Broken Lens

The abandoned pawn shop sit nestled between a coffee shop and a book store on the main street of an old town that looks like time has simply passed it by. The town had debated tearing it down because no one seemed to want to buy it but Garret happened to stumble across it and thought it was perfect. He convinced the city council to let him buy it for less than the price they were asking because he was willing to clean it out himself. When he arrived at the front door of the shop with the keys in hand, the for sale sign on the front door was dangling by a single nail and he yanked it off. When he unlocked the front door and stepped inside, his nostrils were assaulted with the smell of must, old paper and something else he could not quite place and it looked like the last owners had run out of the place like a hurricane leaving a path of destruction on their way out. He knew it would be a lot of work but he was up for the challenge and he brought cleaning supplies plus the dumpster he had rented and placed outside the back door.

He went through box after box, tossing out broken electronics and books, starting to think they threw a party before they left, leaving behind the ghosts of what the place used to be. When he finally reached the last box he was ready to just toss it into the dumpster when he noticed the strap of a camera hanging over the side of it so he stopped and reached in, pulling out a dusty older looking camera that looked like it had seen better days but did not look seriously damaged. He took a cloth and began to clean it up and the back of it popped open rather easily and it needed batteries so he dug into his supplies and was lucky enough to find some. He slid them in and closed the back of it and the camera came to life.  Whether or not it would still take pictures he did not know but he was curious about the lens and if it was cracked or not. He studied it carefully then lifted it up to his right eye, pointing it at the interior of the shop and what he saw left him in disbelief. He saw an image of the shop when it was first opened, the shelves lined with various items that people had traded in for money and an older man standing behind the counter with a smile on his face. He put his hand in front of the lens but nothing changed and when he lowered it from his face, the place returned to looking like it did before. He thought to himself that some one must have inserted the photo inside the camera to trick a person into thinking something that simply was not possible. He set it aside and got back to work but it stayed in the back of his mind.

The day was still early and he needed a break from the cleaning so he decided he would go explore the main street and took the camera with him. It did not have any film in it so why was he taking it and he honestly had no answer. He stopped in front of a small cafe because he knew it had not always been there so he lifted the camera up to his right eye once more and peered through it, pointing it at the cafe and the image that appeared was of a barbershop that used to be in that spot about twenty years ago. Ok  this was becoming a bit unsettling for him because the first time felt like a fluke, a joke but now it was something that he honestly could not explain and he certainly could not tell anyone about it. For the rest of the afternoon he kept viewing other parts of the neighborhood through the lens with the very same results…nothing he saw through it was current and he was beginning to think he was overtired or  someone was playing a rather sick twisted joke on him.

He strolls farther along the main street till he notices an empty lot with cracked pavement and patches of weeds growing in them, a little bit of rubble left behind from whatever had been built there before. He is now nervous as he lifts it up to his eye once more and peers through it but what he sees this time chills him beyond anything else up to this point. There is a building which looks like a bar with flickering lights on the street and in front of it stands a man towering over another man with a knife in his hand, and it does not take him long to piece together that there was a murder. He lowers it down and stares at the empty lot now feeling just a bit creeped out wondering what he has stumbled on. He should have just tossed the camera away and went on with his life but he had to know, his curiosity peaked but when he looked through the lens again the picture had changed. The man who had been standing over the body had moved and was now standing closer to the lens of the camera, their eyes dark , their lips drawn into a thin line and for a brief moment Garret feels like the man in the photo can see him standing there. There is nothing but an empty lot because he nervously checks once more. Now if he had been smart he would have just simply walked away and left the camera on the ground for some one else to find but it bothered him, the not knowing so with trembling hands he lifted it up once more keeping his eyes closed for a second before opening them

This time he almost trips on his own feet as the man is no longer looking just towards him, he is now standing so close to the lens that he can see the white of the mans eyes and the grin on his lips is not a happy one. He almost drops the camera before turning, making a run for his home which was a few blocks away, bolting up the front stairs, shoving the front door open and leaping inside, stopping long enough to slam the door shut and lock the bolt with a definitive click. He catches his breath, setting the camera down on the coffee table before creeping to the front window and peering through a crack in the curtains making sure nothing had followed him home then slowly lets out a slow breath. Sitting down on the couch he pulls out his laptop  and decides to do a search on the address for that lot to see if anything had happened there in the past. He read stories about little shops that tried to make it work there but always closed down rather fast leaving everything behind as if they had been spooked. Finally he stumbled across an article from twenty years ago, when there used to be a tavern that was frequented by a rather seedy group of men and most were afraid to walk by the place after dark. The article continued saying that there had been an unsolved murder that had taken place outside of it after closing and the case remained unsolved even to this day.

Garret sat back on the couch, the glow of the laptop still illuminating his face as he realizes that he has seen the killer's face and somehow the killer had seen him but how was any of that possible. The murder happened years ago yet he kept getting closer as if he knew he was being watched and the way he grinned made his skin crawl. What should he do now-does he throw out the camera and pretend that it was all just a dream he would wake up from. He can’t run to the police and tell them he saw a murder through the lens of a camera that took place twenty years ago, they would laugh in his face and tell him to go check himself into a mental hospital. He stared at the camera like it might give him the answers if he looked long enough then he did something he would regret forever, he stood up and picked it up from the table. He was no longer at the crime scene so if he took one last look through the lens it should show him nothing but the inside of his house from years ago or at least he convinced himself of that. At least then he would be able to get some much needed rest and get it out of his head. He points it at his living room towards the front window and his hands begin to shake as he lifts it up one last time, placing it against his right eye but what he sees causes him to stumble backwards, the man from the lot was reaching out to touch the lens, the grin still on his face but this time the camera slipped from his hands and hit the hard wood floor with a sickening crash and  the man was no longer just an image in the lens but was actually standing in front of him, not aged, not tired, looking exactly as he did all those years ago when he committed the murder. The rage was still in his eyes but now there was also panic because someone else knew what he had done and he had no intention of being caught. Before Garret could react there was a glistening flash of something steel and his story was ended but before the man knew what to do next, there was a knock at the door and he had nowhere to run.