The Nightshade Hotel

 The friends were all together in the Square. It was a fun vacation! Marie took out her digital camera and tried to take a picture of the group. The shutter did not seem to work. She tried repeatedly to get the camera to take a picture. Marie looked at the image on the back of the camera and she could see her friends standing arm in arm and smiling at her. "It won't take a picture" she told them.

Marie noticed something strange, the camera had indeed taken some images. But they were not the images she had pointed at. Somehow, the camera had taken pictures of something behind Marie, and there were ghostly shadows on each frame.

Walking down the street now, Marie found the scene on which her camera seemed to be focused. In this historic city, there was an old colonial graveyard. Behind a short retaining wall, she could see the hundreds years old tombstones.  Looking through the camera lens now Marie saw something surprising. There were people in the cemetery. There was a father in dated attire,  wearing black vest and black top hat. They were visiting a grave, he and his small children.

The smallest child, a little boy in short black pants, saw Marie and began running towards her. "Mommy!"  Quite alarmed, the father called for his boy "Devon! Devon! Come back here!"

Shocked, Marie took a step back and lowered the camera. She saw no people in the graveyard. She looked again at the digital picture on the back of her camera. She saw the father catch up to little Devon, and they all ran straight to a Mausoleum. They disappeared in a flash of flames that erupted from the front of the mausoleum.

Marie was too shaken and disturbed by this and she returned with her friends to The Nightshade Hotel.