instantly.

-

A few days later, Beca got the text that the photos were ready to be collected.

Beca was tempted to leave them in the CVS.

Even though she’d checked every photo she had of Chloe around the house and had found no foreboding black marks obscuring Chloe’s stomach - she still had a feeling of dread in her chest as she thought about collecting those photos.

But she told herself she was being paranoid. 

Plus she had spent a lot of money on them, and Riley was excited to see them. 

“Mitchell-Beale, did you say?” The employee asked, looking her up on the computer system.

“Yeah,” Beca said.

“Five rolls?”

“That’s right,” Beca replied.

“Yeah, got ‘em here,” he said. “Unfortunately there’s some quality issues with the prints.”

“What do you mean?”

“Black marks on the photos,” he said, handing over five envelopes. “Not our fault, mind. Issue with the film itself. Likely wasn’t stored correctly.”

Beca felt her blood run cold, and she almost dropped them. “Black marks?”

He shrugged. “Happens sometimes when the film is kept for this long. Like I said, it wasn’t our fault so I can’t offer you a discount or anything. You can see the marks on the negatives, so might even be a camera issue. I can show you if you want proof.”

“No,” Beca said. “No, it’s fine.” She didn’t want proof. She didn’t want to look at all. “Thank you.”

She turned and left, and fought every urge she had to toss the photos in the trash as she made her way back to the bus stop.

As soon as she got home, she went into her office and stashed the photos with the ones already hidden away in her bottom drawer.

She didn’t want to look. Not yet.

When Riley got home from soccer practice that evening, she asked if Beca had picked up the pictures and Beca lied and said she hadn’t.

The photographs remained hidden in her desk for another three days.

On that third day she got a phone call from Chloe’s older brother. 

“Hey Beca,” he said. There was such a heaviness in his voice that made Beca’s heart sink.

“Hi Travis, what’s up?”

“Sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but I just thought I should let you know that my Mom passed away.”

Beca almost dropped the phone. “Oh God, Trav, I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” he said. “She had a stroke last night and she passed a few hours ago. I know things were… you know, difficult between you, but I wanted to let you know before Riley heard it from someone else.”

“No I understand, thank you for calling. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No,” he said. “Thanks though. I’ll, um, I’ll speak to you later.”

“Yeah, take care dude. If you need anything just…”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

Beca ended the call and returned to the living room where she and Riley had been watching a movie.

“Hey,” Beca said. “Can you pause it?”

“Who was on the phone?” Riley asked, hitting pause on the movie.

“Your Uncle Travis,” Beca said. “I’m sorry Riley, I have some sad news.”

Riley’s face fell. “Grandma?”

“Yeah,” Beca said. “She passed away a few hours ago, I’m really sorry.”

Riley let out a huff and her jaw clenched. Beca could tell she was trying not to cry.

“It’s okay to feel sad about this,” Beca said. “I know things with her have been complicated since we lost your Mom, but you’re allowed to miss her and feel sad about her.”

Riley swallowed but wouldn’t look at Beca. “Can I go?”

“Yeah,” Beca said, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “Of course.”

Riley stood to leave but hovered at the doorway. “How did she die?”

“Travis said she had a stroke.”

Riley nodded. “Are you sad about it?”

“Of course,” Beca said. “Before everything that happened with your Mom, your Grandma and I were close. It’s sad that the last conversation we had wasn’t a very nice one.”

Riley nodded again and one tear fell, quickly followed by a second. Riley hurried to wipe them away before she disappeared up the stairs and Beca heard her bedroom door slam.

Beca shut off the TV and followed her daughter up the stairs. She should have turned right and went to comfort her, but she didn’t. She turned left and went into her office. It was as if the photos had a magnetic pull, and Beca reached into the drawer and pulled them out without another thought. 

She started with the original envelope, the one she’d looked through a hundred times already, and easily found the picture of Chloe with her Mom and Dad. 

The three ghosts smiled at her, each wearing their cause of death like a badge. 

A heart attack. A penetrating injury to the abdomen. A stroke. 

Beca’s hands were shaking as she stared down at the photo. 

Had Chloe known? Is this why she’d hidden these photos away? Refused to get the others developed? Is this why she’d stopped using the camera?

By getting the remaining ones developed, had Beca set something in motion now that couldn’t be undone?

She stared at the photo because she couldn’t bring herself to look away. 

She didn’t want to look through the rest because she knew what she’d see. 

There were photos of her in this envelope. Photos with her own black mark. Her own cause of death. 

Would looking at the photo set the ball rolling and bring about her own untimely death? Or would knowing allow her to avoid it? 

Beca thought about the resignation in Chloe’s voice as they had driven back from the funeral. 

Chloe knew. 

Maybe Chloe thought that if she hid the photos away, if she stopped using the camera, stopped getting the photos developed, it would stop the deaths from happening. 

But then Stacie…

Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. A stray bullet from a robbery gone wrong. 

We’re all doomed from the start. 

She looked at the envelopes containing the photos that no one but the CVS guy had seen. 

Inside were photos of her friends. Her family. She remembered Chloe’s camera clicking away during Bellas rehearsals and parties and graduation. 

Everyone she had ever loved were in these photographs. 

Even Riley.

Beca remembered now, not long after Riley was born, Travis had come over with Freddie and the six-year-old had gotten bored almost immediately.

Beca had been exhausted and sore and had taken a second to let her eyes close while Chloe held up Riley to introduce him to her brother.

Freddie had been wandering around their house and had happened upon the camera in Chloe’s nightstand.

It looked similar to the digital one his dad had - the Beales were big into photography - and he had rushed back to the room to show everyone what his dad had taught him.

“Say cheese!” He yelled, startling Beca from her nap, only for her to be temporarily blinded by the flash of the camera. 

Beca remembers thinking at the time that the look of grief on Chloe’s face had been a little bit of an overreaction, but now she knew better.

Later that night Chloe must have taken the camera along with the last of the undeveloped films and stashed them in the attic. 

She moved onto the next photo and saw it was the one of Stacie, her glass held up as if cheersing the camera. 

The black mark was a dot on her neck, right in the spot the bullet had caught her. 

Yeah, this was crazy, but it was real. 

She knew if she moved to the next picture, she would see her own mark. Her own death. 

“Mom?”

Beca jumped and the photos were suddenly scattered everywhere. 

“Sorry,” Riley said. “Hey, you got the photos back?”

“Yeah,” Beca said, willing her heart rate to return to normal. “They came out all weird,” she said, hoping to keep Riley from wanting to look. “All obscured. The guy at the photo store said there was some damage to the film. I guess they aren’t meant to be kept in a shoebox in a dusty attic for 15 years.” She hurried to pick the ones up from the floor and, while she was there, she shoved the other envelopes back in her bottom drawer. 

“Why are your hands shaking?”

“I don’t know, I’m tired I guess,” Beca said. 

“These don’t look too bad,” Riley said, picking one photo up from the floor. 

“This was from the batch your Mom had gotten printed years ago. They were taken during your grandpa and grandma’s wedding anniversary party,” Beca said. 

“Oh,” Riley said, looking down at the photo. “It’s weird. Everyone in this picture is dead.”

“Yeah,” Beca. “It’s sad.”

Riley didn’t say anything for a while, she just kept staring at the photo. 

Please don’t ask about the marks.

Please don’t make that connection.

“Mom, do you believe in heaven?”

“I… I don’t think so,” Beca answered honestly. The question had caught her off guard. “I don’t really know. Why?”

Riley shrugged. “It’s just… I’m sad about grandma, but there’s something… I dunno, not nice but…” Riley huffed. “Mom has her parents with her again. Grandma has her daughter and her husband back. I dunno, it’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Beca said, tucking a strand of her daughter’s dark hair behind her ear. “It’s comforting. The thought that we might one day get to see the people we’ve lost again, it’s… it’s enough to give you the strength you need to carry on.”

Riley nodded. “People keep dying,” she said. 

“I know,” Beca replied, thinking of Chloe, Stacie, and Chloe’s parents. She thought about her own Mom whom she’d lost when she was young, and about the stack of photos in her bottom drawer which would show her the deaths of everyone she loved who was still alive. “It isn’t fair.”

Beca decided she didn’t want to look at the rest of the photos. 

Death was inevitable after all, and she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life looking at her loved ones and picturing how they would die. 

She didn’t want to know where Riley’s black mark was, and she hoped she’d never have to find out. 

She thought about Chloe again. If she hadn’t made the connection between the marks on the photographs and the deaths of her Dad and Stacie, would she still be here?

If Chloe hadn’t been talking about dying in the car, would Beca’s eyes have stayed on the road?

Would she have avoided the deer?

Would Chloe be alive? 

Her mind was reeling with a thousand what ifs, and she hadn’t realised that Riley had picked another photo up from her lap. 

“Who’s this?” She asked.

Beca looked without thinking, and she saw the photo of herself talking to Chloe’s nephew. 

She saw the black mark at the back of her head, almost like a halo.

Beca’s throat tightened, and her hand went to the back of her head on instinct.

There it was. That’s how she’d die. 

Was it a tumour? Aneurysm? Stroke? Head injury? The possibilities seemed endless. 

“Mom?”

Beca cleared her throat, and prayed her voice would be steady when she spoke. “Your cousin Freddie. You know, Travis’ son.”

“Oh,” Riley said. “Red hair, I should have guessed.”

Beca looked away. She didn’t want to see Freddie’s mark. She didn’t want to look at her own anymore. 

“You’re acting weird,” Riley said. 

“I feel weird,” Beca said.

“Because of grandma?”

“Yeah. And your Mom, and aunt Stacie, and my mom and…” Beca trailed off. “I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed at the minute.”

“I get it. We don’t have to look at the rest if you’re not ready,” Riley said, handing the photograph back.

“Thank you, Ri, I appreciate that,” Beca said. 

She gave Riley a hug and a kiss on the head, and they each headed for their separate bedrooms.

Sometime around 1 am, Riley gave a tentative knock on Beca’s door before she pushed it open and crawled into bed beside her.

“I had a bad dream,” she mumbled, curling into Beca’s side who had lifted her arm on instinct.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Beca asked, fighting the drooping of her eyes so she could make sure her daughter was okay.

“I dreamt you were falling,” Riley said. “We both were but I couldn’t reach you.” She hugged her Mom tighter and Beca rubbed a hand up and down her back. “People keep dying.”

-

The photographs sat in the bottom of Beca’s and remained untouched and unseen, but they occupied every one of Beca’s thoughts for the next few weeks.

It was almost an obsession. 

The not knowing but knowing there was something to know was driving her crazy.

Instead of working she would stare at that drawer, imagining the black marks over everyone she loved, and wondering who she would lose next.

She wished she’d never found the camera or those photographs.

She wished she could rewind time to the point where Janet had called and asked for the decorations. She wished she’d lied and said that Chloe threw them out years ago.

She wished she could go back further. 

She wished she’d kept her eyes on the road that night. 

Wished Stacie had gone to the store a different night, so her friend would still be here and they’d never have been driving down a country road and 1 am in the first place.

But she couldn’t. 

She couldn’t change any of it. 

There was no rewind button. No un-do.

Beca reached into the bottom drawer and pulled out the photographs.

She thought about burning them, but couldn’t find it in herself to do it.

It felt wrong. Like burning a piece of Chloe, and the lives they’d lived before having their child. 

With difficulty, she pulled the cord that pulled down the ladders to the attic.

She’d do what Chloe had done all those years ago, and she’d stash them.

A voice in her head told her it wasn’t enough, but it’s all she felt capable of right now.

She told herself in the future she’d get rid of them for sure, but for now this was all she could handle.

As she climbed the ladder, she wondered if maybe she should speak to her doctor? See if she could order an MRI or some other kind of head scan, just in case there was something already there, waiting until it was too before showing itself.

She flicked the switch to light up the attic and -

BANG!

- the bulb blew.

For the third time in as many weeks, she jumped and the envelopes of photos were scattered.

Shit.

She tried to gather them as quickly as she could without looking and stuff them back into their respective envelopes.

One had made it a little further than the others.

The only light in the attic was being filtered through the hatch from the hall, and Beca could only just make out the white shapes on the photograph. It was as if the subjects of the photo were a bunch of ghosts.

They are, Beca thought. All photos are pictures of ghosts. Ghosts of who we were at that exact moment. 

As she picked the photo up she realised the photo was just overexposed, like someone had used the flash up close.

The red eyes of the people unnerved her, but not as much as the realisation of what this photo was.

Travis, Chloe, Beca, and their new baby girl.

The one photo Beca had really not wanted to see.

Beca was in the background and not nearly as white as the others due to being further from the flash. She was sitting on the couch with a look of exhausted bewilderment on her face. The black mark spread out behind the back of her head.

Chloe was completely white. Her red eyes her only real distinguishing feature. Those and the black mark on her stomach.

Travis was a little further back, and Beca could just about make out his ginger beard that hid his grimace at the flash. His eyes were shut and there was a black mark over his heart.

Just like his dad, Beca thought, sadly.

And even though she wanted - desperately - to look away, her eyes moved to tiny baby Riley of their own accord.

In her despair, she took a step back as if she could escape the knowledge she’d just gained.

The police would call it a freak accident. Something they’re sure they wouldn’t be able to repeat if they tried.

It all happened so fast, but Beca lived each second as if it lasted a lifetime.

She had stepped into nothing, her foot dropping through the open hatch door, and she had fallen six feet from the attic to the floor below.

On her way down her leg had gotten caught in the rungs of the ladder and caused Beca to flip so that she fell head first instead of feet.

Her head hit the floor with a crack and there she lay, looking up at the ceiling as blood began to pool around her head.

“I should have burned those fucking pictures,” came a familiar voice.

Beca couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. The ceiling above her began to distort. The colours swirling together until her eyes couldn’t focus anymore. 

“I know you’re scared, but it's okay.”

Chloe?

“Sort of,” Chloe’s voice replied. “More like a projection. The synapses of your brain firing off one last time.”

Riley?

“Will find you when she gets home from school. But she’ll be okay, eventually.”

No. No, she’s lost too much already. She can’t lose me too. I need more time.

“We get the time we get. It was always going to end this way.”

I’m not ready.

“Neither was I. I’m sorry, Bec. I’m sorry it has to be like this.”

Chloe… Please…

“You’re already gone, Beca.”

-

“Riley, are you sure you want to do this?” Travis asked his niece as they stood outside her old front door. “It’s still your house, it isn’t going anywhere, you don’t have to do this so soon.”

“Mom was in the attic for something,” Riley said. “And maybe it was something important.”

Travis sighed. He knew Riley was looking for meaning. Something to say that her Mom’s death wasn't just some random terrible accident, just like his sister’s had been. “Okay, kiddo,” he said, and he gestured for her to go inside.

It had been a no-brainer for him to agree to taking Riley in when he’d heard about his sister-in-law’s death. He was her godfather after all, but they did give him an out if he wanted to take it.

The thought of his niece ending up in foster care after losing both parents in 18 months was too much to handle though, and he’d gladly agreed to take her in.

Riley climbed the familiar staircase, careful to keep her eyes trained down so she didn’t glimpse the photographs hung in the hall. She didn’t want to see those snapshots of her former happy life.

When she reached the landing, her eyes shot back up. 

Her Mom had lain on the floor for over an hour before Riley had found her. The blood had soaked deep into the floor, down between the gaps in the wood. Even though it had been cleaned up, Riley knew it was there. Knew it would always be there. 

She tugged on the cord and the ladders slid down. She climbed up into the attic, and she switched on the torch on her phone.

She found it immediately, lying face up on the floor.

A photograph.

Riley picked up the thing that had cost her Mom her life, and felt herself deflate.

She wasn’t sure what she’d been hoping for, but this overexposed picture of her parents, her uncle, and a baby, wasn’t it.

Oh, Riley thought, that must be me. I look creepy as shit.

Her eyes in the photo were bright red, and there was a thin black line running across her neck.

Riley’s hand touched her neck on instinct.