Caraliza

by Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick

  The Reisman Portraits missed them as well. There were changes inside the haunted place. A spirit awoke, which had been tired and silent until the silk covered image plates were discovered and removed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Better the dirt for this one. I will have him returned to it without a stone, if I have my say. Some people live, with no more soul in them than the street has beneath our feet. Such a person was the one who lived in that hellish basement, and kept Caraliza prisoner,” Sareta said to Evan. “He was never human, from his first breath. He was not a dumb animal either; even they have tenderness of a sort for their young. This one, who also died, deserved the death he got. A prison would have been a better home than the one of his own choosing and a prison would be still too good for the likes of him.”

  Evan drove her to the police department to see if the remains had been disposed and if the city would let the family have the man buried. Evan knew the brute’s name, from the original investigation, when Benny missed his place with his fellows on the stoop. Evan never spoke the name to anyone, and hoped Sareta did not care to have it spoken to her. A person without a soul should not have a name, but, Evan wondered, would he refuse his rest without his name? What prayers could be said for one who could not be named?

  Prayers for the unnamed?

  “Sareta, the second box, it contains photographic plates, and they are silk wrapped with notes tied to them. Hebrew notes. Are they prayers?” Evan said to her as they left the police department.

  “You have seen these?”

  “Yes, there are about a dozen, most of them seem broken, but there are a few that may be undamaged. That is all the chest contains, and they all have folded notes with Hebrew writing on them, tied with silk.”

  “Is Shelly at the shop? Is the chest there?”

  “Yes. We took it there last night before we went home.”

  “We must see this together. Can we go now?”

  Sareta displayed an excitement Evan was pleased to see, but he was only mildly curious as he held the silk wrapped plates, they carried no feeling about them, or hinted to him they could be part of the family secret. Perhaps he was just not listening to his own heart as he touched them on the curb, next to the officer who pulled them from under the great window. That officer was deeply troubled by her experience in the dusty place. Something Evan did not feel, might cling to that chest still. Perhaps they did not compel him, but they excited Sareta. She wanted to hurry.

  “Kaddish Yatom,” she said to him. “Hebrew prayers for the dead, Mourners’ Kaddish. We must see these. They may be very important to us. Has Shelly seen them?” Evan shook his head, no.

  Shelly was immediately suspicious her grandmother was walking into the studio with Evan in tow. There were new kitchen items being installed in the new space, and Shelly did not want them seen yet. She was relieved they came into the back, and Sareta was not the least interested to rummage around in the renovation. She sat down and asked Evan to bring the second chest. Shelly stopped everything she had been doing.

  Evan had not discussed the second chest with her at all. She assumed it was quite ordinary and not like the one the family had passed around, but forgotten in the attic room for years. The thought Evan made secrets from her now, made him a tad more interesting. Perhaps some secrets could be tortured from his lips, and it would be fun to try!

  The boxes were nearly identical, but for the dust deeper into the cracks in the woodcarvings on this latest one found. Evan had already been inside, but never told Shelly. It was discovered on that awful day, she remembered, but he only told her the barest of facts, there were things hidden under the great window, people hidden in the brick walls across the street. He never went into detail, and here was a tantalizing detail, completely forgotten!

  She wondered what it might contain, that he would not really have a lasting interest in opening it again. He lifted the lid, and she reacted the same as Sareta, it was terribly important to the family history. Her grandmother breathed a prayer, before she even touched the box. Sareta suspected it contained prayer notes, and she instantly knew why. They were photographs of the dead.

  “Photographs of dead people?” Evan wanted to know. “Papa made images of dead people? For who?”

  “Not just anyone, dear boy,” Sareta calmed him with a hush.

  “These would be our dead, Evan,” Shelly said in the same hushed tone. “Papa would have photographed a departed relative, but no other. These were buried ceremoniously, with the prayers. That is why this chest was built. It is an ark.”

  Her grandmother smiled and patted her on the knee and they both bent to look deeper into the box. Evan had not noticed before, there was a fine layer of dirt, much jostled about, but the plates would have been placed inside, touching it lightly. Papa wove some very old superstitions into his creation. He had gone to extraordinary lengths to honor those loved ones, whose images this chest contained.

  Sareta lifted the first plate, and it seemed broken. She frowned, and tested each silk wrapping until she found a perfect plate. She was breathing a song, as she laid the plate on the coffee table in front of them, and untied the ribbon. Her voice caught in surprise as she read the prayer note.

  “This is an infant child. Hannah is her name. We honor her memory and love her as we did in life.” And she pulled the ribbon aside to reveal the plate, which rested, wrapped in silk, since 1891. The little girl was only days old. The image was beautiful and frightening. Sareta wiped a tear and took Evan’s hand.

  “Papa and Mama’s child, Hannah. Stillborn. He honored her this way lest she ever be forgotten.” Evan looked at nearly a dozen other plates, were they all children? Shelly wrapped the plate again and retied the note as before while Sareta removed another silk bundle. Two more children, Elias and Kela, neither more than a few months old. Sareta wept, these would have been brother and sisters to her husband, but he never mentioned children who died.

  This marked profound grief to Papa and Mama, and they must have rejoiced to have a birthday to celebrate with their few other children. Papa would have opened this chest only in strict privacy, and they would have honored the children they wished to have known longer, before Heaven called them.

  Evan carefully took the next bundle out; it protected a broken plate. The remaining plates were all broken now. He placed it on the table, and Sareta removed the note to read it. Her shudder and release of the note, as if it burned her, surprised Evan and Shelly.

  “This is the beautiful child, Caraliza!” she exclaimed.

  “No!” Shelly recoiled. “He took her photo when she died? How!” She was crawling backward into the corner of the divan and was trying to hide in it. Sareta was similarly repulsed.

  “This can’t be what it seems,” Evan said, but Sareta shook her head as she looked at the silk wrapped glass pieces. Evan reached and opened the packet. The glass was upside down on the table. He gently took the pieces and turned them over. Caraliza stared at them, wide-eyed and unsmiling from the very room in which they sat. Sareta was holding his other hand and squeezing it painfully.

  “This prayer is only for the dead. He would do no such blasphemy as to place this prayer on the image of a living person.”

  “But who took this? It couldn’t have been Yousep; she would have been smiling for him.”

  Evan began gently to lift all the bundles out of the chest and placed them on the coffee table for Sareta to read. They were all written for Caraliza and Sareta asked him to leave them alone, they were not what they seemed at first, she did not want these disturbed, but he began to open and reveal the image in each silk wrapping. Shelly stayed in the corner of the divan, her eyes closed and her arms around herself as a shield.

  He looked at the face of Caraliza on each plate, she was the same in all but one, she was turned to look out the window in that image, her eyes were wide and piercing, and her mouth closed and mute. No smile could cross those lips. The sun played in the studio differently in each, the cam
era placed near the same spot, but not identical until the last two. Each of the plates was broken into at least two pieces, and apparently very carefully as they were not shattered.

  Sareta was visibly distressed, still breathing her prayers and she stopped Evan’s hands as he lightly touched the images wondering why they had been made.

  “She was dead when he made these notes, Evan. You cannot do this for the living,” she told him.

  He looked at each one again, believing there must be some clue to why they were made, and it was at last found. There upon her neck, was Yousep’s pendant. It was in each photograph. As he looked, another clue came to his sight and it stirred his heart and made him shudder as well. The image, in which she turned to gaze through the window; Evan’s eyes followed her gaze, the window was covered with snow.

  Caraliza had been rescued and killed during the summer. There was no winter on earth that she wore Yousep’s pendant upon her neck, and was alive.

  Evan knew in his heart what he would find if he scanned the images at the photo lab. At least two of them would have been perfect as only the image taken by Yousep had been. Others would not have been, one even looked to be hastily focused. Papa tried Yousep’s camera, then others, and then ceased to try.

  “She returned, Shelly,” Evan said, and he walked to where she sat and offered his arms. “Papa tried to use the Waterbury, and she appeared. He tried again - she appeared. He tried other cameras until it was winter and it snowed. She haunted him in every frame he exposed, until he lost his mind and refused to touch a camera.”

  “She was dead. Haunting him in every camera he used. He tried to honor her with the Mourners’ Kaddish,” Sareta breathed. “He broke the plates, hoping to release her.”

  “And he stopped working and began to die. She took his living from him but left him to suffer for two more years,” Evan whispered.

  “What had he done to her?” Shelly whined. She hid her face against his shoulder. Papa was said to speak to people who were not there. Evan understood now who he spoke to, and why.

  “We have to find out what she wants. Papa tried, but I don’t think he felt the same way about her appearances as we do now,” Evan whispered to Shelly. “Grandma Sareta. We will replace the Reisman infants as Papa wished and you may take those home, to share and cherish. But we will keep Caraliza’s images here. They become profane in this box with the others. Papa was desperate, but we are not, and will find out what she wants in other ways.”

  Shelly’s grandmother instantly began to ready the children’s photographs to be placed back inside the chest. The removal of the broken images satisfied her, and she felt badly about it, but Evan was right. Caraliza did not belong in that ark, and it was best she not be placed there. But Evan caused her to question him; she heard his whisper into Shelly’s ear.

  “How? How are you going to find out what this girl wants?” she demanded of him. “What did she tell Papa that helped the poor man?”

  “We will see if she still haunts Yousep’s camera. We know she did when Shelly was photographed and it was only to block Shelly. But what if we let her speak to us, the way she spoke to Papa, alone in the image? What will she show us?” Shelly was already shivering in his arms. She wanted into the closet and he could tell it excited her.

  “You may do what you wish, but first let me leave. I will not speak to these spirits again. They do not speak to me, they cause me pain.” Sareta stood with Evan’s help and slapped him quite hard, but playfully, on the cheek. “You are the bravest, stupid boy in this shop…since Yousep Kogen was here. He died here, Evan. Remember that.”

  “I bet he also made love to Caraliza here, too, Grandma. I bet it was on this divan.” Shelly bit her lip and squeezed Evan until his eyes almost popped.

  “I hope he did. That girl should have blessed any man who could be kind to her. I hope on my own heart they were like rabbits.” And she left them doubled with laughter as she picked up the chest and headed for the door. “God married those two, sure as they breathed the same air. You two are not married!” she shot back at them and slammed the door.

  Alone again with the spirits, and no camera with which to ask the questions they wanted to ask, Evan hurried home to fetch some plates to expose - and the Bryant Waterbury.

  “Our plan, dearest love, will be to photograph you, with my camera, and Caraliza, with Yousep’s. We will see which she chooses to haunt. If it is you, I think we know where it will lead. They may not want us here. Are you scared to see what she might want?”

  Shelly said, no, she was not afraid. Evan could protect her from anything. And they both laughed, but the sound of it shook them suddenly. Laughter was a thing to be feared there, and they remembered it well.

  The two cameras were set side-by-side and the plates installed in the backs. Evan made the focus for each with Shelly standing in front. Then she stood alone in front of the Bryant, and the Reisman took an image of only the studio and empty air. They were but moments away from finding a new way to ask Caraliza what she wanted. They were headed to the closet, and Shelly was in a hurry.

  It felt instantly familiar, and warm already, as though they spent several hours there and not in the studio. Evan took his place and lit the candle to begin the steps to develop the plates. Shelly stepped in very close behind him and took him in her arms. They shared this embrace for a few moments, letting it merge their breath, and their sway, so he could move as he needed. The candle was shaded, and in the near total darkness, Evan removed the plates and began his work. Shelly was underneath his shirt, against his skin with her arms, and with her fingernails.

  “Take off your shirt,” she whispered to him.

  He let her pull it back and he felt her breasts against his back. She kissed and tasted him, tiny bites and raking her nails gently across his chest. They breathed together and she listened to his heart. They adored this dance.

  “Take your hands from there, Shelly. You are distracting me,” He suddenly whispered to her. “We won’t finish if you do that.”

  “I have my hands only here,” she replied with more kisses to his back. Her hands were high on his chest near his shoulders. The other soft, warm hands he felt were much lower, much more serious in their search for flesh. “Shelly, I’m being touched intimately,” he said, nearly more aloud than he desired. She only laughed a very delicate, soft laugh.

  “Have you been touched like this?” he asked her, and she laughed again for him and her tongue was on his shoulders with more kisses. She was very involved with sensations of her own.

  “Shelly, have you been touched in here, by Yousep?” Evan insisted she answer. He was greatly distracted by the other hands but wanted her to reply. Shelly took her place where the other hands had been and Evan ceased asking any questions.

  “Yes. I have been comforted in here,” she said after a moment. “I always closed my eyes, and it was you.”

  “But it was him, Shelly. Yousep was in here with you. He is just a boy.” Evan was serious and tried to turn around. Shelly bit his skin and he knew she would not let him turn.

  “I was never with a mere boy in here, Evan,” she replied to him and laughed again. “That was no boy.”

  “Shelly!” Evan was jealous, and they both suddenly realized it. She giggled and moved her hands back up to his chest and the other hands returned as quickly and Evan could not tell who he gave his passion to, Shelly or Caraliza.

  “Yousep is ninety years old, Evan,” Shelly sang in his ear, “And he is so very gentle.”

  Evan loved how creepy she and Caraliza were today.

  The two plates were ready and dried, and they found a use for the bench they hoped the two lovers thought to try. But it may have been the source for the idea after all. It did not matter; the closet was their favorite place, to be so very close. The afternoon was getting along, and the studio was ablaze with light. They sat on the divan; both more or less covered, and were still playful as they looked at the two plates. There was a very beautiful She
lly in the Bryant image, with a very strangely posed guest.

  But the Reisman image showed a frightening, severe Caraliza, as Papa had seen her. She haunted the camera still, and it was unnerving how differently she appeared. They had seen her image nearly a dozen times now, and this Caraliza was terrible. Her wide eyes held a piercing, accusatory gaze, directly into the eye of the camera. She looked into the person who photographed her.

  To Evan, it meant the life of the Waterbury was ended. It had taken one single blessed image of Caraliza the angel. All the others were the ghosts of Caraliza, the tortured, in the filthy dress.

  The Bryant image showed the beautiful Shelly, with the arms and hands of Caraliza reaching from behind. One delicate hand playfully in Shelly’s hair, the other with a single finger to Shelly’s lips, as if to shush her from speaking. Nothing more of Caraliza was shown in the image. She had hidden this time.

  “We are going to do this one more time, Love, only with the Bryant,” Evan said to her, and he kissed her and let her bite his lip. “Would you like another hour in the closet?”

  “May I have Yousep in there? You’ve had your girls.”