by C.G. Banks
Chapter 24: The Photograph
Patsy sat like a stone at her kitchen table. She’d seen the news too, had driven by the house this morning. Except for what she knew it could have been any house on any day. But that whole family was dead. The morning paper confirmed it. She’d crumpled the whole mess up and thrown it away, not wanting to think about it. There were already too many other things to consider. She cast a disapproving eye on the cigarette smoldering in her right hand. Another nasty habit she’d reverted to, something she hadn’t done even in the maelstrom of grief that had followed the accident.
It had been almost a week since the last visitation. For the first time since she’d moved in there had been absolutely nothing disturbing. No children in the attic or the yard, no weird noises, but worst of all: no Terri. The last image of her daughter was the thing that plagued her now, worse than anything she’d seen or thought she’d seen since moving in. She couldn’t forget the pleading in Terri’s sweet, stricken little face, the chains connected to her wrists. Like it or not, Patsy could feel her sanity slipping away. And that was the oddest thing: she’d always believed people unaware of approaching insanity, but here, now, the evidence mounted. She could feel it like a train leaving a station. But unlike that train, she had no idea where this one was headed.
“Ahhhh!” she yelled, jerking her hand violently. The filterless Camel had burned down to her fingers and now laid smoking on the kitchen table. She pincered it up with her thumb and forefinger and dropped it into the ashtray. Examined her fingers to see how bad it was. Not too. She brushed off the stray flecks of ash and wrung her hands together. Her supposed “job hunt” had gone nowhere. In fact she’d hardly left the house at all since…well, since the last time she’d seen Terri, except for the grocery store, anything to pass the time.
She’d even taken to leaving the attic door down. Just in case. Of course it was a tight squeeze getting through to the bedroom but it was a small price to pay in case Terri needed her help. Christ, the voice whispered in her head (a voice that was getting fainter and fainter with each passing day. She’d come to equate that voice with the sign of her mental health. It appeared to be leaving on the same train.). What is this you’re thinking? Do you actually believe Terri just might come crawling down that ladder one day? Do you really believe you might have to rescue her from those other two? These are very simple, disturbing questions, Patsy. If you can answer yes to either of them it should tell you something. Something very important. Terri’s dead. You know that, face it. Because if you go on believing this fantasy it won’t be long before you’re ready for the padded room. This last was like a faint stale breeze in her mind.
She knew it was right, this voice. She knew that insanity beckoned. But she was powerless to stop it. That was another irony. Because there was Terri to consider. Patsy had seen her…several times. She’d made out every detail on her little face, watched her fingers reach out, seen the pleading in her eyes. And she would not let that go. Once again, she would not. She’d rather go screaming into oblivion than let this go.
She could almost imagine the voice of reason in her head sobbing softly in a corner of her mind, but as far as she was concerned, that’s where the motherfucker could stay. Bring all hell to bear and she’d spit it its motherfucking eye.
But how was she going to do this? She needed guidance, some sort of clue. She knew Terri was close, she could practically feel her sometimes, right there at her fingertips. But what to do? This new place had become her prison and still that was not enough. She sat for hours at a time either on the living room sofa or right here at the kitchen table, and so far it had been all for naught.
Not a scratch, not a whimper.
She stood up and paced over to the sink. Picked up a stained coffee mug, washed it out, then filled it again with tap water and chugged the whole thing down. She looked out the window, through the carport to the outside world. Just down the street a yardman was mowing, his partner skirting the driveway with an edger. A little boy was slowly pedaling his bicycle away from her, every once in a while trying to unsuccessfully pop a wheelie.
She felt like a fish in an aquarium. An aquarium with a leak.
She turned away from the window, leaned her butt against the cabinet. The house remained deathly quiet; she almost wished she could hear laughter, scratching in the walls…anything. She looked back at the kitchen table and saw the fresh pack of cigarettes, the burgeoning ashtray. Yeah, it had been a brand new pack this morning; now it was eleven o’clock and the damn thing was almost empty. At this rate she’d be up to three packs a day in no time flat. “What difference does it make?” she said, not even aware until it passed her lips that she’d said it aloud. So, okay, what did it matter? Nonetheless, she bit back the urge and moved away from the sink, around the kitchen island to the living room opening. From the table to the couch, the couch to the table. Like an endless, fruitless game. She cocked her head right, toward the hallway.
The attic ladder was down, just as she’d left it. The light was on up there too; she was ready, goddammit! There was no more fear left inside her now, just a slow smoldering rage that threatened to explode. But as of yet, this rage had found no outlet.
Suddenly the thought of the box ranged through her mind, the one she’d found in the attic and broken into with the bolt cutters. Odd, how it’d come now, right out of the blue. Especially after all the horrors she’d witnessed. She stood still, hands gripping the couch back, trying to find a reason why she’d not thought even for the briefest second about that strange, enigmatic box, even though, now, right this minute, it suddenly seemed imperative to get it out and examine it in more detail. She’d only made a cursory inspection the first time and had fully intended on a closer look.
And then she’d forgotten all about it.
Oh, she still remembered where she’d put it (high on the top shelf in her closet, pushed way toward the corner out of sight), but it still didn’t seem reasonable that, with all the trouble and questions she’d had, to have forgotten the only real clue she’d been able to uncover.
Well, by God that was about to change!
She let go of the couch and hurried down the hall toward the ladder, squeezing by between it and the wall to the bedroom. She passed through the door, glancing briefly at her rumpled, unmade bed. She’d kicked most of the covers off sometime during the night and there they lay on the floor, collecting dust. She could care less. The closet door was closed and she wrenched it back, hitting the light switch with her free hand and stepping immediately into the enclosure. Unconcerned with any potential intruder (either of the common or supernatural variety) she stepped up to the bank of clothes along the back wall and reached up on tiptoes, patting the top shelf in search of the cold metal surface of that box. Her index finger caught on the corner of the handle and she immediately compensated her grip and pulled it into view. It was heavier than she remembered and she brought it down with two hands like a pilgrim retrieving a holy relic.
She looked down at the thing she held in her hands and ran a finger lightly over the top. A thrum of electricity seemed to pass through her and she fought to catch her breath. For just a moment the interior of the closet swam like a bad movie and she felt like she might faint. She closed her eyes, counted to ten and opened them again. Better, but not great. She still felt faint, wobbly. She backed out of the closet all the way to the bed, the box springs catching her calves. She sat down heavily with the box in her lap.
Then she very slowly opened it for the second time. Stared at the contents momentarily before upending the box and dumping everything out by her side on the bed. It made a fairly large pile and she stood up, chunked the empty box up near the headboard. Pretty much what she remembered. Old newspaper clippings, handwritten notes. She ran her hand through the pile and fanned it out across the bed. Quite a lot. Someone had definitely spent an inordinate amount of time collecting all this shit. But, let’s face it, what was the fucking point?
A war
ning, the faint little voice managed from its cell.
A chill did not pass down her spine (she was immune to most of that now) but she did feel a prick of unease as cold and sharp as a knife just removed from a drawer. She fanned her hand back through the way it’d come and the contents of the box scattered even more. But one thing stood out. The corner of what appeared to be a Polaroid snapshot protruded from one of the drifts of paper, and she pushed her finger toward it. Kicked the end out of the pile so that it now stood alone on a half-sheet of notebook paper with dates and addresses scrawled across it with an accountant’s precision. The hand she’d used to extricate the picture flew up to rest at her neck as her eyes grew and grew, her mouth opening and closing around a muteness that was slowly, suffocatingly, paralyzing.
The photo was of her. As impossible as that seemed, there she was. Whoever had taken the picture had caught the entire left side of her face and that was no doubt Patsy Standish’s face. But hers was not the only one. A man faced her. He was smiling. In a split second the recognition slammed into her with the force of a fist to the jaw.
The man from the hardware store. The Mexican-looking guy who’d hurried out when she’d noticed him watching her. “Whathafu….” she said, squinting down at the picture. She picked it up and turned it over. There was no information on the other side: no date, not even where the thing had been developed. It was totally blank.
She flipped it back around. Gripped the picture in both hands. “My God, who took this…?” she whispered, mesmerized. It couldn’t have been from more than ten feet away. She looked closer. There was not a lot of background, as if whoever (whatever) had taken the picture had been intent only on the subjects, because a wall butted up on Patsy’s side and the strange man’s back formed the edge on the other. There was not much space between the two. Patsy was standing in a doorway, holding a screen door open with her right hand. The realization came in a flash. So fast, in fact, she couldn’t believe it hadn’t struck her immediately. Her carport. Why right there, that wall was undeniably the one that ran back to the patio room on the back of the house. The screen door was hers; she recognized the glass partition that could be opened to let in outside air. The man had his hands out in front of him as if explaining something, his face nothing but goodwill and understanding. Just past him she could make out the contour lines of her car stretching away from the focal point of the photo. This house. There was no doubt. Now that the shock was fading to a safer distance it was as plain as the nose on her face. She could almost guess the circumstances. He had knocked on her door, she’d answered, and here he was explaining something to her in earnest; the smile on her face more recognition than happiness, she now saw. And the photographer? Why, he or she would have had to stand back near the door leading into the outside room. But both Patsy and the man showed no clue whatsoever that they were aware of anyone else’s presence.
Now a chill did descend. This was somehow beyond anything she’d yet to experience. All the strange happenings in the attic, on the trail, in the yard somehow paled before this thin little photograph. She rubbed her finger across its surface and it did not go away. If anything, she merely cleaned a skim of dust that allowed her to see in more detail. She recognized the blue blouse and stone-washed jeans. She tried to think back, wondering if she’d worn that outfit the day in the hardware store. Maybe this was some photographer’s trick; she knew a good computer nerd could make up practically anything and present it very convincingly. Maybe…
But that didn’t shake. For Christ’s sake she’d just taken the box down from its corner in the closet. It hadn’t just been shoved under her front door or left in the mailbox out by the road. If it was a trick (and Patsy couldn’t fathom how it could be) then she never wanted to see another magic show. This unknown person would have had to have a picture of her to begin with, then fashioned up this phony, snuck into her house without her being the wiser, found the box and hid it inside. Then, of course, it would have been only the simple job of slipping out and getting away without anyone seeing. Pretty elaborate when you got right down to it. And for what? All that trouble to plant a photograph? It didn’t make sense.
She looked back at it.
She checked the shading, whatever shadows she could discern. She looked for overlaps and smudges. Came up blank. The damn thing looked real. She guessed she could find a lab of some sort that could tell her for certain, but in the end, what good would that do? Even if it was faked there had to be a reason.
But the man. She hadn’t thought for a second about him sense the incident in the hardware store. In fact, she’d dismissed the whole incident entirely. Until this very moment the encounter had disappeared from her mind, but now like a recognized but lost scent, it was back. She remembered him staring at her. Turning her eyes toward him and then, him, beating a fast retreat. He’d said something to the guy at the counter and left. Hell, the plumbers had stared at her longer and harder than he had.
And now, this.
She looked down at the scatter of newsprint and handwriting on her bed. God knows what else is in there, something inside her warned. Could be anything, indeed. But Patsy was almost positive it would be nothing good. This stank of depravity, the whole bloody mess. She plunked the photo back into the thick of the pile. Stared at it a second longer and walked over to the window. The shades were drawn as they’d been ever since moving in. Every time she looked this way she thought of those two strange girls milling around back there. Stopping and walking over toward the window when she’d seen them. Somehow this was all part of the same thing: the girls, the photo, everything weird that had happened since she came here.
Even Terri.
That got her heart beating and she reached over to the pull-cord and drew the curtains. No one stood at the window. Everything appeared so normal in the daylight. It was hot, not a cloud in the sky. There were little spots of shade here and there around the bases of the young trees in the backyard and the grass had grown fat and deeply green with the afternoon showers they’d gotten every afternoon for fifteen or twenty minutes. Just enough time to leave the neighborhood in a thick knot of humidity. There were little spotlets of condensation on the window, trickling down to rust in the tracks of the windowpane. She moved a step closer, feeling the oppressiveness of the house pushing up against her back.
She didn’t know what else to think about the whole situation, but at least, she thought, now she just might know what to look for.