Episode 2 Script: The Picture that Knew Her

Episode 2: The Picture that Knew Her 

By Grace Antiedu 

Ama didn’t sleep that night.

The photo now sat on her bedside table.

And just before midnight, the girl in the photo turned her head -and smiled.

Sometimes, blood remembers more than it should.

Ama didn’t tell anyone what she saw.

Who would believe that the girl in a photo taken 40 years ago had turned her head and smiled?

But the next night, the photo changed again. This time, Ama wasn’t in it.

At least—not standing in the row of women.

She was in the background—behind a tree, face half-hidden, eyes staring directly at the camera. Like she had always been there, just watching.

Ama locked the photo in a drawer.

The next morning, it was back on her table. That evening, during supper, her uncle Kojo -her grandmother’s youngest son -spoke up.

“She looks just like her,” he said, watching Ama too closely.“Just like little Ama. The one who drowned in the river”.

Ama’s spoon froze midway to her mouth.

“How did she drown?” she asked.

No one answered.

Later, her aunt whispered the truth: the first Ama had died under mysterious circumstances. Found in a small boat drifting downriver, eyes open, smile wide, body dry -but dead.

The elders said she had been taken, not drowned.

Now, strange things began happening in the house.

Mirrors flickered when Ama walked past. She began humming songs she’d never learned; old Ewe folk hymns that no one had sung in decades.

And one night, her mother walked into the room and found Ama standing by the window, her voice soft and distant:

“The river is calling me home”.