Fatal Frame:Hide And Seek

[Greqoh]

Fatal Frame:Hide And Seek
by L. A. Greco
(Loosely based on the cult Japanese games. A strange invention makes its way to America...)
************************************************** **


The camera lay forgotten in an old box of photo albums and notebooks. It was ancient looking, covered in dust and absurdly large and cumbersome.

And Allan lifted it out of the box as if he had found some prized antique."Look at this!" he said. "I wonder if it still works?"

"No way," Roger answered, "You won't ever find any film for that anymore."

Sheila kneeled down and started going through the box.
"Look at these!" she said holding up a few abandoned rolls of film."I bet it does work. It looks fine to me." She took the camera from Allan.

Roger walked over to the pile of junk Sheila had lain aside while going through the box."Anything else in there? Something worth anything?"

"No, it doesn't look like it. Just these notepads and photo albums,"Sheila answered.

"I wonder what this stuff says?" Allan asked as he looked at the Japanese writing. It looked like some cryptic alien cipher.

"Who cares? There's nothing else in here. We had better get going now," Roger answered sharply.

He was getting nervous. Upstairs the body of an elderly Japanese man still lay where it had fallen. Allan did not mean to hit the man so hard.

He had answered the door and Allan had asked to use his phone. Allan told him that they had broken down and needed to call someone.

The old man was so nice that, as he had invited them into his home Allan nearly couldn't get the nerve to do it.
But as the man handed them all something to drink, commenting on how thirsty they must be walking such a long way, Allan took out the pipe he had been hiding and clubbed him in the back of the head, making a sickening thud.

The nice old man probably never even realized what was happening. He collapsed without a word or sound, twitching oddly, and just like that his many years on this earth had come to an end.

Now this break- in had turned into something else.
Roger drug the old man's body to the top of the basement steps, and tossed it down, as if to make it look like he had fallen.

The three of them stood and stared silently, until Sheila descended the stairs again, and bending down, snatched a silver pendant from the man's throat.

"Now that is cold...." Allan laughed.

As they quickly packed some of the man's more valuable possessions into the van, Allan wondered aloud if they were wrong...maybe the man was still alive.

Roger looked at him sternly and said "He's as dead as we're all going to be if the police catch us here! Now get in the damn van and let's get out of here!"

As their old Chevy van backed out off the gravel road that led to the dead man's home, quietly sitting in the back, and still in shock, Sheila noticed that without thinking she had carried off the old worthless camera. It still had a few rolls of the film.

She raised the camera up to her eyes and gazed through it at the house. She thought she saw something move at the window. She felt as if an icy current of electricity shot through her stomach.

"He's alive!" she yelled. She lowered the camera and looked at the empty window, feeling foolish.
Alan stopped the van.

"Are you going to be OK with this?" Roger asked impatiently. "It was a mistake...none of this ever happened! Do you understand?"

"Leave her alone!" Allan snapped. "She'll be fine."

"She'd better be." Roger said in a low voice.

She nervously raised the camera once more, her hands clumsily adjusting controls, as she once again stared at the house through the old view finder.

It was then that she knew madness, for there was now no mistaking it...the old man was staring out at them, his mouth hanging open, and his flesh a sickening unnatural white, his hand pointing accusingly at them as he began to come out of the house after them. She gasped and dropped the camera from her face and again...nothing was there.

They pulled out of the driveway, and Sheila once again looked through the lens, to see the man once more...
His eyes met hers, she was sure of that.

Her finger pushed the button and there was a flash.
"Jesus!" Roger again snapped. "Put that damn thing down!"
She lowered the camera to her lap, and as Allan pulled onto the highway. Roger began to count the money from the old man's wallet.

Sheila fell silent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It had been almost two weeks since they had divided up the spoils they had taken from the old man.

Sheila had only gotten some jewelry, a little of the cash and the camera. She could not be persuaded that it was worthless and insisted on keeping it...for her own reasons.

She sat alone at the table, her hand playing with her new silver pendant she had taken as she stared down at the camera. “How do I load this damn thing?”

Allan had went out with Roger again and left her alone.
She was getting tired of these boys nights out.
Next Saturday it would be her turn.

She finally figured out where the film went in.
She took the old film out of it and reloaded it.

Nightmares had been coming for over a week now.
Every night, she would awaken in terror, but have no memory of just what she had dreamed of. She would awaked soaked and shaking, with the feeling that something....someone was watching her.

She had changed since the encounter with the old man.
She had become even more hardened and cold, even darkly perverse, than she had been before. As if looking into his eyes through that old lense had somehow corrupted her soul.

She could not be sure whether what she had seen in the car was real, or if she was merely having a breakdown.
"God is punishing me..." she thought as the silence of the empty apartment crept inward to her soul.

She looked down at the instrument of her spiritual sentence, this absurd old camera. While what she had seen through it horrified her, she could at the same time not throw it away.
She was bound to it by a morbid fascination with the terrible things it promised to show her.

The mysteries of the other side teased her, claimed her imagination, more every day, as she passed many evenings alone, her hands finding the demonic object, feeling it's unnatural coldness, wondering what was around her, which her eyes could not see, but afraid to look through the lens lest she find out.

Then one day things took an unexpected turn....

Sirens wailed. Shrieking as they came closer outside. Sheila pulled back the curtains to see the lights of an ambulance and police car flashing. Paramedics hurried into her neighbor’s house and returned with a body on a stretcher. A white sheet was draped over the still form, and the men were no longer in any hurry. Their faces wooden, grim masks as they went about their business of putting the neighbor into the back of the ambulance.

Sheila hurried across the yard, into the neighbor’s driveway
"What happened to Mr. Garner?" she asked the police officer.

"Did you know him?"

"Not really. we talked a few times." she answered.

"Suicide. I see it all the time with old people who live alone. So sad...." he said, visibly shaken.

"How did he?" she paused.

Another neighbor answered in a low voice..."We hadn’t seen him for a while and he wouldn’t answer the door. I heard that he shot himself."

All of them fell silent for several seconds. Sheila returned home without saying another word.

She thought about Mr.Garner.
He had taken his wife's heart attack very hard.
His only child had perished in the crash as well, and she couldn’t remember the last time she spoke to the man.

She wondered how long he had rotted in that quiet dark house. Then...she wondered something else.

She looked at the recently loaded camera on the table, and resolved that she would learn it's mysteries.

[Greqoh]

Allan got a call from Shelia as he and Roger were about to leave the club. He stepped outside to hear her better.
He was very interested in what she had to say.

Their neighbor had passed away leaving his large home with it’s valuable contents for the taking. Mr. Garner had been a collector of many things from rare coins to antique guns.

He wondered to himself if he should ask Roger to come along.

Meanwhile, Sheila left a note for Allan telling him that she was getting an early start and to meet her at Mr. Garner's home.

She knew Allan would never understand her taking the camera so she would have to get the jump on him and get in the home first.

She summoned up her nerve and went to the house.
She tried the door just in case it was left open by someone. No luck.

She checked under the welcome mat for a key without success. No key under the stones around the flower bed.
As she was thinking about her next move, she heard a rustling sound that made her jump.

It sounded like it came from by the front window. She bolted around the side of the house. Sheila hid in the shadows and waited. After a time she grew impatient and crept back to the front.

No sign of anyone.

To her surprise she saw a stray cat under the window, which was open just a crack. She put her finger under it and lifted it open.

She crawled inside. By the light of a small penlight she examined the nebulous house. The smell of rot was almost overpowering.

Sheila could feel the gloom and despair in the very air. It was as if the sadness had stained the walls, impregnated the very structure of this home which had been wrecked with so much tragedy and heartache in such a short time.

She unpacked the camera and raised it to her face.
Her hands trembled as she started scanning the living room.
Nothing.

She lowered the camera and walked into the master bedroom. It was so cold. She kept feeling as if someone was behind her, but nothing was there to be seen, not even with the camera.

There was a large crimson stain sprayed across the wall and parts of the ceiling, she followed it with her penlight, tracing the gore and picturing the final moments of Mr.Garner.

She raised the camera to her eyes again and noticed it had begun to vibrate, a red light flashing off and on. She just caught the fleeting image of something moving out of her field of vision.

She spun around trying to lock onto it, to see the shifting shadowy form. She would catch it, steal a glimpse with the hellish camera and know...absolutely know what really happens when we die.

But try as she might, she couldn’t catch it. It always just escaped her eyes...teasing her, taunting, this ultimate mystery, so close within her reach, but always escaping out of the lense.

She heard a sound in the bathroom, and off she went. Again the camera moved in her hands, as if it had a life of it's own.

This time, it looked as if she barely saw someones shoulder go by in a blur. She listened again, now another sound in the small bedroom.

She ran there, nearly falling, and scanned the room.
The silence mocked her. Only her heavy breathing met her ears. Once again she caught a glance, this time of a pale torso running out of the room, only for a fraction of a second.

She wanted so bad just to look death in the face, right in the eyes, but her blood was turning to ice. She had to fight running from the house.

The perversity of her morbid curiosity pushed her onward. She was filled with adrenalin as she raced down to the basement, following the light shape. Below in the basement, an ocean of blackness awaited her. The tiny pen light began to flutter and fade. But Sheila would not give up.

She stood in the middle of the basement for a while, calming herself, catching her breath, waiting like a hunter as she scanned the area with the camera as if it were a scope. She felt an icy panic come over her... Her throat!

Her newly acquired necklace was being tightened around her throat, as if someone was trying to choke her with it.

She tried to turn around, but fear had frozen her legs like useless wooden sticks. The necklace went tighter around her neck. In her ear she could hear a hideous whisper "YOU...."

She turned and silently leapt forward with the camera raised to her eyes. There was a loud sound, like a crack of thunder and a sharp pain in her chest, as she snapped a picture. She fell to the ground, and light fell upon her face from someone’s flashlight. The camera fell to the ground enveloped in an odd swirling blue light.

"Oh, my GOD!! NO!!" she heard Roger scream.
"You startled me," he cried out.

"You son of a bitch! You shot her!" Allan yelled and fired into Roger’s skull, blowing the side of his face off.

Roger flew back to the ground, and Allan emptied another round into his friend, this time in the center of his head, sending a spray of bone and brain into the air.

Allan cradled Sheila and prayers came from his lips.
But as the life faded from her eyes she was staring not at him but into the open space beside him.

He glanced at the open space and saw nothing.
He looked back at her. "Baby, it’s ok...hey," he said.

Her mouth opened and unnerving sounds came from it.
And she was gone. Her face had twisted into a stark mask of horror, wide eyes mad with fright. She had seen what she wanted to see in her final seconds.

Soon there where flashing lights outside again. Someone heard the shots in the house, and the police found Allan inside, in front of the two bodies, with his gun in his mouth.

After a few seconds of useless reasoning, he appeared ready to lower the gun, but his eyes grew wide, and he moved as if struggling against some unknown assailant to take the gun from his mouth.

As his left hand tried to come to his aid there was yet another shot fired, and now there were three bodies on the floor.

The scene was examined by the officers.
The camera was found and eventually the film inside it was developed.

The police soon discovered the stolen possessions of the murdered old man, in Sheila and Allan’s home and pieced together what had happened.

Something would always haunt the men who worked on this case...something that was almost never talked about by those who where involved in this case, not even to other officers.

Much of the film that could be developed was of old Japanese style homes. Some photos filled with odd transparent forms. Several smoke-like, twisted monstrosities with scowling faces and empty eyes appeared to stare out of the photos.

Some of the newer photographs were taken by the young woman, Sheila. One photo had an image of Roger and Allan, guns pointed at the viewer. But it also had, in the background, an unexpected surprise.

How.... could it be...that the Japanese man, murdered weeks before appeared in the background? He held up what looked like a pendant as he grinned maliciously into the lens.