We took this family selfie at the cabin—but when I looked closer, I counted ten people and eleven plates. We hadn’t all been together in years. No weddings, no funerals—just a last-minute idea from my cousin Ilona to “reconnect like we used to.” So we went to the old family cabin.
No Wi-Fi. No signal. Just forest, chickens, and that rotting fence our uncle never fixed.
The breakfast spread was perfect. Homemade sausage, honey, jam, fresh bread—everything our grandparents used to make. Ilona set up her phone on timer mode and jumped in for the selfie.
Everyone smiled. Even Erik, who usually hated photos. We laughed, we ate, we posted the picture to the family group chat.
And that should’ve been the end of it. But later, after the rain came and everyone scattered inside, I stayed back to clean the table. That’s when I noticed something.
There were eleven plates. All arranged neatly. Each with the same setup—bread, sausage, napkin, fork.
But there were only ten of us. At first, I thought maybe I had miscounted. So I stacked them one by one—Ilona’s, Erik’s, mine, and so on.
Ten people. Ten plates. But there was still an extra one, untouched, set carefully with food.
No one had eaten from it, but it looked just as deliberately placed as the others. My chest tightened. I called out through the open door.
“Did someone make an extra plate?” Nobody answered at first. Then Ilona came out, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She looked at the plate, frowned, and said, “I didn’t do that.
Did you?”
I shook my head. “Maybe someone just forgot?” she offered, though she didn’t sound convinced. We carried everything inside, but the unease lingered in the air.
As the rain tapped harder against the tin roof, people gathered around the fire, playing cards, telling old stories. I couldn’t shake the image of that eleventh plate, so later, while everyone was distracted, I pulled up the selfie on my phone. My stomach dropped.
Ten people, yes—but when I counted again, I swore there was a shadow at the very edge of the picture. A blur. A shape that didn’t belong.
I zoomed in, but the picture distorted. Maybe it was a trick of the light, maybe not. I showed it to Erik, who usually brushed off anything strange.
But this time, he frowned and muttered, “That’s weird.” He didn’t say more, and that was unusual for him. He just went quiet, staring at the fire like he wanted to burn the thought away. That night, after everyone went to bed, I had trouble sleeping.
The storm had passed, leaving only the dripping sound of water sliding from the trees. I lay awake on the creaky bed, staring at the ceiling, until I heard something faint outside. Footsteps.
Not heavy—measured, deliberate. I sat up, heart pounding, and looked through the curtain. By the faint moonlight, I saw the table still outside under the awning.
And there it was again—an extra plate. Someone had set it back out, carefully, with bread and sausage on it. I almost woke the others, but something inside me stopped.
Instead, I quietly went outside, the wet ground cold against my feet. The plate was fresh, steam still rising from the sausage. But everyone had been asleep for hours.
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