by Kevin Lucia
The clenching in my guts eased. I took one more deep breath, pushed off the counter, and lurched down the aisle toward the front door.
The floor tilted with every step. I lumbered ahead, however, with the grace of a drunken mill worker (no disrespect to mill workers who drink, mind you). I narrowed my eyes so all I saw was a bit of the front door and not how crooked it was, how it tilted back and forth, back and forth . . .
I slammed into it, hand scrambling for the knob. My vision of the skewed aisle and door had obviously been an optical illusion or something. But I didn’t care, I wanted out.
I grabbed the doorknob and twisted.
Nothing.
No click.
Not a sound.
I used both hands and yanked with everything I had. It didn’t budge. I pulled harder, but my hands just slipped off the knob. I flew backwards and slammed into the nearest shelf of junk.
I’m not gonna lie. I yelped like a kid when the shelf’s metal edge jammed into the small of my back. I rolled to the floor in a shower of toys, ceramic mugs (a few which shattered), keyboards and an upended box of old floppy disks.
Something dinged. An electronic device had switched on in the fall. But my brains were too frazzled to worry about it. I closed my eyes and grabbed my head, took several deep breaths and sat still.
Silence.
Which meant I had to be alone, for sure. No way the shopkeeper was out back and didn’t hear the tape player, and then everything crashing down. I was alone, the door was locked, and I felt my grip on reality slipping.
Something happened. When I picked the Magic Eight Ball up and shook it. Something happened.
I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes and rubbed. My head no longer pounded, and my stomach felt more stable, too. I rubbed my face and tried to piece my wits back together.
Something.
I heard something.
A voice. Whispering from far away. Actually, whispering wasn’t it, exactly. It was quiet, low and hissing, but the tone sounded excited about something.
my life, going to change my life
“Hello? Anyone back there? Mister? Listen, I’m not trashing your place, honest. I could use some help, though.”
I hated the way my voice sounded. So weak. Afraid. Hell, old. But I’ve got to admit, I was shook up. All my snark blown away. I was tired, scared, and I wanted out.
“Hey! Anyone there?”
ssssss
this is it
going to change
my life
Static. I was hearing something through static. I remembered the ding when things hit the floor, so I scanned the items I’d knocked off the shelf. Next to my foot I saw something which stood out from the junk: a brand new digital camera. A Nikon. That’s what dinged. Apparently it had switched on.
The viewfinder was glowing, the camera playing back a recorded video. Dark flickers passed over the screen. Something moved, or the camera panned. It was running on a loop and between snatches of dead air I heard a whispering voice.
going to change my life
I sat and stared. Then, on impulse, I reached out—my hand amazingly steady—and picked the camera up, to the hissing tune of: “This is it, going to change my life . . . ”
OUT OF FIELD THEORY
Brian Palmer shivered in spite of the warm noonday sun. “This is it,” he muttered, staring at the picture he’d taken. “This is it. This picture is going to change my life. This. Is. It.”
It was about time. All the other pictures he’d taken with his Nikon hadn’t been worth a damn. The first was out of focus. Couldn’t see the barn on Bassler Road for shit. Another was framed wrong, cutting the top off the old gazebo in the abandoned koi garden down the road. As for the brilliant yellow and orange koi swimming in the old pond next to the gazebo? Red and yellow blobs.
Some of the other shots? Of Bassler Road curving into the distance? Of an abandoned old truck sitting by the railroad tracks? They were okay, but he knew what Professor Spinella would say: They looked like stock photos in Adirondack guidebooks found in tourist novelty stores everywhere.
Which wouldn’t cut it if he wanted his final project for Philosophy of Photography to pass. He needed something unique to analyze through any one of the philosophies they’d studied this semester. Philosophies he’d struggled to understand from the start.
But as he’d examined his pictures, nothing clicked. Not the water flowing under Black Creek Bridge, or the abandoned factory on Black River, or the bandstand next to Raedeker Park Zoo. Every. Single. Picture. Sucked.
Except one.
Something in it caught his eye. He’d taken it only a moment ago, of an old Victorian farmhouse everyone in Clifton Heights called Bassler House. It was in the middle of a fallow cornfield. He’d snapped several wide angles, then on a whim zoomed in on the front door and the window next to it. He snapped the shot instinctively.
And he’d created a striking effect. The area around the doorway had endured the years passingly well. Cancerous, mottled damp rot had riddled the siding around the window, however, spreading rash-like toward the door.
“Geez,” he muttered, tapping the zoom button. “That’s not bad. In fact, it’s . . . ”
He trailed off.
In the window, at the edge of the image’s frame he saw a smudge. A shadow. Of . . .
Something.
He couldn’t tell what because his framing had cut the rest.
Brian gazed over his shoulder back at the old house, thinking. Dimly, he remembered a theory they’d studied this year, by some guy named Deleuze. He raised the camera and examined the cut-off shadow in the window. He recalled a snippet from an essay written by Deleuze, assigned early in the semester:
. . . the out of field phenomenon occurs when literal framing of an image leaves elements and actions partly out of frame, implying their continuation past the frame . . .
The philosophy part of his class had sucked. Brian hadn’t understood much of it. He loved taking pictures of things. Who cared why?
Like the other philosophies they’d studied, he’d struggled to understand Deleuze’s ideas. Professor Spinella had explained it this way: Anything cut off by the framing of a picture didn’t actually end but continued outside the frame somewhere else. Photographing images created another reality. A reality of the image, which wasn’t limited by the artificial framing imposed by the photographic device. He’d thought the whole thing a bunch of bullshit when they’d studied it, but . . .
He tapped the image on the Nikon’s small screen, his stomach tingling with excitement. Maybe he’d found at least one photo that would help him pass his final project. Maybe he could take similar shots and use them for a presentation of Deleuze’s theory.
He glanced at his watch. 2:00 PM. Plenty of time for him to take more pictures. Maybe even jimmy his way inside the old house, see if he could find something interesting to shoot. He should be able to get enough pictures before evening. Because who wanted to muck around an old house after dark?
He slipped his hand into a small satchel slung over his shoulder, digging for another memory card he could use for the camera, intent on filling the whole thing with pictures of this house. The prospect of actually taking pictures that meant something to him, for a change, was exciting.
So long as he got his ass out of there before dark.
***
A year ago Brian had never imagined he’d become so desperate to take a “unique” photograph. Everyone liked his pictures then. His parents had indulged his hobby, sacrificing their meager savings to buy him the Nikon for his 16th birthday. He’d served as president of Old Forge Academy’s Photo Club for three years straight. Was one of the lead photographers for the school journal and yearbook. The summer before and after his senior year, he’d done some freelance work for the Webb County Courier (paid in contributor copies only, but a byline was a byline.) Then to cap it all off, right before graduation, his picture of a sunset over Black Bear Mountain
won first prize in Old Forge Academy’s Penny Harper Scholarship Contest. The scholarship paid his way through two years at Webb Community College to study photography. His future career behind the viewfinder was assured. At least in his mind.
But a year into his studies had given Brian a new, depressing perspective. He freelanced for the campus newspaper, but his photos were hardly ever used, apparently not “fresh” or “original” enough. His old spot with the Courier had been handed over to a high school successor. He’d eagerly tramped through the countryside all summer after graduation, taking scenic pictures of waterfalls, creeks, lakes, old cabins, mountains, and sunsets. He’d submitted to every contest and journal he could find. All of them rejected him by form letters stating: “Thank you for your interest but at this time, your photos don’t meet our needs. Please submit again in the future.”
As the semester wore on, his studies and various class projects ate into his free time. His own personal photography shrank to a third of what it had been. Complicating matters: His scholarship paid for tuition, room and board and a limited meal plan. He was on his own when it came to gas, groceries, the laundromat, textbooks, and photo supplies. His father worked construction; his mother was a nurse’s aide. They barely met their own needs, and he could expect no extra money from home.
So he reluctantly found work as a checkout bagger at The Great American Grocery down the road from campus. Working nearly twenty-five hours a week on top of his schoolwork left little time to take pictures for himself.
Brian stopped about five feet from the old house’s front door, wrestling as always with his future, his dreams, and their slow, painful death this past year. All the ideas in his head were breathtaking, but when he had the rare moment to actually get behind his camera, the results seldom matched his daydreams. His professors, so far, had felt the same way. Best he’d managed in any of his classes the past year was a B.
It would be incredibly convenient to blame his mediocre grades on how tight his schedule was. He always felt so tired, unable to focus, with little time to develop his technique. The truth of the matter? In his gut he knew none of his excuses were valid. Several of his classmates were only carrying B averages, but their photos possessed something his lacked. Their photos had a kind of shine. A vitality. His were lifeless things in comparison.
Everything he’d shot over the last year had been the same. You could see all the different angles, focuses and lighting techniques he’d learned. Could tick them off a freaking checklist. But when viewed as a whole, his photos fell flat. Didn’t match the visions in his head. They had no life of their own.
The truth of the matter, then, was far simpler, and a lot more depressing. He had enough talent to turn photography into a nice hobby, if he continued to pursue it, and nothing more.
The picture of this house, however.
Something felt different about it. A vibe he’d not sensed in his work for a while. If the image he’d just shot hadn’t been a fluke, if he could take more like it, maybe his dreams weren’t dead after all.
He paused before stepping forward, checking the batteries on his Nikon, wondering about the history of the place. He wasn’t a Clifton Heights native. His cousin Rich lived here, had suggested a month ago Clifton Heights would be a good place to take pictures. Said it was a “unique” town, “kinda scenic’n shit.” When he saw Rich again, he’d have to ask him about the history of this old place.
Satisfied with the camera’s battery levels, Brian approached the front door. Whatever its history, the house felt long abandoned. As if no one had lived in it for years. Decades, maybe.
Brian stopped several paces from the crumbling remains of the house’s front porch. There it stood, tottering, like every abandoned house he’d ever seen. Paint largely peeled away, several windows without glass, roof sagging in places. He imagined it had once been a stately old home.
His gaze traveled over the decayed face of the house. As he settled on the window and door he’d snapped a picture of, an uneasy thought occurred to him: the shadow. In his excitement over the picture he’d never considered what had thrown the shadow.
A brief chill passed through him.
He shivered, but shook it off. There hadn’t been a real shadow there, of course. An angle of the light was all, something formed in the ‘reality’ created by his camera, nothing more. In fact, it was an excellent lead-in for his project, the shadow having been created by his framing, created by the reality he had created in taking the picture.
Bolstered by this idea, he continued. As he neared the front door, he saw (with the faintest relief) no shadow looming in the window. C’mon. You want to be a photographer? For real? Suck it up, Nancy.
He placed a hand on the door, pushed it open and stepped inside.
***
A foul odor assaulted his nose as he entered what remained of the home’s foyer. Brittle wallpaper flaked away from the walls. Grit crunched beneath his shoes. He hadn’t expected such a rotten smell, but of course it made sense. Empty for years, no one living in it, heating it or taking care of it; everything moldering in the damp, freezing through winter, only to thaw into rot again every spring. Probably nothing here had escaped the creeping decay. He realized if this house had a basement or a crawlspace beneath the floor, he’d need to be wary of his footing.
Also, the dark. Not pitch black but definitely something he needed to account for. He held up his camera, toggled to ‘lighting options’ on the digital menu and selected ‘night portrait,’ adjusting the flash settings for optimal exposure.
Something scuttled across the floor, from left to right.
Brian stiffened, goose-flesh rippling across his skin. Adrenaline surged and his heart pounded.
Instantly he felt stupid, though his heart still thumped and it took considerable effort to shake off his jangling nerves. A mouse. A squirrel, a chipmunk, or God forbid, a rat. It had only been a rodent of some kind, scurrying for cover. Place was probably lousy with them, and he didn’t need to be—
His eyes fell on the hallway receding to the back of the house. Clearly the main hall, which opened into a large room. A den or perhaps a dining room. Off the hall on both sides, several doors led to other rooms, and as he stared down the hall, something clicked in his head. A switch flipped. Possessed by an inspiration he’d not felt all year, Brian raised his Nikon, focused on the hallway, stepped sideways so his framing caught the hallway at an angle, partially cutting off its opening, and he snapped a picture.
In the flash, his fancy took over, papering the rotten walls with wallpaper, installing polished wooden floors and a stucco ceiling. He imagined what this room must’ve looked like years before.
The image faded, replaced by the moldy reality of now. A feverish excitement filled him (tainted by the faint worry that, as always, the finished product wouldn’t match his imagination) as he thought how he could use these photos for his final project. Filled with enthusiasm, Brian gave himself over to the camera as he hadn’t since high school. He lost himself in the process as he moved and shot, moved and shot. His eye became the camera, his mind using the camera’s flash to wash away the decay with images conjured from his imagination of what might have been.
***
Brian returned to himself.
Dazed, breathing heavily, and clutching his Nikon as if his life depended on it. He took a steadying breath and blinked his eyes. Suddenly aware of the room’s chill and the sweat gluing his shirt to his chest, he shivered and glanced around.
Sunlight filtered in through a smudged, gritty window. Leftover furniture—recliners, kitchen chairs, end tables—had been strewn around the room. The recliners were in tatters, the end tables and kitchen tables in rotten pieces. Also, wooden crates had been stacked against the wall, full of unidentifiable matter.
His thoughts seized as he gazed upon a yawning black rectangle before him. A doorway, its door long since gone. The wall surrounding it was made of cinder-blocks, splotched with black-green mold.
He had no way of knowing, but he didn’t think the doorway led to another room. The darkness beyond looked thick and absolute. A dank, cold, earthen smell wafted from it. Basement, his mind whispered. Maybe root cellar.
He lowered the Nikon, closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. How long had he been in the zone?
He’d shot ‘in the zone’ before, of course, but not since high school. He supposed other creative types experienced something similar. At a peak moment of creative excitement, the conscious mind faded while intuition took over. It used to happen a lot. When he was shooting woodland trails, lakes, mountains, sporting events in high school, he’d slipped into the ‘zone’ without noticing. He’d pointed and shot, pointed and shot. When he reviewed his pictures after coming out of the zone, they were good (they always were back then) and many of them he didn’t remember taking at all, so deeply immersed he’d been.
Going into the zone had never felt like this, however. Back then he’d slipped in and out of the zone easily, smooth as silk. This, with his heart pounding, breathing as if he’d run a marathon, sweating rivers, he felt as if he’d been sucked into the zone, and almost hadn’t made it back out again.
He held up his Nikon with trembling fingers. How many pictures had he taken?
He glanced at the digital screen, which showed the looming black doorway to the basement, but also, in the right bottom corner, a little red 15. Fifteen pictures. He’d taken only fifteen pictures.
It felt more like fifty.
The next question: fifteen pictures of what? He couldn’t remember. As his thumb hovered over the review toggle, a strange compulsion gripped him: Delete them all. He should go back to the main menu, select ‘batch delete’, wipe the whole memory card clean, and get the hell out.
On the heels of this, rationality kicked in. Why? It’s only an old house.
He pressed review. A spread of thumbnail images replaced the basement door on the Nikon’s screen, the first thumbnail outlined in yellow. He pressed review again, bringing up the first image.