She was delighted they found it, but it did not ease her nerves about opening the lens on that box, disturbing God only knows what spirits around the place. Evan suggested they put some tape on the inside of the worst scuff, just to make sure it was not torn more than they could see. Very quickly, they were standing in the back again and Evan was describing what Shelly needed to do, to load the plate while under the dress.
A couple of curses, and some sharp clicks from the latches on the box, and she was ready to upset history, and had she mentioned to Evan, she was really nervous about this whole thing? He assured her with a kiss and told her how to make the focus while he stood in the front. They would exchange places and he would uncover the lens to capture her image on the plate. Just a moment later and he was smiling at her because she did not smile at all, looking into the black center of the lens when he uncapped it. She stood there, still as stone, and he thought it was silly, but she could not help the shock of seeing that camera looking directly at her.
She stood there for a moment, the lens cap back in place, the clan-shattering image on the plate in the back of the box, and Shelly was not sure they were doing something really mundane at all. It was like tossing a stone into thick, black waters, to disturb something awful, hidden there. The Waterbury looked at Shelly Reisman; had it been offended by what it saw when its eye was awakened?
Evan completely surprised her by bringing out his family camera before they took the Reisman off the stand. He prepared his instrument for a duplicate exposure, only this time it would be he in front of his camera. He would invite her into the haunting closet, and they would develop the plates together, the first time she would see it done. It was the type of education she wanted, no reason to wait; the plates would be in hand. She was losing her jitters as they eventually took everything down to go back inside.
Evan guessed she could be talked into taking her own image because he brought all the materials they needed to do the developing too. Her storeroom was cleaned of offending old goods now, but she still did not have a stock of viable chemicals to put the darkroom into use. Too many things had been pulled out as useless, or suspect, when the other stocks were removed. So they took their cameras to the closet, after lunch in the studio, and Evan prepared to remove the plates in the darkened room. They used a candle and the filtering lens Papa used himself all those generations ago.
Evan turned in the small space and took Shelly into his arms for a reassuring embrace, and to calm his nerves as well. They had been offended by strange sensations when they stood together in the closet before, and he was not ready to feel them again. Shelly was pleased he did not notice, she was desperate to be inside in the darkness with him.
“Whatever you feel in here, do not fight it, please?” He asked her with a whisper. “But do not open the door without warning me if you must leave. We can keep the plates safe, if I have but a moment to cover them.”
She did not speak but nodded as she bowed her head into his chest and pulled him closer. There were sensations in her arms, they were already urgent but they were satisfied as she circled him and stood very still. She could not be beside him as the space was entirely too narrow, but she could stand behind him well, and she preferred it to crowding him. He began to explain what steps he would make with each plate as he turned and her cheek was soft against his back.
She wanted time to stop, willed it to stop, to hear only his breath and his voice and nothing else. The light was deep red and very dim, not light at all but warmth that glowed. She could still feel the warmth behind her eyelids as she closed them and listened to his voice whisper around his heart. She had no understanding of his words, they made no familiar sound but she adored the music of them.
He did not move so much as sway, not sway so much as dance and she was in love with his breath and felt safe. The pain was not so bad while she held him, the longing would ease, the dreads would fade, the crush of horrid stinking weight upon her body would be forgotten, and her tears flowed and wet his shirt and touched his skin. She trembled with a desire to let her dress slip to the floor; to hold him with her skin, have nothing between them at all, but the dress would not fall as she moved to release it. It would not free itself from her shoulders, she would have to let go, but letting go could not be done. Why would the dress not slip to the floor? It saddened her. She began to cry.
“Shelly?”
Evan whispered into her ear. She was on the divan in the studio and the bright afternoon light was bothering her eyes. Evan was very close, holding her and she felt she had been asleep.
“We were not finished, but we were close. Are you all right?” he said softly to her. She tried to think what they were doing, that they would be finished. It was hard to think, difficult to remember.
“Both plates are fine, but I couldn’t tell in there how they turned out, candles are really too dim. I’ll bring them out here when they dry off. We can see them better then. Are you okay, Sweetheart?”
It was the first time he had called her anything but Shelly, except for the accidental Tiddles. She liked sweetheart just fine, and she began to remember the plates and the warmth in the closet.
“What were you feeling in there?” he asked her. “We were fine until the last few minutes and you seemed near to sobbing. When I got us out you were fainted again.” He smoothed her hair and brushed her cheek with his fingers. “I loved it this time, but what were you feeling? What made you cry?”
“That I would have to let go of you, and you would be lost and I would die.”
She wanted to hold him again, but she did not really need to. In the closet, it was a painful need. It embarrassed her a bit, but she admitted to him, she wanted to be naked. She wanted to slip out of a dress she was not wearing; it broke her heart she could not let it fall to the floor. He sat quietly listening to her as she described the emotion, and described how powerful it seemed.
“That explains how you were moving. Like you wanted out of your skin, that’s what creeped me out and made me stop to get us back out. If you hadn’t been holding me, you might have fallen down in there. While we were still, it was wonderful.” He leaned to kiss her and soothe her. “But, there is something going on here that is not normal at all. The closet affects you; this place you love so much might not be as safe for you as you think.”
Shelly closed her eyes and turned away. She did not want to hear anything like those words, least of all, from him.
The plates were surely dry. Evan left her on the divan and hurried in to retrieve them so they could see how well their work turned out. She waited a few minutes, and decided he was taking too long to bring them back. Her legs were still a bit wobbly, carnival ride wobbly, but she made her way out into the shop and found him sitting on the floor in front of the closet and he did not look well. He seemed to be making sounds but the silence swallowed them until she was kneeling at his shoulder.
“Shelly, we have to get out of here. I don’t think you should be here at all. There aren’t just ghosts here, there is something more than them, and it scares the shit out of me!” He was shaking and she could see it. “It’s just scared me to death and I can’t make my legs work or I would have run.” Evan was panicked.
“Why? What happened Evan?”
“That plate!” he voice rising to a whine. Evan was losing his control and the shaking was getting worse. “Your plate, it’s not right at all, I couldn’t even bring it out.” He was clutching at her and trying to stand. It only pulled her nearly off her own feet and frightened her as well. They struggled together for a moment and he was holding her down. “You’re not alone in the plate! There is someone there with you!”
Shelly’s terror raised goose bumps on her arms, and she understood why he was horrified; they had been alone in the back, but he saw two people in her image.
She lost all interest in being in the shop and wanted out, and Evan could not get to his feet!
They sat silent in the heat of his car for half an hour before
Evan could stop shaking.
The Reisman Portraits quietly looked out onto the street, saying nothing to help calm them. Shelly did not want to believe anything in there was dangerous. She loved the shop and always had, but she was sitting in the street so glad to be outside in the air; it felt like an escape from a tightly closed box they had become trapped inside. He was not close to being calm enough to talk, but she was determined to know what petrified him so completely, he could not even flee the thing that scared him.
“There is someone between you and the camera,” he said with difficulty, as if the words burned his lips. “It’s not like a double exposure, Shelly; it’s not in focus because she’s too close to the camera! But you are nearly blocked and she is facing you, looking you right in the eyes. It’s not a ghost! There was a person there! There is a young woman keeping the camera from seeing you. “
“I was alone, Evan, you know that. There was no one out there with us.”
“But the camera saw her! She’s on the plate! This is not a smudge in the way; it’s not bad light. You can see her skin through a hole in the dress she’s wearing!” he was becoming frightened again as he imagined the thing he saw in Shelly’s photograph. “You can see her limp, dirty hair! She is as solid as I am.”
Evan did not even want to look at the building. His grip on her hand actually hurt but she did not make him let go. She needed to see it for herself and she did not know how to tell him, so they waited a while longer. She had to pee so bad it hurt, and when he finally let go, he refused to go back into the shop with her. She could not hear those words from him. Not from Evan.
“But I’m about to wet my jeans, Evan. I have to get back in, and we need your camera. We can’t leave here without it. Your tribe will kill you, it will start a bloody feud, and we have more clubs than your bunch. Do you want to be the death of the Bryant clan because we’ve been screwing each other more than your lot?” Shelly was hoping to make him laugh and perhaps calm her own mood. The dead were visible in the Reisman Portraits now, and she had to go back in there, either that or pee in the alley.
“I’d piss on the wall before I went back in there. I’m sorry Shelly. I’ve got no guts for that again.” He had crossed another invisible line with her. Two very bad accidents in the same day, it caused her a sudden pain near her heart.
“Then stay here you wuss. I’m going to go uncover my ass without you, and rescue your precious toy!”
And she ran to the building before he could grab her hand and make her ruin her jeans for the day. She was already crying before she reached the front door to rush inside. He was outside - her Evan was staying outside; she did not know what to do, to make him brave enough to come back in with her.
Her life depended on bravery he could not show.
Half an hour later, she was mad as hell at him, walking back to the car with the Bryant in her hands. She waited and cried, hoping he would find a reason to come back. But he was on the curb, where he lost his lunch in the gutter.
She was gentle with him because of that.
“You are some protection you wimp!” She kicked his butt playfully. “Weren’t you the least bit concerned what might be ripping my ribcage apart in there?” as she sat down next to him.
She wanted him to notice she had cried.
“Yes, and that’s why I puked trying to go back in.”
Evan did not like being frightened at all and she fell terrible for him. She spent her life looking for ghosts in her building, she loved being frightened by them, but he was different and she sat there next to him, to explain what she was feeling. She explained why she had taken so long.
“It’s her, Evan. In the plate with me?” She took his hand and kissed it. He was still shaking a bit and was trying to hide it. “It’s the girl who died with Yousep, upstairs.”
A moan escaped his lips, and he looked over her shoulder back at the silent building.
“I’ve never been afraid in there before,” she said, “That’s why I wanted to see the image. I believed you, but this is my heritage, my history. I couldn’t refuse even a terror from my family’s past! I wanted to hold the plate and feel how real that horror had been.”
She put her arms around him and began to kiss his cheek and try to help him understand she was okay.
“I was never afraid until today, and I’m all-right with that. What I believed is very real and it scares the shit out of me too. But, there is nothing in there which will hurt me; do you believe that with me?”
“I don’t think I can go back in there with you!” He hung his head, ashamed. “This is not just a story people tell to work up their kids. This isn’t a parlor trick to make people laugh.”
“I know that, Evan. I’ve never felt anything scare me like that plate does, but it can’t keep me out of there. It never has.”
“But, it might be very dangerous Shelly!” He pleaded with her. “That is a real thing! I don’t think you know what it can do.”
“Are you telling me you won’t ever go back in there with me again, Evan. Are you saying you can’t walk into the building?”
It was distressing her to say such things, but it was exactly what he wanted to hear. That they would never go back; that he could try to forget the day he took a photo of something that was not there to see in the daylight. He wanted her to leave the building forever. He was on the safe side of that invisible line of hers, but it was the most important line she made and he knew what she was about to say - it was like thunder after the lightening.
“Then don’t make yourself come back.”
And those whispered words hurt his ears worse than if she screamed them at him in a rage.
She rose and walked back to the Reisman Portraits. He watched her walk and noticed the wetness in the back of her jeans. She was scared of the image enough to wet herself, even after her desperate trip into the toilet. That plate could really do some harm and he dreaded it. Shelly Reisman was swallowed into the front of the building and he heard screams of anger she had been too kind to throw at him. She gave them to the ghosts instead, because it was their fault she was alone with them again.
The weekend plans were dashed. Evan knew he was a creep, a pig, a haser, as her family would surely call him. He sat on the curb next to his car until the sun was burning his neck. He sat there for hours and she had not left either. The window and door were too well papered up; she would have no hole to peer through to see him still waiting, without the courage to enter on his own legs. She would have to look out the door and he knew she had not. He was so ashamed of himself. If she found the courage to be in there, he would find some too, and it took nearly all of it to stand and approach the door again. Whatever still held her heart, the Reisman Portraits was not drawing him at all. It was threatening to him. It was repulsing him. It was pushing Evan while she was being held by it. He could feel the building preventing him as he touched the door and opened it to walk into the gloom.
The stillness hurt his ears. He could hear his own heart beating and feel the rush of blood inside his head. He gently called her name and hoped she would peer to see him from the studio in the back. But she did not answer. He walked back through the displays and passed the empty darkroom closet. The candle still burned, it was nearly to the nub, but he did not go near it. The plate was still there; he would not look at it again. Not even for Shelly. But she still did not answer. The studio was the brightest room and ahead of him, and he hoped with all his heart she was there and just mad enough to curse him and shove him out. Again, he called her name. His heart beating within his own ears answered him. Shelly was not in the studio. Shelly was not in the front. He stood, and listened, because he knew if he held his breath, he would hear where she was, and he was correct, and his limbs went numb as he stood in the studio - and looked to the ceiling.
Shelly was there, in the attic, in the storeroom and he could hear her sobs from where he stood. They were faint, as if the strength to make them were nearly gone. They were not sobs of fr
ight, or anger. They were sobs of grief and they were dying away to whispers. Evan lost his fear enough to rush to the stairs. But he was too hasty to see Shelly at the window of the rear door, outside on the porch. She was too slow to call out to him before he ran upstairs where someone was crying. She had not heard a thing but saw his face. She instantly knew, he made a terrible mistake and he did not know it.
Evan Bryant burst the upstairs door, not to frighten Shelly, but to hurry to her side. But mere steps from the attic door she sobbed for him again and he could tell she was in anguish, near to faint from the sorrow in her failing breath, but as the door moved, and the dust blew aside from his rush, there was no other living person in the attic of the Reisman Portraits. Evan had been baited, and he hurried inside the empty room. He could not move as the door closed behind him, whether swinging back from his rush, or from its satisfaction of having him again, he could not guess. His mind was twisting in darkness he could not avoid.
Shelly found him in the room, but he was not waiting; the shelves were around him and he was twisted as if he had fallen in a struggle and fell with a force. And near his damaged brow lay a jar, which was the heaviest in the storeroom. Her terror at his pose spun her completely in the room and she backed herself into the corner, sobbing that he not be dead. She wept as she screamed at him to be but harmed, she pushed herself into the corner as far as she could go and stepped with her bare feet into a newly wet stain on the floor, but she had not lost her water there. It was not Shelly who soiled the spot where she stood and cried, wanting Evan to be alive. Shelly was reduced to whimpers when she fell to the floor.
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