The Devil's Photographer Read online

"Perhaps you should take that as a hint," I reply.

  "Perhaps I should. But you'll have to forgive me if I dig a little further. Until yesterday, it had been years since I met someone who'd even heard of Bell's work. And then you turn up at the university, digging your heels in until a copy can be found. All of this effort, all of this work, and then do you know what else I discovered? You're not even a student, are you?"

  I stop walking and turn to him. "What do you mean?" I ask, my mind racing.

  "I checked you out, and you're not a student at the university. Not anymore. It seems you were on a course, but you -"

  "That was a while ago," I reply, interrupting him. "It hasn't got anything to do with what I'm doing at the moment".

  "Relax," he says. "I don't care. I'm not going to cause any trouble. I just think it's interesting that you're so obsessed with Amin Bell".

  "I'm not obsessed".

  "Really? You agreed to meet me tonight, when you'd clearly rather be anywhere else. You've obviously been working on something, and it's brought you to Bell, and frankly I find that fascinating".

  I pause for a moment. My first instinct is to just turn and walk away, but I need to keep going to the university for the rest of the week. If I abandon Dagwood here on the sidewalk, he might start bugging me when I'm at the library. "I'm just looking up some details as background research," I say eventually, "for a photographic essay I'm trying to get finished. If I seem a little over-zealous, then I'm sorry, but I just like to be thorough. I promise, though, that if I've stumbled upon anything unusual or peculiar, it's nothing more than an accident".

  "It is, is it?" He pauses. "That's a shame. I was hoping to get your opinion on something, but I guess that'll have to wait for another time. I mean, that's assuming you want to continue this discussion another time..."

  I smile awkwardly as we continue to walk. "I'm not sure my opinion is of any great value," I tell him, adjusting my shoulder bag. "I'm a photographer. I'm not an expert on anything. I'm pretty sure you know far more than me, so I don't want to waste your time. I just know about photos".

  "It's a photo that I'm talking about," he continues. "It's one I took, actually, a long time ago. There's something kind of unusual about it, and I've been meaning to get it checked out for a while. I mean, it's probably nothing, but..." He pauses, as if he's regretting this particular part of the conversation. "I don't know, I was just hoping you'd be able to take a look at it and tell me why I'm wrong, because right now I'm kind of freaked out by the image".

  "What's so special about it?" I ask.

  "If I told you, you'd think I'm insane. It's the kind of thing you really have to see for yourself. I'd really rather just let you look at it with no preconceptions, and then you can tell me what you think. You'll probably just laugh and tell me I'm crazy".

  "Do you have it with you?"

  He shakes his head. "I keep it framed on the wall of my apartment. I use it as a reminder that no matter how much I read, I can never fully understand the world".

  "Sounds interesting," I say, as we reach the street corner. Glancing at St. Abraham's, I see that the workmen are carrying some equipment into the church. It doesn't look as if they'll be finished any time soon, and I don't really fancy spending time alone in some local bar. "So did you say you live nearby?" I ask, turning back to Dagwood.

  "About two blocks away," he replies, smiling. "Do you want to come and see the photo after all?"

  I pause for a moment, feeling as if I might be on the verge of making a huge mistake. The last thing I want to do is to give Dagwood the wrong idea, but at the same time I need to kill some time, and this photo sounds like it could be at least mildly interesting. "Sure," I say eventually. "Just quickly, though. I still have to be up early, but I guess I can take a look and see if I can help you out".

  "This way," he says, leading me along the next street. "You'll probably be able to explain the whole thing to me as soon as you see it, but it's puzzled me for years. I guess it's one of those situations where the truth is staring me straight in the face, but I'm too blind to see the wood for the trees. I'm sure it's just a trick of the light, or something to do with a badly exposed negative. Still, I'm sure you'll understand why it's bothered me. If nothing else, it's pretty creepy".

  "I guess," I reply, glancing back at St. Abraham's. I figure there's no way those workmen will still be there after midnight. I'll get the photos I want, even if I have to wait up all night.

  Twenty-five years ago

  "You're turning into our best customer," the guy behind the counter says as he labels my latest roll of film. "You want this done in an hour?"

  Reaching into my pocket, I start sorting through my money, but after a moment it becomes painfully obvious that I only have enough for overnight processing.

  "Tomorrow's fine," I tell him.

  "You know what?" he replies with a smile. "We're not busy today. Pay for overnight, and I'll get it done over lunch. Does that seem fair?"

  "Thanks," I reply, placing the money on the counter.

  "I remember the photos you brought in yesterday," he continues. "Some of them were really cool. I loved the portraits you were doing of that guy out by the -"

  "I'll be back in an hour," I tell him, turning and hurrying out of the store. The last thing I want is to get into a conversation, and besides, I need to get to the bathroom. I think I'm going to throw up.

  Today

  "Can I get you a drink?" Dagwood asks as we enter his apartment. "I have everything from coffee to hard liquor".

  "Just water, thanks," I reply, figuring I need to keep a clear head. Checking my watch for the hundredth time, I decide to see if I can stay here until midnight, at which point I'll make an excuse and head back to St. Abraham's.

  "Go through, please," Dagwood says, opening the door to the lounge. "I'll bring you some water".

  His apartment is surprisingly cluttered. I would have pictured him having a much tidier, more carefully arranged living environment, but there are piles of books leaning against some of the walls, while laptops and cushions are strewn all over the place. This is not the apartment of a man who brings women home very often, and it's definitely not the apartment of someone who expected to have company tonight. In a way, that's a good thing; it means he wasn't planning to lure me back here and get me into bed.

  "Still or sparkling?" he calls through from the kitchen.

  "Still," I reply. "Thanks". To be honest, although I find Dagwood to be a little too earnest, I think I might be willing to sleep with him if he made a move. With a couple of hours to kill, I wouldn't mind some purely uncomplicated sex, and at least I know I'd be able to drop him cold if he became too clingy. Although I've become quite comfortable in my routine with Robert, there's something undeniably exciting about the idea of having random sex with a guy I barely know. It's not that I'm overcome with desire; it's just that I'd be willing to give it a try, if Dagwood made the first move. If he turned out to be clingy, though, I'd drop him like a hot brick.

  Wandering over to the bookshelf, I find that he has a number of unusual items on display. There's something that looks like an old hacksaw, and another wrench-like item that seems to have a curved back for some purpose that I can't quite make out. Everything looks to be quite old, and I can't help thinking that Dagwood is some kind of collector. I guess everyone has their little secrets; everyone looks a little weird, if you approach them from the right angle.

  "Do you collect old carpentry tools?" I ask, turning as he comes into the room.

  "Not quite," he says, coming over and setting my glass of water on one of the shelves. "I collect old medical equipment. Pre-Renaissance, mostly". He picks up the wrench-like item and turns it so that I can see the large screw set in the front. "Do you have any idea what this is?" He turns the screw, and a small spring flips open. "This is a fourteenth-century trephination device. It was designed to hold the patient's head still while a hole was drilled in the skull. The theory was that certain types of c
ranial problem, including some forms of madness, could be relieved through the drilling of a hole at the correct location".

  "Sounds... macabre," I say.

  He smiles. "Maybe. There's a small element of medical science behind the idea. In fact, some people still practice trephination today. In general, though, it's frowned upon by the medical community. Exposing the brain to direct air, while the patient is still fully conscious, is a rather controversial technique".

  "I can't imagine drilling a hole in someone's head is considered standard practice these days," I reply.

  Putting the tool back on the shelf, he picks up a small, thin, sharp-looking item. "This was used in the fifteenth century to deliver a fresh snake bite to the heart," he explains, showing me the opening at one end. "The sharp part would be driven into the chest until it perforated the heart, and an asp or some other small poisonous snake would be induced to go down the spout until its head emerged in the patient's heart chamber. The snake's body would then be squeezed in order to make the creature angry, at which point it would bite the inside of the heart. The whole thing might seem crazy now, but there were people who believed that snake venom, while poisonous in the broader sense, could restart a heart once it had stopped due to some other trauma".

  "People actually did that?" I ask, shocked at the barbarity of such a device.

  He nods. "Willingly, in some cases. They believed it would cure them of various maladies. The most common problem was believed to be Satanic possession. There was a common belief that demons could become trapped in the body, and that they needed to be flushed out. Exorcisms were considered to be only one option; a more direct route was simply to decide where the demon could be located, and cut a hole in the body so it could be released. Of course, hygiene standards back then weren't exactly great, so you can only imagine some of the infections that occurred". He grabs a small wooden case and flips it open to reveal what appears to be a long piece of thread. "I'll give you a thousand dollars," he says, "if you can guess what the hell this was for".

  "No idea," I reply.

  "It's a fifty-foot cord that patients were required to swallow. Eventually, as they were still swallowing one end, the tip would emerge from the anus. This would continue until the patient could be suspended on the cord like a bead on a necklace, at which point the cord would be soaked in various substances that were believed to have medicinal qualities. The theory was that the substances would be absorbed by the cord and passed through the patient's body, although whether such a benefit actually occurred is questionable. The final act was to pull the cord out as fast as possible, in order to cleanse the bowels. Death was not uncommon". He closes the box and places it back on the shelf.

  "And this stuff interests you, does it?"

  "I find it fascinating to see how barbaric people can be to their bodies". He pauses for a moment. "Not that such things are confined to the old days, of course. Even in twenty-first century America, we're constantly cutting into ourselves. Who's to say that one day, contemporary surgical and medical procedures won't seem absolutely horrific? It's far too easy for us to assume that we've reached the pinnacle of science, when in reality we're still groping around in the dark. But some of the old ways were quite possibly better than anything we have today. Leeches, for example, seem to be able to remove certain toxins from the body under the right conditions. Wait here". With that, he turns and hurries through to the next room.

  Taking a sip from my glass of water, I wander across to the window. Looking out at the dark New York street, I find myself wondering what might be happening down at St. Abraham's right now. Although it's interesting being here with Dagwood, I'm itching to get down to the church and find out what's going on in those ruins; I feel certain that I've got a good chance of finding something. It's strange, but I don't even know what I'm looking for, other than a hope that I might get another shot of the man from the photos. I just have this overwhelming feeling that, as time goes by, I'm gathering more and more pieces of a puzzle that'll eventually snap into focus and make perfect sense. It's as if someone is handing me pieces of a shattered vase, and I'm struggling to put them back together; eventually, as I get more pieces, I'll get a better idea of the shape of the vase, and eventually I'll understand the whole damn thing.

  "Here," Dagwood says, coming back through with a small plastic container. He joins me at the window and holds the container out toward me. "Tempted?"

  Looking into the container, I see a dozen writhing, slippery leeches. "Seriously?" I ask. It's one thing to have a bunch of old medieval medical devices; it's quite another to have some real, live leeches. "Do you use these?" I continue.

  "Sometimes. The traditional belief was that they could be used to draw out toxins and help balance the humors, although modern medicine values them more for their use with venous congestion. Leech saliva contains hirudin, which is a kind of anticoagulant. These little guys can save lives, even today". He reaches into the container and removes one of the leeches, allowing it to move slowly across the palm of his hand. "Do you want to try? Do you have any health issues that might benefit from a brief course of leeches?"

  I stare at the leech for a moment. "No," I say after a moment. "I'm totally healthy".

  "Is that right?" He drops the leech back into the container. "There are some traditionalists who believe leeches can be used for many more conditions than is generally recognized. Even some types of cancer, for example. Liver cancer in particular".

  As he carries the container back through to the other room, I find myself starting to panic. I've been very careful not to mention my medical condition to anyone. In fact, the only person who knows I'm sick is Dr. Martindale, and there's no way he'd ever reveal my personal details to anyone else. It's possible that Dagwood has done a little digging and discovered that I had health problems in the past, or perhaps he just happened to make an innocent remark that hit closer to him than he intended? Either way, I take a deep breath and try to remind myself that I need to stay calm. Dagwood's comment about liver cancer was just a coincidence, and the only way he'll suspect anything is wrong is if I start acting strangely.

  "So where's this photo?" I ask as he returns. I suddenly feel uncomfortable, as if I've allowed myself to relax a little too much.

  "Over here," he says, leading me back to the bookshelf. "Before I show you, though, I want to make sure you understand that I'm not saying this is definitely what it looks like. The whole reason I invited you up here was so that you could take a look and give me your professional opinion. I don't want to cloud your judgment in advance, so just take a look and give me your honest opinion". He grabs a small, framed photo from the wall and passes it to me. "The man in this picture. Is there anything unusual about him?"

  Taking a look at the photo, I see that it seems to show the exterior of a church. I recognize the building: it's St. Alfred's, which is one of the many churches I've photographed over the past year. I was never able to find the man in any of my photos from St. Alfred's, but Dagwood's image has an undeniable smudge next to the doorway. It looks identical to the smudges that sometimes appear on my photos, except that while mine always resolve to show the image of the man, Dagwood's seems to have remain smudged. Nevertheless, it's clear that there's the vague shape of a man hidden within the smudge, and my heart skips a beat as I realize that - for the first time - someone else has come close to capturing the same thing that I've been seeing.

  "Are you sure that's a man?" I ask, my mind racing as I try to work out how much Dagwood already knows and whether I should tell him anything else. My initial instinct is to dissuade him from pursuing this line of investigation. "It just looks like a smudge to me".

  "I can see it in your eyes," he replies. "You know it's more than a smudge".

  "It could be anything," I continue, handing the photo back to him. "It could be an imperfection in the original film stock, or a problem with the camera, or a relic of a mistake made during the development process. There are so many possible exp
lanations, a visual inspection can't possibly hope to pin it down".

  "But it's none of those things, is it?" he says. "It's a man, and I'll tell you what makes me particularly interested. He wasn't there when I took the photo. The room was empty. I was the only one there. How do you explain that?"

  "I don't," I tell him, "but it's not my job to explain every little detail, is it? Just because you -"

  "Let me show you something else," he says, interrupting me as he grabs a book from a nearby shelf. He leafs through the pages until he comes to a photo, which he shows me. My heart nearly stops as I realize that I'm staring at the man from my photos. "I think that's the man whose smudged image is in my photo," Dagwood continues. "The similarity is too great to ignore". He pauses for a moment. "Kate, this is Amin Bell. The photo was taken two years after Bell died".

  I take a deep breath. How could I not have guessed that Bell would somehow be connected to the images?

  "Come on," Dagwood says, "I'm not stupid, Kate. I can see from the look in your eyes that you know something". He pauses. "You're not a very good liar," he adds eventually.

  "What's to know?" I reply, passing the photo back to him. "You were taking photos. You didn't pay attention. Some guy wandered into the background -"

  "Not some guy. This particular guy. Amin Bell. I swear it's him, but there's no conceivable way he could have appeared in this image. I guess what I'm asking is whether there's any way the camera could have held his image and then added it later. I know that sounds like superstitious garbage, but is there any way at all -"

  "There's no way," I say. "Maybe it's just someone who looks like Amin Bell. It's not impossible that there could be a doppelganger out there".

  "You're clutching at straws".

  "No. I'm just saying that there's an explanation, even if you don't know what that explanation might be. You can't just assume that something supernatural's going on, just because you don't know how a particular thing happened". I pause for a moment, as I realize I'm being a hypocrite. Everything I'm saying to Dagwood, I should also take to heart myself. "I have no idea what caused that image to appear," I continue after a moment, "but I'd bet all the money in the world that there's an explanation, albeit one that's outside your field of reference".