Picture the Dead

“Please, tell it now. I want to hear.” I can’t leave, not now, with nothing to show for my visit but my plain and ordinary likeness.

Geist has been eagle-eyed on my print image, but I sense that he doesn’t find what he wants. His gaze flicks up to hold mine through the darkness. “For that sort of story we’ll need my fire and my scotch. And then, Miss Lovell, you must go. It’s not appropriate for a young lady to be out and about so late.”

I touch the edges of the print. “May I take this when it’s dried?” Though the picture doesn’t flatter me, I like that I am posed alone. No Aunt Clara simpering at my elbow.

“With my blessing.”

Out of the darkroom, I see through the window that snow is beginning to fall. It’s getting late, but the idea of returning to Pritchett House after this afternoon of magic depresses me. Only Mavis knows where I am and had agreed to fib that I’m in bed with a sick headache, should anyone inquire.

In his sitting room, Geist prods at the logs with his toaster iron then pours himself a scotch and offers me a glass of apple brandy, which I take.

The liquid rolls warm down my throat and erases the sticky tang of photographic chemicals that had been lingering in my nose and lungs.

Geist takes the tumbler of scotch and then settles deep into his wingback chair. As if he wants to surround himself in light and comfort before he lets his mind move backward into darker matters.

19.

I first learned of the Du Keating affair when I was living in Paris. I’d been studying photography back in the forties under the great Disderi,” begins Geist. “It was he who told me this tale of a wealthy Parisian couple whose young daughter, Marie-Claire, had come down with a fever that took a violent turn for the worse. When she died, she left her parents absolutely shocked and heartbroken.

“In this same family was an older brother, Aurelian, who could neither read nor write and was bereft of even the slightest social grace. Aurelian did not attend school, and his parents hardly bothered with him. He was, however, enormously interested in photography. Which in those days, Miss Lovell, was only a burgeoning scientific art, nothing like what it has become today.

“Aurelian du Keating had been close with his sister, and after her death he claimed that she haunted him. He began to suffer from violent night terrors. The story goes that as the boy mastered his hobby, he began to obsessively photograph his deceased sister’s empty bed. On days when there was no light and he could not work the camera, he curled up in her bed and slept.”

“Did he allow anyone to see his finished photographs?”

Geist shakes his head. “Not at first. As soon as he had developed a daguerreotype, the boy secreted it back to his rooms. Frankly, nobody was much interested in his activities. After all, where is the intrigue in photographing an empty bed? Or so they thought. But Aurelian’s nightmares became so tortured, and his habits so fanatical, that eventually his work was uncovered and brought forth. And what a horrible shock when they beheld it.”

A log splits, shooting a scatter of sparks up the flue and a tremor up my spine. No fire can warm me at this moment. “Faint at first, the image became clearer with each plate,” Geist continues. “There in the photograph was the image of Marie-Claire’s corpse. Not as she’d lain angelic on her pillow, but in a state of grotesque decomposition. It was,” he says with a sigh, “most horrific.”

I swallow. The back of my mouth is dry as dust. “What happened next?”

“The household went into an uproar. It was as much a proof of haunting as any had ever reckoned with. Most of the servants fled. Hex symbols were branded into the doors. There was a failed attempt to torch the Du Keating chateau. Cursed by the devil, they said it was. Better to burn it down.

“The girl’s body, which had been interred in the family crypt, was removed and reexamined. When the physician suspected foul play, young Aurelian confessed. Apparently he’d so believed in the magical power of photography that he’d prepared a solution of the same ingredients used to prepare the photographic plates and administered it to his sister. He had tried, as he most pitifully explained, to cure his beloved Marie-Claire of her fever.” Geist’s eyes search the firelight. “Instead, he had killed her.”

Horror twists inside me. “Mr. Geist, did you see any of these images?” Though I can see the answer in his face.

Almost imperceptibly Geist’s face hardens. “Unfortunately, I did. Disderi managed to obtain one,” he admits. “Poison had distorted the girl’s features, and her flesh was a paste over her skeleton. And her eyes. Stuck wide open.” Momentarily he closes his own. “Eternal in her last moments. Though I would do anything to not have seen it, from that moment I was a believer.”

“In what?”

“In Marie-Claire du Keating. And in William Pritchett. I believe in the spirit afterlife. The dead are here, all around us.”

A chilling thought. “Whatever happened to Aurelian?”

“His end is not so tragic. After his confession it was decided Du Keating needed special care, and he was placed in a monastery near Languedoc. It’s said he lives there, quite contentedly, to this day. His sister’s spirit did more good than harm. Which is as Marie-Claire would have wanted it and doubtless why she made contact. She loved her brother despite his terrible crime. She knew he was bedeviled by an unsound mind and that he needed more attention than what her parents could provide. She wanted him safe.”

I lean forward in my chair, my hands gripping the glass. “Mr. Geist, why do you think Will needs to contact me?”

The photographer sits back. “It could be any number of reasons.” He ticks them off with his fingers. “Perchance Pritchett wants to send a warning, or expose a truth, or make a confession. Or perhaps he simply needs to remind you of his pain and suffering.”

“Why wouldn’t he appear to me in a dream?”

“A dream? Bah.” Geist flicks off my thought like water from his fingertips. “Dreams are nonsense, a cluttered attic of the unconscious. You see, Miss Lovell, while most spiritualist photography is bunk, it can be a portal. Whether through photographs or séances, this is the pact that we make in this trade as we go about our daily business. We must respect those moments when a soul from the other side decides to rap on the door.” Suddenly his fist knocks the underside of the mantelpiece.

I jump, hand to my heart. Then smile weakly. “Answering that door would frighten me.”