AN: Hola, one and all! Thanks for choosing The Last Picture for your reading pleasure. This was an essay I had to do recently and thought some of you may be interested! I hope you enjoy this little essay and-oh! Merry Christmas!

-Leeland XD

The Last Picture

I bite my lip nervously, lay my hand on the rotten gate, and push. A loud screeching noise from the dated hinges send a shiver up my spine.

"Why'd they have to ditch me..." I mumble. "Why are they making me do this alone?"

My mind flashes back to the night before, a sleepover my friends and I had planned earlier that week.

"Dare." I said triumphantly, making some of the girls in the small circle gasp. I didn't blame them, it was pretty rare that I would choose that atrocious path -let alone play the game, but it made it all the more special to pick something I couldn't refuse to do.

"Okay, Leeland," after much discussion between the four other girls, my best friend, Bianca, smirked at me with my verdict.

"We, as a whole, dare you to go inside the Old Widow's Shack and take pictures of everything inside."

I couldn't stop myself from letting my mouth drop a little in shock, making the lot of them laugh. The Old Widow's Shack, a historical landmark, had a horrible history. Supposedly, during the Civil War, the old widow that lived there would house slaves who were on the Underground Railroad. Since her small house was deep in the woods, it was easy for her to keep the slaves a secret. Unfortunately, her save haven was discovered by a farmer in a near by town after his slave had ran away. He gathered up a few of the town's people and they all marched through the woods to the Old Widow's Shack. The

farmer demanded where she kept the slaves, but the Widow denied having housed any slaves at all.

It's said that they snatched her up and drug her deeper into the woods where the town's people murdered her.

Little did they know that the Widow had the escaping slaves locked and hidden in a single room, that only she could access.

Not even the slaves could open the door...

And they were inside.

Now the shack has been made into a historical landmark and-despite many protests- couldn't be torn down.

The story always frightens me, no matter how many times I've heard it. My friends knew that, and that's probably why they dared me to go inside the shack.

We all met the next day at two o' clock, a few yards away from it. I rode my bike, but my friend, Laila, grabbed the handle bars and guided my bike to the group of buzzing girls.

"Hey! What're you doing with my bike?" I huffed, following closely behind.

"We don't want you hurrying through the shack. We want you to take at least eight pictures. I'll take your bike to my house."

They explained what I needed to do: take pictures, walk through the house, and see if I could find the secret room from the legend. Once that was done I would call for pick-up.

Seemed simple enough.

Whistling, pushing, and hissing, the wind warned me upon entering the lawn. I gulp, the sudden gust of cold air sent prickles down my back and arms. Parched leaves crunch under my gray Converse as I walk across the dying grass. The clouds blocking the early winter sky cast a ashy veil over everything, giving the shack an eerier look. A petrified weeping willow stood stiffly with it's jagged tears nearly scraping the ground. I snap a picture of it and turn toward the house with bitter anxiety.

The house itself, slightly tilted and menacing, takes up a majority of the lawn. The color of it reminds me of aged fence boards, long over due for demolition. I take a picture of it and pull my jacket closer to me as the wind blows again.

I saunter nervously up to the three rotting front steps and dash up them, each one resonating a protesting screech.

Now past the steps, I let my hand rest numbly on the rusted doorknob, waiting for my brain to send the correct signals to open the door.

The smell hits me first as the door shrieks open, a mix of rotting mold, dust, and animal waste- a horribly unpleasant mix of stenches. I pull up the folded part of my black turtleneck sweater to try and hide the scent, but to no avail.

As I let the doorknob go to try and adjust my turtleneck-mask, the wind howls behind me and slams the door shut, violently kicking up a plume of thick dust. Hacking, I feel against the wall for the nearest room, while my eyes fill with stinging tears.

Stumbling into a wide opening, I catch my self on the wall and gasp for air.

I stare around the narrow room- a kitchen it looks like- broken plates and chairs litter the ground. I snap a picture of an over turned chair and notice something I missed while scanning the room.

It's a back door, but the doorknob is completely gone... strange. I click the camera's button to take a picture of it and decide to go back to the main entry-way to look around some more.

Now that most of the dust has settled, I notice there's another room, it's opening framed by grimy, chipped, and faded walls.

I wander through it's narrow ark and into a bare room, a small fireplace the only thing that furnishes the whole space.

After taking a quick pick of the fireplace, I start walking around until I spot another room.

Nearing the entry, I find that the rusty hinges that should hold a door are completely empty. Odd.

This room is barren also, the only things being a rotting wooden bed frame and a gross window on the west wall, nearest to the room's opening. I shrug, and take two pictures of the room.

Tap, tap, tap...

I jump at the sudden sound, all silence broken.

Tap, tap, tap...

My head whips around, causing the mask I made out of my sweater to slip off my face.

Tap, tap, tap...

The sound seems to get louder, as if impatient. My pulse quickens and my eyes dart around the room, until I spot something covered in dust, gleaming in the small light the window emits.

Tap, tap, tap...

Louder still.

I snatch the gleaming object up as I stumble on the ground, landing in something wet and cold, but I ignore it- the stench telling me all I needed to know.

A doorknob.

Tap, tap, tap...!

The taps were more like knocks now and were coming from a distinct area.

The east end of the room... a wall... with a hole...

Where a doorknob could be.

Tap, tap, tap!

I start shaking. I wanted to run, hide, and curl up in a ball, but I felt myself get up and nearly stumble over to it.

Tap... tap...

The tapping slows and quiets, drawing a chill through my spine. The hand holding the doorknob reaches up with shaky fingers and sticks the knob into the hole, as if moving on it's own.

"Stop!" I scream in my head. "Stop!" But I can't stop, my curiosity getting the best of me.

Pop...

The doorknob had popped into place, causing my whole body to tense. I feel the color drain from my face as I turn the knob, my hand making it jiggle violently from shaking.

Creeeak...

I stare into pitch black. A cold burst of air floods into the room, making me convulse even more. I wonder if my eyes are trying to adjust- I blink them fiercely- but as I stand there peering into black, I subconsciously realize I need some light.

Not thinking, I reach for my camera and push the flash, my eyes widen at the last moment.

Click.

Thump.

...

I stare down in complete shock and horror at what lied at my feet face up. Two endless black circles stare back up at me.

I shriek, push on the camera button several times stupidly, dash out of the room, and finally scramble out the front door. But as I try to hop down the porch steps, the last one collapses underneath me, and I trip, biting my tongue in the process.

Not caring that the taste of iron was filling my mouth, I jump over the fence- that too ruining as my left foot grazes the top.

As soon as I'm far, far, far away from the Old Widow's Shack, I let out another scream of horror.

Then I start wailing.

I don't stop running until I get to the main road, where several cars pass by and a few joggers stare at me in wonder. Dropping to my knees, my mouth still hangs agape. I probably had a bunch of twigs and

leaves in my hair, dried blood leaking from the side of my mouth and trailing onto my sweater, and I more than definitely smell horrible-but I really don't care.

Quickly, I get out my cell and call Laila to come and pick me up, my voice shaking as I spoke.

"Lee? Are you okay? You don't-" I hang up on her before she finishes and curl into a ball on the dry grass. I tug at the strap of my camera around my neck and start flipping through the pictures, trying to find that one.

I stop at it.

Two eye sockets stare at me, mouth wide open -revealing gnarled and twisted teeth- and a faded red bandanna, frizzy tendrils snaking out from underneath. I flip back a picture and sob. There were two other skeletons, small like children.

The three of them must have suffocated in that small room after the Widow had been killed. It still boggled my mind how the secret room was hidden so well, the key being the back-doorknob.

I stare down at my camera again, flipping through more of the pictures I had taken in my panic.

When I get to the last one, I stare.

A chill slithers through my body.

It was a similar picture of what was probably the mother of the two children... but it looked as if...

...

Well...

As If she was smiling.