The Photograph

by Lee Chin Wee
(Singapore)

"Mum, what's that?" I used to ask my mum, holding a yellowed, aged photograph in my pudgy fingers.

"Oh! That's just an old family photograph, nothing much really..." Her voice trailed off into the distance as my mum glanced at an old man in the picture.

Later, I found out from my dad that he was Great-Grandpa Jenkins, dead only 2 days after the photograph was taken, his body... his body a mangled heap of bones in a closet.

A chill crept up my spine every time I glanced at his menacing face, his cold eyes that seemed to bore straight into me. And somehow... somehow I could make out a faint white face in the background, grinning menacingly down at Grandpa Jenkins.

My hands trembling, the ghostly pale face grew clearer and clearer. I gave a shrill scream and ran out of my room, and showed the picture to my mum again. She turned a pasty white and locked the picture up in her closet, a deafening silence filling the house.

The next day, I found another picture.

The same ghostly white face, staring at my mum.