Odd Spaces

Just to prove that he was telling the truth, Jean opened all the photo albums in their house.

"I know it's weird I don't remember his name, but I'm sure there are photos of you together. I took photos of you guys," he said to Kyle, his voice tinged with a hint of uncertainty although he was sure he was telling the truth. "Just wait till I find them."

He was convinced there was someone who taught Kyle to play the guitar. It was a young man just a few years older than him. A man whose name and face he couldn't remember.

As he shuffled through the pages, a peculiar sensation washed over him, causing a shiver to run down his spine. It was only a flicker, but an image of another person flashed in front of him—a woman. No. There were actually three of them. The one who taught Kyle the guitar and two women.

He decided to ignore it.

Photos of them as newborns, on their first day of school, in their Boy Scout uniforms... photos of them growing up were quickly flipped until Jean's hand stopped on a certain photo. It was the picture of Kyle playing a guitar surrounded by junk food wrappers and cans of beer. It was exactly as he had described, only missing one important detail. Kyle was alone in the photo, when he could have sworn there was someone else there.

"There you go! See what I told you? Nobody taught me. I learned on my own," Kyle declared. Instead of feeling victorious for proving his older brother wrong, he felt disappointed. He had secretly hoped Jean was correct all along, which was why he felt a bit let down and dissatisfied.

But for some reason, Jean couldn't take his eyes off the photo. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. That was when he noticed a detail so small he would have otherwise missed had he not laid his eyes on it.

On the lower right of the photo, there was a small, inexplicable smear of red against the wall.

"Kyle, hurry to my room and get the magnifying glass. It's in the drawer of my study table under the scientific calculator," he instructed with urgency. Kyle was confused why Jean was acting weirdly all of a sudden but followed anyway.

While waiting, Jean decided to confirm his suspicion. He went back to their oldest photos. Initially, nothing seemed suspicious, just a picture of himself at about four years old, looking at the newly born Kyle. The next photo showed their dad bottle-feeding Kyle. Since their father was a single dad, he had to handle all household chores, including cleaning, cooking, and taking care of both sons. However, as Jean flipped through more photos, something didn't seem to add up. He felt anxious the more he stared.

"Who took all these?" he wondered out loud. "It couldn't be grandma because she's in some of them. And mom left us a long time ago. She left after giving birth to Kyle. It couldn't be a tripod either as half of these photos were taken by a vintage film camera which didn't have a tripod mount and most importantly, a time-lapse shot."

Various questions filled Jean's mind, making him feel increasingly uneasy.

Not long after, Kyle arrived with a magnifying glass, and Jean flipped back to the photo with something red in the corner. Using the magnifying glass, he was finally able to see what the red was, but all the hairs on his body stood on end.

It was a painting of some sort, which looked like it was made of blood, hair, and nails. An image of a disfigured man, his face twisted in agony, with no mouth to speak. His eyes were hollow and lifeless, while his hand was outstretched, pointing to the right as if guiding him towards something.

And while staring at it for quite some time, something seemed to finally click inside Jean.

He flipped through all the photos over and over again and was overcome by fear.

In every photo, there seemed to be odd spaces. As if a human was edited out of them.

Without explaining anything, he took the photo with the red in it and ran to the living room where it was taken.

"Oi! What's gotten into you all of a sudden?" Kyle called out, but his words fell on deaf ears.

Jean aligned the photo to match the background and followed where the disfigured man was pointing to. It was pointing towards the room they hadn't entered in ages. The room they had been avoiding like a plague. The room with a newly built door.