Final Girl

by Michelle Schusterman

  “Oh, I know,” Carrie said hastily. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought her up.”

  A slightly awkward silence fell, quickly broken by Jamie. “So, where’s all the thoughtography stuff?”

  Carrie’s face lit up. “In the back room! Follow me.”

  She led the way around the shelves to a corridor. Jamie took my hand and squeezed, and we smiled at each other. My frozen fingers finally started to thaw. But I couldn’t help getting chills as I pictured Emily the last time I’d seen her. Knocking Oscar unconscious, pulling out her knife, forcing me up the twisting staircase to the prison guard tower, and—

  “Ta-da!” Carrie exclaimed, and I jumped, jerking my hand out of Jamie’s grip. He gave me a concerned look, which I pretended not to see. “Our psychic photography exhibit. I helped curate all of this—thoughtography’s kind of an obsession of mine.”

  I gazed around the room, which was much smaller than the other one. The walls were covered in framed photos: some yellowed newspaper clippings, some black-and-white, and even a few color Polaroids and prints. In the corner, a small TV sat on a card table, topped with a VCR. Static played silently on the screen.

  “So Jamie told me you guys did a little research on thoughtography already,” Carrie said, gesturing for us to check out the pictures hanging near the door. “I’ve tried to curate only pictures that haven’t been debunked . . . which is pretty hard to do, because most of the ones out there are fake.” She tilted back her head, glancing at the ceiling. “You should see the number of boxes I’ve got upstairs, all filled with what I was told were psychic photographs that turned out to be bogus. It’s really easy to do.” Carrie grinned at me. “Well, you probably know that already.”

  “What?” I asked, startled. “Why?”

  “Because you’re a photographer,” she said. “You know, you can mess with the exposure, the printing . . . although, I guess it’s a little different with digital cameras. Have you ever played around with analog cameras?”

  “A little,” I said. “A really long time ago, though. My, um . . . my mom’s a photographer. She brought me to a darkroom a few times in elementary school.”

  “Do you remember much about developing?”

  I frowned. “A little bit . . . you put the negative in the enlarger and set a timer for how long you want it exposed to light, then put the print in the developer, then a . . . um, a stop bath? I think that’s what it’s called. And then a water bath—no, the fixer, then the water bath—and then you hang it up to dry.”

  “Exactly.” Carrie pointed to a small framed black-and-white photo behind me, and I turned to look. “So what do you think went wrong there?”

  Jamie leaned closer, too. The slightly blurred picture featured an older man in a suit sitting in a chair in what looked like a study or office. He had no beard, but thick, dark hair covered the sides of his face and extended down to his chin. His expression was stern yet exasperated, as if posing for this photo was a massive waste of his time. Behind him, a bookshelf was just visible next to an open door. Beyond that, the corridor was dark, save for a blur of white.

  “A ghost?” Jamie asked immediately.

  I shook my head. “Nope. Whoever printed the photo just underexposed that part, that’s all.”

  “Exactly!” Carrie said. “But in 1896, this guy published a whole paper about what he called evidence of psychic photography. You’d be amazed at how many people tried stunts like this back then. Even though they were almost all proven to be frauds, a lot of people still totally bought it.”

  Jamie looked half-amused, half-embarrassed. “I probably would’ve,” he admitted.

  “Because you want to believe,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  He smiled at me in a way that made my heart thump a bit faster, and I hoped Carrie didn’t notice the blush creeping up my neck. “So why’d you include this one if you know it’s fake?” I asked her.

  “As an example,” she replied, leading us over to the next photo. “So that people will understand the real thing when they see it.”

  “Whoa,” I whispered, stepping closer to study the picture. It was taken at the foot of a grand wooden staircase, at the top of which stood a woman in a silk gown with a high waist and lace sleeves. She was smiling in a posed sort of way, seemingly unaware of the other, transparent woman huddled at the bottom of the stairs, this one in a dark, long-sleeved dress with full skirts. Her features were blurred, so all I could make out were two dark spots for eyes and a thin line for a mouth.

  “So, Kat,” Carrie said. “Any idea how you could fake that?”

  “Photoshop?” Jamie joked, and she laughed.

  “Not really a thing a hundred years ago.”

  “Long exposure?” I suggested, pointing to the woman in the silk gown. “With a slow shutter speed, she would have to hold her pose for several seconds while the photographer took the picture.” I pointed to the other woman. “If she was walking down the stairs at the same time, she’d appear all blurry and transparent in the photo.”

  Carrie raised her eyebrows. “Wow. I think you remember more from your mom than you give yourself credit for.”

  I tried to smile, even though my skin prickled uncomfortably at the mention of my mom. “Thanks.”

  “But,” Carrie went on, “how do you explain this?”

  She tapped the photograph hanging next to it. The two were almost identical, but taken from slightly different angles, as if the photographers were standing a few feet apart at the base of the stairs. The woman in the silk gown stood in the same pose, the same small smile curving her lips. But the other woman wasn’t there at all.

  “These were taken at a mansion up in Harlem in 1912,” Carrie said. “Two photographers. The one who captured the image with the ghost, his family owned the place. He’d grown up believing it was haunted by his great-grandmother, and as he was taking this picture of his niece, he was thinking about her. Really focused. That’s why she appeared in his photo, but not the other. At least, that’s the story his son gave me when he donated this to the exhibit.”

  “Awesome,” Jamie said fervently.

  “I know there’s no way to prove this is a real psychic photograph,” Carrie said. “But there’s one other detail that pretty much convinced me. Any guesses?”

  Jamie and I studied the picture again. “Oh!” Jamie exclaimed. “Her dress—the great-grandmother’s dress.”

  Carrie beamed. “Exactly!”

  I must have still looked confused, because Jamie continued. “This was taken in 1912, but her dress has petticoats, a high collar, long sleeves. Totally different than what the niece is wearing.”

  “But very much in fashion in the mid-eighteen hundreds,” Carrie finished. “When great-grandma here still lived in the mansion.”

  I exhaled slowly. “Oh. Okay. That’s . . . that’s pretty cool.”

  “Really cool,” Jamie added, his eyes sparkling. I couldn’t help but grin at how into this he was. I believed in ghosts, but I still tried to stay skeptical until I saw proof. Jamie was always ready to believe.

  Carrie led us through the rest of the small exhibit, giving us the story behind each photo and why she believed it was real. She showed us the footage of a séance captured on VHS; it was only fifteen seconds, so we watched it probably a dozen times. A dark figure appeared in the shadows right at the twelve-second mark, then vanished. No one at the table seemed to notice it, and as Carrie explained, the woman behind the video camera had claimed to have projected the image from her mind.

  It was outlandish and ridiculous and to be honest, a few months ago I never would’ve believed any of it for a second.

  But now? Maybe I did. Because I’d done it myself.

  I’d never shown anyone the flash drive currently tucked safely in my backpack back at the hotel. The footage it contained of a figure moving behind me in th
e mirror as I practiced being on camera seemed just as outlandish and ridiculous as anything in this exhibit. But I’d been there. I’d been thinking about this, the other version of me. The Thing. And it had appeared.

  I couldn’t prove it any more than the woman who’d taken this séance video, or the man who’d captured a photo of his great-grandmother in the mansion. So who’s to say they weren’t telling the truth, too? Maybe they were. Or maybe they were crazy.

  Maybe I was crazy.

  Psychic photography was an explanation for that footage, and that was a relief. But I hadn’t been trying to do it . . . so why had it happened? The idea that I might have projected the Thing there without meaning to kind of freaked me out.

  The distant sound of bells jangling pulled me from my thoughts. “Be right back!” Carrie said, hurrying out of the room. Once she was gone, Jamie turned to me.

  “So, do you think this one’s—”

  “I think I created a ghost,” I blurted out, surprising both of us.

  Jamie’s eyes widened. “You . . . what?”

  I’d told Oscar about the Thing back in Brussels. And when we got to New York, I’d told him about what really happened in Buenos Aires—that somehow, I’d created an artificial ghost based on this other version of me. The version my mother had always wanted: a pretty little princess kind of daughter. I hadn’t seen the Thing since that last night in Argentina, but I felt it around me constantly. Hovering just outside of my peripheral vision. Lurking in the corners of every mirror. Breathing down my neck, as it had most of my life. When Dad first got this job with Passport to Paranormal, I’d thought traveling around the world was my chance to get the Thing out of my head.

  I’d never meant to do that literally. Now it was with me in a very real way.

  Oscar had believed me. But that didn’t mean he believed in the Thing. I mean, part of me even wondered if I was hallucinating—a thought just about as terrifying as the Thing actually being real. I knew Oscar had to be thinking the same thing. We were both skeptics, after all.

  But Jamie was a believer. And right now, I needed someone to believe me. Even if I didn’t quite believe myself.

  So I took a deep breath. Then I gave him the short version, glossing over all my embarrassing issues with my mother and focusing on the fact that I’d created a ghost version of myself that was now haunting me. Jamie’s expression remained serious the entire time, not a trace of worry or skepticism.

  “And I don’t know how to get rid of it,” I finished. “It’s not . . . you know, possessing me. Nothing like that. It’s just . . . with me. All the time.”

  “You have video of it,” Jamie said slowly. “You projected it onto a video, just like this?” He gestured to the séance playing on a loop behind us, and I nodded.

  “Yeah.” I winced, sure he was about to ask if he could see the video. I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the thought of him watching me stammering and rambling anxiously on camera, trying to get rid of my stage fright. But instead, he said:

  “If you can project it, maybe you can control it.”

  “What?”

  The bells jangled again, and I heard footsteps as Carrie headed back to the exhibit. Jamie stepped back—somehow we’d ended up standing really close—and grinned at me.

  “I have an idea.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE HORRORWOOD REPORTER

  Rumorz

  All the celebrity gossip you need (and then some)!

  POLL: Which former host would YOU most like to see guest star on Passport to Paranormal? by Shelly Mathers

  Carlos Ortiz. Miss those dimples!

  Bernice Boyd. Her historical insight actually made the show educational!

  Emily Rosinski. Give me the drama!

  Other: __________

  Comments (1)

  [The Real Kat Sinclair]

  You won’t care about any of these idiots once you meet me.

  “I’M sorry!”

  I gasped, sitting upright in bed. Blood rushed in my ears as I gripped the sheets, my palms sweaty. The clock read 8:28—two minutes before my alarm was set to go off. I had a vague memory of Dad’s alarm going off a few hours earlier.

  Throwing the comforter aside, I hurried over to the desk and stared at the laptop, my dad’s notes, his calendar, my camera. What was I even looking for? I pressed my fingers to my eyes, trying to think. I’d had a dream that I’d done something to make Dad upset. I’d woken myself up apologizing to him. But for what?

  Exhaling slowly, I gazed around the room. Nothing out of the ordinary. It had just been a dream. A nightmare.

  I showered and dressed quickly, pulling my hair back and brushing my teeth without looking in the mirror. It wasn’t until I grabbed my camera that I realized what was missing from the desk.

  Dad’s contract.

  Relief flooded through me, and I actually laughed out loud. He must have signed it and brought it to the Fright TV meeting this morning. Finally.

  I grabbed my coat and headed to the lobby to meet Oscar, feeling ten times better than I had when I’d woken up. No more stress dreams about Dad leaving P2P and making us move back to Ohio. Maybe I’d actually get some decent sleep tonight.

  The Montgomery apartment building took up almost half a block and loomed high overhead, all sparkling white stone and gray marble gargoyles. A doorman stood stiffly at the entrance, pulling the gold-and-glass door open after we gave him our names.

  “The Coopers are expecting you.”

  “Holy . . .” Oscar trailed off, gazing around the lobby. “I knew they were rich. But I didn’t know they were this rich.”

  I shoved my hands into my coat pockets. “Maybe because Jamie and Hailey don’t, you know . . .” I stopped as a woman descended the grand staircase at the far end of the lobby. She looked like she was on her way to a photo shoot: thigh-high leather boots, gray sweater dress, and a dark yellow cloak with an almost laughably enormous hood. Oscar and I watched her cross the lobby, the heels of her boots clacking loudly.

  “Because they don’t look like that?” Oscar finished.

  “Yeah. I bet their mom does, though.” Over two weeks in New York, and we still hadn’t met Jamie and Hailey’s mother. Apparently, being the editor-in-chief of Head Turner fashion magazine meant you spent a lot of time traveling and attending fancy events without your kids. Hailey had complained about their parents’ busy work schedules on more than one occasion. Although at least their dad brought them on some of his trips.

  Oscar shook his head. “Man, I wish they’d asked us over sooner. We could’ve spent the last two weeks hanging out here instead of at the hotel.”

  “Yeah,” I said, pressing the up button on the elevator. Honestly, I’d thought it was kind of weird Jamie and Hailey hadn’t invited us to their apartment until the vlog came up. It was probably just my imagination, but it was almost as if they hadn’t wanted us to see where they lived for some reason.

  As we waited, Oscar glanced around and pointed to another elevator on the opposite wall. The door was an ornate brass gate, and instead of a digital panel showing the floors there was a brass sign sticking out just over the doors that said “Floors: 1st to 28th” in old-fashioned script.

  “That must be it,” he said. “The haunted one.”

  It had been Hailey’s idea to record the next episode of our vlog, Graveyard Slot, in her own building. She swore the manually operated elevator the building’s owners had kept during renovations was haunted by the ghost of its first elevator operator. Oscar and I had agreed to film here, because it was a good story. And more importantly, all of the other supposedly haunted venues we’d looked into—theaters, bars, hotels—had wanted to charge us a fee to film an investigation there. A really, really high fee.

  “Well, yeah,” Mi Jin, the show’s intern, had said when Oscar and I griped to her about
it. “You don’t think all the places we’ve filmed just let us do it for free, do you?”

  Luckily for us, the manager of the Montgomery, had said yes when the Cooper kids had asked if they could take some video of the building’s elevator for a vlog, free of charge. Then again, you’d have to be a serious miser to charge your tenants to film their own elevator in a place like this. The Coopers’ apartment probably cost thirteen times whatever our rent was for the house in Chelsea.

  Oscar and I rode up the elevator in silence. He kept yawning while I checked my backpack for the tripod. I thought about asking if he was still having trouble sleeping, but decided not to. Clearly he was, and I didn’t want to make him cranky right before we filmed. I had enough anxiety of my own to deal with—or at least I would once I turned on my Elapse. Ever since I dropped it in a pool at the site of a residual haunting in Brazil, it had carried the same feelings of nervousness and panic that lingered around that campsite. Not exactly a feature I wanted in a camera, but the Elapse had been a gift from my grandma. And it was the nicest thing I’d ever owned. Even if I could afford a new one—which I definitely couldn’t—I hated the thought of giving up this one.

  “Okay, 2206 . . . there it is.” I led the way down the hall, suddenly nervous for a whole other reason. I knew Mr. Cooper wasn’t home because of that meeting at Fright TV . . . but what if Mrs. Cooper was here? I knew exactly two things about Jamie and Hailey’s mom: She worked in fashion and she hated Ouija boards. Which pretty much guaranteed there was no way she’d like me.

  Not that I should care. But Jamie and I were . . . well, friends. Friends who went on dates. Had he told his mom about that? What if he introduced me as his girlfriend? I wasn’t, at least not yet . . . was I? Did I want to be?

  The door flew open, and a woman exclaimed: “Kat! Oscar! So nice to finally meet you!”

  I gaped at her. Which was really rude, but I couldn’t help it. This was not how I’d pictured Mrs. Cooper. She was wearing torn jeans and a green flannel shirt. No makeup, no jewelry. She looked young—like, maybe even Mi Jin’s age, although that wasn’t possible. Definitely way younger than Mr. Cooper, though.