Come find me.

That’s all that was written on the blurry photo dropped through the mail slot in her front door on Sunday morning.

While most people’s first thought would be, “Who sent this to me?” or perhaps, “Who needs finding?” or even, “There’s no post on Sunday.”, Laura’s first thought was how much she hated that mail slot. She should have boarded it up as soon as she bought the house. It was drafty and now apparently a target for pranksters.

She stomped down to the basement and rummaged through boxes until she found her hammer and some nails. She ripped a wooden slat from a crate she hadn’t bothered to move when she moved in six months ago. One struck thumb later, she had the mail slot boarded up and had forgotten about the photo.

But the photo hadn’t forgotten about her.

It appeared stuck into the frame of her bathroom mirror when she got out of the shower the next morning. She threw it in the wastebin.

She opened her lunchbox to work through her break and found the photo on top of her sandwich and it went through the shredder. The photo, not her sandwich.

After a week of having the photograph show up in her shoe, in the egg carton, on her dashboard, and in her book, Laura threw her hands up and screamed,

“How do I find you?”

She looked down at the photograph and the writing swirled like oil on top of a puddle after the first autumn rain.

Follow the shadows on the sidewalk.

“Great,” Laura muttered. “Now I’m taking directions from a haunted photograph. I must be mad.”

But she picked up her coat and walked out her front door, photograph in hand.