Hard Light (26 page)

A bird flapped noisily overhead. I blinked and looked up to see a large crow or raven settle onto the top of the sign. It clacked its long red beak and tipped its head to regard me with one inky eye. The feathers on its throat fanned out, making it appear as large as a good-sized cat.

I expected it to fly away. But the bird remained where it was, opening and closing its beak. The sound made me think of someone whetting a blade. I shoved my hands into my pockets and stepped into the barn.

Slats of light slanted down from the ceiling where broken roof tiles had dropped to the floor. The place was filled with junk. Old wooden trunks, translucent plastic storage bins stuffed with newspapers and magazines, wooden crates of tools. It smelled musty, though not unpleasant—of dried grass, linseed oil, moldering paper, and some sweet herb I didn't recognize. An enormous hay rake was suspended between the rafters, its tines laced with cobwebs and dust.

I picked my way to the back wall, where a dozen painted canvas flats leaned. Childlike renderings of green mountains and blue skies, a sun with rays like spider's legs. Peace signs and astrological sigils; figures from a tarot deck. The sets from
Thanatrope.
I ran a finger across the picture of the High Priestess, her imperious face pleached with mildew. The paint flaked away like blue and yellow snow.

I walked to the far end of the barn, where a ramshackle structure rose above a canyon of cardboard boxes. Nowhere as tall as it appeared on film, its rusted struts buckled with age: the pylon. Behind it was a door.

I pushed it open and stepped into a dark storeroom filled with film equipment. Cameras, rigs, microphones—all state of the art, circa 1973. Stacks of film canisters. A vintage editing table with a swivel chair—a Steenbeck flatbed deck, with its distinctive blue and brushed nickel hardware. I recognized this bit of archaic technology from my brief stint at NYU, when I'd occasionally hang out with a friend who was in the film studies program.

I sank onto the swivel chair and ran my hand across the Steenbeck's surface. It was free of dust. A reel of thirty-five-millimeter film sat on one of the aluminum plates. The acetate threaded between myriad spindles, then through the picture gate where the projection lamp would shine on it, frame by frame, and onto the take-up spindles and take-up plate. Beside the guillotine splicer was a white chargraph grease pencil, wth a single frame of thirty-five millimeter beside it. Someone had drawn a vertical white line through the frame, indicating it needed to be cut.

I picked up the piece of film. It was too dark to see inside the storeroom, so I stepped into the doorway and held the frame to the light.

Squinting, I could just make out a figure lying in a patch of grass. A corona of sunlight bloomed in the upper corner of the frame, burnishing the figure's blond hair, limbs, and naked torso. Magic hour. Lens flare had ruined the effect, presumably why the frame had been cut. The tiny figure was turned so I could only see bright hair, an arm cocked at an unnatural angle beside its head. It was impossible to tell if it was a doll or a child.

“Dad?”

I turned to see a boy standing in the barn. Twelve or thirteen years old, rope thin and big boned, dressed in filthy jeans, muck boots, and a black hoodie so big it came to his knees. His eyes widened when he saw my face. “The fuck are you?”

“A friend of Adrian's. Who are you?”

“Samsung.” He took a step away from me.

“Samsung?”

He blushed. “Sam. I'm not the cunt what named me.”

“That's good.” I cocked a thumb at the contents of the room. “What's all this?”

“What do you think it is? Crap.”

The boy dug in a pocket of his hoodie and produced a crumpled, hand-rolled cigarette and a lighter. He had a sharp pale face, good-looking in a ferrety way. Tangled black hair to his shoulders; Adrian's deep-set black eyes; thin lips, chapped and bitten. He only came to my shoulders but looked like he'd get much taller: he had big bones and large, long-fingered hands, their nails blackened and knuckles seamed with dirt. He lit the cigarette—tobacco—took a few quick drags, and walked away.

“You live here?” I called, following him.

The boy looked back at me disdainfully. His eyes narrowed. He quickened his steps then broke into a run, heading for the farmhouse.

The door opened before he got there. Adrian stepped aside as the boy ran up to him.

“I thought he was you,” Sam said, gesturing.

“She,” said Adrian. He waved me toward him. “I see you've met the family.”

Inside it was dim. Flagstone floors, whitewashed stone walls, wooden beams overhead. The cramped hallway led into a pantry filled with baskets of apples and large burlap sacks. This opened onto a large kitchen outfitted with scuffed furniture, gas range, and noisily humming 1950s refrigerator, and another dim room with an enamel-topped dining table and mismatched chairs.

All the windows were small and deeply recessed, with lead-muntined panes. Where panes were missing or broken, rags and cardboard had been stuffed into the gaps. Like the barn, every inch of available space was crammed with stuff—empty food tins, flattened boxes, soiled clothing, fishy-smelling cans of cat food fuzzed with mold. A few chairs and inexpertly handmade tables. Writing covered the walls: grocery lists, lists of names, bad poetry, a rant against the Sunshine Free School.

Here and there something hinted at an earlier, more affluent life for both the house and its inhabitants. Peeling ribbons of vintage Art Nouveau wallpaper; an umbrella stand made of an elephant's foot; a crystal chandelier, gray with dust and draped with tarnished Christmas tinsel. In the kitchen, an antique oaken daybed was shoved against a wall, its rumpled bedclothes trailing onto the floor. Sam kicked at these and darted off. I followed Adrian into a living room.

“Have a seat,” he said.

“Where's Krishna?”

“She took off,” he said dully. “I'll make some tea, if I can find any.”

He left, and I surveyed the room. Sisal carpeting had disintegrated to a web of filthy straw. A brown, deflated soccer ball sat abandoned in the corner opposite a fireplace. The only furniture was a pair of threadbare red velvet armchairs.

I collapsed into one of these. The room had a pervasive fetid odor that I could taste as much as smell—sweat and smoke and mold, rotting vegetables, beer and urine. The reek of rural poverty. People had lived here for centuries. I burrowed into the chair, hugging my bag to my chest, and closed my eyes.

“Hey—”

I sat up blearily. The black-haired boy, Sam, squatted in front of me. “My dad said to give you this.”

He held out a steaming mug and I took it. “Thanks.”

It was strong black tea, bitter and very hot. I cradled the mug and let the steam warm my face. The boy remained where he was, barely a foot away, staring at me. He reminded me disconcertingly of the raven I'd seen by the barn.

After a minute I said, “You mind giving me some space?”

The boy frowned but scooted back an inch. “Who're you?”

“Like I said: friend of your dad's. Adrian. He's your dad, right?”

“You'd know that if he was your friend.”

“Good point.”

I drank my tea and ignored him, in hopes that he'd go away. That usually works with dogs, except when it backfires and they attack you.

But the boy didn't seem overtly hostile—not toward me, anyway. His forehead was creased, and there was a pronounced
V
at the bridge of his nose, suggesting a glare was his customary way of observing the world. After a few minutes he asked, “You got a fag?”

“I don't smoke.”

“You drink. I can smell it on you. You stink.”

“Nice manners.” I glanced around the room. “You live here?” The boy shrugged, then nodded. “Know where Adrian went?”

“To find Tamsin. I told him, she's not here, she—”

“Never mind. Where's the bathroom?”

He pointed at a door but didn't move. I had to step over him to leave.

The bathroom held a cracked porcelain toilet with a corroded metal tank above it, the chain reduced to a single link and frayed twine. No medicine cabinet, no towels. A string of red LED lights dangled from the ceiling, reflected in an old mirror with most of its silver rubbed off. I looked at the mirror and ran a hand through my hair.

I bet I stank. I looked like shit. The black hair dye made my face look cadaverously pale, save for the livid star-shaped scar beside my eye. The cut on my cheek appeared inflamed. I wondered if it had gotten infected.

I splashed my face with cold water and then returned to the living room, tossing my jacket on the chair. Sam was gone. Adrian stood by the window, smoking a real cigarette.

“You scared Sam,” he said. “She thought you were me, and then she thought you were a ghost. I can see why.”

“She?”

“Yes,” Adrian said curtly. “I'm going to have a lie-down—I'm knackered. You should do the same. Come on.”

I got my bag and we climbed a flight of narrow steps beneath a ceiling so low we had to duck. On the second floor were three bedrooms, each one smaller than the last, like a grim variant of the Three Bears' house.

“That's Sam's room,” said Adrian, pointing.

I glanced inside and saw a narrow bed with a brightly checked afghan thrown across it, some books on a small student's desk by the door.
The Serpent and the Rainbow, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,
J. G. Ballard's
High Rise.
“She has catholic reading taste,” I said.

“Does she? I haven't kept up. This is Tamsin's room, and this was mine—Krish can have that one when she gets back. I'll doss in the kitchen, and you can have the garret.”

“Is Tamsin here?”

“Sam says she went to Penzance on Tuesday and texted that she'd gotten stranded there by the storm. Road closure, she's supposedly staying with friends. I tried calling and texting her, but she's not picking up.”

“Do you think she's still in London?”

“I don't know.” His deep voice rasped with fatigue. “I hope so. I hope she's in hell.”

“What if she comes back here?”

“That's why I'm staying downstairs.”

At the end of the hall was a wooden ladder. We climbed to a whitewashed attic beneath the eaves, with blackened wooden beams, bare stone walls, two windows. It was cold enough that I could see my breath. A tattered rag rug covered the floor. On the windowsill, cigarette butts overflowed from a McCann's Oatmeal tin. There was a little door at the far end of the room and the pervasive, vinegary scent of apples.

Adrian opened a window, propping it up with a stick. He knelt and opened the little door, rooted around inside, and pulled out an armful of quilts.

“Here.” He tossed the quilts at me. “I'll see you later.”

The quilts were slightly damp. I made a lumpy pallet of them, then zipped up my leather jacket and removed the Konica and bottle of wine from my bag. I put the camera on the floor beside me and stretched out, using my bag as a pillow. Immediately I passed out.

 

32

I must have been asleep for several hours when I heard a soft sound. I opened my eyes and shouted in alarm.

A figure sat on the floor a few feet from me, his—her—knees drawn in front of her. I threw one of the quilts at her. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Just looking.”

“That's a good way to get cold-cocked.” I stumbled to my feet and glared at her. “You're lucky I didn't put your lights out.”

Sam brushed a sweep of black hair from her eyes. “Is that what happened to your eye?”

“No.”

I crossed to a window and peered down into the yard. It looked to be late morning. Bedraggled chickens picked their way between the tractors. The shaggy cow stared over its barbed-wire fence. Most of the snow had melted, but the distant crags of Carn Scrija were dappled white. Watery sunlight streamed between lichen-gray clouds, brightening to gold as a burst of rain fell.

I grabbed my camera. I'd used up my last roll shooting Quinn, so I'd have to reload. But if I moved fast I might catch the light.

Sam stared, fascinated, as I dug into my satchel and pulled a plastic canister of Tri-X from a ziplock bag. “What are you doing?”

I strode to the little door. “Loading my camera.”

“Can I watch?”

“There's nothing to watch. You have to do it in total darkness, otherwise the film's ruined.”

“I'm not afraid of the dark.”

I opened the door and peered inside. The apple smell was stronger here. Threads of light spun from holes in the roof, igniting dust motes. I turned to Sam. “Hand me one of those blankets.”

“Can I—”

“Yeah, whatever! Just give me that blanket and get inside. Quick. Shut the door.”

She grabbed a blanket and scrambled after me into the storeroom, pulling the door tight behind her. I angled myself as far from the door as I could—it was close quarters—then draped the blanket over my head and settled onto the floor. I could feel Sam bump up alongside me.

“What are you doing?” She sounded excited.

“Putting film in my camera. Here, hang on to this.”

I stuck my hand out from under the blanket and gave her the empty film canister. I opened the Konica, removed the roll I'd shot of Quinn back at Canary Wharf, pocketed it, and slipped the virgin Tri-X into the camera. I drew the camera to my face, inhaling the lactose-sweet scent of the emulsion, and threaded the film onto the sprockets of the take-up spool, then closed the camera back and hit the shutter a few times to advance the film, making sure it had loaded correctly.

“Okay,” I said at last, and tossed the blanket aside. Sepia light and slowly moving dust turned the storeroom into a frame of grainy film, with Sam's stark white face, black hair, and inky eyes superimposed on it. She hugged the blanket to her thin chest and stared at my camera.