Fuzz touched Sasha’s arm. “What do you mean, sometimes the dark was there? It’s Dark Cave. Of course, the dark was there. It’s there all the time.”
“Not this dark,” Sash said, taking another draw.
Fuzz waited. So did Adam.
“There was this special darkness, see. It was there no matter what. You could walk into that dark with the brightest torch, my Nan said, and it’d still be dark. All that’ll happen is, your light’ll be quenched. That’s how she put it: quenched. Like thirst.”
Adam scowled, shuffling his foot through withered leaves. The earth beneath it was a deep, rich black. He stopped.
“You couldn’t put it out, that dark. People just went into it and there was nothing to light their way. They went in and either they came back or they didn’t. No one knows what happened to the ones who didn’t.”
Adam thought again of the names he’d glimpsed on the walls. He let out an exasperated sound. There were so many: too many. If that many people had disappeared around here, someone would know. They’d have stopped it. More likely the cave had been the haunt of people like him. They’d written their own names there, and no one had come to wipe them away. Why would they? The cave was nothing special. It went so far and no further; like everything else in life, a disappointment. He realised the others were looking at him and scowled.
“I felt it,” said Fuzz.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. You felt her panicking. And you turned chickenshit.” Adam turned away. “It’s about time you grew up, Fuzz.” And then he thought: It’s not them. It’s me. Only, I couldn’t feel it because they were there. He didn’t know why he thought it. It didn’t even seem quite right, not really. He only knew that the taste of the place had stayed with him, like an echo but with a feeling instead of sound.
Sash pushed herself up. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m off. You coming, Fuzz?”
It happened quickly. Fuzz nodded and the two of them headed away, threading between the trees. Adam opened his mouth to call after them, some insult, or a question maybe: like, where they were going. Like, what they thought they were doing, just the two of them. Then he closed it again. It didn’t do to care, didn’t do to let people fuck you over. If they wanted to be alone, let them. He wasn’t going to make them think he gave a shit. Besides, he had better things to do. The other two could wait.
Daylight was fading when Adam found himself standing outside the cave once more, but he knew it didn’t matter; it would be dark inside anyway. It was different, being in the woods on his own. He didn’t know if he missed the others. He liked the clean air, the way the trees waved at him and the cave mouth opened as though to swallow him. He wasn’t sure he minded the idea of disappearing into it. He thought of the way his mother had been that morning. She’d been passed out on the sofa, an empty bottle at her side. This time it was gin, not wine. Ordinarily Adam would have been upset, but it gave him the chance to take a couple of tenners from her purse.
Adam had been shopping. Now, he pulled the first item from his bag: a large torch. The weight of it was comforting and he smacked it into his palm a few times. He opened the slot, inserted the batteries he’d bought. Now it was even heavier. He flicked it on and off a few times, watched the beam disappear into the dregs of daylight. He looked towards the cave. There was nothing to wait for. He turned his back on the trees and started walking.
This time, it was easier. The torch highlighted each irregularity in the ground, filling each dip with ink-black wells. They looked almost like footprints and Adam grimaced as he placed his feet into them. When he shone the light on the walls, he saw that there was writing on them. He made out occasional letters; more names, maybe. Then he found an almost complete date: 1971, years ago. The paint was cracked, crumbling away. Adam wondered what the date had meant, why it was important enough for someone to write it here. Someone’s birthday perhaps, or the day a couple met: sealed with a loving kiss. Sash and Fuzz, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Adam scowled.
He stood there, listening to the sound of water dripping onto rock. There was no other noise: no traffic, no voices, no teacher droning a list of facts he was supposed to remember. This time, when he went on, Adam smiled. He reached the chamber and shone his torch around it. The space was indeed roughly circular, and about twice his height. There was writing here too, and in places it was fresher. There were more names and more dates, just like Sash had said. Adam frowned. Why only names? Dates that had once meant something to somebody, and now meant nothing that he could tell?
There was darkness in the centre of the cave. Adam looked into it. He couldn’t make out the wall beyond that part. It must be too far off for his torch to reach, or perhaps there was another tunnel after all. He started to walk round the outside of the cave, tracing the wall with his fingertips. Soon he stood at the opposite side. There was no other tunnel; the wall was solid. Adam looked down at the floor and saw deep wrinkles in it, grooves leading towards the centre of the cave. They went into the dark and were lost to view. Adam shone the light along one of them. He still couldn’t see where it led. He shone it up at the ceiling. Bright lines flashed down, water dripping in the torchlight. He frowned, tried to watch them all the way to the floor. He could not.
Adam didn’t like the dark. He found his heart was thudding, a solid, heavy sound that reminded him he was alive, he was flesh and skin and bone, and could be taken apart quite easily. Could be sliced and bitten and ended.
He realised he couldn’t see the way out now. There should be a faint glow coming from the entrance, but it wasn’t there. Adam shone the torch straight ahead, into the dark. The beam was swallowed up. He heard his own breath, too loud. It sounded like some animal: a bear perhaps, or a wolf. He blinked. It made no difference to what he could see and what he couldn’t.
He shuffled quickly on around the cave wall, and realised he could see the tunnel after all. It was as though something had been blocking his sight. As he went on a few more steps, the whole, roughly circular shape of it came into view.
Adam closed his eyes. He was letting Sasha’s stories get to him. Of course, he hadn’t been able to see the tunnel: the torchlight had spoiled his night vision. If he’d just turned it off, let his eyes adjust, he would have seen it all the time.
Now he stood by the way out and turned back towards the centre of the cave. The darkness was there. There was something wrong with it. Adam frowned. There was one way to prove this was stupid, that Sasha was wrong, and that was to go in. He would go into the dark and banish the thought of the way she’d looked at him when she walked away with Fuzz.
Sash with her smooth, pale tits. Her laugh. Her grin.
Adam still didn’t move. He didn’t like the dark. It looked too solid somehow, especially when he looked at it dead on. Like a roughly circular patch of – something. And there was something else; a feeling of watchfulness, of waiting. Of presence.
Adam shook his head. It was like standing in an old house and telling yourself not to think of ghosts. The moment you did, every shadow was brought to life, every room given breath. It wasn’t that anything was there, not really. “Nothing outside your mind,” he said out loud, and wished he hadn’t. He let out another sound; a hiss of irritation, at himself and this whole stupid place, the way the three of them had parted. It was this place’s fault. He had done everything right, put on the skin he’d needed, the bravado and the toughness that got him through. It was the cave that had fucked everything up.
“I’ll show you,” he said, and this time it seemed all right to say it out loud.
Adam shone the torchlight down at the floor. It found one of those deep grooves, and he placed his feet on either side of it. He took one step forward, and another. It was easy once he’d started. One after the next. The light moved forward and the dark retreated. When Adam looked into it, though, it seemed to swirl in front of his eyes. Coalescing. Massing. He took another step and the light went out.
Adam caught his breath, started b
ack the way he’d come. He couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t think about where he was putting his feet, slipped into that groove in the floor, caught himself from falling. He had to get away; had to put some space between him and the dark before he could turn his back on it. When he’d gone far enough he turned and ran, not stopping to take out his lighter. Adam didn’t stop running until he was out of the cave mouth and into the trees, turning again so that the cave was no longer behind him. He leaned against a tree trunk, panting, hands on his knees. He let his breath come quick and fast. Then he started to laugh.
The torch was still in his hand and he shook it. The batteries rattled in their compartment. Duff batteries: of course they were. That was all there was to it, just his sodding luck. He laughed again. He turned the torch over in his hands, flicked the switch. His eyes shut involuntarily as bright light flooded his face.
“Hey: Fuzz, Sash.” They stood by the tree, a sorry thing that had been shorn of its lower branches. The tree stood in the centre of the school yard and its branches had been cut off to stop kids from swinging on them.
Sash scraped her foot across the concrete, staring at it fixedly. It was Fuzz who said, “All right?”
“I’m going back to the cave.” Adam said the words casually then wished he hadn’t. He should have made it a boast, one they’d have to rise to. Now Sash looked away, staring at the school as though she longed to be inside.
“Tonight. I’ve got a torch. You coming? It’ll be a laugh.” Adam stuck his hands in his pockets, straightened his back.
After a moment, Fuzz shook his head. “Sash is coming to ours,” he said. He made a movement, a jerk of his arm as though he’d been going to reach for her.
“You’re scared,” Adam tried. “Chickenshit.”
“All right,” said Fuzz. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “We’re chickenshit. Come on, Sash. We need to get to French.”
She nodded. Then she met Adam’s eye. “I’m not going back,” she said.
Adam looked at her for a moment. He remembered the way she’d taken off her top. The way he’d thought it meant something: the way he’d looked at her and Fuzz hadn’t. Now he realised that maybe it did.
But Fuzz was already moving. He took Sash’s arm, kept hold of it as he led her away. As he led. Fuzz.
Adam scowled after them. If they chose not to be a part of this, fair enough. It was something special he had found, that he had led them to. If they turned their back on it . . . he spat. Their loss.
It’s not them. It’s me.
He turned and started walking towards the road. If the others weren’t coming, there was no need for him to wait. No need to wait, at all.
The mouth of the cave looked smaller than Adam remembered. It didn’t look scary, or forbidding, or welcoming. It didn’t look like anything special. It just looked like what it was, an unexciting cave in an unexciting wood, clinging to the edge of an unexciting town. Adam thought of the first time they’d come here, the three of them laughing, hurrying into the cave so that Sash could light her cigarette. No, not laughing.
He shook his head. The others had no part in this. The dark was for him, and him alone. He was supposed to go inside. He knew the cave had drawn him back: he just didn’t know why.
He got the torch from his bag and it lit when he flicked the switch. He started walking.
The next time Adam looked about, he was in the chamber. He blinked. He didn’t remember the tunnel, didn’t remember if the footing had been damp or dry, whether he had slipped. It was nothing; just a blank. Like the space he saw in front of him.
The dark was there. Adam looked into it, and it seemed to him that the dark looked back. Adam listened. He felt he should be able to hear something, but there was only a faint silvering on the edge of hearing; something that could have been the blood in his veins or the wind outside or the sound the dark made.
Adam put down the torch and his bag, rummaged through what was inside. More exercise books, one with the blank pages missing. He couldn’t remember which went with which subject, which classroom, which teacher. It didn’t matter. This time he tore all the pages out, crumpled some so that they would catch. He got his cigarette lighter and set it to the paper, used another book to bat the flame towards the middle of the cave.
It fluttered to the ground and went out. It hadn’t gone far enough. Adam knew this because he could still see a faint glow where the paper smouldered.
This time he went closer before he flung the fire into the dark. Again, it went out. This time the change was so sudden Adam blinked. One moment the paper was there; the next it was not. It had fallen further in this time. There was nothing left to see, not a single smouldering page. The dark had taken it.
What was it Sash had said? They’d send people in. Sometimes they came out, and sometimes they didn’t.
Adam stood there. He thought about his mother, waiting back home. No, not waiting. Drinking. His mother’s mouth to the bottle as though she was sucking in life. His father at the television, taking in its babble with greedy eyes.
Sometimes they didn’t.
Adam’s heart beat faster. It was a small, captured thing between his ribs. He wondered what would happen to it if he went into the dark; whether it would end up somewhere new, or if it would burst. He took a step forward, hadn’t known he was going to. And he realised he could see something in the dark, after all: something that was only for him. It was waiting. Adam didn’t close his eyes. As he walked into the dark, he knew it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.
* * *
Adam stepped towards the edge of the cavern. The torch had gone out, but he could see everything. It was all so bright, now. He swept up the torch and his bag then let them fall again. He didn’t need them any longer. He smiled. The dark had filled him. There were no longer any questions, any worries. He was full, entirely full; no room left for different skins, different faces. That was behind him now. The dark had swallowed him, making him whole. Making Adam truly himself.
He looked around and saw the names written on the walls. He could see them clearly, even the ones where no ink remained. Adam smiled: almost laughed. The words he had heard on his first visit echoed through him. He had been right after all: it’s not me. It’s them.
He had expected to find his name written here, but it was not. These were not the names of the chosen, the initiated, the others like him. These were the names of the reluctant, of all those who had looked into the dark and turned away, denied its name. They were the ones who disappeared: the unwilling. The ones who had to be forced, to be made to see. Like Sasha and Fuzz. So that they were made a part of it; part of the dark. The ones who needed to be led.
Adam leaned into the wall, running his hands over its roughness. He could sense that he was close. He searched until he found the right place. There was a sharp jut of rock and he cut his palm against it, wiped the blood onto his fingers. He glanced towards the centre of the cave. He knew it was different now; the dark wasn’t there anymore, not really. Adam wasn’t worried. He carried it inside him, and when he needed it, it would be there. He turned back to the wall, could see every dip and wrinkle in the rock. He stared at it, eyes wide and bulging. And he smiled as he smeared the blood across it; the pact-blood that acknowledged what he was going to do. Acknowledged it and let it in as he wrote their names.
DANIEL MILLS
The Photographer’s Tale
DANIEL MILLS LIVES IN Vermont, New England. He is the author of the novel Revenants: A Dream of New England from Chômu Press, and his short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of venues, including Historical Lovecraft, Delicate Toxins, Supernatural Tales 20, Aklonomicon, Dadaoism, A Season in Carcosa and The Grimscribe’s Puppets.
“Spirit photography has existed for nearly as long as the photographic medium itself,” explains Mills. “As early as 1869, engraver and amateur photographer William H. Mumler was tried on charges of fraud in relation to his purported images of the dead.
“Likewise the haunted photograph is a well-established horror trope, one that has far outlasted the heyday of spirit photography. In such stories, the haunting is typically presented to the reader as a phenomenon of the development process – i.e. a photograph of an unremarkable scene is developed to reveal the otherwise invisible presence of a ghost. Horror ensues.
“‘The Photographer’s Tale’ attempts a variation on the now-familiar model. Here the camera lens itself – rather than the process of development – serves as the agent of unearthly revelation. In the viewfinder, the protagonist Lowell obtains a glimpse of the Other – of the future, perhaps, the soul in all of its grotesque splendour.
“This other reality defies all attempts at illumination, all of Lowell’s efforts to capture or contain it via film. As he himself describes it: ‘There are places – interiors, I mean – corners so dark they cannot be lighted.’ His flash powder burns but cannot chase away the darkness.
“By the time his tale concludes, he is left alone, with nothing save his guilt, his unconfessed sins, and the endless New England winter.”
I HEARD THIS STORY from a passing acquaintance, a fellow photographer whom we shall call Lowell. I met Lowell in June of last year at a mountaintop resort in northern Vermont. I had travelled there for my health and was surprised to meet another who shared my profession.
The two of us struck up a conversation one evening after supper as we took cigars on the veranda – two old men alone with the wild hills before us. The darkness covered us completely and Lowell’s haggard features were visible only by the pale orange tip of his cigar.
Photographic technique was the object of our discussion. As I recall, we argued back and forth for some time regarding the utility of the new flash lamp.
“I’m not denying that it might be useful,” Lowell conceded. “But only up to a point. There are places – interiors, I mean – corners so dark they cannot be lighted.”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books) Page 23
