Emma and her mother were cleaning out the attic of their old house. While her mother worked in one corner, Emma wandered around, looking for treasures.
She came upon a dusty old photo album sitting on top of a stack of boxes. On the front of it someone had crudely scribbled, "DO NOT OPEN." Of course, Emma ignored that little note. She was known to be quite curious.
When she opened up the old thing the first picture that came to view was of her mother and father on their wedding day. The second was of her and her sister, just little babies, opening Christmas presents. The pictures went on like that for the rest of the album, just old family memories.
Emma almost closed the album before she saw one last photo. It was of her and a boy, a boy who she had never seen before in her life. What was strange was that it looked oddly present day, not like the rest of the pictures. She would think she could remember someone whom she took a picture with so recently.
In the picture the boy smiled a lopsided grin with one arm behind his back and Emma herself looked almost frightened. It was a strange picture. Emma felt something was off about it.
She took the album over to her mother and pointed out the photo. Instead of looking at it strangely like Emma thought she would, her mother just shrugged and asked, "What about it?"
"Who's that boy?" She asked. Her mom laughed.
"It's Stephen," she said, and continued doing her work. Emma didn't know any Stephens. She thought her mom was kidding around with her. She ran downstairs to find her sister.
Kylie, her older sister, was on the computer, as usual. Emma came up to her with the photo album and asked her if she knew the boy.
"Of course I know him. That's Stephen," she snorted. Then she pulled up a picture on her computer that Emma had never seen either. It was a picture of Emma, Kylie, and "Stephen" at the water fountain in the park. Emma started to get shivers up her spine.
She quickly ran to find her father, to see if this was all some kind of practical joke. Her father was in the study, reading the newspaper. Emma asked him if he knew the boy in the picture. He nodded.
"Stephen." He then showed Emma an article in the paper titled "Stephen Kills Young Girl." There was a picture of him on the front and Emma backed away from her father slowly. She knew something was very, very, wrong.
She hurried back up to her room to try to think of what to do. She never should have opened that album. All of a sudden the doorbell rang.
"Honey!" Her dad called from downstairs, "Stephen's here!"
Emma felt her stomach tie in a tight knot. She timidly walked down the stairs, holding her breath. The boy in the picture was at the door, and the rest of her family stood smiling next to him. "Stephen" began to pull a knife out from behind him, but before he did he said, "Don't you remember me, Emma?"
Her father snapped a picture.
