A Dark Dividing (47 page)

She closed the door, and switched on the main overhead light, and after a moment she opened a small drawer and reached inside.

She had tried very hard to accept her mother’s explanation about Sonia’s presence in Mortmain that day—that there was some sort of telepathic link between Simone and Sonia and that it was something that had lingered on, even years after Sonia’s death. If you wanted proof of an after-life, Mother had said, here it was, and she had looked so shiningly happy at this idea that Simone had never been able to say anything to spoil it for her, not then and not since. And it was true that when they went back to Mortmain there had been no trace of Sonia. Nothing here, you see, Mother had said, reassuringly.

But Simone knew there had been something in Mortmain that day—something that had seemed alive and ordinary and that had talked to Simone and led her through the bleak echoing corridors of Mortmain. Something that had screamed as it fell into the echoing blackness of the well, and something that had returned to her in dreams ever since, scrabbling vainly at the bricks of an ancient well-shaft in an attempt to climb out…

And whether it had been Sonia or only Sonia’s ghost, Simone had left her to die all alone down there in the dark.

At the time it had not seemed like that. At the time it had felt as if Simone had stayed in the dreadful room for a very long time and had done all she could to rescue Sonia.

She had scrambled to the edge of the well after Sonia fell and had knelt there, peering down, panic-stricken and terrified. But however frightened she was, it was not possible to leave Sonia who might be bleeding to death, or lying there with her legs or arms broken, alive but unable to call for help. There might even be a ledge a few feet down that had broken her fall, and Simone might be able to reach her and pull her out.

As she leaned cautiously over, the sour clammy breath of the well came up into her face. She tried not to notice it, and she tried to peer inside the thick darkness. But although the light from the room trickled down a little way, showing up the brick-lined shaft and the row of iron rungs sticking out on one side like a makeshift ladder, after that solid blackness took over so that it was impossible to see more than a couple of feet down. If only there was a way of shining a light down there—

A light. The word exploded in Simone’s mind. There
was
a way of shining a light, of course there was! There was her camera with the flash-attachment. She could position the camera over the well’s mouth and take a photograph with the flash, and in the split-second when the flash worked she would be able to see what was at the bottom.

The leather case had still been lying on Sonia’s sweater where Sonia had left it. Simone took the camera out, slinging the case over her shoulder. There were two flashbulbs left, which meant she had two chances of seeing into the well. She fitted one carefully in; it was quite difficult to do it in the dimness, but she thought she had got it properly in place.

Then she leaned out over the well’s mouth again. She was quite frightened of losing her balance, but in the end she half sat down on the ground so that most of her weight was firmly on the floor. The bricks were cold and hard against her legs. Simone positioned the camera so that the shutter was facing directly downwards; it ought to be easy enough to operate it with her right hand, and keep hold of the brick wall with her left, and she did not need to be looking through the lens; she only needed to flick the shutter and look down as she did so. There would be a half-second chance and maybe even less than that, but it should be long enough to show up what was down there.

It was enough. The flashbulb exploded into a split-second of white brilliance against the darkness and then the darkness closed down again, thick and impenetrable. Simone sat back on her heels, clutching the camera, feeling trembly and a bit sick.

The dazzling flare of white light had printed itself on her vision, so that she had to blink several times before it began to fade. But also printed on her vision—on a much deeper vision than just her eyes—was something that she thought might never fade. The image of Sonia’s figure, looking small and impossibly far off, lying still, and broken… Sonia’s left shoulder—the one that had been a bit crooked—lying at a hideously
wrong
angle to the rest of her… Splintered sticks of bone protruding from both her legs…

But worst of all, far far worse than broken legs or smashed shoulders, was Sonia’s head, lying half in and half out of a puddle of black, greasy water. Or had it been only water? Mightn’t it have been blood, dark and sticky, seeping out to mix with the well-water so that you could not tell which was which…?
Because blood turns black in the darkness, didn’t you know that, Simone…?
For a moment it seemed as if the whispering voices pressed in on her again.
Blood turns black in the darkness, Simone, we know all about that, you see…

Whether it was blood or not, Sonia had fallen on to her back and her head looked as if it had been seized by giant hands and wrenched to one side. Dreadful.
Dreadful.

That had been when Simone had tumbled across the room and, sobbing and terrified, had run through the old house and down the tanglewood path to cycle home.

There had been no real need to keep that roll of film. Mother had shone the torch down into the well later the same evening and Sonia was not there, and although the explanation was a bit weird, it should have been possible to regard the whole thing as over.

But Simone had kept the film. She had wound the camera back that night and taken the film out, being careful not to expose it to the light. Then she had tucked it at the back of her dressing-table drawer, wrapped inside a woollen scarf. She had had the first roll developed—the ones with the shots of Mortmain’s exterior—and Mother had seen them and been quite impressed by them. It had been one of those shots that Simone had used in the exhibition—a vanity thing, she had said to Harry Fitzglen, but really, of course, it had been an attempt to dilute the nightmare.

They had left Weston Fferna pretty soon after that afternoon at Mortmain: Simone had thought they probably would, and she had not been in the least bit surprised when the very next week Mother had started to telephone estate agents, and talk about them being gypsies again and wonder whether it might be better for Simone if they moved nearer to London. Neither of them had actually come out and said they were leaving the place where Simone had had that creepy experience, but Simone thought they both knew that this was the real reason.

She had never told Mother that there had been a second film with two flashlit shots on it. Over the years she had often thought about destroying the roll of film from Mortmain, but she had never done so and it had gone with her when they left Weston Fferna and moved to the North London house, and then to the flat she had shared with two other girls while she was at the Slade. It was a sort of talisman in reverse; something that might, despite all the evidence, one day prove what had really happened in Mortmain that day.

Since Thorne’s had come into being the film had lain in a small drawer in the darkroom. If you want to hide a leaf, you do so in a forest. If you want to hide a roll of film you do so in a photographer’s studio.

Simone took the film from the drawer, and looked down at it for a moment. Then, in the crimson glow from the filter-light, the light that was like the light in her nightmare, she began the developing process.

In the early days of photography primitive people had found it a frightening process; they had believed that the camera had the power to steal souls and they had shied away from it in terror. In a curious distorted echo of this, some psychic researchers held the theory that supernatural entities could be caught on film, although they more often utilized the process to unmask fakes rather than to prove the existence of ghosts.

Simone had never ceased to be fascinated by the gradual forming of pictures on blank surfaces, and even though she understood the chemical processes by now, there were times where it still seemed almost magical. It seemed magical tonight as she bent over on the workbench, waiting for the images to lift themselves out of the paper.

The first two—the ones taken just outside Mortmain, pointing upwards—had come out surprisingly well. Simone studied them for a moment. Yes, they had clarity and lots of contrast, and from a technical point of view they were not at all bad.

She turned to the next one, which was the one she had taken just inside Mortmain’s central hall. Here were the shadows and the rotting staircase… And the ornate plasterwork of the crumbling stone arch… Simone’s heart skipped a beat, and then resumed an uneasy pitter-patter. There’s something there; something on the right-hand side, just on the edge of the field of vision. She bent over the workbench, narrowing her eyes. Yes, there it was: a definite blur of colour, as if something had suddenly darted across the camera’s range. Something that had been wearing a cherry-red sweater, but that had moved so fast the camera had not been able to capture it. Like a smudged fingerprint, like your own reflection in a steamed-up bathroom mirror. Simone stared at this out-of-focus shape for several moments, then turned to the final one.

This is it, she thought, uncomfortably aware that her throat was dry from nervousness. This is the moment when I crawled on to that evil-smelling brick parapet and pointed the camera straight down. The flash lit up the whole well-shaft like a spear of lightning, and I saw her lying down there—Sonia. But am I going to see her now?

The well-shaft came sharply and distinctly into focus; it looked like a long narrow tunnel, lined with dry black bricks. And there at the bottom lay a small, broken figure, jagged bones sticking up from both the legs, the head twisted around in that sickening,
wrong
angle that Simone had seen all those years ago and never really forgotten. Half of the head was turned towards the camera, one eye staring accusingly and sightlessly upwards. The other half of the head lay in a pool of clotted smeary blackness.
Because blood turns black in the dark, remember that, Simone…?