The girl in the photo on the picture on the wall blinked. I stopped putting on my makeup for a moment---just a moment. She began to blink rapidly, as if trying to tell me something. 

"What do you want?" I asked. I should have known it was futile. She kept blinking. The lights flickered, beeps sounded. Morse code? I didn't know Morse code! "I don't know what you're saying, lady!" I yelled as I threw my heel at the framed photo. It was of a young girl, no older than twenty. She had golden locks of blonde hair that was held in a bonnet. Her eyes were a dark shade of blue one would find on a blazer. She was beautiful, really. Her lips were a rosy red, her cheekbones were profound. But something was ugly about her. Something a camera couldn't capture. The photo had been taken nearly 20 years ago. I never had a clue who she was, and mother and father never told me. As the photo hit the ground, the glass shattered. The lights flickered and something poured from the photo and materialized into a young woman.

  "Hello, Lydia darling," The woman began. "Thank you so much for freeing me."

  I was silent for a moment. I had never listened to old tales of ghosts. I had always thought they were to scare children into behaving. "Why?" was the only word I could manage to get out. Why was she here? Why now? Why was she in the photo?

 She giggled then began, "Why I'm here? You broke me free. Why now? I learned how to blink. Why I was in the photo? Your mother."

 "My mother?" I was skeptical. That was some witch stuff, the stuff of the devil. My mother would never touch stuff like that.

  "You come from a line of witches," She paused. "Your mother wanted to be the last one. Being a witch is dangerous, you know. But, see, I wanted you to embrace your powers. So she put me away."

 "But that doesn't explain who you are," I noted.

  "I suppose it doesn't," She said. "I'm your aunt Laurel."

   "Mother would have mentioned you," I said.

    "Not when we had a difference like that."

    "So I'm a witch?" I asked. I couldn't believe it. Just two hundred years ago, I would have been hung!

"Only if you'd like to be," She mentioned. So I could choose! I was curious to see what it would be like, but I didn't want to be near any dangers. "You are wondering the dangers, do not. We do not live in the world your mother and the prior witches had. We are not hunted, you do not have to fight." 

"I'll do it," I said with my chest. I wanted to see what mother had hid. She cracked her knuckles and a yellow beam emerged from her hands. The sensation flooded my body, my bones contorted. I had been tricked. I collapsed and was placed in the painting, forced to only blinking.