The Camera Man Read online

  “Too late.”

  I take another photo, then another, and another as Julio screams. Finally he slumps down against the floor, but I don't dare risk stopping, not yet. Towering over his prone form, I take photo after photo, filling the elevator chamber with light, before finally the battery gives out and I fall back, slumping against the wall.

  Gasping, I reach out and fumble with the buttons on the control panel, frantically jabbing anything I can find until eventually the chamber shudders and starts moving down again.

  With that, I fall to the floor, dropping the camera in the process. I manage to keep my eyes open for a moment longer, watching Julio in case there's any sign of him waking up, and then I have to close my eyes. I can feel more blood running from the wound in my neck, flowing out of me and making me weaker and weaker. Finally I hear the elevator's door slide open, but I don't even have the strength to turn and see whether anyone has found us yet.

  Instead, I sink deeper into unconsciousness, until all I can feel is the blood. And then, a moment later, even that sensation is gone.

  Epilogue

  Two weeks later

  Cold rain is starting to fall, but I stay at the graveside even as most of the other mourners walk away. Chrissie's coffin is down there in the dirt, waiting to be buried, but I can't help feeling as if I should be able to find some deep, meaningful words to say.

  “I'm sorry,” I whisper finally.

  That's not enough.

  “Are you okay?” a voice asks.

  Turning, I see that Julio is limping toward me. Ever since the incident two weeks ago, the left side of his face has been drooping considerably, and the doctors are apparently at a loss to explain the fact that his cheekbone was shattered from the inside. For a moment I watch his eyes, just in case there's any hint of the other presence, but after a moment I'm pretty sure that it's the real him. Still, every time I see him now, I have to check.

  Just in case that thing comes back.

  “This rain is only going to get worse,” he continues, his voice sounding slurred. “Do you want to go somewhere and talk?”

  “I don't know what there is to say,” I reply, before reaching into my pocket and pulling out Patrick Duggan's diary. “Everything I know, I've put in here.”

  I hold the diary out for him. As he starts flicking through the pages, I see page after page of Duggan's handwritten notes, and then finally Julio reaches the section where I added my own comments.

  “I only managed half a page,” I tell him. “As I was writing, I realize I still know so little about what happened. I don't know what that thing was, where it came from, I don't even know its name.”

  “Maybe it didn't have a name,” he suggests.

  “Everything has a name.”

  “Not if it's new,” he replies. “Not if it's alone.”

  “Did you read what Duggan wrote?” I ask.

  He hesitates, before nodding.

  “Do you think he was just crazy?” I continue. “Do you think everyone was crazy? Duggan and Sam and... and me? Or do you think maybe some of this actually happened?”

  “Do I think some kind of faceless entity briefly took control of my body, only to be forced out because it was superstitious about cameras?” He stares at me for a moment, as if he's struggling to decide. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “That's the best I can do right now.” He looks back down at the diary for a moment, before handing it back to me. “You're the one who spoke to it. You're the one it seems to have been obsessed with. Are you sure there's nothing else you remember?”

  I shake my head.

  “And what about...”

  His voice trails off for a moment.

  “I mean,” he continues, “how do we even know that it won't...”

  “Come back?”

  He nods.

  “I'm sure it'll come back,” I tell him. “There's no doubt in my mind at all. But Duggan wrote repeatedly that the entity has a different experience of time. If what he wrote is correct – and he was correct about most of it – then even if the entity comes straight back, by our standards many decades will have passed. Even centuries. So you and I will be long gone, and it'll be for another generation to deal with whatever that thing is.”

  “So that's why you wrote these notes?” he asks, handing the diary back to me. “To help the next people who have to face this thing?”

  “I don't see what else I can do.”

  Tucking the diary back into my pocket, I realize that the rain is getting much stronger. I look down into the grave for a moment, before reaching down and picking up a handful of dirt. I throw the dirt into the grave, where it lands with a heavy thud against the coffin's lid, and then I start walking away. Julio limps alongside me, and I have to keep from walking too fast, so he can stay with me.

  “The police want to talk to me again,” he says after a moment.

  “Me too.”

  “I don't think they know what to think.”

  “I can't blame them.”

  “It even sounds crazy to me,” he continues, “and I was there. I felt it happen. Even when that thing was in my body, in the elevator, I was aware of what it was doing and saying. I was trying to cry out, but I couldn't. It's as if I was trapped in a corner of my own body, but there was nothing I could do.”

  “Sure,” I reply, shuddering as I realize that maybe Chrissie was the same when her body was possessed. Maybe she even felt herself suffocating.

  “So are we both crazy,” Julio adds, “or did this really happen?”

  As we reach the arched cemetery gate and stop to shelter from the rain, I turn to him and see the fear in his eyes. I think he wants me to tell him we're wrong, that we just misunderstood, but I can't do that.

  “Something reached out to us,” I tell him. “To you and to me, to Chrissie, and to Patrick Duggan. And to three innocent women in the next apartment. Something reached out from somewhere a long way away, and it tried to use us to enter this world. We're lucky it was so young and immature, and that it could be tricked so easily. I've got a feeling that won't be the case next time it shows up, but I also think you and I will be gone by that time. So we'll never know what happens when that unnamed thing comes back.”

  “We'll have to live with the knowledge that it's out there.”

  “And that if it's out there, there must be other things like it,” I point out. “Call me crazy, but if the one we encountered was young, I'm not sure I want to know what the adult versions are like.”

  I pause for a moment, before spotting a distant light at the far end of the road. Despite the rain that's pouring down, I can just about make out the dark shape of a pub.

  “Do you want to go grab a coffee or something?” I ask, turning to Julio. I can't believe I even asked him, but I guess I can't back down now. “I mean... Sorry, it's just that I feel like you're the only person I can talk to about all of this. Everyone else, even if they say they believe me, gets this glint of pity in their eyes.”

  He hesitates, before nodding.

  “Sure,” he says. “I know that feeling pretty well these days.”

  As we set off through the wind and rain, trying our best not to get sprayed by cars that race past us and don't slow for puddles, I watch the light ahead and see that there's a flickering glow. Maybe they have a fireplace, and maybe I can hang my soaked coat up to dry. And then maybe Julio and I can try to think of something else to add to Patrick Duggan's notebook, some advice to be read many years from now by whoever encounters the unnamed entity next. Because someone will encounter it again, I'm sure of that.

  I'm also sure that, despite all the madness, the entity will ultimately be defeated. Julio and I survived thanks to sheer dumb luck, but all we did was push that thing back for a while. Whoever comes after us, if they're smarter, might be able to drive it away forever.

  Also by Amy Cross

  THE ASH HOUSE

  Why would anyone ever return to a haunted house?

>   For Diane Mercer the answer is simple. She's dying of cancer, and she wants to know once and for all whether ghosts are real.

  Heading home with her young son, Diane is determined to find out whether the stories are real. After all, everyone else claimed to see and hear strange things in the house over the years. Everyone except Diane had some kind of experience in the house, or in the little ash house in the yard.

  As Diane explores the house where she grew up, however, her son is exploring the yard and the forest. And while his mother might be struggling to come to terms with her own impending death, Daniel Mercer is puzzled by fleeting appearances of a strange little girl who seems drawn to the ash house, and by strange, rasping coughs that he keeps hearing at night.

  The Ash House is a horror novel about a woman who desperately wants to know what will happen to her when she dies, and about a boy who uncovers the shocking truth about a young girl's murder.

  Also by Amy Cross

  THE MURDER AT SKELLIN COTTAGE

  Skellin Cottage is an oasis of peace and tranquillity. Miles from the nearest town, nestled far out in the English countryside, it's the perfect place for visitors who want to get away from the world for a while. And then one morning the cottage's latest tenant, Deborah Dean, is found brutally murdered.

  After several months of police inactivity, the cottage's owner Lord Martin Chesleford decides to take matters into his own hands. Hiring former police officer Joanna Mason, who now works alone as a private investigator, he demands that Deborah's murderer is brought to justice.

  But while Deborah had tried to isolate herself at Skellin Cottage, she'd already begun to attract attention. Terrified of her own past, Deborah lived a life of fear, desperately afraid that the truth would one day be revealed. And as the ongoing investigation uncovers old secrets and new rivalries, another murder is right around the corner.

  Also by Amy Cross

  THE BRIDE OF ASHBYRN HOUSE

  “I have waited so long for your return.”

  In the English countryside, miles from the nearest town, there stands an old stone house. Nobody has set foot in the house for years. Nobody has dared. For it is said that even though the lady of the house is long dead, a face can sometimes be seen at one of the windows. A pale, dead face that waits patiently behind a silk wedding veil.

  Seeking an escape from his life in London, Owen Stone purchases Ashbyrn House without waiting to find out about its history. As far as Owen is concerned, ghosts aren't real and his only company in the house will be the thin-legged spiders that lurk on the walls. Even after he moves in, and after he starts hearing strange noises in the night, Owen insists that Ashbyrn House can't possibly be haunted.

  But Owen knows nothing about the ghostly figure that is said to haunt the house. Or about the mysterious church bells that ring out across the lawn at night. Or about the terrible fate that befell the house's previous inhabitants when they dared defy the bride. Even as Owen starts to understand the horrific truth about Ashbyrn House's past, he might be too late to escape the clutches of the presence that watches his every move.

  The Bride of Ashbyrn House is a ghost story about a man who believes the past can't hurt him, and about a woman whose search for a husband has survived even her own tragic death.

  Also by Amy Cross

  THE BODY AT AUERCLIFF

  “We'll bury her so deep, even her ghost will have a mouth full of dirt!”

  When Rebecca Wallace arrives at Auercliff to check on her aged aunt, she's in for a shock. Her aunt's mind is crumbling, and the old woman refuses to let Rebecca stay overnight. And just as she thinks she's starting to understand the truth, Rebecca makes a horrifying discovery in one of the house's many spare rooms.

  A dead body. A woman. Old and rotten. And her aunt insists she has no idea where it came from.

  The truth lies buried in the past. For generations, the occupants of Auercliff have been tormented by the repercussions of a horrific secret. And somehow everything seems to be centered upon the mausoleum in the house's ground, where every member of the family is entombed once they die.

  Whose body was left to rot in one of the house's rooms? Why have successive generations of the family been plagued by a persistent scratching sound? And what really happened to Rebecca many years ago, when she found herself locked inside the Auercliff mausoleum?

  The Body at Auercliff is a horror story about a family and a house, and about the refusal of the past to stay buried.

  OTHER BOOKS

  BY AMY CROSS INCLUDE

  Horror

  The Bride of Ashbyrn House

  The Body at Auercliff

  B&B

  Laura

  Asylum

  Meds (Asylum 2)

  Annie's Room

  The Farm

  The Haunting of Blackwych Grange

  The Ghost of Molly Holt

  The Ghosts of Hexley Airport

  The Devil, the Witch and the Whore (The Deal book 1)

  The Ghost of Longthorn Manor and Other Stories

  Perfect Little Monsters and Other Stories

  Twisted Little Things and Other Stories

  The Disappearance of Katie Wren

  The Horror of Devil's Root Lake

  The Curse of Wetherley House

  The Ghosts of Lakeforth Hotel

  The Printer From Hell

  The Nurse

  American Coven

  Eli's Town

  The Night Girl

  Devil's Briar

  The Cabin

  After the Cabin

  Last Wrong Turn

  At the Edge of the Forest

  The Devil's Hand

  The Ghost of Shapley Hall

  The Death of Addie Gray

  A House in London

  The Blood House

  The Priest Hole (Nykolas Freeman book 1)

  Battlefield (Nykolas Freeman book 2)

  The Border

  The Lighthouse

  3AM

  Tenderling

  The Girl Clay

  The Prison

  Ward Z

  The Devil's Photographer

  Thriller

  The Murder at Skellin Cottage

  The Return of Rachel Stone

  The Girl Who Never Came Back

  Other People's Bodies

  Dystopia / Science Fiction

  The Dog

  The Island (The Island book 1)

  Persona (The Island book 2)