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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Sea-Concept-7772 on 2024-11-13 21:55:18+00:00.
My name is Nick Bannon. I’m about six feet tall. Skinny build. My curly hair and eyebrows are a dark brown, and my eyes are bright blue. A strange start to my story, I know, but it’s only because I know the inevitable. It’s going to happen again. I don’t know where, and I don’t know who to, but I have a feeling it’s been happening for a while. I’m just another small link in a long, long chain.
If there’s a photo in your home that matches the description above, you’re in danger. All I can advise is that you get out. Get out as fast as you can and share my story with somebody, anybody who will believe you. I’ve written it out below, as quickly as I could under the circumstances. I don’t think I have much longer. It’s going to find me soon.
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My Mother died two months ago. Lung cancer. We weren’t very close, especially at the end, but I’d been the only family she didn’t despise. Because of this, the majority of her possessions were left to me. This included an old blue truck, a storage unit full of tattered furniture and old clothes, and a split level house at the end of a long country road.
The house itself was in okay shape. There were some exterior walls that looked a bit rough, but it was old. Good bones, as they say. I decided I’d move into it, at least for the time being. I was between jobs, and it felt like as good a place as any to crash for a little bit. I packed what few belongings I had from my shitty studio apartment and left the city in my rearview mirror.
Things were normal for the first few days. It felt good to be away from the chaos that I’d grown accustomed to. My closest neighbor was two miles away, and I barely saw any cars drive by. I’d forgotten the value of silence from time to time.
However, pretty quickly it got to the point where it was too silent. Soon, every creak made me jump, every gust of wind sounded like an intruder, and it was driving me crazy. I decided that I needed a project. Something to fill the silence. Pass the time. I had a lot of it these days. I looked around at all of Mom’s tacky inspirational wall hangings and her dated velvet furniture and decided that it felt too much like her in there. If I was going to live there, I was going to make it mine.
I had a yard sale that had a pretty great turnout, despite my isolated location. Pretty much everything went, and what didn’t get sold got donated to a local thrift store. I shampooed the carpet, painted the walls, tended to the garden, all things that Mom probably hadn’t done in years. By the time I was finished, the entire house almost looked brand new. I bought some new furniture with the yard sale money, threw up a few horror movie posters, and soon enough this place was starting to feel like mine.
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It had been easy to get rid of Mom’s stuff because, quite frankly, most of it had been ugly. The only things that stuck around were her framed portraits, the ones that climbed the stairs. They were family photos. A dozen semi-familiar faces dotted them sporadically, and I found myself staring at them from time to time, wondering what they were up to now. It felt odd. I’d been alone for so long that the thought of a family this big being my family didn’t make sense in my head.
I started getting in the habit of greeting them each morning. I know, it sounds weird, but grief is a strange thing. I felt comfort in it. As I’d been clearing out everything, I’d found a family photo album. Using that, I’d been able to match a lot of the names to faces. Aunt Grace popped up a lot throughout the frames, as did my Uncle Rob. I even saw myself as a baby a few times. It took a while, but soon I had each of them memorized. That’s why I’d noticed the new photo almost instantly.
Every single one of the frames had a thick, black frame, no matter the photo size. It gave the wall a nice, uniform look. Mother had liked them that way. The new one stood out from the rest. It was made up of plastic roses, each one a different shade of red.
The image inside of the roses was of a woman. She was ice skating alone on some pond, surrounded by brush and thick snow. The photo was taken from a few yards away, through the branches of a dead tree. It was like photographer had been crouching a few yards away. Hiding.
When I went to take the frame off the wall, I was met with…wetness. The entire frame was covered in some sort of thick, clear goo that had started to pool on the stairs. My stomach churned at the sight of it. I took my shirt off and used it as a sort of glove to carry it to my kitchen table.
I stared at it for a long time. Half of my brain was searching my early memories for the skating woman. Maybe she was a long lost relative, or maybe a friend of Mother’s? But that wouldn’t explain the photo showing up out of nowhere. I’d passed that photo wall dozens of times, and I was almost certain that it hadn’t been there before. It also wouldn’t explain that disgusting goo.
At that point, I was weirded out and confused, but I wasn’t scared. I’d heard about strange things happening in the woods, how it can play tricks on your mind. That had to be it. I tossed the frame into the garbage. I didn’t want it anywhere near me. I thought that’d be the end of it. Just a strange occurrence, nothing more.
That morning, I skipped saying hello to the photos. There was an imposter. It didn’t feel right.
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Later that day I decided to take the truck into town and run a few errands I was putting off. I needed to get out of the house. It felt like I had that disgusting goo all over me, even after a shower. Being in town helped a little bit, but not much. At the convenience store, the cashier picked up on my off mood.
“You doin’ okay, sweetie? You look pale.” She said, bagging my groceries. I lied and told her I was fine, and forced our conversation to turn towards the weather.
“I’m just getting sick of those storms,” I said. “I know some people say they help them sleep, but not me”
The woman gave me a weird look. “Storms? What storms? It’s been bone dry for weeks! You sure you’re okay?”
“Oh, uh…yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” I stammered, grabbing my groceries. I hurried out of there and got in the truck. What had she meant by no storms? I’d been seeing lightning every night pretty much since I’d moved in. Maybe she lived in a different county. Yes. That had to be it.
I drove around for an hour or two before heading back. The skating woman wouldn’t leave my head. When I finally returned to the house, it had started to get dark. Night time out in the middle of nowhere was no joke. I brought the groceries in and put them away. I cooked a small chicken dinner, cleaned the dishes, and shut the house down for the night. I needed to sleep. It wasn’t until I went to shut off the front porch lights that I noticed it.
The photo of that skater. It was back in its place on the wall, right along with the others. A fresh layer of goo was dripping off of it like slimy teardrops.
Alright, I thought. Now I’m scared.
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I didn’t end up getting much sleep that night. I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling in a daze. The sounds of the old house sounded even louder in the dark. There wasn’t a storm, at least not one that I noticed. In the morning, I checked every single nook and cranny in this house, looking for any sort of explanation on who’d moved the photo while I’d been gone. It had to be an intruder, but there were no signs of forced entry. The windows had been rusted shut years ago, so there was no chance of someone shimmying in that way. All of the doors had been locked as well. Deadbolted.
Outside, I saw no footprints or tire marks that weren’t the truck’s. Nobody else was here but me, at least according to the physical evidence. After a paranoid few hours of searching, I got fed up. I started a fire in the backyard and threw the photo into it. It almost sounded like it was screaming as it went up in smoke. I stood there until I was sure it was charred beyond repair before I doused the flame.
The next day I had someone from SPC Security come out and installed a home alarm system, complete with a tablet that controlled its every move. It was very fancy. The man showed me how to arm and disarm the system, and helped me create an access code. After he left I felt a bit better. At least now I’d know if something in the house was moving while I wasn’t.
The photo hadn’t returned, thank god, but I still felt weird about the photo wall. What had once given me comfort now felt wrong. I took the photos down and put them in a box that I shoved into a closet. The stairwell looked bare afterwards, like I’d ripped all of its teeth out, but I felt good. It felt like I had things under control.
That night, I got into bed with the security tablet laying on my bedside table. I armed the house with my access code, and I drifted off to sleep as the lightning began once more.
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The alarm clock read 3:45 a.m when I was startled awake. There was a sound.
ACK! ACK!
I squinted through the pitch black, still half asleep. I couldn’t see anything.
ACK! BLECH! ACK!
Whatever it was was loud. Really loud. The sound was like a blend of a sick puking cat and a human cough. I rubbed my eyes with some force and peered into the darkness again.
ACK! ACK! ACK!
As my eyes began to adjust, I saw it. In the corner. Something was there. Crouching. Vibrating. Tw...
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