Chapter 2: The Unseen Editor

Chapter 2: The Unseen Editor

"It's a trick of the light, Sarah. A branch or something."

Frank’s voice was a low, placating rumble, the one he used when one of the kids woke up from a nightmare. He stood behind her, his large hands resting on her tense shoulders, but his words offered no comfort. They felt like a dismissal, a pat on the head when her world was tilting off its axis.

"Look at it, Frank," she insisted, her voice sharp and brittle. She jabbed a trembling finger at the monitor. "Branches don't have knuckles. They don't have fingernails. That is a hand."

He leaned closer, squinting. "Okay, it looks like a hand. It's a digital artifact, then. A weird glitch when the file compressed. You see this stuff all the time."

"In one single frame? Out of a burst of a dozen?" The questions shot out of her, rapid-fire. The rational part of her brain was desperately trying to seize on his logic, but her gut was screaming. She remembered the sudden, baseless chill she’d felt in the forest, a fleeting sensation she'd dismissed as a breeze. Now, it felt like a premonition.

Her desire for a simple, technical explanation was a burning need. This couldn't be real. Her perfect family photo, the symbol of that golden afternoon, couldn't be tainted by this… this grotesque intrusion. It had to be a mistake. And there was only one person who could have made it.

Her anger flared, a welcome heat against the encroaching ice of fear. She snatched her phone from the desk, her thumb swiping clumsily across the screen until she found Janice’s number.

“What are you doing?” Frank asked, a note of warning in his tone.

“I’m calling the photographer,” Sarah snapped, pressing the phone to her ear. “This is not funny. It’s a sick, twisted thing to do.”

The phone rang twice before Janice picked up. “Sarah! Hi! Did you get the gallery? I was so thrilled with how they turned out!”

Her cheerful voice was like gasoline on Sarah’s fire. “Janice, I’m looking at the photo of Leo and Isabella hugging. Image 73. There’s a hand in it.”

There was a pause. “A hand? What do you mean? Like, one of the kids’ hands is in a weird spot?”

“No,” Sarah said, her voice dangerously low. “A third hand. A long, white, skeletal hand on my daughter’s shoulder. An extra one. What did you do to my picture, Janice?”

The silence on the other end of the line was suddenly heavy, charged. When Janice spoke again, the chipper professionalism was gone, replaced by a thin thread of confusion and something else… something that sounded like alarm. “I… I didn’t do anything, Sarah. The only edits I’ve done are color and light correction. I haven’t retouched anything yet. Are you sure you’re seeing it right?”

“Am I sure?” Sarah’s laugh was a harsh, choked sound. “My husband is standing right here. We both see it. I want to see the original file. The raw file. Now.”

“Okay,” Janice said, her voice small. “Okay, just… can you come to the studio? I don’t… I need to see what you’re seeing on my monitor.”

The twenty-minute drive to Janice’s downtown studio was suffocating. Frank drove, his jaw tight, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. He was humoring her, Sarah knew. He believed they were on their way to clear up a misunderstanding, to expose a digital ghost in the machine before taking his overwrought wife home. But for Sarah, it felt like a pilgrimage toward a terrible truth. She stared out the window, the familiar suburban landscape looking alien and threatening, every shadow between the houses seeming to stretch and twist into long, grasping fingers.

Janice’s studio was a bright, airy loft space, filled with softboxes, colorful backdrops, and framed prints of smiling babies and laughing families. But Janice herself looked like a ghost. The freckles stood out in stark relief against her pale, drawn face. She ushered them inside without a smile, her hands clasped tightly in front of her.

“I pulled it up,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, gesturing toward a large, professional-grade monitor on her editing desk.

There it was again, blown up to terrifying proportions. The hand. Its waxy pallor seemed to suck the warmth from the room. Its thin, spidery fingers looked even sharper, more predatory.

“It’s a photoshop prank,” Frank said, his voice firm, though a sliver of doubt had begun to creep in. “And it’s in very poor taste.”

Janice shook her head, her eyes wide with fear. “I swear to you, I didn’t do this.” She tapped a few keys on her keyboard. “This is the file you saw in the gallery. A JPEG. It’s been processed. But this…” Her fingers trembled as she clicked on another window. “This is the RAW file. CR2. It’s the raw data straight from the camera’s sensor. It’s the digital negative. It’s impossible to edit this without creating a new file. This is the source. This is exactly what the camera captured.”

The image on the screen flickered, replaced by a slightly less vibrant, uncorrected version of the same photo. And the hand was still there.

Frank stared, his skepticism visibly crumbling. He leaned forward, his face inches from the screen, tracing the outline of the spectral fingers with his own. He checked the file’s metadata—the date, the time, the camera settings. It all matched. There was no evidence of tampering. No layers, no masks, no digital brushstrokes. It was as much a part of the original image as her children’s smiles.

The air went out of the room. The technical explanation was gone. The rational foundation of Frank’s world had just fractured.

Janice sank into her chair, her face in her hands. “I should have told you,” she mumbled. “I should have insisted we shoot somewhere else.”

“Told us what?” Sarah demanded, her heart hammering against her ribs.

Janice looked up, her eyes glistening with tears. “The stories about Blackwood. I just thought they were local folklore, you know? Spooky campfire tales to scare tourists.”

She took a shaky breath. “They say something lives in those woods. Something old and… lonely. It doesn't like to be alone. The legend says it… it latches on. To people. To families.”

Frank shot her a sharp look. “Latches on? What is that supposed to mean?”

Janice’s gaze fell back to the horrifying image on her monitor. “It’s possessive,” she whispered, the words sounding like a long-held, terrifying secret she was finally confessing. “It envies the warmth, the connection. Before it makes itself known, before anyone can feel it or see it, it first reveals itself in captured images. A reflection. A photograph. It’s how it proves it’s there. How it stakes its claim.”

The word hung in the sterile air of the studio. Claim.

Sarah felt a wave of nausea so profound she had to grip the edge of the desk to stay upright. This wasn't a glitch. It wasn't an error. It was an announcement.

Her desire to capture a perfect moment had done more than just freeze time. It had captured something else with it. That skeletal, bloodless hand wasn’t just resting on Isabella’s shoulder. It was holding on.

She looked at Frank, searching for the anchor of his disbelief, but it was gone. In its place was a mirror of her own terror, a dawning horror that was even more terrifying to behold. They had invited a photographer to take a picture, and in doing so, they had given something an invitation into their lives.

The unseen editor hadn't added something to the photo; it had revealed what was already there, riding home with them from the woods, unseen. Until now.