Darkroom

by Graham Masterton

  He chalked up the name ROBERT H. VANE.

  ‘This is the man I’m interested in. He toured Southern California around 1853, and I believe that he took pictures of Native American tribes. I want you all to see how much you can find out about him, and see if you can locate any of his pictures. You can use the library, the Internet, whatever you like.’

  ‘Is there some kind of point to this, sir?’ asked George solemnly. His hair was sticking out at the back, as if he had just got out of bed.

  ‘Yes, George. We’re going to be writing an imaginary diary of what it was like to wander around California in the pioneering days, taking daguerrotypes.’

  ‘Er … what for?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what for. So that you can use your imagination to describe California as it was in the middle of the nineteenth century, and how new and wonderful it must have appeared to visitors who came from the east. So that you can describe the technical process of taking a daguerrotype in clear, easily understandable English. So that you can tell me which pictures you would have taken to show the people back in New York what California was like, and why it was worth them making a hazardous three-thousand-mile journey to settle here.’

  Jim stuck up four fingers, one at a time. ‘One, you’ll be demonstrating how good you are at describing scenery and people. Two, you’ll be showing that you can understand the way somebody else thinks – even somebody who lived a hundred and fifty years ago. Three, you’ll be making it clear that you can grasp a technical process and explain it in non-technical language. Four, you’ll be displaying your powers of persuasion, your salespersonship. You may think this is a history project, but believe me, all of those four skills will help you to find a modern-day job. Any job.’

  ‘Even if you want to work for Radio Shack?’ asked Edward.

  ‘Especially if you want to work for Radio Shack.’

  Shadow puffed out his cheeks and Jim could tell how daunted he was by the thought of writing more than two coherent sentences.

  ‘You got a problem, Sonny?’

  ‘Kind of. Maybe I misinterpretated it – but didn’t you say yesterday that you wanted us to teach you?’

  ‘Yes, I did. But think about it. How can you teach me anything if you don’t know anything?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Shadow. He wasn’t convinced.

  Jim smiled at him. ‘You find out all about this Robert H. Vane character, believe me, I’ll sit and listen to you. And I won’t file my nails, or pick my nose, or send suggestive text messages to my girlfriend. I won’t even bounce a basketball on my head. Is that a deal?’

  Lieutenant Harris was waiting for Jim outside the main entrance, along with two detectives. They were all standing in the shade of the college’s pride and joy, a hundred-foot cedar of Lebanon, which was allegedly planted by Tom Mix, the great silent-movie cowboy, in 1923.

  ‘We have an eye witness,’ called Lieutenant Harris as Jim came walking across the grass.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Detectives Mead and Bross have interviewed dozens of bums and itinerants who spend their nights by the seashore. One of the bums was camping less than fifty yards away from the Tubbs’ beach house.’

  Detective Mead flipped open his notebook. He was black and handsome as a TV actor. He wore a gray lightweight suit, immaculately cut, and a red and yellow silk necktie. ‘Hayward Mitchell, aged 48, unemployed dishwasher of no fixed address. Says he was settling down for the night when he saw two young people coming down the ramp to the beach. Says they were laughing and joking and generally horsing around.’

  Detective Bross was well over 6ft 5in tall, with a head that looked as if it had been sculpted out of raw granite with a jackhammer. He had a gray buzzcut and deep-set eyes, and a hook-shaped scar around the side of his mouth. He said nothing, but he stared at Jim as if he were trying to remember his face from a recent armed robbery.

  Lieutenant Harris took two color photographs out of his pocket and held them up. ‘Mitchell admitted that he was nine parts intoxicated, but he identified both Bobby Tubbs and Sara Miller. He gave a reasonable description of what they were wearing and we don’t see any reason why he should be shooting us a line.’

  Detective Mead turned over another page. ‘The vics went into the beach house, and about ten minutes later Mitchell says he saw a third individual coming down the ramp. Says this individual appeared to be dressed in white and gray. This individual climbed the steps outside the beach house. When he reached the verandah, he turned around, as if he was making sure that nobody was watching him. Mitchell says he was definitely African-American, no question about it. Possibly late middle-aged or elderly, too, because his hair was white. We took Mitchell down to the station and had him sit with our best composite artist. The artist used ImageWay computerized ID and came up with this … which Mitchell agrees is a very accurate likeness.’

  Jim took the paper and opened it out. Looking back at him was a square-jawed black man with a shock of white hair and white eyebrows.

  ‘Ever seen him before?’ asked Lieutenant Harris.

  Jim shook his head. ‘Nope. Never have. It’s not the kind of face you’d be likely to forget, is it? You don’t mind if I keep this, though? Maybe something will come to me.’

  ‘According to Mitchell, this individual was very well-built,’ said Detective Bross, in a thick, concrete-mixing voice. ‘About the same height and weight as me.’

  Jim looked Detective Bross up and down. He must have weighed all of 275 pounds. ‘Well-built? You don’t exaggerate, do you?’

  ‘Let’s just say that his mother must have made him eat his greens.’

  Jim stared at the ImageWay picture closely. He found it oddly unsettling. It was like seeing a friend in a mirror for the very first time – a friend whose face you know well, but when his features are reversed left-to-right, looks unfamiliar, even creepy.

  ‘Mitchell says he never saw this individual leave the beach house, although obviously he must have done. He probably waited until later, when Mitchell was asleep.’

  ‘So it looks like Bobby and Sara might have been murdered?’

  ‘Almost certainly. So, if you can get something out of that face that we can’t, don’t hesitate to call me.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said Jim.

  He nodded goodbye to Detectives Mead and Bross. He could tell that they were deeply unimpressed by his psychic abilities, but that was their problem. He had picked up no vibrations from the crime scene, nothing at all, even though today’s visitation by Brenda’s sister Mary had shown him that he was still capable of seeing spirits. He couldn’t identify the suspect in the Image Way picture, either. At least it wasn’t the college janitor, Walter. He, too, was black, with snow-white hair – but he was only 5ft 5in tall and skinny as a spider.

  He was walking back toward the main entrance when Karen came out, with Perry Ritts from the science department. Perry was deeply tanned, with thinning blond hair that waved in the wind like a flag, and one of those wholesome-guy faces with plenty of teeth and eyes that were always a little too wide, as if everything surprised him. Karen was wearing a pink check blouse that he had never seen before, and she was laughing. She looked a little older, of course, but it suited her, and he had forgotten how pretty she was.

  Jim veered sharply right toward the side entrance. He wasn’t ready to confront Karen yet. He was even less ready to nod and smile at her as she walked past him with Perry Ritts. He had made up a rhyme about Perry Ritts – it wasn’t clean and it wasn’t at all complimentary.

  Seven

  Jim went for a drink after college with Vinnie and Stu Bullivant from the arts department. Stu looked more like a Minnesota logger than an art teacher, with a massive brambly beard and a red checkered shirt and jeans that could have comfortably accommodated Jim and Stu in each leg. Stu had a theory that everything was art, particularly after seven beers. A shopping cart was art, because you filled it with things that revealed your soul.

  ‘Stand behind any woma
n at the supermarket checkout, and look at what she’s buying. She wouldn’t let you read her private diary, would she? But she’s spreading out her shopping in front of you, and that’s much more intimate than any diary. What does it say about her, if she’s buying twenty-four bargain-price toilet rolls, and six loaves of medium-cut white bread, and four gallons of milk, and thirty cans of dog food, and a box of incontinence pads, and a dozen Hungry Man TV dinners, and a can of drain unblocker, and a copy of National Enquirer? It says everything. It’s a searingly honest self-portrait. Searingly honest! Just because she happens to have created this self-portrait in consumer goods, instead of paint, that doesn’t mean it’s any less meaningful. It’s still art!’

  ‘I think I’ll stick to Rembrandt,’ said Jim. ‘At least Rembrandt didn’t show you his sprinkled donuts and his wart cream.’

  When Stu had gone to the rest room, for the ninth time, Vinnie lit up a cigarette and said, ‘How are you settling in? Everything OK?’

  Jim hesitated for a moment, but he decided not tell Vinnie what had happened to TT. After all, he wasn’t supposed to have a cat in his apartment at all. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘That shower’s something, isn’t it? It’s like going over Niagara Falls without the barrel.’

  ‘You … ah … you slept OK?’

  ‘Fine. It’s kind of creaky at night, that’s going to take me some time to get used to. But I love that bed. There’s room enough for me and a dozen passionate women.’

  ‘Well, if you can only find eleven passionate women and you need somebody to make up the numbers, you know my cellphone number … Thirteen in a bed, that’s supposed to be very unlucky, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know about unlucky. Exhausting, yes.’

  When Stu emerged from the rest room, Jim drove him home to Westwood. Stu told him over and over that he was so happy to see him back at West Grove College because there were no genuine people left in Los Angeles, only fakes and liars and snake-oil salesmen.

  ‘Let me tell you something, Jim, some people are so dishonest these days they’d even buy things they don’t really want, like pâté de foie gras, and dictionaries, so that when you look at their shopping you think they have taste, and education, when they don’t have dick.’

  ‘Sleep well, Stu,’ said Jim, and waited patiently outside his house while Stu jabbed his key at his front door again and again, as if he were trying to pin the tail on the donkey.

  Jim stumbled over Vinnie’s uncle’s shoes yet again before he found the light switch in the lobby. The living room was dark and silent, except for the ticking of the bronze Italian clock on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Tibbles?’ he called. ‘TT?’

  He went to the side table and switched on one of the lamps, and then another, and then another. ‘Tibbles, are you OK? Where are you hiding yourself, baby?’

  It was then that he saw Tibbles sitting in the very center of the hearthrug, utterly still. She was staring up at the wall above the fireplace. And hanging on the wall above the fireplace was the painting of Robert H. Vane, with his black cloth draped over his head.

  Numbly, Jim lifted the blue canvas satchel off his shoulder and laid it down on the couch. His feeling of dread was so overwhelming that he could have believed his hair was crawling with lice. He approached the fireplace and looked up at the painting in disbelief. It must have weighed well over 120 pounds. Who could have lifted it up and re-hung it? Who would have wanted to? And why?

  He looked down at Tibbles. She must have been washing herself today, because she looked a little sleeker, even if she did have five or six raw patches.

  ‘What’s going on here, TT? Did somebody come in here while I was away? Huh? Who did this?’

  Tibbles briskly shook her head, but that was all.

  Jim took two or three steps back. He didn’t know what to think. He was so nonplussed that he laughed, but then he immediately stopped. This simply wasn’t funny, even as a practical joke.

  ‘So, Mr Robert H. Vane!’ Jim challenged him out loud. ‘Do you want to explain how you got yourself back up there, you bastard?’ He waited, but underneath the black cloth that covered his face, Robert H. Vane remained as silent and mysterious as ever.

  Jim walked through to the kitchen and took a beer out the fridge. He came back into the living room and stood in front of the painting again, just like Tibbles, and stared at it. He knew that the supernatural was a day-to-day reality. He had spoken with ghosts and he had seen a kitchen table rotating of its own accord. But there were limits to what spirits could do, and re-hanging an oil painting, in his opinion, was way beyond those limits.

  Maybe Vinnie’s uncle had a cleaning-lady, who had thought that she was supposed to dust the painting and put it back up again? Maybe the super had replaced it, thinking that Jim had been unable to do it himself?

  He looked around and saw that the gray blanket with which he had covered the painting was neatly folded on one of the chairs. Spirits don’t fold blankets, do they? This must have been done by a human. One of Vinnie’s relatives, possibly? Maybe Vinnie hadn’t told the whole family that he had rented out his uncle’s apartment, and one of them had called by to inspect it.

  Eleanor Shine? She had seen the painting, after all, and come to the conclusion that there was something strange about it, something powerful. But why would she hang it back up, even if she were strong enough to lift it, which she probably wasn’t? Maybe she had decided that it was against the co-op’s rules and regulations for paintings to be taken down if they had been hanging for longer than a certain number of years. If you started letting people take their paintings down, what next? Champagne parties in the elevators, and pet lions?

  Jim approached the painting as close as he could. Like Vinnie had done when he was a child, he leaned his head against the canvas and looked upward, at an angle, as if he could see the man’s face under the cloth. Of course, it was impossible; but the unsettling thing was that he felt that there was a face, covered by the cloth, and that in some extraordinary circumstance it might be possible to see it. If and when the painting itself chose to reveal it.

  He stepped back. What he hadn’t noticed before was Robert H. Vane’s left hand. On the wedding-ring finger, instead of a wedding band, he wore a heavy silver ring with a crest on it. The crest was painted in some detail, but Jim couldn’t decide what it was. A shield and two crossed daggers? A skull and crossbones? It was impossible to tell.

  ‘Still … we’re not scared, are we, TT?’ said Jim. ‘“The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures. ’Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.”’

  Tibbles squeezed her eyes shut, and yawned.

  ‘Shakespeare, Macbeth, act two, scene two,’ Jim informed her. ‘And put your paw in front of your mouth when you yawn.’

  Jim cooked himself a stir-fried supper of strips of beef and red and yellow pepper confetti, pungently flavored with chilis and cumin and garlic. He hadn’t eaten anything all day except for half a chicken sandwich, but once he had turned his wok out on to his plate, he suddenly didn’t feel hungry. In fact, he felt slightly sick, especially since the kitchen was still filled with smoke.

  He sat at the kitchen table, prodding at his supper with his fork. You shouldn’t let this get to you, Jim. Are you listening to me? There has to be a rational explanation for how the painting got back up on the wall, and when you find out what it is, you’ll feel like a total idiot.

  Tibbles came limping into the room, sniffing. She hated garlic, so he knew that she wouldn’t want to share any of his supper. He played with it a little more, and then he said, ‘It’s no good, TT. Unexplained events play havoc with the appetite.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up, putting his plate into the microwave oven so that the flies couldn’t walk all over it.

  He was just closing the oven door when there was a brilliant flash of bluish-white light. He jumped back, thinking that the oven had shorted out, but then he realized that the flash had come from behind him. Not just behind him, but fr
om the living room, next door. Tibbles had jumped, too, and was hiding herself under the sink, where her bowl was, and staring at him wide-eyed.

  Jim waited and listened. It couldn’t have been lightning, because it hadn’t been followed by a peal of thunder. But it had been bright enough for lightning – brighter. Even though he had been standing with his back to the door he still had a green image of the kitchen clock swimming in front of his eyes.

  He picked up his largest kitchen knife and cautiously went back into the living room. Nothing had visibly changed, although he thought he could smell overheated metal, like an empty saucepan left on a hot electric hob. He prowled around the room, prodding at the furniture with the point of his knife, but there was nobody here, and no clue as to what might have caused such a dazzling flash.

  He deliberately kept his eyes away from the painting of Robert H. Vane. He wasn’t even going to speculate on how it managed to get back on the wall. He had too many other things to do, like putting his life back together. His career was OK, even if he had taken a step backward. He had a reasonable place to live, with a sexy lady living across the corridor. Tibbles looked like somebody had attacked a Davy Crockett hat with a flame-thrower, but her fur would probably grow out in a week or two.

  Had the painting suddenly jumped up on to its picture hook all by itself? Or had it slowly and eerily risen off the floor, as if it were being lifted up by unseen hands?

  He was still circling the room when the doorbell made a weak buzzing sound like a blowfly in an empty matchbox. He stood very still for a moment, with his knife lifted. He wasn’t expecting anybody, was he? Maybe it was the super, coming to tell him that he had re-hung the painting for him, and expecting a tip. He went to the front door and peered through the spyhole. Before he could see who it was, the blowfly buzzed again.