Photographing Fairies: A Novel

by Steve Szilagyi

  “We can’t trust anyone,” Paolo finally said.

  “You can trust me,” I said. “And I can prove it. I’ve been in that cottage. I stayed there. I know exactly where the photographs are. I can lead you there.”

  “What’s in it for you?”

  “Oh, nothing. I mean, no money. I’m in it for the same reason as Walsmear. We’re on the same side. Ask him, he’ll tell you.”

  That must have been the wrong thing to say. Paolo moved quickly. He flipped me over in the dirt and began tying my wrists together with his belt. Shorty leaned over and held a gleaming blade to my throat.

  I protested. But Paolo sat roughly on my back and lit a cigarette.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Don’t you believe I can help you?”

  Paolo ignored my question. “How do you know what we’re doing here?” he asked.

  “Well, I — I overheard — ”

  “If you were listening to us, you heard everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yeah,” Shorty chimed in. “You heard him say we were going to double-cross Pocus.”

  “That’s right,” from Paolo. “And if you’re on his side — ”

  “Oh, I won’t tell,” I said beggingly. “I promise. I’ll help you get the pictures. But I won’t tell.”

  “Shut up,” said Paolo. He brought the lit point of his cigarette right up to my eye. Then he slowly crushed it out in the dirt an inch or so in front of my face. “You’ll help us, all right. You’ll show us where the pictures are. Or we’ll kill you.”

  He and Shorty dragged me to my feet. I still saw the cigarette ash. It lingered like an orange sunset in my aftervision.

  “C’mon,” Paolo said. “Let’s get into that house.”

  I was led through the woods with my wrists tied and Paolo gripping the back of my shirt. He did not, however, grip tightly. I thought about breaking free. I could make a desperate dash for the road, screaming my lungs out all the way. It seemed like my only hope. But the moment I considered doing it, my muscles uncontrollably tensed in preparation. Paolo sensed this and tightened his grip. With his other hand, he pulled out a knife and pressed it into my back.

  “Don’t be clever,” he warned. “Clever means I cut your kidney out.”

  “I’m not clever,” I said. “I’m trying to help you. Don’t you understand that? Can’t you untie my hands?”

  “In time, in time,” was his reply.

  We came to the ferny glade. We swished through, three abreast. At every step, I measured my chances of writhing free. They did not seem good. If I attempted to escape, all I could look forward to was quick recapture. After that, a knifing. I could have shouted and screamed before I died, but I had no guarantee that anyone would hear me.

  As I saw it, my only hope was to accompany Paolo and Shorty into the house. Once we were there, I would lead them straight to the photographs and get them out. We could do the job quietly and directly without waking anyone. Of course, they’d probably kill me afterward. But at least Anna and Clara would be spared.

  Beyond the ferny glade, we came up behind Old Splendor. Here we stopped and I was pushed down to my knees. Paolo and Shorty crouched to either side of me. The garden stretched before us. At the end of the flagstoned path, I saw the sleeping face of the cottage, wrapped in peace.

  Paolo shook my shoulder. “Which door?”

  I looked up at him.

  “Which door is easiest?” he asked.

  “This one right in front of us,” I said, truthfully. “You just have to give it a little push. It’ll open right up. They never lock it. So for God’s sake, don’t go kicking it in or anything.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.” Paolo kneed me in the back. “So once we’re inside, where is the library?”

  “Turn right when you get inside the front door. Go through the sitting room. The library’s right after that. The pictures are in the desk. In the upper right hand drawer. It’s unlocked.”

  “Anything else?”

  “What?”

  “Anything you forgot? A dog, maybe?”

  “Well, no, I — ”

  I glanced at Shorty. He appeared to be hiding something behind his back. He twitched a little. I saw that it was a length of pipe as long as a man’s forearm. That pipe was meant for my head, I knew. I’d be coshed the moment the two were sure they’d extracted all the helpful information I knew. Could I stall them?

  “Let me think now . . .” I said, trying to move out of Shorty’s range.

  “No, you don’t.” Paolo thought I was making my move, and grabbed for the nearest part of my body. It happened to be my face. He took it into his whole palm and squeezed it like a grapefruit. I kicked at his stomach but he jumped around and locked my head in his arm. I could not move and expected at any moment to feel the knife plunge into my body.

  But something had happened. I could feel Paolo’s body tense and go still. Though I was still crushed under his stinking armpit, I could hear him whispering to Shorty. I looked up, but all I could see was the side of Paolo’s shirt. Suddenly, I was released. A split second later, a foot slammed into my face. I could feel the grit and almost taste the shoe leather. The shock passed like an ugly black wave through my brain. When it had passed, I was lying on my stomach. Paolo had his knee in my back and his forearm around my mouth. Opening my eyes, all I could see was a bit of his shirt and a nobbly mound that could only have been one of the tree’s huge roots. Paolo was hardly breathing and Shorty was silent.

  Since I didn’t know what was going on, I tried not to worry about it. Instead, I lay there feeling terrifically sorry for myself. I almost sobbed recalling the last night I had been in the garden. How ironic, I thought. As I was being brutally held prisoner by two vicious thugs, the air around us was probably filled with invisible fairies. Perhaps they were mating. I imaged the elves’ pursuit, the capture, and the swirl of spinning bodies. I thought about the lovely fairies with whom I had disported, and how they were now dancing with equal indifference down Shorty’s back and over Paolo’s head into the garden.

  If only the two criminals knew. If they held perfectly still, they could actually have felt the fairies. If they held perfectly still and concentrated all their attention on the most delicate nuances of sensation in their skin.

  The silence was finally broken by Paolo. “Who is it?” he whispered.

  “Dunno,” said Shorty.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  I felt Paolo’s fingers creep across my scalp. He grabbed a handful of my hair and roughly jerked my head upward.

  “Keep quiet,” he said. “And look straight ahead. See that? Who is that?” I painfully raised my eyes.

  “Oh God,” I prayed. “Not tonight. Please, not tonight.”

  It was Rev. Drain. He was stark naked and tripping gingerly down the flagstoned path.

  “You know him?”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to control my fear and despair.

  “Who is he?”

  “The minister.”

  “The fucking minister? Naked in the garden? What’s he doing?”

  “He comes here at night.”

  “What for?”

  I should have told them he came there to pray; but I was addled with horror and half-suspected that the idea of prayer would enrage the evil men beyond control.

  “He does a funny thing here. It’s a funny — sexual — thing. He does it all alone. Don’t bother him, I beg you.”

  “Alone? Or with you?”

  “What?”

  “That’s it,” Paolo whispered inches from my face. “I thought there was something funny about you being out here. You’re a fucking sod, you are. That’s what you’re up to. You and him. You’re disgusting. You make me sick.”

  “No, no — ”
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  “Oh fuck,” Shorty exclaimed. “He’s coming this way.”

  I could see what Drain was doing. He had been testing various areas of the garden. I guessed that he was searching for the one that would produce the effect he was looking for. His search was taking him closer to the mighty tree, and I guessed that he would be coming even closer. As I had observed, the tree seemed to be a kind of Charing Cross for the local fairydom.

  How often did Drain come to that spot, I wondered. And how — how in the name of heaven had he discovered the indescribably subtle sensation of fairies dancing on his skin in this of all places? I myself, of course, had felt the fairies. But I had been looking for them. And I could see them. Drain, however, couldn’t see the fairies. I could tell by looking at him. He was easing his way across the garden guided solely by his sense of touch. He could not know the exact nature of what he was feeling. He probably only knew that it was real and that it felt good.

  A remarkable man.

  Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I can imagine his chance discovery of the thing on one of his long midnight runs — his first encounter with the otherworldly sensation. It’s a bright moonlit night, a week, a month, a year earlier? He is probably improvising a route, trotting through fields, past the factory, and then through the ferny glade. It has been a fierce, energetic run. But now he is on the point of collapse. He is at the end of his physical energy. Hot, sweaty, and breathing hard, he staggers past the great tree and into the Templetons’ garden. There, feeling the soft grass under his feet, he drops onto his back. In an ecstasy of exhaustion, he lies there, staring into the starry sky. Perhaps a daffodil hangs over his face, or a lacy cloud of baby’s breath. Maybe a branch, heavy with pink blossoms, hides the moon. So pleasant! The air is scented with intoxicating spring perfumes. He closes his eyes. He can feel the sweat evaporating off his skin. His pores contract in waves of delicious coolness. Suddenly, he feels something on — or in — his arm, leg, or belly.

  What is it? Does he try to brush it away? Pesky insect! Or does he sense that it is something else? The fairy touch is like nothing else in nature. And not by any definition disagreeable.

  So Drain lies there, keyed to a high pitch of sensitivity, feeling this unaccountable sensation pattering over, around, and through him and what must he think? He thinks, “I must go along with this feeling. I must lie here and follow it wherever it takes me.” And where it took him was —

  Well, just then, it was bringing him closer to Paolo, Shorty, and myself, where we hid behind the great tree. He was surely closing in on a strong concentration of the sensation he sought. Fairies must have been cascading down the roots of the tree like Hindus down the banks of the Ganges. Drain was pursuing the best spot with the fetishist’s hair-splitting niceness. He wouldn’t stop, I knew, until he’d found just the right place.

  As I prayed that he would give up and turn back, I felt the knife blade pressing into my back.

  Paolo’s mouth pressed damply into my ear. “Say something to him,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Think of something.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Whatever I said would have brought Drain’s solitary pleasure to an end. My words would tear him from his beautifully private world of self-delighting idiosyncrasy and drag him into the world I currently occupied, a world of pain, confusion, horror, and evil.

  Paolo pressed the knife more deeply into my back. It tore through my coat and broke the skin of my back.

  I cried out.

  Drain heard. He jumped up into a crouch. Every muscle in his body popped alert. He was motionless, but for a slight twitch under his eye.

  “What — who — ” he stammered. “Who is that?”

  Still in a crouch, he moved a little forward until he spotted me.

  “Castle? Is that you? Who is that with you? Oh, my goodness. Well, well, well.” A desperate smile spread over his features. “I suppose,” he said, “you must be wondering. I know this looks — I mean, it’s quite simple, really — ”

  He stood up in a matter-of-fact way, silent for a moment. He was frantically, no doubt, trying out explanations and excuses in his mind.

  I didn’t want him to get any closer.

  “Drain,” I said, feeling the knife just inside my skin.

  “Run.”

  The syllable “run” was no sooner out of my mouth than my arm was violently twisted. It felt like my shoulder blade was being torn out like a turkey wing. And it was all for nothing. Drain didn’t understand. He was preoccupied with his own shame.

  The poor man. I imagine what must have been going through his mind. Whoever I was with, he probably guessed he was destroyed. He had been found out. How could he explain? The effort of lying and of keeping up a lie would have been too much for him. What was in store for him? Disgrace, ridicule. He came toward us now with his eyes cast down and his powerful chest heaving.

  To me, it is unspeakably tragic that Drain’s spirit was crushed the moment before Shorty came up behind him with the lead pipe and did the same to his skull.

  “Run!” I screamed.

  But Drain, mortally struck, pitched forward. He landed against me, the shoulder of his carcass taking another blow from the pipe — a blow that was meant for my head.

  I made a grab for the weapon. It was on the downswing and I thought I had a chance. But in a moment, I found myself in a welter of arms and legs. With Drain sagging amid us, I felt myself being grabbed, struck, poked, and pulled. The moment I was able to struggle free, the knife blade swung at my head. I ducked, and was half-blinded as it ripped across the boney ridge over my eye.

  Nonetheless, I was free. I ran in the direction where there was no one to obstruct me. I screamed loudly. I screamed for help, mother, the police, and Jesus Christ. I ran across the garden, vaulted the wall, crossed the road, and ran through the field across the road. I thought I heard footsteps behind me. I was actually happy when I thought this. If the villains are chasing me, I thought, they are not in the cottage harming the Templetons. And if I make enough ruckus, and draw them far enough away, there is little likelihood that they will return.

  At the same time, I was sure that I was only moments from death. I was sorry to go this way. I was also sorry that no one would ever know how I sacrificed myself to save the Templetons. I would never enjoy their gratitude — or Linda’s admiration — for my deed.

  How long did I have? As I made it across the field and into the little woods, I looked behind me. I slowed down. There was no one there. Whoever was following me had dropped away. Or they were hiding.

  I dived onto my belly and crawled into a shallow ditch. Peering over the edge, I scanned the fields and woods. But all was dark and peaceful. The chimney of the cottage merged with the silhouettes of the treetops on the horizon. Overhead, clouds were rolling over the stars.

  I slid farther down into the ditch. Fear, horror, and tension raced through me like Alpine cataracts. My head throbbed. Sweat poured down my face. But it was not sweat: It was blood from the gash over my eye. Faint and frightened, I looked down into the ditch. There was a kind of tunnel there. A man-sized pipe made of brick. It was dark. I crept into it and lost consciousness. From thence I was pulled the next morning and placed under arrest for the murder of Rev. Drain.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  How I Am Spending the Last Night of My Life

  Actually, I am not writing this at all. Who would be foolish enough to think that a condemned man, on the night before his execution, would have the stamina or patience to commit such a mass of words to paper? Where would he get the paper? Does anyone think that jailers are eager to supply condemned prisoners with reams of paper, unlimited ink, not to mention coffee and other stimulants necessary to keep the mind fresh while in the act of composition?

  Writing this? Not at all. I am thinking it. And I am thinking it all while in the a
ct of sketching a fairy with a piece of charcoal on the single sheet of paper I have been allowed on my final evening. Of course, I am drawing from memory, and not from life; and as I try to capture the look of a fairy exactly as I remember it, I’ve had to do a lot of smudging and crude erasures, leaving the paper as gray and shadowy as that first photographic enlargement that so electrified Walsmear and I back on my London rooftop that delightful spring morning. So it is that the more accurate my picture becomes, the more difficult it is to see; and when it is complete, I imagine that the figure may very well be rendered invisible to all but those who are looking for it among the clouds and rubbings — if at all even to them.

  My little fairy is a female one; for female is the shape of my desire. But how much more interesting — in retrospect — were the males, with their disproportionate heads and chaplets of thick hair. Where are they now, my elvish mates? They who, after all, wanted nothing more than what Rev. Drain got from his fairy mistresses; or what I and the minister’s wife longed for from one another. So many of the elves dead, necks broken by Anna and Clara — their elvish souls filled with concupiscence, they were crushed by the terrible power of innocence. But what I am asking is: Did the elves have souls?

  I have no doubt that at this time tomorrow, I will be seated opposite Rev. Drain in some celestial chair, discussing the incredible chain of events that brought both our lives to a fatal cross. I have no doubt that I will be doing that — or I will not be doing that. One or the other.

  If I am, my hope is that we will be surrounded by jolly elves, sporting down sunbeams and spinning through the clouds with spry, fairy mates. Perhaps, however, the elves and fairies have no souls. Perhaps they are more like cats: seeming to share some of our feelings and sensibilities, but dying a final sort of death, from which no spirit emerges, and which marks the completion of a life, as our human deaths never seem satisfactorily to do.

  The moon has passed down behind one of the guard towers. It has become very dark in here. I can hardly see my drawing anymore. How annoying. This will be the only record of what a fairy looks like for a long time to come. Brian Templeton destroyed the fairy photographs in his possession. And my copies and enlargements disappeared among the possessions auctioned off to pay my debts and legal fees.