The Faceless

 The Faceless 

The dusty box of old photographs sat on the floor of Grandma Eleanor’s attic, untouched for decades. Sarah found it while sorting through her late grandmother’s belongings. She loved history, and these photos would be a glimpse into a forgotten past.

One by one, Sarah studied the faded images of her ancestors: stiffly posed families, solemn faces, and sepia-toned memories of a simpler time. Then she found it.

A photograph of a family—a mother, father, and two children—standing in front of a large farmhouse. Except none of them had faces. Their heads were featureless, smooth like porcelain. Sarah shuddered.

Flipping the photo over, she read the note scrawled in faint ink: "Do not speak of them."

She wanted to dismiss it as a prank or an oddity, but the longer she stared at the photo, the more uncomfortable she became. Her heart raced as a thought whispered at the edge of her mind: Why had she never heard of these relatives?

That night, Sarah couldn’t sleep. The photograph sat on her nightstand, drawing her gaze like a magnet. She swore the faceless figures seemed closer than they were before.

At 3:13 a.m., a faint knock echoed through her room. She froze. Her apartment was on the fourth floor—there was no way anyone could knock on her window.

Another knock.

Heart pounding, she slowly turned toward the sound. Her blood turned to ice. Outside the window, barely visible in the moonlight, stood the family from the photograph. Featureless, yet unmistakable.

She screamed, grabbing the photo and throwing it across the room. The knocking stopped, but the silence felt heavier than the noise. Sarah didn’t sleep that night.

The next morning, she decided to throw the photograph away. As she grabbed it, her breath hitched. The back of the photo had changed. Beneath the original warning, another line had appeared:

"You spoke of us."

Sarah tried to laugh it off, convince herself it was stress or lack of sleep. But as days passed, she noticed strange things. Faceless figures appeared in the background of her photos. Reflections in windows seemed blurred or distorted.

She dug deeper into her family history, hoping to find some rational explanation. What she found only deepened the mystery. Records of a farmhouse that burned down in 1913. A family that vanished without a trace. No names, no faces, just whispers of a curse.

The last straw came when she woke up one morning to find a new photograph on her nightstand. It was of her. She was smiling, standing in her living room—but her face was gone.

The police found Sarah’s apartment abandoned days later, her belongings left untouched. The photograph box was missing, except for one picture left on the table: the faceless family. This time, there was a fifth figure among them.

Her.