"Give me a few minutes, okay? I was sleeping," you tell her.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I wouldn't have called if I wasn't totally freaked out."
"All right. See you in a bit."
You roll back over in bed. Even though you've already slept for hours, your pillows and comforter still feel so nice. It's only after you've spent some time groaning that you force yourself to get up and make the trek.
Next
Anuja opens the door before you even have a chance to tell her you're there.
"Downstairs," she says, breathless even though you're the one who just made the trek. "They're in the darkroom still and I don't want to go back in there by myself."
The basement bathroom has been set up as Anuja's darkroom for a little over a year now. You've only been inside once before. Ever since first using a film camera in a seventh grade photography class, Anuja has preferred it to digital, though she uses both. The space is a snug fit for the two of you in there, especially with strings of photographs hanging across the room, but you manage to position yourself so you can see what Anuja is facing.
"Some of them are definitely weird because water got into the camera. But some are fine. Well, 'fine' might not be the right word, but whatever's wrong with them isn't because of water damage," Anuja says as she pulls down a photograph and hands it to you.
It takes a moment for your eyes to make sense of it since they're still getting used to the red light that illuminates the space, but your heart jumps in your chest as soon as you understand what you're looking at.
The photo is of the beach just outside the boat. Standing in the distance—but still too close for comfort—are several figures. The ones that are further away are hard to make out, but the closer ones, the one with faces you can see, are clearly people. Their outlines are faint, and they are the color of white ash, but on their faces are dark smudges in the shapes of eyes and mouths.
"There are people," you finally say aloud.
"Yeah," Anuja breathes. "Kind of. Look, they show up in some of the others too."
Anuja pulls down several other photos. The figures are closer in these ones. Looking through them gives you the sense that it's happening all over again now, that they're really coming closer and closer to you even now.
You put them down.
"You didn't see them when you were taking the photos?" you ask.
"No. Not at all. I saw nothing. Just fog."
A few of the outlines look like they might be wearing dresses or skirts. One of them is tall with broad shoulders, if those are shoulders, that is. Some of them are much shorter. Like they might be children. Almost all of their clothing looks old fashioned. Wider skirts, old hats, an old military uniform.
"What does it mean, Petzeiros? I don't understand it."
You go with your gut instinct on how to make sense of this.