The Camera in the Attic

She finds the old camera in the attic, tucked into a heavy trunk covered in dust and filled with all sorts of junk. The camera, clunky and old with its silver bits, was in a similar condition as the rest of the items. They’re strange things, those vintage film cameras, like otherworldly machines, brought here by travelers from some alien planet, familiar yet unknown.

She turns it over multiple times, just looking at it, trying to understand it. Trying to gain some knowledge of how it works. After a few minutes of holding it up to the golden light coming through the single, small window, she begins, instead, to touch and pull at every little part. The shutter clicks, one pull bit rewinds the film, and sticking her nail under a little clasp pops the back open to show the film. There’s a flash when it opens and a cloud of white smoke.

She coughs pretty violently, trying to clear her throat of the debris floating around, waving a hand around wildly to clear it.

“We’re free, Robert,” comes a trembling voice from somewhere beyond the smoke.

“Yes, we are,” Robert whispers in reply.

She blinks rapidly, trying to see through the lingering smoke. As her vision clears something takes shape in front of her, two somethings, in fact. A woman stands there, dressed elegantly in a white, high collar dress, lace at her throat. Her companion has an arm around her, dressed in his three-piece suit. It takes a moment to put the full picture together, but she’s actually seen these people, in these exact outfits.

The photo of her grandparents on their wedding day is big and prominent on the living room wall, exactly where it’s been since she was a child. Still there now, even after her mother’s death. In fact, she walked right past it on her way up here, on her way to begin clearing the attic. Her mother left the house to all three kids and they made the difficult decision to sell. Of course, living the closest, she took on the actual task of selling. She expected to find old memories and plenty of old crap, but this…

“Thank you!” Grandma Addie says to her, tears clear in her eyes.

“Yes, thank you for freeing us,” Grandpa Rob smiles at her.

She can only nod, absolutely in awe of the apparition in front of her. The hazy vision, backed by golden light, of her grandparents. The two of them can’t stop thanking her, smiling and crying as their solid edges become even hazier and slowly dissipate, like smoke clearing away. She blinks a few more times and they’re gone, particles drifting back into the universe.

She had known that something had happened to her grandparents after their wedding. It was explained to her by her mother as a slow decline of the mind. It wasn’t an instant vanishing of who they were, it happened over a number of years, but quick enough. Mom was their only child and she was moved to her own grandparent’s house by the time she was five. Mom’s parents became a shell of their former selves over time, eventually needing full time care for everything, but no one could explain why. No one could figure out what happened. They never could diagnose the disease. Well, she supposes, standing there, still stunned, gaping at the setting sun, this is what happened.