Adam stood there. He thought about his mother, waiting back home. No, not waiting. Drinking. His mother’s mouth to the bottle as though she was sucking in life. His father at the television, taking in its babble with greedy eyes.
Adam’s heart beat faster. It was a small, captured thing between his ribs. He wondered what would happen to it if he went into the dark; whether it would end up somewhere new, or if it would burst. He took a step forward, hadn’t known he was going to. And he realised he could see something in the dark, after all: something that was only for him. It was waiting. Adam didn’t close his eyes. As he walked into the dark, he knew it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.
Adam stepped towards the edge of the cavern. The torch had gone out, but he could see everything. It was all so bright, now. He swept up the torch and his bag then let them fall again. He didn’t need them any longer. He smiled. The dark had filled him. There were no longer any questions, any worries. He was full, entirely full; no room left for different skins, different faces. That was behind him now. The dark had swallowed him, making him whole. Making Adam truly himself.
He looked around and saw the names written on the walls. He could see them clearly, even the ones where no ink remained. Adam smiled: almost laughed. The words he had heard on his first visit echoed through him. He had been right after all:
He had expected to find his name written here, but it was not. These were not the names of the chosen, the initiated, the others like him. These were the names of the reluctant, of all those who had looked into the dark and turned away, denied its name. They were the ones who disappeared: the unwilling. The ones who had to be forced, to be made to see. Like Sasha and Fuzz. So that they were made a part of it; part of the dark. The ones who needed to be led.
Adam leaned into the wall, running his hands over its roughness. He could sense that he was close. He searched until he found the right place. There was a sharp jut of rock and he cut his palm against it, wiped the blood onto his fingers. He glanced towards the centre of the cave. He knew it was different now; the dark wasn’t there anymore, not really. Adam wasn’t worried. He carried it inside him, and when he needed it, it would be there. He turned back to the wall, could see every dip and wrinkle in the rock. He stared at it, eyes wide and bulging. And he smiled as he smeared the blood across it; the pact-blood that acknowledged what he was going to do. Acknowledged it and let it in as he wrote their names.
DANIEL MILLS
The Photographer’s Tale
DANIEL MILLS LIVES IN Vermont, New England. He is the author of the novel
“Spirit photography has existed for nearly as long as the photographic medium itself,” explains Mills. “As early as 1869, engraver and amateur photographer William H. Mumler was tried on charges of fraud in relation to his purported images of the dead.
“Likewise the haunted photograph is a well-established horror trope, one that has far outlasted the heyday of spirit photography. In such stories, the haunting is typically presented to the reader as a phenomenon of the development process — i.e. a photograph of an unremarkable scene is developed to reveal the otherwise invisible presence of a ghost. Horror ensues.
“‘The Photographer’s Tale’ attempts a variation on the now-familiar model. Here the camera lens itself — rather than the process of development — serves as the agent of unearthly revelation. In the viewfinder, the protagonist Lowell obtains a glimpse of the Other — of the future, perhaps, the soul in all of its grotesque splendour.
“This other reality defies all attempts at illumination, all of Lowell’s efforts to capture or contain it via film. As he himself describes it: ‘There are places — interiors, I mean — corners so dark they cannot be lighted.’ His flash powder burns but cannot chase away the darkness.
“By the time his tale concludes, he is left alone, with nothing save his guilt, his unconfessed sins, and the endless New England winter.”
I HEARD THIS STORY from a passing acquaintance, a fellow photographer whom we shall call Lowell. I met Lowell in June of last year at a mountaintop resort in northern Vermont. I had travelled there for my health and was surprised to meet another who shared my profession.
The two of us struck up a conversation one evening after supper as we took cigars on the veranda — two old men alone with the wild hills before us. The darkness covered us completely and Lowell’s haggard features were visible only by the pale orange tip of his cigar.
Photographic technique was the object of our discussion. As I recall, we argued back and forth for some time regarding the utility of the new flash lamp.
“I’m not denying that it might be useful,” Lowell conceded. “But only up to a point. There are places — interiors, I mean — corners so dark they cannot be lighted.”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
He exhaled heavily, releasing a cloud of smoke. His mood was unreadable. Turning from me, he looked out toward the distant mountains, black beneath the hidden moon. A long minute elapsed, a silence spun from the murmur of crickets, the occasional scrap of bird song.
He sighed. “Perhaps I had better explain.”
The morning of 1 December, 1892 dawned cold and grey, promising an early snowfall. After breakfasting in his apartment, Lowell descended the back stair to his studio, where he was surprised to find that a shipping crate had been left for him with the first post. There was no return address, but he recognised the handwriting on the label and knew it to be from Patrick.
Lowell had first encountered the boy on the streets of Providence some twelve years before. Patrick was no more than eight or nine at the time, one among hundreds of beggar children who had resorted to thievery and worse in order to survive. One night in October, Lowell returned to his studio to find the boy curled up in the doorway: soaked and shivering, delirious with fever. Lowell brought him inside and allowed him to spend the night.
Days went by — Patrick’s health improved — but Lowell did not turn him out. The boy served as his apprentice for the next seven years, assisting in the darkroom in exchange for room and board. Their relationship was a close one, and in time, the unmarried Lowell came to regard the lad as his own son, only for Patrick to leave him — as sons will do — at the age of sixteen.
Whatever its cause, their final parting, when it came, was not amicable. Lowell blamed himself for it. He sought shelter in alcoholism and later in the Church. Five years passed. His letters to Patrick went unanswered but from time to time he received word of his former apprentice from colleagues in New York.
In 1892, Patrick was just twenty-one years old but already esteemed an expert in the field of portrait photography. He was said to possess an eye for hidden beauty and feeling that allowed him to reveal, with considerable skill, “the very soul” of his subject. Lowell admitted to a twinge of jealousy in this. Certainly, his own work had never inspired such hyperbole.
He knelt before the shipping crate and lifted the lid, peeling back layers of straw and brown paper to reveal a view camera. It was a newer model, equipped with a built-in viewfinder and little used by its appearance. A length of ribbon had been fastened around the front standard, the ends tied up in an elaborate bow.
Lowell plucked the camera out of the crate and tested the action of the shutter.
