Picture the Dead
Page 8Communication, Geist had clarified in his letter.
But this first attempt at spiritual communication is anything but otherworldly. My eyes itch, while my face is stiff as a cold caramel. Only a few minutes have gone by, but it feels like an eternity.
“Persevere, family,” Geist intones. “William Pritchett is close at hand.”
Will has never seemed so far away. He’d laugh to see us now. How fascinated he’d be with Geist’s instrument and tripod. What amusement he’d take in Aunt, who holds one of his Harvard photographs balanced upright on her plump knees.
According to Geist, the photograph provides passage for Will’s spirit to enter this gathering of Aunt Clara, Uncle Henry, Quinn, and me. “The deceased are drawn to their loved ones like butterflies to sugar water. Our beloved often appear to us through vapor or mist,” Geist had clarified. “Other times, another passed soul such as an angel or a Native Indian is sent to serve as messenger.”
This had provoked a dramatic gasp from Aunt Clara, who has a fondness for angels.
Now Geist jumps out from under the muslin drape and darts around to the front of the camera.
“Oh, dear. Is something broken?” squeaks Aunt through gritted teeth.
“Not at all.” Geist fits the cap on the lens then slides a rectangular plate into the body of the instrument. “Exposure to the light is crucial to our success. But now we’re finished. I have cut the light. The butterfly is in the net, so to speak. You are free to move. I feel certain that
Geist then hands the contraption to his waiting housemaid, who scurries off with it at once.
“A most confounded thing,” declares Uncle Henry, “but I experienced a tickling in my fingers.”
“A chill down my neck, perhaps,” Aunt Clara whispers.
“What rot.” Quinn sighs. His suit bags at the seams, but a faint glow of health in his cheeks offsets his auburn hair, and he has traded his bandages for an eye patch, which I privately think makes him look rather rakish.
“And you, Miss Lovell?” The photographer folds his black-tipped fingers over his chest and rolls back on his heels. Judging by my imploring letter, Geist must think I’m the most susceptible of us all.
I incline my head politely and say nothing.
The maid reappears in the parlor door. She is a plain thing. Buck-toothed and as jumpy as India rubber. “Dinner’s in the sitting room.”
“Thank you, Viviette,” says Geist. “And now, if you’ll excuse me to my darkroom.” He takes swift leave through the parlor.
Eyes averted, the maid leads us to a sitting room cluttered with bric-a-brac. My father once said that the character of a household can be known through the behavior of its staff. I don’t know what to conclude from Viviette’s refusal to meet my gaze.
The sandwiches and cakes are stale, the tea too strong, and the tables and walls are blanketed in photographs of vistas and monuments my eyes are caught by a daguerreotype of Big Ben, the largest clock in London, which I yearn to see. There are also several portraits of Geist himself and stacks of cartes de visite of Geist and of his maid, modeling evening dress, street clothes, and even swathed in Grecian garb. Stealthily, I slip a few into my pocket.
“He watches us, even in his absence.” Quinn rolls his eyes, and we trade a humorous glance.
Silence holds the room until the spiritualist returns. There’s a bounce in his step. “Promising, promising! Now we wait until the varnish has dried and the photograph is printed. Then we shall see the fruits of our labors.”
With no mind to his blackened hands, Geist helps himself to sandwiches and tea before launching into a fascinating recount of his youth in Paris.
“I studied under the esteemed photographer Monsieur Disderi. Odd fellow but brilliant. Disderi made his money in his portraits of the upper classes, such as the present emperor, Napoleon, who considers him to have procured his very best likenesses. But Disderi will also go to great lengths to authenticate rumors of spirit activity. Why, that gentleman once stood sentinel for twenty-four hours at the Place de la Republique in order to photograph Marie Antoinette’s ghost on the scaffold, in her mobcap and with her hands bound.”
“How did he…when did he…?” A crumb trembles on Aunt’s lip.
“There’d been sightings every October sixteenth, the anniversary of her death. Doubters dismissed these as hearsay. Disderi proved them wrong. One glimpse of this image of the last queen of France would turn your hair stone gray. But that is nothing on Disderi’s journey to Scotland and his singular images of pagan spirits who have haunted Tulloch Castle since the twelfth century.”
“I want to travel the Continent,” he confesses.
“Go first to the City of Light,” says Geist. “Fill your mind with beauty.” He jumps up to leave the room and returns with a stack of tintypes. “Locke ought to have stayed there. He’s destroyed his sanity. But his images will bear witness to this war long after we are departed.” Geist hands them around for us to examine.
I examine portrait images of young boys with guns high as their chests. Rows of the dying. Rows of hospital beds. A look at Quinn, and I can tell that each image has hit him as a punch.
The pictures have a dizzying effect on me, too. I’m not sure if I’m mesmerized or daydreaming, but the heat is with me all at once as my memory catapults me back to last year, a languid August afternoon. Will and I had strayed from our picnic spot to go boating, and a boy, watching us push off from the bank, had decided to rifle through the belongings we had left behind, including Will’s sketchbook. Ripping out the pages…yes, I remember…the little troublemaker had then set them afloat in the water, and Will had blazed with fury. I’d never seen him in such a temper, and it had taken him the rest of the day to calm himself.
My eyes are staring into Will’s eyes black irises ringed in pale blue.
I open my eyes and Will stands before me in blazing life in his Union uniform. The bottoms of his trousers are wet, and water darkly pools the carpet. His anger is palpable. He is so real, so alive, that I can inhale the tang of the salt water that he has carried in with him. If I reached forward, I could ball my fingers in the rough broadcloth of his jacket, my mouth could find that secret space where the carved notch of his collarbone met his throat and