Chapter 7: Rose's Darkroom

Rose jolted awake in the van's passenger seat, her hand instinctively reaching for where Liam had been sitting just moments before. The space was empty, still warm from his presence but undeniably vacant. Her camera clattered to the floor as panic seized her chest.

"Where's Liam?" she gasped, shaking Caleb's shoulder. "Where is he?"

Caleb's eyes snapped open, immediately alert. He swept his flashlight across the van's interior, confirming what Rose already knew—their friend had simply vanished. Matthew was still curled in the back corner, mumbling in his sleep, but of Liam there was no trace.

"He was right here," Rose said, her voice rising toward hysteria. "I saw him black out, and then I must have dozed off, but he was right here!"

Through the cracked windshield, the chapel sat in malevolent silence, its boarded windows revealing nothing. The little girl in white was gone, but the frost patterns her hands had left on the glass remained, forming symbols that hurt to look at directly.

"Maybe he went to check the engine," Caleb said, but his voice lacked conviction. They both knew Liam wouldn't leave the van alone, not after what they'd witnessed.

Rose was already moving, grabbing her camera and pushing past their makeshift barricades. "Liam!" she called into the darkness. "Liam, where are you?"

But even as she shouted his name, something cold and predatory seemed to wrap around her consciousness. The world tilted, colors bleeding out like watercolors in rain, and suddenly she was no longer standing beside the van.

She was in her editing suite.

The familiar space materialized around her with perfect detail—her dual monitors glowing softly, the ergonomic chair she'd saved for months to buy, the cork board covered with screenshots from their best investigations. Everything was exactly as she'd left it in her apartment, down to the half-empty coffee cup sitting beside her keyboard.

But something was fundamentally wrong. The shadows were too deep, the corners too dark, and when she tried to look directly at her reflection in the blank monitor screens, her image seemed to lag a fraction of a second behind her movements.

"This isn't real," she whispered, but her voice sounded hollow in the familiar space.

Isn't it?

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, the same grinding presence that had spoken to Liam in the confessional. But here, in her creative sanctuary, it took on different tones—the whisper of film through a projector, the hum of hard drives processing data, the soft click of a camera shutter.

This is where your truth lives, Rose. In the spaces between frames. In the moments you chose to capture and the moments you chose to ignore.

Her main monitor flickered to life, displaying the timeline from her latest edit—their investigation of the Blackwood Mansion three months ago. She remembered the project well; it had been their breakthrough video, the one that had launched them from amateur enthusiasts to viral sensations.

"I don't want to watch this," she said, but her hands were already moving to the mouse, controlled by something other than her conscious will.

You've watched it a thousand times. Perfecting the cuts, adjusting the color grading, crafting the perfect narrative. But you've never watched the raw footage, have you? The parts you chose to leave on the cutting room floor.

The timeline began to play, but instead of the polished final product, Rose found herself viewing footage she'd deliberately excluded. The camera was her own—she recognized the particular way she held it, the subtle movements that were as distinctive as a fingerprint.

The scene unfolded in the mansion's basement, where they'd heard rumors of a violent haunting. But what played on her monitor wasn't the carefully edited sequence that had made them famous. It was the full, uncut horror she'd witnessed through her viewfinder.

A young man—maybe seventeen, clearly homeless from his appearance—had been squatting in the mansion's ruins. They'd surprised him while he slept, and the encounter had gone terribly wrong. Caleb had startled him awake, the boy had panicked and tried to run, and in the chaos that followed, he'd fallen down a rotted staircase, his neck snapping with a sound like breaking kindling.

"We tried to help him," Rose said desperately, but even as she spoke, she could see the lie in her own footage. The timestamp showed she'd kept filming for a full thirty seconds after the fall, capturing the boy's final moments with the same steady hand she used for supernatural phenomena.

You had a choice, the voice continued. Call for help immediately, or capture the perfect death scene. You chose the shot.

The footage continued playing, showing all four friends standing around the body. She could see the exact moment when the decision was made—not spoken aloud, but communicated through glances and subtle nods. The boy was already dead; there was nothing they could do for him. But they could spin the story, make it part of their investigation, claim the mansion's spirits had been responsible for the "accident."

"It wasn't murder," Rose whispered, but the words felt hollow. "We didn't push him. We didn't mean for him to fall."

But you used his death. You built your fame on his corpse. And when the police investigated, when his family posted missing person flyers, you said nothing.

The monitor switched to a different timeline—their social media accounts, their subscriber counts, the monetization reports that showed exactly how much money they'd made from that single video. Thousands of dollars. Tens of thousands. All built on the foundation of a homeless teenager's broken neck.

You turned his final moments into entertainment. His death became your breakthrough.

Rose tried to close the video, to turn away from the screen, but her body wouldn't obey. She was forced to watch as the footage continued, showing her own face behind the camera. She could see the calculation in her own eyes, the artistic evaluation of light and shadow, the way she'd unconsciously adjusted her framing to better capture the scene.

She'd been thinking about the shot even as the boy died.

"I'm not a killer," she said, but the words carried no conviction. "I'm an artist. I document things. I don't create them."

Don't you?

The screen filled with a montage of her work—not just the Blackwood Mansion video, but every investigation they'd ever conducted. Frame by frame, she was forced to confront the truth she'd buried beneath layers of artistic rationalization and creative ambition.

The "ghostly" sounds they'd recorded at Riverside Cemetery—actually the cries of a homeless woman they'd found overdosing, whose pleas for help they'd recorded instead of answering. The "paranormal" footage from the abandoned hospital—capturing a veteran suffering a psychotic break instead of calling for medical assistance. Incident after incident where they'd chosen the perfect shot over basic human decency.

You are a killer, Rose. You kill with indifference. You murder with neglect. You create the very horrors you claim to document.

The editing suite began to shift around her, the familiar space warping into something nightmarish. Her monitors multiplied, dozens of screens showing every moment of suffering she'd captured and commodified. The walls stretched upward into darkness, covered with still frames from her most morally questionable footage.

"I gave people what they wanted to see," she said desperately. "I showed them the truth about the paranormal world."

You showed them death. You fed their hunger for authentic horror by serving them real tragedy dressed up as entertainment. You are not a documentarian, Rose. You are a ghoul.

The chair beneath her began to sink into the floor, and she realized with growing terror that she was trapped in her own creative space, surrounded by the evidence of her artistic crimes. Every video they'd ever made, every moment of genuine human suffering she'd captured and polished into content, played on the screens around her.

The homeless boy's face appeared on every monitor simultaneously, his neck bent at that impossible angle, his eyes staring directly into her soul. When he spoke, his voice was the grinding whisper of the entity, but tinged with the sadness of youth cut short.

You could have saved me. You could have called for help immediately. But you chose the shot. You always choose the shot.

"I'm sorry," Rose sobbed, the words torn from her throat. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know how to stop. I didn't know how to be anything other than what I was."

Confession is the first step toward forgiveness.

The words felt like a trap, but Rose was drowning in guilt and desperate for any form of absolution. The artistic ambition that had driven her entire adult life revealed itself for what it truly was—a hunger for authentic suffering, a need to transform real tragedy into digital gold.

"I confess," she whispered, and immediately the words began pouring out in that strange, ancient language that bypassed conscious thought. She spoke of every moment she'd chosen the perfect shot over human compassion, every time she'd prioritized content over conscience, every death and tragedy she'd transformed into entertainment.

As she confessed, the editing suite continued to warp around her, becoming less like a creative space and more like a shrine to suffering. The monitors showed endless loops of the moments she'd captured, the real horror underlying their supernatural investigations.

You are forgiven, the voice finally said, and Rose felt something fundamental tear loose inside her chest. But you must atone. You must remain to document the truth you've always sought.

"What truth?" she asked, though part of her already understood.

That art and cruelty are often indistinguishable. That the most beautiful darkness comes from the deepest suffering. That you have found your masterpiece at last.

The editing suite dissolved around her, reality fragmenting like corrupted video files. Rose felt herself falling through digital static, through the spaces between frames, into a darkness that promised to be the most authentic footage she would ever capture.

Her last coherent thought before the transformation completed was a bitter recognition of artistic irony—she was finally going to become part of the very phenomenon she'd spent years trying to document.

The perfect shot, at last.