Half the roll remaining.
13. The left half of Alice’s torn piece of paper, dropped to the floor of their childhood room, covered by an impossibly wide shadow of Grace and Alice standing together, or something standing behind them.
Grace remembered not liking the empty hall at their backs as they looked blindly upon their younger selves, both she and her sister turning, arm-in-arm, the door to their room slamming shut behind them with a wall of wind. She’d reached behind her back and had felt the door, wondering if her sister had closed it.
14. An accidental shot of the floor, nearly black, completely covered in shadow despite the camera flash.
“Both Mom and Dad were asleep in bed, right?” Alice asked, and Grace had been thinking the same question because of the next three images, which panned from left to right.
15. The living room, left, with a flat screen television mounted on the wall, powered on and displaying a rerun episode of The Twilight Zone, a black-and-white scene with a woman in a train station looking confusedly at her luggage next to a bench.
16. The living room, centered, with a coffee table enveloped by a wraparound couch. A half-empty glass and a remote on the table. An unrecognizable male figure sitting upright on the couch, hands on his knees, his entire body out of focus, but face turned toward the camera—a completely featureless blur—as if he’d noticed the two of them taking pictures in the dark and had posed with an empty face.
17. The living room, right, with left-most portion streaked black with heavy contrast covering what should be the couch and the man sitting there, an uncle or family friend staying the night perhaps, the right-most portion revealing the front entryway.
“Who the hell is that,” Alice said, pointing at the middle picture.
“Maybe Uncle Thomas? He sometimes stayed over.”
The next four photographs were unremarkable, despite the fact that they’d captured the memories from sixty years ago. The contrast of each image darkened from one to the next, as if they were progressively underexposed, the last of which was nearly black.
18. The front entryway.
19. The kitchen from far away.
20. A close-up of the left side of the kitchen.
21. A close-up of the right side of the kitchen.
Grace remembered the cold breeze that had once again spun them around, their arms becoming untangled for a few seconds. She’d flailed in the dark for her sister, and had imagined Alice doing the same. What happens if I lose her before shifting back? she’d wondered, and then she’d found her, and had turned the camera around for a selfie from as far out as she could reach.
22. Grace standing next to an older man or older woman, a featureless flowing witch of an apparition, face and hair as black as pitch and eyes glowing inverted white.
“What do you remember?” Grace asked her sister, pulling away from her.
“I remember… I remember losing you but quickly finding you, and I was led to what felt like the front entryway of the house. I remember that because the door opened and it was cold. So cold. And then I was led to the porch and then a barn, and the door slammed shut behind us and I remember saying I don’t want to do this! but you couldn’t hear me so I pulled off my blindfold and the headphones and then we were back or coming back and I said, Don’t ever make me do that again. And we were back. “Who is that with you in the picture?”
23. An accidental shot of their feet after they’d tripped over something while moving through the house—of Grace’s feet, as there were no other feet but her own.
She and Alice had hastily made their way back to where they’d started by this point. The final photo would be of their parents’ bedroom.
But Alice wasn’t with me, Grace realized. I’d imagined her chanting let’s go back let’s go back please let’s go back, but it wasn’t her, it wasn’t Alice who’d led her back so hastily.
She hesitated with the final picture, too afraid to see, hands shaking.
They’d shifted back. Grace could take physical things with her to the past, and whenever she shifted back, the items would still be with her, as if they’d never left the present. Which meant she didn’t necessarily need to touch those things to bring them back.
“I came back,” Alice said, as if reading her thoughts. “Let’s see it. The last picture.”
Grace closed her eyes, holding the photo to her chest, took a deep breath, and then she opened her eyes and held it out so they could see it together.
24. Their father’s side of the bed in the early hours of the morning, his covers thrown to the side, an impression of his head sunken into the pillow. Mom’s hand in the frame, reaching out but not finding him, leaning over to where he should be, her eyes open, startled awake. The rest of the bed is out of focus, dark clouds of black around the edges, as if from underexposure.
“Where’s Dad?” Alice asked, and then, “Did Dad ever, you know—?”
“He must have gotten up, while we were there.”
“Did he ever—?”
There were so many questions, yet suddenly not enough time for Alice to ask them all, let alone finish a single thought. Grace understood what her sister wanted to ask, because Grace already knew. If Dad had ever taken her from bed at night after everyone else had gone to sleep. If they’d ever go places. If he’d ever touched her. Grace knew what Alice wanted to ask, because she’d asked those same questions after revisiting her childhood.
Grace flipped through the photobook of her father for the first time, watching him age in reverse from old man to young man, sixty years passing in a matter of seconds. She loved him then as she loved him now. She looked from the photobook to the first picture now hanging in the darkroom: Dad at thirty-four; at thirty-four she’d loved him most.
It wasn’t until the year 2007 that she’d suspected her father of anything. She’d been thirteen, Alice only twelve, and so she spent a great deal of time shifting back to that year to help her re-remember what she’d forgotten about her youth. And each time she revisited, the past became darker, became filled with black tendril shapes and impossible shadows and horrific sounds, as if her past were trying to mask what had happened all those years ago. 2007 is when Grace noticed her father starting to change. There was a drastic difference in the way he looked—or perhaps the way she saw him—compared to any year after that, so she spent more time in 2007, and then 2006, and then 2005, focusing most on those three years. In the beginning of 2007 he’d become incredibly sad, a part of him missing, and so she’d started there, spending more time with him in that year before going back further into the past.
“Go through the photos,” Grace told her sister. “Start with two thousand five and work your way up to the present. I want you to remember dad one year at a time, and when you feel you understand who he is, who you remember him to be, then we’ll both revisit two thousand four and take more photos, again, and again, and then we’ll go to two thousand three, and then two thousand two, as far back as we can go.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said.
“You need to.”
Alice picked up the box labeled 2005, which had perhaps four hundred photographs Grace had taken, and developed, just the other day. She sorted through them.
“Look for the ones of Dad.”
In 2005 her father sometimes got up in the middle of the night, watched over them while they slept, sometimes standing in the doorway, sometimes sitting at the edge of their bed, brushing either her or Alice’s hair, and sometimes he’d simply stand at the window looking out into the dark. These were the photos she wanted her sister to see. These were the photos that would help her understand.
And it would keep her busy for a while.
Grace looked to the new photos of 2004 hanging before her, stared at #16, the faceless blur of a man sitting at the couch. She knew who he was now. She remembered everything.
She closed her eyes, shifted.
Without the gauze coverings, without the bandana, witho
ut the noise-cancelling headphones, Grace shifted back to that same night in 2004. She wanted to see everything this time, hear everything, because she was no longer afraid.
She knew who her father was and what he had done.
When she opened her eyes again, she was standing next to her parents’ bed, looking over her father while he slept. She and her sister had visited this same exact spot, this same exact moment of time, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d maybe see another version of the two of them shift into this plane of existence, but Grace was alone this time, her eyes open, her ears listening.
A melee of swirling black filled the room around her, pumping out like smoke from beneath the bed, reaching for her impossible presence from each dark crevice like wiry wisps of hair. From every void came the distant screams of children from other wheres and other whens, the nighttime house-settling noises of a hundred versions of the same house overlaid one on top of the other. But Grace wasn’t afraid, not this time.
Her father struggled restless under the covers, her mother’s hand reaching for him. He yawned and put a hand to his mouth to catch it, opened his eyes. This was the moment she and her sister had taken the second photo, she knew, the one that looked like the painting of The Scream. She left him there and followed the blackness, which shifted out of the room like fog and down the hall, as if wanting her to follow.
She found herself admiring the multi-photo picture frames on either side of the hallway, the same older photos she’d taken with newer photos, and she touched the glass of some, as if doing so would bring back those memories even more.
Down the hall she stopped at the bathroom, hesitating before looking to the mirror she knew would be waiting for her. She expected a reflection of her older self, or the reflection of something else entirely standing next to her, but after collecting enough courage to look, she discovered she didn’t cast a reflection at all, perhaps because she really wasn’t there. Yet there was something casting a reflection, another memory perhaps, or a memory of a memory.
If I had the camera with me, she thought. I’d be able to capture my reflection, and then the thought was gone, for the layer upon layer of screaming intensified down the hall. The darkness deepened behind her, passed through the hall and toward the bedroom door with the keep out sign—like a warning.
The door was ajar, and so Grace again hesitated. Some of the black from within the room emerged and brushed against her hand, like the backs of two fingers gently caressing her skin. Come inside, the invisible hand gestured. Come inside.
Grace pushed the door inward and found her childhood bedroom engulfed in the smoky cloud-like substance, some of which had escaped through the door as soon as she’d opened it, and some of which moved from one side of the room to the other—from Alice’s side of the tape to her own side. The window ahead, like the bathroom mirror, did not cast Grace’s older shadow, but something was there. Outside the wind howled, and this startled her little sister awake; nine-year-old Alice sat upright, a nearly perfect ninety-degree angle, and looked sleepily around the room, toward Grace’s bed. She said “Grace?” but the older sister Alice wanted wasn’t there, although her older self was and wanted to answer. I’m here, Alice, she thought, I’m here, but younger Grace was gone, her bed a tangle of disturbed blankets. Alice rubbed her eyes and yawned her own little scream.
A shriek cut through the sudden silence, and as Grace turned to the noise behind her, she saw terror in Alice’s face as she raced out of bed and slammed the door, as loud as a gunshot.
Grace made her way to the living room because that’s where the darkness took her, twisting and coiling like a snake, to the television playing an episode of The Twilight Zone—only on, she discovered, to mask the noise, to help cover what was happening—and to the couch, where the black shapeless form she’d been following transformed into the silhouette of a man, their Uncle Thomas, whose head turned toward her, his face solid for a moment and then featureless, then dissolving and moving toward the front entryway of the house with another smaller shape at his side, holding a smoke-billowing hand, a little girl screaming I don’t want to do this! I don’t want to do this! even over the cacophony of noises, even over the layers upon layers of painful memories from the cold winters of 2004, and the years leading up until then.
I don’t want to do this!
Grace followed the black apparition, followed the scream, found herself following the phantasms of Uncle Thomas and the dragged girl through the door and out onto the front porch.
I was led to what felt like the front entryway of the house. I remember that because the door opened and it was cold. So cold. And then I was led to the porch and then a barn and the door slammed—
Grace followed them into the vacant barn next door. She and Alice used to play there as children, even though they weren’t supposed to. They hadn’t had neighbors for as long as she could remember, the neighbor’s house dilapidated, their barn in decent shape. She and Alice used to play in the barn and pile the abandoned hay as high as they could manage, sometimes ten feet tall and ten feet around, and they’d climb the rickety wooden stairs to the loft and jump and fall and laugh until they were tired and cold.
So cold.
And this is where he dragged the arm of the little girl, deeper into the barn—illuminated only by flashlight—and behind the tractor, and this is where Grace followed them, and heard, and saw—a black swirling melee of painful memories finally taking shape, of Uncle Thomas, not her father… and a little girl, and not Alice, but ten-year-old Grace, her younger self.
How long had this been happening?
The older version of Grace turned around and met the eyes of her father, the version of him she’d always wanted to remember, the version she loved most, his light beaming onto her like an oncoming train. Perhaps Alice slamming the bedroom door had stirred him out of sleep, had caused him to check in on the girls like he always had, only to find one of his girls sleeping, not two, only to find his brother no longer on the living room couch although the television was still on, perhaps looking outside because the front door was ajar, and perhaps he’d seen the flashlight beam, heard his oldest daughter’s scream…
Her father carried a wrench, the red heavy kind used for large pipes. He walked right through the seventy-year-old version of Grace and for a split second she felt both his understanding and his anger—could feel his rage developing—and she watched as he brought the wrench over his head and swung downward, and then suddenly the chaos of noise ceased.
“Come on, sweetie,” he said. “Let’s get you dressed and inside.”
It wasn’t until this memory that Grace realized she’d been involved.
She’d only thought Alice.
Go through the photos, Grace told her sister before shifting to this memory. Start with 2005 and work your way up to the present. I want you to remember Dad one year at a time, and when you feel you understand who he is, who you remember him to be…
Grace wanted Alice to figure out that she—not Grace—had been molested by their uncle. She’d first photographed the act in the summer of 2007, and through the developed film had determined he’d been doing it from as early as the winter of 2004—the when and where they’d shifted together—a span of nearly three years. Alice had never spoken of it, ever, as if the events had never happened, as if she didn’t know what had happened to her all those years ago, which is why Grace had invited Alice along this time. She needed her sister to remember. If Alice looked through the pictures of her father, she’d stumble on their uncle and—
“Let’s get you inside,” her father repeated.
She watched her father—half her own age—remove his jacket and wrap it around the small arms of her shivering ten-year-old self, watched them walk back to the house. And then she found herself looking over her uncle, unconscious next to the tractor, next to the haystacks where she and Alice used to play. All those smiles. All those laughs. All those good memories. He was bleeding, but not enough. Gra
ce wanted the wrench, to smash it against his head, again and again and again… but she wasn’t really there. She stood over him for what seemed an impossible amount of time, willing him to bleed out, willing him to die.
And then her father was suddenly there again, eyes red and face wet, standing next to Grace with a hand on his hip and the other pressing against his temples, standing close enough that she could feel radiance pouring out of him, his love. “Goddammit, Tom,” he said, and that was it, as if cursing his brother’s name and not his god. He leaned his weight onto his other foot. Looked to the wrench. Contemplated. Hesitated. He retrieved the wrench and it was heavy enough to warrant resting against his shoulder. Her father sniffed back the tears and grabbed the handle with both hands, knuckles whitening. He cried, lifted the heavy thing over his head, cried some more. He made as if to swing it over his head, but simply let it drop and fell to his knees. Uncle Thomas began to stir then, and groan, and once again her father looked to the wrench.
Kill him, Grace thought, kill the bastard, but she knew he wouldn’t.
When her uncle came to, her father lifted his brother onto his feet and waited for him to realize the gravity of the situation, to realize he knew, and once that happened, signified by the startled expression on her uncle’s face, her father grabbed him by the collar and punched him in the jaw, in the face, again and again and again, keeping him upright to take the blows—Uncle Thomas’ mouth drooling scarlet, eyes vacant—and then he let him crumple to the ground. “I should kill you,” he said, but didn’t, and never would.
She knew this because Grace had seen her uncle in future years. Sometime after this near-death beating, he’d gone through the system to overcome his problem and Mom and Dad—never Dad and Mom—for some reason had let the monster back into their lives, because he was family, even letting him live in their for a period of time. And Uncle Thomas would not recover, but would repeatedly go on to molest her little sister over the next few years, enough so that Alice to this day could not remember, or had somehow blocked it from her memory.
Darkroom Page 3