Some photographs preserve the past. Anna’s phone had begun doing something else.
At 9:16 on a Tuesday evening, Anna found a photograph on her phone that would not be taken for another two hours and thirty-one minutes.
She almost scrolled past it. She was sitting on her bed, half watching television and half looking through photographs from the weekend.
Then came the picture of her bedroom.
The bedside lamp was glowing. The gray blanket was pulled almost to her shoulders.
And Anna was asleep beneath it.
She enlarged the image.
There was no mistake. It was her bedroom. Her bed. Her lamp. Her face.
But the photograph had been taken from the far corner of the room.
Anna lived alone.
She opened the image information.
Today — 11:47 PM.
The clock at the top of her phone read 9:16 PM.
Anna deleted the photograph.
The photograph returned. Only this time, the camera was closer.
At 11:40, Anna was still awake.
Every light in the bedroom was on. She had checked the windows twice and the apartment door three times.
At exactly 11:47, she sat against the headboard with her phone in her hand.
Nothing happened.
At 11:48, Anna finally laughed.
Then she opened Photos.
The deleted picture was back.
Only now she was not sleeping.
In the photograph, Anna was sitting against the headboard, holding her phone.
Exactly as she had been one minute earlier.
And whoever had taken the photograph was no longer standing in the far corner.
The camera was closer.
Much closer.
Another photograph appeared the following night.
And another the night after that.
Anna changed her passwords. Disabled cloud syncing. Turned off Bluetooth. Covered the cameras on her computer.
Nothing stopped them.
Every photograph showed exactly where she had been at 11:47.
And every night, the viewpoint moved closer.
DON’T LET HER IN.
On the seventh morning, no photograph appeared.
Instead, Anna noticed a new album in Photos.
She had not created it.
Its name was TONIGHT.
Inside was a single photograph.
Her apartment door.
Across the bottom were three words:
DON’T LET HER IN.
That evening, Anna locked the deadbolt, fastened the chain and pushed a chair beneath the handle.
At 11:47, someone knocked.
Three quiet knocks.
Then came a woman’s voice.
“Anna?”
Anna stopped breathing.
She knew that voice.
Her mother had been dead for twenty-three years.
“Annie, sweetheart. Open the door.”
Nobody had called her Annie since childhood.
Her phone vibrated.
A new photograph appeared.
Timestamp: 11:49 PM.
Two minutes from now.
In the photograph, Anna was standing beside the open door.
Another appeared.
The apartment was empty.
Anna was gone.
And something was standing inside.
Outside, the woman began crying.
“Please, Annie. I’m cold.”
Anna took one step toward the door.
Then a memory returned.
A hallway. Her father holding her so tightly it hurt. Someone knocking on her bedroom door.
And her mother’s voice saying:
Annie, sweetheart. Open the door.
But her mother had already been dead for three days.
Her father had never been trying to make Anna forget her mother. He had been trying to make her forget what came after.
Anna backed away from the door.
“No.”
The crying stopped.
The handle moved once.
Twice.
Then something slowly dragged its fingernails down the other side of the door.
The voice that followed no longer sounded like Anna’s mother.
“I found you once. I can find you again.”
Then there were footsteps in the hallway.
And silence.
Anna did not move until sunrise.