I wasn’t imagining the ghost of Mrs. Irene Cadence-because I didn’t see the woman. Not at first.
The camera did.
The biologist had loaned me an expensive 35mm with a tripod and a wireless shutter attachment after I’d mentioned how much I admire the Everglades work of Clyde Butcher: black-and-white landscapes of cypress and saw grass that captured subtleties of color better than any color shots I have ever seen.
“In the hands of the right photographer,” the biologist had explained, “a fine lens reveals details the human eye can’t see.”
What a lovely notion, I had thought at the time.
The observation didn’t seem so fanciful now.
The biologist had loaned me a fine lens, too-a Canon 24mm with incredible light-gathering capabilities. It also had an incredible price tag-I’d checked-so I was extra careful as I set everything up and took a few practice shots outside the gate.
The house became my subject. Harsh sunlight flared off the windows. It put an icy edge on falling leaves. I snapped a few images on full auto, then experimented with slower shutter speeds. To avoid camera shake, I used the Remote button and kept my distance. After a half dozen or so, I checked my work on the LCD view screen.
Nice shots. The wide lens allowed the house to be itself, old and rambling, aloof to trees that had shaded it for a hundred years. Brash sunlight was transformed into saffron and bronze. The porch off the sitting room was a cavern of shadows. Above it, the balcony was bright as a New Orleans stage but solemn for its emptiness.
Or so I thought until I saw what the lens had seen.
Three frames in, there she was: a blurred image through the upstairs window. A blouse of lipstick red, a face as translucent as moonlight. But tiny because of the wide-angle lens. My head swiveled between the LCD screen and the house while I checked two more frames. In the next shot, only a smear of her shoulder appeared… then the women’s face in profile, but no more detailed than an antique cameo. She wasn’t overweight like the witches, nor was she silver-haired like Lucia. This woman was young, lithe, full-breasted.
The woman on the balcony…
The ghost story about Irene Cadence came into my mind, a lady of great beauty with raven-black hair. It couldn’t be her, though. Ridiculous, even to linger on the possibility. But, if not… who had the lens discovered?
I looked up from the gate, studied the window, then yelled, “Hello? Are you there?”
Not now, she wasn’t. I opened the gate, took a few steps but lost my courage. So I returned to the camera-which is when I realized that I was wearing a blouse of copper red. Not as bright but similar. And I, too, had black hair, although it was pulled back in a ponytail. The explanation was obvious: I had photographed my own reflection.
Of course!
I was convinced. But the feeling didn’t last. The woman in the photo couldn’t be me. I was at ground level. She was upstairs behind the French doors that connected the balcony to the music room. It was an impossible angle. Or was it? I turned and looked. My SUV, with its big mirrors, was behind me. If the sun had hit a mirror just right, and if I was standing just so, and if the light had ricocheted upward…
The solution was too complicated. What I needed was a closer look at the photos.
The camera’s electronics were high-tech. It took a while to figure out how to zoom in on the LCD screen. A toggle switch, click by click, magnified the image, but was no help. The woman’s image was soon so pixelated, she vanished in a shattering of red and moonglow skin. That caused me to wonder if my imagination had reconfigured oak leaves and light into a female form. Another look at the images proved it had not.
Well… there was an easy way to settle the matter. I would go inside the house. First, though, rather than leave the camera unattended I returned to my SUV and opened the back. When I did, a startling option presented itself. Piled against the seat were a blanket and a few towels. Beneath them, I had hidden the pistol that Birdy had wanted to see. There was a loaded magazine, too.
Put the gun in the camera bag? I thought about it for a moment, but only a moment.
No… I didn’t need a gun to confront a woman even if she was a ghost. I had my cell phone. If the woman didn’t make her presence known when I entered, I would press the issue-but only after getting the pictures I needed.
I was losing my light. It is a phrase that photographers use.
THEO HAD BEEN inside the house… and maybe still was. The lingering odor of marijuana and freshly burned resin hung at nose level when I entered. A broken cookie on the floor told me Lucia and the witches had been here, too.
I stopped in my tracks and listened. Theo, the nonstop talker, couldn’t bear silence. But that’s what I heard, silence: the slap of wind against roof, the creak of old wood. A full minute I stood there.
The fire, although smoldering, was nearly out, but that was no guarantee the house was empty. The realization spooked me. If there was a woman upstairs, ghost or not, she was welcome to leave or stay. That was up to her. I wasn’t going to risk confronting a man who had dodged a rape charge. Another concern was that, after only a few minutes inside, smoke that hazed the windows had already moved into my bloodstream. I could feel it. The chemical it contained sparked a glowing clarity that soon teetered between giddiness and despondence.
Maybe I spoke my thoughts aloud. I’ve got to get out of here.
I did. I retraced my steps, padlocked the door, and was dialing 911 when I remembered why I’d come. Pictures… I needed pictures. Photographing the archaeological dig site required me to break federal law. I couldn’t call the police. Not yet.
Damn it.
It made me angry to be in such a position-caught between the law and my fear of a man I had disliked at first sniff. Which is why, when I opened the back of my SUV, I made a decision that was unlike me. I pulled the blanket back and removed the pistol from its clever carrying case. And it was clever: a leather box the size of Webster’s Third. It looked like a book, too, NEGOTIATORS embossed in gold on the cover. I had no idea what the title meant-another ruse, I assumed.
My Uncle Jake, in life, had been wise and sweet and bighearted as a retriever. But, in death, by leaving me this gun, he’d become a man of mystery. The gun was silver steel, smooth as glass in my hand, and a mystery in itself. Even finding it on the Internet had been a chore. Thirty-some years ago, a master gunsmith had produced a concealment weapon for a government agency. The name of the agency was still classified, although it was known that fewer than two hundred of the special weapons had been produced. The pistol was a shortened Smith & Wesson with a hooked trigger guard, a sleek fluted barrel, plus other tweaks for fast and lethal shooting. My gun expert friend, Birdy, had pronounced it “Beautiful; perfectly balanced.”
Odd… Until this instant, I had thought the pistol ugly, even brutal, in appearance. There was a reason. I had used it to shoot a killer. The thump of bullet taking flesh, the man’s screams, still troubled me during moments when I lacked confidence or doubted my own virtue. Even touching the barrel could spark a response similar to what I’d felt that day: body shakes, labored breathing. It was humiliating what fear had done to me. And that was the problem. I felt no guilt about shooting the man. Quite the opposite. Bunny Tupplemeyer had guessed correctly about me first aiming at his genitals but losing my nerve. What haunted me was the memory of how helpless I had felt… and the knowledge that the frightened girl inside me could not be trusted to overcome life’s inevitable dark surprises.
The gun reminded me of the truth. That’s why I avoided the very sight of it. Perhaps I was feeling the effects of the smoke and whatever drug it contained because the truth was vividly clear now. And the truth was this: fear was my enemy, not the gun. Fear-and weakness-both separated me from the woman I pretend to be. Why hadn’t I realized this before?