The Seer of Shadows

by Avi

  “That can’t be!”

  “I should so like to see her,” whispered Pegg. “To dance with her again.”

  “Pegg,” I asked, “why did Mrs. Von Macht want a photograph?”

  “These days Mrs. Von Macht’s friends talk a great deal about spirits. The talk worried Mrs. Von Macht. She decided to put her photograph on Eleanora’s tomb to scare Eleanora’s spirit away—just in case. She told me to find an unknown photographer, so none of her friends would know what she was doing.”

  “And the candlestick,” I asked, “why is that in the pictures?”

  “It was the first thing Mrs. Von Macht purchased after Eleanora died. She wanted it in the pictures to mock Eleanora, to remind her of her defeat. Horace, since the Von Machts took possession of Eleanora’s money, not a day has passed without some extravagant purchase.”

  “Why did she say she had many pictures of Eleanora?”

  “She’ll say anything to make people believe she cared for her.”

  What could I say to such crimes? Such a recital was its own condemnation.

  “Horace,” said Pegg, “you should be going. The Von Machts may come home.”

  I was reluctant to leave. “Pegg,” I said, “we must talk more.”

  “I’ll find a way,” she said, taking my hand and leading me from the dark room out to the hallway and back to the door. When we reached the doorway, we stood there for a moment, hands clasped. I didn’t wish to leave her and I think she did not want me to go. But of course, I had to.

  Within moments I stood beneath the dark stoop, the door to the Von Macht house closed behind me. As I walked back to our rooms, I reviewed Pegg’s story. A ghastly tale. If ever a spirit had reason to seek revenge, Eleanora had it. Yet true reason said such a thing could not be done!

  Reaching home, I was glad that Mr. Middleditch hadn’t returned. No doubt he was still celebrating his fraud. I got ready for bed.

  But as I was removing my jacket, I came upon the print of the four images I had taken to Pegg. I had become so absorbed in her story, I had forgotten to share it with her. I pulled it out but suddenly found myself reluctant to look at it. Next moment, I chided myself for being so foolish and made myself look.

  It was like a blow to my heart: For what I saw on that print were not four images of Eleanora Von Macht but five.

  I stared with disbelieving eyes. I had done no more than carry the print in my pocket. But there it was, as if self-created, another image of Eleanora Von Macht—and the clearest yet.

  In the end I decided what I was seeing was not there, because it could not be. I made up my mind that it was simply a nightmare, a fixation concocted in my tired brain.

  Slipping out of my clothes, I blew out the candle, buried myself under the blankets, and tried to convince myself that in the morning I’d wake from this dream and the ghostly fifth face would be gone.

  Unable to sleep, a new thought came: Each new image of Eleanora was in better focus. It was as if my presence brought the face into the photograph—as if the ghost of Eleanora was coming closer and closer to this world!

  Was Pegg right? Had I somehow brought her back into life?

  TWENTY-ONE

  I MUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP at last. When I woke next morning, the first thing I did was snatch up the print and look for that fifth image.

  It had vanished.

  Enormously relieved, I told myself that it had been a dream after all. In fact, I was quite prepared to consider everything I thought I had seen and done a bad dream. Of course, when I checked the photograph, those four images remained. No matter. The fifth image did not exist, and for the moment that was enough. It enabled me to put aside my irrational ideas of ghosts. My old sense of reason reasserted itself. I had no doubt I would find an explanation for the rest. And yet . . . and yet . . . it wasn’t long before my unease returned.

  Mr. Middleditch soon arose. He was still feeling very chipper, and over our usual breakfast of oatmeal and coffee he insisted upon regaling me with an account of the good time he had enjoyed the night before. His mood was so jaunty I ventured to ask, “Were you bragging about what you did?”

  “Me?” he cried with a guffaw. “Brag about the spirit photography business? I should hope not. I might as well run an advertisement in the Daily News to tell other photographers how they could horn in on my business. But Horace, I’ve been thinking how we should prepare for the next round.”

  “What next round?”

  “Mrs. Von Macht will call us back.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “You’ll see,” he said with a grin. “She’ll want another photograph, the better to determine if what she saw was a fluke.” He laughed. “I intend to be prepared.”

  “In what way?”

  “She’ll ask me about the image. I’ll remind her that when she first visited me at my studio she spoke of souls, or ghosts, and . . . what was it? Ectoplasm. That she felt her late daughter was restless. Something like that. I’ll remind her that it was she who had to convince me there was an image among the palms. And that’s not all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve decided we should go to the cemetery—Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Photograph that poor girl’s grave.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell Mrs. Von Macht I was so touched by her story—by her deep-felt grief—that I was moved to visit the girl’s resting place. What’s more, I felt absolutely compelled to photograph it. And voilà! Another spirit photograph.”

  “But—”

  “We’ll use the spy camera—the more practiced we are, the better.”

  Of course, he said we, but I knew perfectly well he meant me. “Must I?” I said.

  He laughed. “Now, Horace, am I not your devoted teacher? And you, my loyal apprentice? So of course you must go. And since it’s a long way, you’d better get started.”

  With much reluctance I did so.

  The sky was dull that morning, the air chilly with a feel of impending rain. I was glad I had my coat, though the jostling spy camera was a bother.

  All the same, I traveled to the bottom of Manhattan and paid two pennies for the South Ferry across the crowded East River to the city of Brooklyn. Once there I boarded one of the plodding omnibuses that ran directly to the cemetery, some two and a half miles away. I left Charlton Street at about nine in the morning and did not arrive at the cemetery gates until near one in the afternoon.

  Green-Wood Cemetery was not an ordinary graveyard, nor just a burial ground for the wealthy and fashionable. No, Green-Wood was and is where people of great renown and importance are buried. (My namesake, Horace Greeley, had recently been laid to rest there.) Moreover, thousands of people visit its vastness—not only to see the graves of the famous, but also to see elegant sculpture and, I dare say, to enjoy the clean Brooklyn air, so different from Manhattan’s.

  The main gates are like some fantastical beachside sand castle with three gothic towers that stand more than a hundred feet tall. The massive structure is adorned with countless arches, battlements, towers, gables, and religious carvings. Resurrection is the theme, and the gates are emblazoned with sayings such as “The Dead Shall Be Reborn.”

  Flanking the twin entry gates are offices. Within the right-hand one, I found a uniformed guard—a Gettysburg veteran with one arm and a spread of medals on his chest. He was seated behind a desk covered with large ledgers.

  “Help you, young man?”

  I informed him that I was visiting a grave.

  “Which family?”

  “Von Macht.”

  “Ah! Yes, indeed. That sad affair. The parents quite cut up. But,” he said, looking up and cocking an eyebrow, “it didn’t prevent them from holding a very fashionable entombment.”

  He opened a ledger, wet his thumb with his tongue, and flipped through pages, fingering the columns until he announced, “Von Macht. Lot Eighty-two.” He pointed to an elaborate wall map depicting many paths as intertwined as a d
ish of noodles. The Von Macht mausoleum, he indicated, was on Rue Path. He was kind enough to draw a map.

  “Best hurry,” he warned. “Storm’s coming.”

  I set off.

  Map in hand, I walked along the ways (Sunset Path, Sylvan Avenue) through the cemetery’s vast sculpture garden of gray, stone-hewed grief. It was exceedingly hilly and irregular. Within its valleys I could see little save brown grass, leafless trees, grave markers, and mausoleums. At the highest elevations I could observe Manhattan; the Lower Bay, full of ships; and even New Jersey.

  Closer at hand were graves by the hundreds—a city of the dead, populated by weeping stone gods, goddesses, saints, animals, and angels. Everywhere images of deceased persons were on display, usually in small frames. A few were photographs.

  While some graves were pathetically small, for infants, others were showy, large enough for whole genealogies to gather within. A fair number had massive entryways with stone sheep, lions, and even a sleeping dragon for eternal guardians. Some graves were embedded in the hillsides.

  The day’s light being dreary, and as there was no true greenery, the only bright color was the occasional discarded or decaying flower. It made me feel as if I were drifting through a garden of shadows—as if I had entered into a living photograph.

  It being a weekday and the weather increasingly threatening, only a few people were about, mostly mourning families with children. So as I wended my way along the twisted paths, I was for the most part a solitary wanderer. By the time I stood before the Von Macht tomb, thunder was rumbling.

  The tomb was a grandiose stone structure with a pair of large iron doors. Over the door’s lintel was carved the name VON MACHT. Above stood a statue of God in glory, His arms spread wide as if grateful to receive the Von Machts. His feet trampled a vanquished stone skeleton—a symbol of death, I supposed. The skull leered as if mocking me. It fleetingly occurred to me that its expression was that of the photographed face of Eleanora.

  On one of the doors a stone tablet listed the names of those interred, the last one freshly chiseled: ELEANORA. I gazed upon the doors, and wondered what lay beyond, if the poor girl truly rested easy.

  Right next to the tomb, a little bit apart, was a figure that caught my attention: a tall, gray, and beautiful angel, her great wings drooping, her head slightly bowed in deep-felt sorrow, grief personified. For a moment I was sure she was weeping, but then realized the tears were rain, which had begun to fall.

  I stepped back, and since no one was about, made no attempt to conceal that I took six hurried photographs, the maximum allowed on the camera’s circular plate.

  With the rain now increasing steadily, I was glad to turn back. But I had gone only a few paces when a crack of lightning burst above. In the flash of white light I spied a young girl in a black dress dart across the gap between two tombs. Having been lost in thought, to see her dash by was startling. Moreover, such was my constant preoccupation that for a second I actually thought the girl was Eleanora.

  I stood stock still, my legs shaky, my heart pounding almost (I’m sure) as loudly as the storm’s thunder. But the girl was gone as quickly as the lightning, presumably over a hill and thus lost to sight.

  I took a deep breath and began to flee the pelting storm, all the while trying to convince myself that I had not seen what I saw.

  The journey home was cold, dull, and damp, my thoughts filled with much foreboding.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I REACHED OUR ROOMS close to seven o’clock. Upon arriving, I found a note from Mr. Middleditch: “Went out.”

  Glad to be alone, I got out of my wet clothes, devoured a simple supper of bread, cheese, and a bumper of tepid milk. I told myself that in the morning I would get up early and develop my new pictures. Though it was not late, I went to bed—the sooner to rise.

  Again, I could not sleep. In my mind, I kept wandering through Green-Wood Cemetery—seeing it as a photograph. I saw anew the countless graves. The tall, gray, grieving angel. The storm. I recalled the briefly noticed girl—in her black dress. But no matter how I twisted and turned (in body and thought), I always seemed to return to the Von Macht tomb—as if it were pulling at my thoughts, at me.

  Accepting that sleep was not possible, I got up and decided I might as well develop the pictures I’d taken. And after going through the usual process, I eventually had a decent negative—six pictures—all of the tomb. Using a magnifying glass, I held it up to the candlelight.

  I gasped. The fragile glass plate nearly slipped from my fingers. For in indistinct but undeniable fashion, there were not just pictures of the tomb but images of Eleanora Von Macht! Not just her face, but her full self—in a black frock.

  As for the sorrowful angel, she was not in my pictures. She had vanished from the scene.

  I noticed another thing: As I had first observed of the images from the Von Macht house, the focus on each image of Eleanora became progressively sharper, so that the last image was as real as life.

  I stood there in great distress. My head fairly seethed. My jaw clenched. I wanted to cry. The next moment my mind went to the words on the cemetery gate: The Dead Shall Be Reborn. In that moment my understanding of the world completely altered. My body turned cold. Tears ran down my face as I had to accept the extraordinary fact: I, Horace Carpetine, had somehow brought Eleanora Von Macht back into the living world.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “DID YOU GET SOME DECENT pictures of the girl’s grave?” Mr. Middleditch asked over breakfast next morning.

  I was hardly able to answer. I had slept little. I was tense, and quite upset. The considerable time I’d spent thinking how I was to answer his inevitable question had brought little comfort.

  “I did,” I said. “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Something happened to ruin them.”

  “Ruin them? Do you mean to say you’ve already made prints?”

  “Just negatives.”

  “What’s the problem, then?”

  “I don’t know how it happened. I was concentrating so on taking the pictures that . . . someone got into them.”

  He wagged a finger at me. “That, young Horace, is the classic photographer’s botch!”

  “I’m . . . sorry.”

  “Oh, well. You can always go back. But better show them to me. Perhaps they can be salvaged.”

  I fetched the negatives. Squinting, he held them up to the light. “Fetch the magnifying lens.”

  I did.

  He looked and said, “Is that a girl standing there?”

  “I think so.”

  “Mean-spirited little tyke,” he said, not realizing who it was. “And you didn’t notice?”

  “No, sir,” I answered truthfully.

  “Any idea who?”

  “A ghost.”

  He laughed. “You really are getting into the spirit of things, aren’t you?” he said with a grin. “Ah, well, consider it practice. You will need to go back. Let’s just be patient. I suspect we’ll hear from Mrs. Von Macht before too long.”

  He was right. Next day a message came by post:

  Mr. Middleditch: Would you be kind enough to call at my home at 3 p.m. I shall send my carriage for you.

  MRS. FREDERICK VON MACHT

  Needless to say, Mr. Middleditch was elated by what he took as a request. I saw it as a summons.

  “Shall I come?” I asked.

  “By all means, Horace. You’re very much a part of all this. You must have your enjoyment, too.”

  That was fine with me. I needed to see Pegg again, to continue our conversation, and to tell her what had happened at the cemetery.

  Later that day—Mr. Middleditch didn’t notice—I quietly made two prints of one of my photographs of the Von Macht tomb. I intended to give one to Pegg.

  Next afternoon at two thirty the Von Macht carriage came to our door, and we were taken to the Fifth Avenue house. Pegg let us in. When she did, she and I exchanged knowing looks, nothing more. S
he led the way to the parlor, holding the door open. Since Mr. Middleditch entered before me, I was able to slip my photograph to Pegg without anyone noticing. She took it and shut the door behind us.

  Mrs. Von Macht was as elegant as ever, in a dark purple dress, quite striking against her black hair. In her hands was the photograph Mr. Middleditch had made. She seemed tense.

  She was not alone. Her husband was with her. When I had first seen him, he had appeared angry. Now he stood red-faced, jaw muscles pulsating, a clenched fist gripping a walking stick as if about to give way to outright violence.

  Alarmed, I took my place behind Mr. Middleditch, a little off to one side.

  “Mr. Middleditch,” said the woman, “so kind of you to come.”

  He made his little bow. “Mrs. Von Macht. Mr. Von Macht. How can I be of service?” he said.

  “Sir,” Mr. Von Macht cried with great force. “How do you explain this . . . photograph?” He gestured toward the image in his wife’s hands.

  Mr. Middleditch appeared taken aback. “Sir?” he managed to say.

  “Mr. Middleditch,” said the woman in more controlled tones, “what my husband is requesting is an understanding of the picture. Some way of knowing how, and why, it contains the face of our late, much mourned daughter, Eleanora.”

  Mr. Middleditch relaxed. “You’ll forgive me, madam,” he said. “If I may remind you, it was you who had to convince me it was there.”

  “Claptrap!” barked Mr. Von Macht, his face turning quite red. “Of course it’s there. I presume you aren’t blind. Since you’re the photographer, I should like to know how it got there.”

  “It’s a mystery to me, sir.”

  “Mystery!” shouted Mr. Von Macht. “Are you suggesting that it got there of its own accord? Do you take me for a fool, sir?” He shifted his hold on his walking stick menacingly.

  “Frederick . . . please!” cried Mrs. Von Macht.

  “Never mind, please!” Frederick went on, taking two steps toward Mr. Middleditch, his stick twitching in his hand. “Sir, you are asked to take a photograph of my wife. You do. But when you present it to her, there, lurking in the background is the face of our dead daughter. I insist upon an explanation. How did it get there?”