Experimental Film

by Gemma Files

  I get it, I thought. Knowing, even as I formed the idea, that Simon didn’t, couldn’t—wouldn’t.

  “So what does this damn thing want then?” he demanded, arms crossed. Sidlo simply shrugged.

  “Worship,” he replied. “That was all she could figure, by the end.”

  “I friggin’ knew it,” Safie muttered under her breath.

  In the Freihoeven Institute interview, Dr. Abbott reaches across to take Sidlo’s hand and agrees to concentrate on an image inside his own head, one Sidlo can’t possibly know about, while Sidlo (in turn) concentrates on the magnetic tape unspooling inside the camera trained on him throughout. What follows—as the image literally takes shape before the viewer’s eyes, supplanting Sidlo and Abbott entirely—is a lot like watching a visual experience being reconstructed from MRI brain scan input; the details are definitely off, almost shorthanded, but the overall shape is astoundingly recognizable, far more so than in remote viewing experiments of yore. Full colour, for one thing, not sketched in black and white with the various components unstrung and drifting, like an encephalitis patient drawing whatever portion of a clock face their infection-swollen brain can process.

  What’s far more impressive, however, is the sheer clarity with which Sidlo seems to channel the sensory details of the experience, providing a tiny window into the moment in question: image as still frame in a mess of linked footage, one single moment culled from an inextricably linked, forward-moving mass. Instead of a cursory, surface-only browsing, it’s as though Sidlo sinks deep beneath the crust of Abbott’s chosen memory, culling out all the parts that tweak him emotionally: not so much the beach as the feel of hot sand slipping under rubber sandals; not so much his companion’s face as the smell of her perfumed sweat, tiny soft hairs on the back of her arm brushing his; not so much the sea as the sound of in-rushing waves, the taste of salt. Not so much the day itself as the painful joy of it, their mutual intimacy already undercut with anticipation—accurate, as it later turned out—of future loss.

  Then there’s a cut, a lag, during which Abbott must have viewed the playback. When we return he seems shaken, slightly manic, while Sidlo appears . . . basically the same. Almost bored by his own powers, calloused over through constant interaction with the miraculous.

  DR. ABBOTT: My God. My . . . God, yes. How incredible! How—that is truly remarkable. Isn’t it? [As Sidlo gives him a look] Though yes, I suppose you have . . . no way of knowing, really.

  SIDLO: Not as such.

  DR. ABBOTT: And this was what you did for Mrs. Whitcomb?

  SIDLO: More or less. She wanted the impression made on film, of course—silver nitrate, very particularly. Her medium of choice, though there were alternative stocks available by that time.

  DR. ABBOTT: Interesting, considering its volatile nature.

  SIDLO: Industrial alchemy, she called it. I knew nothing about such matters until she explained them to me, in detail. Silver nitrate was once one of the most important ingredients in such processes, lunar caustic or lapis infernalis, the hellish stone; silver could be sublimated by dissolving it in nitric acid, aqua fortis—strong water. Evaporating the solution then produces silver nitrate crystals that when applied to an organic substrate—paper, for example—become photo-sensitive, depositing tiny silver-black particles on any area exposed to light. With the addition of common salt, it also turns into silver chloride, two of the most important ingredients in the history of photography: a moon solution, to reflect—and summon—its opposite.

  DR. ABBOTT: Summon? Summon what?

  SIDLO: You wanted to know what the memory was, the one Mrs. Whitcomb wanted captured.

  DR. ABBOTT: . . . Yes.

  SIDLO: She wouldn’t tell me. But it didn’t matter, no more than with you just then; I picked it from her head, let it run through me, bloom like frost onto the reel of film we both held. It etched itself into the silver. [Pause] I couldn’t tell what she saw, not really. Being what I am isn’t the same thing as not being blind; even if I could actually see through other people’s eyes, I wouldn’t know what I was looking at. But I remember what I felt, intensely. I can still feel it.

  DR. ABBOTT: Describe it.

  SIDLO: Lying down, in long grass. Scratchy everywhere. Bugs . . . cicadas in the trees, very loud. Hot. There are other people all around me, just lying there, not moving. A bad smell. Very bad. And someone praying. And then—someone else is there, all of a sudden. Asking questions. A voice like . . . I don’t know. Terrible, brazen. Like a steel bell. Like nothing on earth.

  DR. ABBOTT: And what happens then?

  SIDLO: I start to cry.

  DR. ABBOTT: Where did this person come from?

  SIDLO: I don’t know.

  DR. ABBOTT: Who are the other people?

  SIDLO: I don’t know. I never knew.

  DR. ABBOTT: Did Mrs. Whitcomb know?

  SIDLO: . . . Yes.

  DR. ABBOTT: She told you?

  SIDLO: Not until later, but yes, she told me. Who she thought it was.

  DR. ABBOTT: And who did she—?

  SIDLO: You know. Her family, her father, Her. The Lady. The one who took her son, her Hyatt. The one from the field.

  DR. ABBOTT: The field where Giscelia Wròbl’s father died.

  SIDLO: That field, and every other. She lives everywhere, you see, at least once a day—that’s what Mrs. Whitcomb would say. Between the minute and the hour, at the very crack of noon. [Pause] She told me she was tired of thinking about that moment, so I took it out for her, as I said I would. And she was happy, and so was I—very happy, to have helped her, the best and most lovely woman I have ever known. I thought that would be the end of it, until . . .

  DR. ABBOTT: Until?

  SIDLO: She vanished. You’ve heard the story, surely.

  DR. ABBOTT: Yes, we’ve done a fair amount of research into that, without much result. But you were there when it happened—what did you think? Did you expect her to be found?

  SIDLO: [Quiet] No. I never did.

  DR. ABBOTT: Why not?

  SIDLO: Because I understood how it happened. Oh, not the exact mechanics, but . . . it would have been all right, I believe, except for one thing: the impulse to poke your tongue into an empty socket, to worry at a wound. Her memory was on the film, you see; she could have buried it, burnt it, never had to deal with it again. But she couldn’t take it on faith. She had to see.

  DR. ABBOTT: See . . . what?

  SIDLO: To see if it was there, at all. To watch it. To know I’d gotten it right.

  “I’ve had a long time to think about this,” Sidlo told us. “And what I’ve come to see is that . . . she lied to me, Mrs. Whitcomb. Probably for good reasons, and yet: a lie, at the very heart of our dealings. If only she would have told me the truth, it might have changed everything.”

  Or not, I thought. But since I needed him to keep talking, all I said was, “What did she lie about, sir? Why?”

  “Oh, as to why, I think she wanted not to scare me. And as for what . . .” He trailed away for a moment. “I now believe she was tired of waiting for Her to re-appear, of praying in vain for some answer to the question of what had happened to Hyatt. That, I think, was how the paintings and the films were meant—as offerings; Hyatt’s own drawings, the paintings, the films, all meant to placate Her. But when that failed . . .” Sidlo turned up his hand “. . . she turned from propitiation to conjury. She wanted to open a doorway and find Her there, in that moment. The moment where She lives, always.”

  “In the field,” said Safie.

  “In every field, every appearance, every tale told, every dream. The Lady is not like you or I, miss, to say the least. Kate-Mary des Esseintes believed there were things that lived outside the boundaries of time, as we perceive them: ghosts, angels, demons. Gods.”

  I nodded slowly. “So when you made that film for her,” I said,
“you gave her a key to open a door from . . . wherever she was, to . . .”

  “To there. To Her.”

  A moment passed, while we all digested that idea.

  “Well,” Simon said, at last, “that didn’t seem to work out all too well for Mrs. Whitcomb.”

  Sidlo shook his head.

  “Might be a lot of reasons for that,” Safie pointed out. “Maybe she asked the wrong questions. Maybe she didn’t take precautions.”

  “What sort of precautions?” Simon demanded. “I mean, does any of us know? If it was just a matter of getting a priest involved, or throwing holy water at her, or—” He ground to a halt, seemingly equal parts angry and afraid. “This is useless,” he said, finally. “I don’t know what you expected to find here, Lo, but I don’t think we’re going to leave happy.”

  I raised both hands, mind racing, and outright shushed him like he was Clark. “Let me think, Simon,” I begged. “Just, just . . . fuck. Let me fucking think.”

  Safie: “Miss—”

  “Quiet, for shit’s sake! I need—”

  And that was when it came to me, right that moment: an idea so stupid, so hubristic and reckless, it could really only have been conceived by a person who’d been awake all night and stretched to their very limits, somebody hovering on the ragged edge of losing not only everything they’d ever had, but everything they ever would have. Like a spotlight on the brain, full blast—creativity erupting like madness, through the top of the head.

  Like Hephaestus opening up Zeus’s skull only to see Athena pop out, born full-grown and armoured, shining like a second sun.

  The impossible made possible. The only option left.

  Even then, though, I knew I couldn’t just blurt it out, ’specially not in front of Simon. I had to wrap it up inside of something else, put things in place, then spring it on the others while he was out of the room.

  Funny how time seems to slow in a crisis, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s that you speed up, all your neurons firing at once.

  “Safie,” I said, “do you have any film stock? In your van?”

  She huffed, eyes widening as if dazed by the sudden swerve. “Um . . . yeah, yeah, I do. Got a whole reel of Super 16 Soraya gave me, along with a whole bunch of other shit I keep saying I’m going to put away.” With a shrug: “I’ve even got some unexposed silver nitrate, as it happens.”

  Simon said, “Seriously?”

  Safie flushed a bit. “Yes, seriously—I like dead tech, sue me. Why?”

  “Would you mind going and getting it? Maybe a camera, too? Digital, I mean.” While Safie frowned, I added as casually as I could, “Simon, if you could give her a hand, that’d be great.”

  Simon opened and closed his mouth, stuck in the classic Nice Guy’s dilemma of clearly realizing something was up, but being unable to call me on it without knowing what it was. I only nodded at Safie. After a moment she sighed, got to her feet, and went to the door, tapping Simon on the arm en route. “Come on.” He gave me one last tight-lipped look, and went with her. I waited until the door had closed completely then switched my attention back to Sidlo.

  “You thought she shouldn’t have opened the door, right?” I said, my voice low. “The film you made—that that was Mrs. Whitcomb’s mistake, trying to go to Her?” He nodded, placidly. “Well—what if you made another copy, right here, right now, based on your memory of her memory? Could you do that? Am I right in thinking it’d be just as good as the last one you made, for Mrs. . . for Iris?”

  There was a long pause before he answered; not quite surprise—it was as if he’d known all along what I had wanted to ask but hadn’t actually thought about the answer till now. He said at last, slowly, “I think so. Yes.”

  “On Super 16, or silver nitrate?”

  “Silver nitrate would be more appropriate.” He cocked his head at me again with that weird accuracy. “But what do you wish to accomplish, Ms. Cairns? Why would this time be different?”

  “Because—” I caught my breath on a razor-edged gasp. “I want to make a door that goes the other way. One where, instead of me going to her, we make Lady Midday come to us.”

  Sidlo stared into space, blinking slowly; said nothing for so long that I began to fear Safie and Simon would return before we could finish. But then, finally, he drew a quivering breath.

  “You have . . . no idea,” he husked. “The repercussions . . .”

  I kind of thought I did, but I wanted to hear it from him. “Then tell me.”

  He shuddered. “Do you think She has ever really left me? I am under Her eye, even now; I live there.” He looked out the window, sunlight turning his skin and hair semi-transparent; weariness came off him so strong there was no room left for fear. “At midnight, I feel the noonday sun shine on me. I have slept only two or three hours a night for decades. Every sunrise is Her attention fixed upon me once more, a hand on my shoulder so hot and heavy I can barely rise, move, or breathe. Every day is the same, waiting helpless for a death She will not allow me—I am Tennyson’s Tithonus, suffering forever, aging without end. The woods decay, the woods decay and fall/The vapours weep their burthen to the ground/ . . . And after many a summer dies the swan—” He let out a long sigh. “Me only cruel immortality/Consumes,” he finished, a near-silent whisper.

  Okay, then great, the most hateable part of me crowed inside. Even more perfect.

  I swallowed, refusing to stop. “Then maybe this is the way to break that streak, get rid of what’s been haunting you all this time—this thing that isn’t even yours, somebody else’s ghost. And maybe . . . maybe this way, it can finally be finished. For Iris’s sake, and Hyatt’s. Their legacy.” The words tumbled out of me, not particularly planned. “Lady Midday wants worship, right? She doesn’t want to give, she wants to be given—that might’ve been Mrs. Whitcomb’s other mistake—that she demanded, instead of placating. Well, I’m fine with doing whatever it takes to keep Her away from my kid, and She can have whatever She wants, in exchange. I mean I’m not going to kill myself, or anything—even going by the mythology, there’s no earthly point to that. But if it turns out I have to spend the rest of my life making films about Her, or writing about Her, or telling people She bloody well exists in order to make her leave Clark alone—well then . . . that’s okay, from my end. Not like I have another job, anyways.”

  (This is your job, Lois, Mom’s voice disagreed, inside my head. But as ever, I ignored it.)

  Sidlo blinked. “You have no idea that’s what She wants,” he countered. “No idea if this will work.”

  “Nope. But you know what else I don’t have? Any other options.” This time it was me who took his hand, gripped it hard, trying not to hurt him. “You saw how Hyatt vanishing destroyed Iris Whitcomb, and if I lost Clark—” The idea blindsided me, somewhat—an instant recipe for clogged sinuses and blurred eyes—but I choked my way through, nonetheless. “I’m not the world’s best mother, Mr. Sidlo. Clark drives me crazy a lot of the time, and I let it show. I let him . . . He’s mine, though. A piece of me—the best piece. I can’t let him go.”

  A few moments passed, and I breathed in hard, letting the feeling ebb away. Then Sidlo moved his other hand across to cover mine. “My dear,” he said, his own voice raw, “if I have anything to say about it, you won’t.”

  Fast fade, wipe, dissolve. Cut to—

  Us in the van—Sidlo, Simon, Safie, and me; Sidlo’s wheelchair wedged into the back atop reefs of cable and equipment cases positioned to hold it still. And here is where, once again, a certain contextual ripple starts, filtering back from the inevitable point of contact between the “real world” and whatever lies sidelong, that hot silver reflection. A backwash, a storm forming, organizing itself around the seizure I can already assume is coming, once Lady Midday digs her fingers into my cortex yet again.

  I think I remember being amazed my ploy had worked, at least thus fa
r. That anyone—Sidlo, let alone Simon—had believed me. Just let me get them home, I think I remember thinking. Let me put it all in place then see what happens. Let me try.

  Because I know now, like I knew then: it was never about surrender, placation. It was about attack, entrapment. Stuffing the ghost—the god—back in her box, then setting the whole damn thing on fire.

  (Opposites attract; lunar caustic, that term I didn’t even know yet. The moon tethering the sun. Industrial alchemy.)

  Sidlo in the back, “watching” me from the corner of his filmy, flickering eyes. Safie driving, gaze on the road. Simon in the back, making sure Sidlo was okay. Me riding shotgun, a reel of precious, poisonous silver nitrate film in my lap, its case pressing cool against my legs—and my monkey-mind just racing, forwards and back at the same time, planning and scheming, unaware of its own impending danger. Always somewhere else.

  (Come back, Lois, goddamnit, my father’s voice demanded, from the past. Don’t take yourself away. There’s more to life than dreaming, and it’s here, right here—)

  I’m going to settle this, I thought, knowing on some level how stupid it sounded, even inside my head. Settle it, here and now. Or . . .

  (What?)

  Die trying, I suppose. Because that always seems so brave, when you’re not thinking clearly. When you haven’t even begun to consider what doing so—or, worse yet, failing to do so—might actually involve.

  Let it work, let it work, I think I remember thinking. God, Lady Midday, whoever; just let this work, and I’ll never ask for anything again. And—

  Looking back, amusingly enough, I don’t actually think I ever have.

  But mainly because I finally know better.

  Hindsight being predictably twenty-twenty, the point of getting Safie to bring her camera soon becomes clear, once I take a moment to contemplate it—on some level, I must’ve known something like this would happen. That I’d more than likely be felled under the Regenmöhme’s heat-stroke once more, and need some sort of record made, to give me a clear idea of what’d happened while I was out. Smart thinking, me. I’ve always been kind of cunning that way, at least when it comes to covering my own ass.