The Spirit Photographer

by Jon Michael Varese

  Yes. The woman was Isabelle.

  The pairs of eyes on one side of the street fixated on the others opposite: Garrett and Elizabeth … Moody and the young woman. Each one of them frozen, like a picture.

  There was one thing he remembered—that when she left, he had been relieved. It came back to him now, that immense sense of relief that had soothed his troubled thoughts when he learned that she had run off. Of course he would miss her, because over those months his care had grown for her, even though what had happened had, in his mind, not been real.

  She looked at him. She knew. Her eyes told the truth. But there was also something else: there was that mist of himself on her face.

  Elizabeth had gone down to see her mother, in Philadelphia, and he had stayed behind with the child. The child loved Isabelle—more, Garrett often thought, than anyone else. She had a way with William Jeffrey that was magical, and Garrett adored that.

  She had crossed his path an impossible number of times. He could not deny what he felt.

  “Watch yourself, old boy,” Dovehouse had once said. “There are transgressions and there are transgressions. I’ve never taken you for a fool.”

  He had been careful … so very careful. He was a young senator, with everything to lose—or win. There was so much greatness in store for him. It was a greatness that he himself would create.

  But on that one night, the world conspired against his winning. Elizabeth, his family, his career, the voice of society—none of it had seemed to matter in that moment.

  “You do … feel something for me then?” he had finally managed to ask Isabelle.

  The slight movement of her head had at least suggested the answer that, for years, he had been longing to hear.

  When he approached her, she did not resist him. There were spirits on his breath. Still she barely resisted him, even when he pulled her close.

  Then her body tensed. He was holding her in his arms.

  “No, Senator,” she said. “No!”

  He did not listen. He did not hear her. He simply did what he wanted. But he would never be able to forgive himself. The years would not bring forgiveness.

  The eyes that now stared into his face from across the street understood everything that had happened. For they had been there—watched it. Recorded it. Remembered it. In these eyes was the story he never told.

  Elizabeth would see it. She had probably already seen it. There was no denying that Elizabeth would immediately see to whom this girl belonged. And she would chastise him for wanting to take this girl under his care. It would have been tantamount to a full confession, and Elizabeth would never stand for it.

  And then, it was as if a shard of glass had pierced his heart. Garrett grabbed at his chest, lost his balance, and fell away from the street. The wall of a storefront caught him, and held him as he continued to stumble. Elizabeth was far away from him now, standing firm—and focused on the others across the street.

  “Officer, arrest that man!” she shouted.

  What happened next, no one could rightly say, for many accounts eventually grew out of the incident. But the young woman disappeared, “kidnapped by a black man,” some said, while Moody marched forward and into the center of the street. He had made no attempt to run, as the nearby officer moved toward him. It was the traffic, and not the spirit photographer, that had made the arrest so difficult.

  Many people had observed this, and many disagreed on how things happened. But there was one observer on the street that day who was unquestionably sure of what he saw—a devilish observer who glanced at the four faces, from Moody and the girl, to Garrett and Elizabeth, and then back at all four of them again.

  Their expressions confirmed everything that Dovehouse believed but didn’t know, as if the truth had been revealed to him from the torn pages of a stolen book.

  BOOK III

  UNION

  Boston Daily Journal

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Tuesday, August 16, 1870

  SPIRITUALISM IN COURT

  IN ALL THE annals of criminal jurisprudence—and they comprise an array of crimes of almost every description—there has seldom, if ever, been recorded a case analogous to that now before Justice Downing, in the Superior Court, Suffolk County, in which the people are the prosecutors, and Edward Moody is the defendant. The specific charge brought against Moody is that by means of what he termed “spiritual photographs” he has swindled many credulous persons, his representations leading the victims to believe that by communicating with the spirit land, it was possible not only to bring back the departed spirit, but to photograph their immaterial forms. How many have been induced to speculate on the features of departed relatives and friends it is hard to say, but the prosperity of Mr. Moody’s establishment seems to have proven beyond controversy that the number was large.

  The opening of the trial drew together a large and miscellaneous audience, including a number of the most distinguished of the believers in, and propagators of, the doctrines of Spiritualism. There were also many legal gentlemen, curious to note the points of law which might arise during the trial, and a sprinkling of middle-aged ladies (believers evidently). The examination was held in the Special Sessions Court Room; members of the bar, distinguished Spiritualists (among them Judge Edmonds and Mr. A. J. Davis), and the ladies, being accommodated with seats inside the railing.

  The defendant, Mr. Moody, a man of about 43 or 44 years of age, with dark hair, beard, and eyes, and whitish complexion, was seated next to a grand army of hired counsel (all Spiritualists, the principals of which are Messrs. Townsend and Day), and appeared perfectly calm and self-possessed during the first day’s proceedings. Moody’s face is one of the few from which one fails to gather any trace of definite character. It is calm and fathomless, and although quite prepossessing, it is yet a face which one would scarcely be able to believe in at first sight.

  The people were represented by Mr. Eldridge Appleton, whose first witness, Mr. Marshall Hinckley, a highly regarded member of the American Institute for the Encouragement of Science and Invention, first brought the notice of the spiritual photography business to the authorities. Mr. Hinckley deposed that the Institute’s investigation into the “hoax” of spirit photography began many months ago, when he sent members, under false names, to have their pictures taken by Mr. Moody. The negatives from these sittings, which Mr. Moody produced right before his clients’ eyes, contained dim, indistinct, outlines of ghostly faces, staring out from various corners. Mr. Moody claimed that these faces were (in Mr. Hinckley’s words) the manifestations of “dead fathers-in-law, or mothers, or wives, or any other jumble of nonsense.” None of the sitters, however, recognized any of the alleged spirits, and emphatically declared that the faces resembled none that they had ever known in life. These agents for the Institute, three in total, took the stand following Mr. Hinckley, and confirmed everything that that gentleman had previously told the court.

  Mr. Moody is charged with multiple counts of fraud and three counts of larceny—crimes for which he could find himself sentenced to the House of Corrections for many years to come.

  XL

  “I THOUGHT THAT it went very well,” Eldridge Appleton said. “Considering—”

  “Considering what?” Marshall Hinckley responded. “Considering the Spiritualists did everything but summon the ghosts from their graves to whisper sweet nothings into the ears of the jurors?”

  “No,” Appleton said. “Considering the strength of the Defense’s cross-examination, and how well you and your men answered the questions.”

  “There were snickers,” Hinckley said. “Those damned Spiritualists were laughing at us.”

  “But they shall not have the last laugh,” Appleton said.

  Inspector Bolles looked at Marshall Hinckley, who would not be satisfied until Edward Moody was in prison.

  “The Spiritualists have hired a great deal of counsel,” Bolles said. “But the people will decide in your favor.”

&
nbsp; Bolles was making an attempt at conciliation. After only one day, it had become evident that more than a trial was taking place in that courtroom.

  “It’s preposterous,” Hinckley said. “This gaggle of witch doctors surrounding him.”

  “I thought your men made him appear very foolish,” Appleton said. “Ten dollars per sitting, because ‘the spirits do not like the throng, and want to exclude the vulgar multitude with high prices.’ It makes him out to be the money-grubbing predator that he is. I think the jury will see that.”

  “Unless,” Hinckley emphasized, “those damned Spiritualists paint a picture that even one member of the jury wants to see. There is no shortage of Spiritualists in that courtroom, and even in the jury box there may be a hankering for ‘beautiful communion.’”

  Eldridge Appleton had done his duty that day, calling witnesses to the stand and beginning the prosecution’s side of the story. There had been Hinckley’s three decoys—all three of them members of the Institute—who had gone separately to visit Moody, and requested pictures with departed relatives. The negatives, upon development, had indeed revealed spectral figures behind the sitters; but the figures, according to all three of the witnesses, “bore not a ghost of a resemblance to the deceased.” Appleton encouraged Hinckley’s men to share the details of how Moody had attempted to coerce them into seeing something that wasn’t there. “He was trying to produce a train of thought,” one witness said, “that would eventually lead me to confound the picture’s shadowy background with the features of my dear departed mother.” Another witness insisted that the likeness of his own face on the negative was “a passable one,” but that the spirit of his dead father-in-law was “a most dismal failure.”

  By the time Inspector Bolles took the stand later in the day to describe Moody’s “escape” from Boston, the courtroom had been treated to numerous accounts of how Edward Moody had seduced many of his visitors into seeing things that were not there. It seemed a wonderful and sensible coup for the prosecution—but that was what had Marshall Hinckley so enraged. Moody’s case, and the fate of photography in general, was about so much more than seeing and believing.

  “The pictures are obvious frauds,” Appleton said. “And we will prove that beyond doubt—the jury will see it.”

  “Yes,” Hinckley replied, “that’s all well and good, but if Moody, or anyone else for that matter, can take a picture of a lady with her hand in a gentlemen’s hair—a hand that one can just as easily adjust to surround the same gentleman’s waist—then how can we ever trust the accuracy of a photograph again?”

  “We can’t,” Bolles said.

  “Precisely,” Hinckley said. “But we must. We must be able to trust the science of photography. This is what is at stake here, Bolles—and I’ve been trying to tell you this all along. Before this spiritual nonsense began, it was nature—and nature only—that could be ‘took’ by the photographer’s camera. But now, where are people to turn, when I can give you Lincoln hectoring a gang of negroes in a cotton field, or the parson in the arms of a whore? Gentlemen, we have treasured photographs in believing that, like figures, they cannot lie. But they are now being made to lie with a most deceiving exactness, and that is what our efforts must make clear—and punish!”

  Did the photograph tell a lie? That was the ultimate question for Montgomery Bolles. After the arrest, Bolles had taken the negative from Edward Moody’s coat pocket himself. He had set the case down on the table between them, and there it sat during their interview, unopened.

  “You know what is in that case,” Moody had said.

  And the inspector had returned a grave nod.

  “And you know what it means, and who it was for … and what it could possibly do.”

  “We have apprehended you,” Bolles replied, “at a great cost to the people of Boston. You and this negative have come back to us at a great cost. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  “I have done many things,” Moody had replied, “but none of that matters to me any longer. I know what you are going to do with me—”

  And he paused, grimacing.

  “But what will you do with—that?”

  XLI

  THE JOURNEY INTO the swamp had not been without its consequences, and even now, many days later, Joseph could not stop replaying what had happened there. He had returned to Mrs. Lovejoy’s rooms after stealing Vivi away from the scene on Washington Street. And yet the memories of what he had seen and done down south refused to let him go. He had swum back to the crossroads, because his business there had not been finished. It would have been easier to have escaped with Moody and Vivi … to have left it all behind, in the swamp.

  He swam. The alligators and cottonmouths had disappeared. His movements were silent in the water.

  He reached the crossroads with no plan. What was it that he was going to do? He had the familiar sense of forward motion … of frantic energy, and drive. It was the same sense that had saved him, time and time again. And yet it was a sense that he had hoped to forget—someday.

  But he would always be running. That is, until he stamped out whatever he was running from.

  The crossroads were quiet. Yellow Henry’s bucket lay empty on the ground, and the bow of her boat was still pressed into the mud. How big was this piece of land? This strange island, this crossroads? How deep into the brush had she gone?

  The brush was entirely motionless—saw palmetto framed by other, softer plants. There were amorphous limbs of moss-draped trees that bent toward and away from one another. Yellow Henry—and Wilcox—were somewhere deep in that brush. There was darkness in the spot where they had both disappeared.

  He entered.

  There was noise—a small animal scurrying away. The brush was thick and yet a rough path opened before him. The earth was dry and hard packed in some spots, wetter in others. There was no telling where the land might end.

  Then, not too far away, he saw the light, and heard the voices.

  “You think it is the way it is supposed to be, and it is not. You think you know, and that there is only one way. But there is not. Now you are blinded, at least for some time. I wonder … will you finally see?”

  Henriette held a lantern in one hand and her pistol in the other. The pistol was aimed directly at Wilcox.

  Wilcox. The demon that had chased him for years. Even after the war, Joseph knew he’d never be safe, for everything that his pursuer represented would follow him, and shame him, and deny him whatever small successes he might achieve. There was no success—only escape. And running. He had dared to ask Isabelle for the one thing she would not do. He had asked Isabelle to run away with him.

  Joseph wanted to run, even now, still unobserved. He could run. There had been no logical reason for why he should have come back.

  Wilcox remained silent. He sat fixed upon a stump. There was a perfect stillness about him—he could have been part of the swamp itself.

  “You think that I want to kill you, eh?” Henriette continued. “But no, no, mon petit diable, that is the last thing I want to do. There is too much that I want you to see, and there is too much that you can show others.”

  So—she was playing games with him. What did she have in mind? Would she lock the monster in a cage, and exhibit him to others as a magnificent demonstration of her power? Or, once the man had regained his sight, would she conjure up visions, and force him to watch things that would destroy him?

  “No, no, mon petit,” she said. “My men will be here soon, and we will have some fun together.”

  Joseph pressed forward. Henriette was being careless. It surprised him how careless she was being, her ignorance of the danger she was in. Did she not understand the ferocity of this animal? After everything she had seen, and heard, and done … to draw it out … to take risks …

  And like a curse, his thoughts at that moment leapt out of him. Wilcox opened his eyes. There they were—the eyes. The familiar pits of blackness.

  “Ah, so—” Henr
iette said.

  But she was not fast enough—or at least it seemed that way—for the old woman did not pull the trigger.

  It was wrong … there was no time.

  Joseph jumped out of the brush.

  “Ah!” Henriette exclaimed.

  But Joseph was too late: both guns had fired their shots.

  Now he was on the ground. Wrestling with Wilcox on the muddy ground. Wilcox had been reaching for his own gun when Joseph burst forth and tackled him. There was no Henriette, no Isabelle, no swamp. There was just Joseph and his hunter, struggling on the dampened earth. Twigs broke and leaves tore in this place that was so used to violence. Maybe it was a panther that screamed from somewhere—the sound was angry, almost human.

  It was hard to remember—a sight one never sees again. The demise of one’s pursuer. Perhaps for good reason, there would be no memory of that. Just a body—belly up, putrid as a dead gator—with its own knife stuck into its heart.

  Joseph breathed, then cried. Then he himself awakened.

  “He’ll be good food for the swamp,” Henriette whispered. “You be sure to leave him there. He’s taken enough from here already.”

  She was herself on the ground, propped against an old cypress knee, like a toy, sunk deep into the moss. Her clothes were drenched in blood—a pool of black seeping from the wound in her breast.

  She touched the bracelet on his wrist.

  “You have her now—you take her,” she said.

  Take her … as if he could. She could never have been taken. She had never belonged to him. She had never belonged to anyone.

  He reached for Henriette’s hand but the hand pulled back. Henriette was looking somewhere beyond him.

  “Mes amis …” she said. “Nous l’emporterons—”

  And with that she released a heavy breath and closed her eyes.

  BACK IN BOSTON, he had gone immediately to Mrs. Lovejoy’s store, knowing that Moody would have taken Vivi there. Moody of course assumed that Vivi needed to be protected, but it was he who would need the protection. Did he know? Joseph wondered. Did Moody have the power to see it? Or was Moody’s devotion to Isabelle so strong that such thoughts had no hope of entering?