He sat up and fished an envelope from his desk. “Great-thanks. I’ll stop by, then. You’re a gem, Ralph. And I don’t forget that I owe you a few drinks-we could meet for dinner tonight, you hand over your findings, I’ll buy, what do you say? Okay, see you then.”

He hung up the phone, slid the photos into the envelope, and stood up.

“Christ,” he muttered, “if I’d known, I would have stayed in school, become an engineer.”

“THEY’RE real, Phil.”

Marks took the crumpled envelope and squinted at it. “You’re sure?”

Ralph Tomlin nodded, eating dried noodles one at a time from his hand. “As far as I can tell, Phil. I did the standard tests-searched for standard stock overlays, pixel differentials, inverted shadings. That’s not 100 percent definitive, but you only gave me a few hours. Give me a week, I’ll take it apart dot by dot. But based on what I did today, it would require serious expertise to have faked those. So they’re either real or absolutely amazing, one-of-a-kind fakes.”

Marks nodded. “Okay. I doubt I need to look that hard at these.” He glanced up at Tomlin, who was a round man, jowly, red-faced, cheerful-seeming. “What did you think of them?”

Tomlin chewed and shrugged, swallowed. “Look like vacation shots to me. Amateur, not particularly inspired-the kind of pictures you get when you hand a cheap camera to random strangers and ask them to take your picture. Sentimental value only, I’d imagine.” He cleared his throat. “Although since you gave them to me, I can only imagine that there’s something not obvious about them.”

Marks held up one at random. “Did you notice the man in the dark suit?”

Ralph squinted. “Okay, I see him now.”

“He’s in every one.”

Ralph nodded. “Okay.”

Marks took the photo back. “No one knows who he is or why he’s showing up every time this guy poses for a picture. That’s the story. So far, at least.”

“Sounds pretty boring, Phil.”

Marks shrugged. “Most stories are. You check out nine to find one that gets interesting. Now, you order anything you want, baby.”

Ralph snorted. “Thanks. You’re a big spender, big boy. So what now with this?”

Marks stuffed the envelope into his jacket. “I’ll talk to the fellow who gave them to me, put a little pressure on him, see what comes out.” He shrugged. “It’s a necessary step. You’d be amazed how many real crazy people approach me, feed me bullshit. Sometimes they come up with some pretty complex bullshit, too.”

Ralph shook his head, holding up a menu. “No, Phil, I wouldn’t.”

III

“Mr. Harrows,” Marks huffed, “thanks for coming.”

Harrows took the offered hand quickly and sat down. Marks wheezed around to the other side of the desk and collapsed into his own chair.

“You have some findings?” Harrows asked.

Marks shook his head. “Not yet, Mr. Harrows. I’ve asked you here to ask a few more questions and to perform an experiment. I spent the last two days doing some basic fact-checking.”

Harrows seemed unhappy. “Checking up on me?”

“You didn’t think I wouldn’t, did you?”

Harrows shrugged and looked down at the floor for a moment. “Well? What do you need from me?”

Marks settled himself into the cracked leather of his chair. He placed a large paper bag on the desk and reached into it. “First, I’d like to ask you if you’ve ever experienced anything that could be described as ‘paranormal.’ ”

Harrows shook his head. “I didn’t even realize that this would be considered such until I began noticing… him. In the earlier photos I showed you, he was distant-part of the background, really, and easy to miss. By the time I started to see him, he was… closer.”

Marks nodded. “Okay. Let me ask you this, then, and please be perfectly honest. Do you recognize the man?”

“I’ve wracked my brain, Mr. Marks. Nothing about him stirs any memory at all.” Harrows laughed a little. “Believe me, I was convinced at first that this… ghost, or whatever, was haunting me, so therefore, there must be a connection. I’ve thought about it and thought about it, and have come up with nothing more than pure imagination.”

Marks began pulling cameras from the paper bag. “Have you gone through older photographs, perhaps?”

Harrows nodded. “Sure, sure. Went through fifty years’ worth of family photos, looking for someone who resembled the man. Nothing.”

Marks placed six cameras on his desk, including an expensive digital camera with a wireless instant printer and a small video camera. “Mr. Harrows, in the samples you showed me, you were in all of the photos-most were vacation shots, where you had asked someone to take your picture, correct? Have you ever noticed our friend in photos you yourself took?”

“No. I’ve checked. When I am behind the camera, he is nowhere to be seen.”

Marks nodded. “Hmmph. Well.” He sat up in his seat. “Well, let’s experiment, gain all the data possible. I’ve got here some random cameras. Certainly not a scientific experiment, but it will at least show us some possible guidelines. I propose to take photos of you-lots of them-using different cameras and see if our friend shows up in them. I’m beginning to have a rudimentary theory-not about what or who, but merely concerning some of the rules of the phenomenon’s behavior. Let’s get started, shall we?”

Harrows looked at his hands for a moment, then nodded. “Fine.”

Marks had Harrows stand against one of the walls of the small office. He took three or four photos with each camera, from different angles and different distances. “I noticed,” he said as he snapped them, “that in all the photos you showed me, you never had your back to a wall. I wonder if that will have any impact.”

Harrows looked startled. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Marks continued to snap photos. “May not mean anything-but that’s the point; we need data. Now, when I film you, just act natural. Move about a bit. I want to see if your movement has any impact.”

Marks lifted the video camera to his eye and pointed it at Harrows.

“See anything?”

Marks didn’t stop filming. “Calm down, Mr. Harrows. If I see any ghosts, I’ll let you know. Everything looks normal. But then I assume you did not see this man when you actually posed for the photos?”

Harrows nodded, shifting awkwardly.

“Okay,” Marks continued, “let’s just get enough video to have something to work with, a minute or so, and then we’ll get this film developed and see what can be seen.”

“Okay,” Harrows said with little enthusiasm.

A few minutes later, Marks examined the photographs one by one, passing them across the desk to Harrows, who stared at them with decreasing happiness.

“Well,” Marks said when the last of them had been glanced over. “We’ve managed to ascertain only one more fact of the case.”

“Hmmmn?” Harrows gurgled from his depressed spot in the chair. “What’s that?”

Marks gestured at the photos, each showing the tall, thin man in the dark suit, apparently creeping up behind Harrows. “Well, he’s still getting closer.”

In each of the photos, the thin man seemed to have just entered Marks’s office, and was seen, shadowy and indistinct, striding purposefully toward Mr. Harrows. Almost directly behind Harrows, he was obscured from the camera and appeared only as shoulders, feet, arms, the shape of a head. It was impossible to detect any true details. The figure was a collection of brights and shadows, which coalesced into a human form only when viewed from a distance.

AFTER Harrows had left, Marks sat at his desk and studied the photos one after another. In each, the thin man appeared to be closer to Harrows by a half step, a few inches. In the last one, he was still only halfway between the doorway and Harrows.

“Who are you, then?” Marks murmured, sipping bourbon in the pale pool of yellow light generated by his desk lamp. “Why are you haunting our Mr. Harrows? Are you haunting Mr. Harrows? Are you getting closer to him, or is he getting closer to you?”