I was on a hike through the forest when I saw it.
The camera was sitting on a large boulder as if it had been left for me to find. I approached it hesitantly, looking around to see if there was someone nearby. Maybe someone had set it down and forgotten about it? But there was nobody around. The hiking trail was quiet and abandoned that day. A Tuesday afternoon in January isn’t exactly the busy time for these places, after all, but I was bundled up and dressed for the weather, my insulated boots keeping me warm and dry on the cold, snowy day.
I stood there for a while, looking to see if someone would come back for it. Part of me thought I should just leave it there, but it was an expensive-looking camera. On the side it said SLR. Not knowing much about cameras, I had still heard of those initials before, and it struck me as being worth quite a bit of money. Not wanting it to get destroyed by the cold weather, I picked it up, thinking maybe I would run across its absentminded owner further down the path. Surely they would be happy to have it back.
But when I picked it up, I saw a tiny yellow sticky note attached to the bottom of the camera.
On it were the words, “Finders Keepers,” and a smiley face was beneath that.
Did that mean whoever it belonged to wanted me to take it?
I took off my gloves and realized the camera didn’t even feel cold, as if whoever had left it there had just done so recently, in the last few minutes, after taking it out from its case. The lens wasn’t fogged up either, as it would have been if it had been left out for hours.
Never one to pass up a free gift, especially one that I could sell to make half my rent payment, I took the camera and continued on my hike.
It was a decision I would come to regret more than any other choice I’d made in my life. Later, I would lose sleep thinking about what could have been if I’d just walked away and left it there. What would my life have been like?
But of course I’ll never know, because I took it and pretty soon I was holding it up to my eye and taking pictures with it.
The pictures didn’t look right, though.
They were too dark, for one thing. There was a greyish-yellow tinge to every shot I took. At first I was just shooting images of the clouds and the sky, but then I decided to try taking a picture of a nearby patch of trees.
One of them in particular looked very unusual - an old oak tree which stood taller and broader than any others in the area. There was a plaque mounted on a stand at the bottom, saying something about its historical significance.
When I held up the viewfinder to look at the image I’d taken, it made my blood run cold. .
My eyes studied the image, trying desperately to make sense of it.
The camera was malfunctioning - that was it. It had to be. There was an issue with the processor inside of it or whatever it was that made it work (can you tell I’m not a camera expert?) and I just needed to take it to a repair shop. I had a friend who knew all about these things and I decided I would take it to his place first, to see if he could figure it out.
The image of the tree was distorted, making it look like a horrifying imitation of itself - stretched out and too thin in places - the branches curling and twisted. Not only that, the colors were dark and malevolent, as if someone had put an Instagram Halloween horror filter on the image. Something about the picture made me very uneasy, and I tried to tell myself it was just a product of the situation.
Still, I didn’t sleep well that night.
I kept hearing the camera making noises. Tiny sounds as if there were little people inside of it, pulling levers and turning gears to make the device work.
Drifting off into a nightmare, I pictured them as little devils. And the inside of that camera was Hell.
*
“Weird, man. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dave said to me, turning the camera in his hands and looking at it from every angle. “You notice there’s no company name or logo?”
I nodded hesitantly.
“Yeah. Except the SLR initials. Maybe you gotta open it up?”
He pulled out a small screwdriver. After a few more seconds of turning it in his hands he set it back down on the table.
“There’s no seams, no screws. That’s the other weird thing. It’s like there’s no way to open it up. There isn’t even a port for a data cable.”
“So how do you get the pictures off of it?”
“I don’t think you can. Unless there’s some way that I’m not seeing. Man, it’s like this thing came from another planet. Maybe it’s European? Or… it could be from one of those discount online stores. What’s it called, WISH.com? You know the one where you order a TV for twenty bucks and when it shows up it’s the size of a dinner plate and non operational? Either way, I can’t fix this thing, and I don’t think a camera shop will be of much help either.”
“Great,” I muttered. “What a waste of time. I thought maybe it was at least worth some money. Fucking rent went up again this year and I can’t remember the last time I saw a raise.”
“You shoulda bought a house when the market was good, my friend. I kept trying to tell you.”
I tuned out of the rest of his speech about the benefits of home ownership and got ready to leave a little while later, feeling dejected and ripped off, despite the fact that the camera had been free. It felt as if I was losing a little piece of myself to it every second I held onto it. And yet I couldn’t bear to throw it away.
“Hang on,” Dave said as I was putting on my boots and coat. “Take a picture of me with your weird-ass camera before you go. I wanna see what a picture of me turns out to look like.”
He was laughing and grinning, but I felt horrified by his suggestion. I’m not sure why, but the idea of snapping a photo of him with this creepy camera I’d found in the forest felt wrong. It was a disturbing notion that gave me a sensation of bugs crawling across my skin.
“Nah, man. I’m tired,” I said lamely, trying to make any excuse I could to avoid doing it. “I gotta go.”
“What are you talking about, dude? It’ll take two seconds!”
He was persistent, joking at first, then beginning to look at me as if there was something wrong with me. At that moment I didn’t want to raise the camera and take a picture of him, but I found myself doing it anyway.
Click
What’s the worst that could happen? A voice in my mind asked.
But I would find out soon enough.
The picture I’d taken of my friend was more warped and unnatural-looking than the ones I’d taken in the forest. It showed him as a twisted, mutilated version of himself. Dark holes in his head where eyes should have been. Long arms with too many bends and twists in them. And the expression on his face which should have been a smile showed up as an angry sneer, jealous and full of hate and rage.
“Sweet, I look like a fucking demon,” he’d said after looking at it. “If you find a way to print those I want a copy of that one!”
Dave had a final thought as I was leaving his home. He told me there was one other person who might be able to help me with the camera. At first I said I wasn’t interested, but then he mentioned that the man might actually buy it from me as well.
That piqued my interest, since I was still short a few hundred dollars on rent. I decided I would take one last shot at deciphering the mystery of the strange camera. If this man couldn’t help, then so be it. I would throw the damn thing in a dumpster after that.
I arrived outside the shop and pulled up to the curb. It was a pawn shop, I realized, but there was a sign out front saying that they specialized in old cameras. More importantly, there was one saying they would pay cash for vintage and modern equipment.
The kid at the counter inside looked frazzled, despite the lack of customers. He was pulling his greasy blonde hair hard enough to make it stand up when he let go, giving him a manic, Einsteinian appearance when he looked up to greet me.
“Oh, hey,” he squeaked, catching a glimpse of himself in a reflection and quickly patting down his unintentional spikes. “Can I help you?”
The way he asked the question gave the impression that he would be very happy if I just told him I had the wrong address and walked out the door. The kid looked nervous as hell, and more than that, scared.
“Hey, I’m looking for Jim. I was told he might be able to help me with this.”
I held up the SLR and the kid’s eyes went even wider.
“Oh no. No. Get that out of here. Jim’s gone. He’s gone! He’s at St. Daniel’s now because of that fucking thing and if you know what’s good for you you’ll GET RID OF IT!”
He screamed this last part and picked up a pile of papers from the counter, hurling them across the room at me. They scattered everywhere and I looked through them falling slowly to the floor like leaves, and could see the kid crying. His face was bright red and he opened his mouth to scream again but I didn’t want to hear the words. I already knew what they were going to be.
“GET THE FUCK OUT!” he yelled as the door swung shut behind me.
I ran back to my car as if rabid dogs were chasing me.
But I didn’t throw out the camera.
God help me, I didn’t throw out the camera.
Instead, I went to Saint Daniel’s Mental Health Facility on the other side of town. I don’t know why I did it. Curiosity, maybe? Maybe something more than that. Maybe the camera has an influence stronger than just what it does with each picture it takes.
I’m terrified of how powerful it is. Much stronger than I could have ever imagined at first glance. More powerful than any technology we have on Earth.
Sorry, I’m getting distracted. Losing focus. Ha-ha.
Anyways, I got to the mental hospital and used what little information I had to weasel my way in there, to see Jim, the man from the camera store who seemed to have some ideas in his head about the camera. I didn’t want to show it to him right away, afraid of how he might react, so I kept it tucked away as I sat across from him in a lounge, surrounded by other patients playing games and watching television on a fuzzy screen.
I’d lied to get in, making up a story about being his nephew.
“Jim,” I said, trying to get him to look at me. “I’m a friend of Dave’s. I needed to ask you about-”
I didn’t even get halfway through the sentence before he looked up at me sharply and began to speak.
“The camera. You found it, didn’t you?”
I nodded reluctantly.
“Oh fuck,” he said, clutching his shirt and squeezing it like he was wringing out a wet towel. “I was starting to believe them. I was really starting to believe them when they said it wasn’t real. They told me it didn’t exist, and I believed them.”
“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even, hoping he would do the same.
He took a few seconds to look around, as if to make sure no one was listening.
“You still haven’t figured it out yet?” he whispered. “You still don’t know?”
I shook my head, no.
His eyes went wide as he seemed to consider something.
“How many pictures have you taken? Did you… Did you shoot any people with it?”
A nurse’s head jerked up nearby at our conversation and she began to walk over, looking angry.
“Just one person. My friend. I took a picture of him with it,” I said, hoping this would reassure the nurse that we were just talking about a camera.
But she looked even more pissed off at the mention of photography than firearms. She was marching over and stood looking down at me. Her face was red and angry at first, but then she looked at Jim and her expression softened.
“It’s okay, Jim. It isn’t real. The camera isn’t real.”
She grabbed my arm roughly and told me to get the hell out, using a few other choice words and phrases about how I was disrupting his recovery and reinforcing his delusions. A minute later there was a security guard standing in front of me saying he would escort me out.
I heard Jim screaming as we left, calling out and kicking something over. He was ranting and fighting with the nurses as they tried to restrain him. And then suddenly a voice was speaking through the overhead PA, saying, “CODE WHITE, ‘E’ as in ‘EDWARD’ THREE. Code white, ‘E’ as in ‘Edward’ three.”
She repeated it once more and then there was a loud click. Staff members came rushing past us from every direction, pushing us out of their way as they raced into the locked unit. The guard escorting me looked a bit dejected that he couldn’t join in on the fun, and was forced to deal with me instead.
“What the hell did you say to him,” he barked at me, after the crowd of staff members had gone by. I didn’t answer. “Whatever it was, you really set him off.”
He walked me right out to the edge of the property, then stood to watch me go.
“Don’t come back, ya hear?” He called after me. “You do, we’re calling the cops.”
*
After the mental hospital I didn’t know where to go. I tried calling Dave, sitting in a McDonald’s parking lot in my car, holding the camera in my free hand and examining it as if looking at it long enough would unlock some mystery I hadn’t yet been able to solve.
Dave didn’t answer, despite me trying him three more times. I ended up settling on leaving him a voicemail, telling him to call me back as soon as possible.
I was starting to get worried about him. More than anything, I was really wishing I hadn’t taken that picture of him, especially after Jim’s words at the mental hospital.
Did you shoot any people with it, he had asked, looking terrified. The way he’d said it, he might as well have been talking about a gun.
Something occurred to me and I sent a text to Dave, telling him where I was going to go and asking if he could meet me there. A few minutes later he responded, saying he would.
So he was alive, I thought, breathing a sigh of relief. Still, I felt uneasy. Why hadn’t he picked up the phone when I’d called so many times?
Then he sent another message, saying, Make sure you bring the camera.
For some reason, it felt like a ransom demand.
I would find out why soon enough.
*
When I got out to the trail I saw Dave’s car right away. But he wasn’t in it.
He sent me another text, saying he got tired of waiting and starting walking, and that he would meet me on the trail. This wasn’t too unusual for him, since he was the impatient type and didn’t like to wait for anyone. Still, I found the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, some primal instinct telling me to be cautious.
I walked out into the forest, following the trail toward the place where I’d found the camera. There was no one on the path and I was reminded again of the day I’d last been out there. Part of me wondered if anyone had been out this way since I was here last.
The answer to that was no, I realized, as I came upon the place where I’d taken the first pictures with the strange camera. If anyone had been out this way, surely they would have reported THIS to the authorities, or to the press, or to SOMEONE.
Every single place where I’d taken a picture with the camera, it was transformed. Even the sky off in the distance looked bruised and permanently darkened, that malignant shade spreading visibly wider by the second.
I felt a cold sweat running down my brow as I turned and looked at how the forest had changed.
The large tree with the plaque at the bottom no longer looked like its majestic old self. Now it was twisted and bent, crooked and dark, just like the photo I’d taken of it. All of the plant life I’d snapped pictures of, everything was distorted and wrong now, and that wrongness was spreading outward, infecting the life around it.
“Have you figured it out yet?” a voice asked from behind me.
I spun around to see someone who looked like Dave emerging from the forest, coming out from behind a tree and walking toward me. I backed away, seeing the wrongness of his face. The same distorted portrait I had seen when I’d taken a picture of him with the camera the day prior.
“I don’t think he’s smart enough to decipher it. We’ll need to spell it out for him,” Jim said from behind me, grabbing me as I tried to spin around to fight him off.
But this wasn’t the same Jim I’d seen at the mental hospital. This man looked like a mutated, deformed version of that person. His scraggly facial hair made it look as if he had not shaved for several days, telling me this could not be the same man.
“Who the hell are you people?” I heard myself ask, seeing another man coming out from the trees.
“There are millions of dimensions, billions of them,” said a version of the kid from the pawn shop, taking the camera from my hand. “All stacked on top of one another. We are from another place, much like yours. But we are better, smarter. Our technology is so far advanced that we have learned to communicate with other worlds - the other versions of our world. We could communicate, to tell them how to build things, to make things for us, but we could not cross over. Not until one of your kind opened the doorway.”
He began to take more pictures, snapping images of the forest around us. And then he turned the camera and pointed it at me.
“Say cheese.”
I closed my eyes, terrified of what would happen to me if he managed to capture my likeness in an image on that camera. If he did, there would soon be another version of me standing here, looking to take my place, looking to create more portals, more gateways to its dark world.
Just as he was pushing down the button to take the picture, I heard a loud BANG!
A bright flash of light and smoke exploded in front of me, sending me reeling backwards. I stumbled out of the arms of Evil Jim who had been holding me and fell to the ground, landing in mud and dead leaves.
“SWARM, SWARM, SWARM!” a voice shouted, and when I blinked my eyes open momentarily I saw a SWAT-like team of what I at first assumed were police officers moving in from the nearby trees.
A helicopter was hovering above and several more men and women in body armor were rappelling down on ropes, landing all around us. I heard the sounds of a scuffle, people being thrown against trees and handcuffed, and several weapons being discharged. Still mostly blind from the flashbang, I wasn’t really able to witness any of it.
When I came to my senses, there was a man standing over me, holding his hand out to help me up. I shook my head, telling him I needed a minute. I was still dizzy from everything that had happened.
“Pack it up, ladies and gentlemen,” he said with an air of authority. “We’ve got what we came for.”
Nearby, someone was placing the camera in a black, heavy-duty-looking case. He snapped it shut and put it inside another, larger case with a bigger lock.
“Begin destratification procedures,” he announced.
“Who are you guys,” I asked, looking around and seeing men and women in reflective metallic suits carrying long, futuristic-looking guns. They began pointing them at the sky and at the areas of the forest where the malignant darkness was spreading. After several seconds, the darkness stopped growing and actually started retreating
“We’re the good guys,” the man standing over me said. “I’m sorry about your friend. We didn’t get there in time to save him. Unfortunately these folks don’t like leaving credible witnesses.”
“Dave?” I asked, feeling like the world was suddenly spinning twice as fast as before. “He’s… Dead?”
“I’m afraid so. He tried to contact you, against their wishes, and they killed him. He was trying to warn you.”
I shook my head. It was all so crazy. How could I ever explain this to anyone? Who would ever believe it?
“Please sign this form indicating you will never tell anyone about the events which happened to you recently involving this object,” the man said, holding out a form for me to sign.
“What if I don’t want to?” I asked, feeling uncooperative.
“Well, then you won’t get this check for ten thousand dollars with your name on it. A finders fee for the discovery of this item. Standard payment amount. But only for those willing to sign the NDA.”
I sighed, feeling like I might as well get something out of all of this madness. The camera was gone, anyway. And that was a good thing. I was glad to have it out of my life.
“Sure,” I said, taking the clipboard and pen. “Ten grand will pay my rent for a year. I’m sure Dave would have wanted it this way. Except for the part about him being dead.”
The man scrunched up his face in a frown and examined my signature, then handed me a check. I examined the payor line, trying to figure out who the hell these people were.
All it said was, The Organization.
And when I looked up, they were gone.