There is evil come to my city.
I saw it yesterday morning. I took a picture of it. And here it is.
I’m often perched at my balcony in Onslow Square. I like to take a picture of my surroundings, of the people who live here, of general London life. Commonly the people are something of a blur when I take them down in pictures, because people will keep moving. In truth – in so many ways – I prefer the taking down of objects than people, so much more reliable you might say – but people, oh people they are always moving, so that when I take them with my machine and commit them to a plate, oftentimes they appear foggy, like a ghost of themselves. Well then, that’s to explain my picture somewhat, when I saw the evil.
It was morning, I do swear it – there was sunlight, weak but present. More than enough for me to see clear. I had my apparatus up and ready on its tripod and all was primed. I was about to take a picture of the square before me, only I became distracted by a loud clacking noise, coming nearer and gaining in volume. It was, I ascertained after a time of listening, the noise of feet, of hard shoes clacking upon the cobbles, making a terrible din. The smacking noise came, as I say, ever closer, and then at last comes into view the source of the perturbation. It was a woman, an uncommonly small woman, not a child though, certainly a woman, and this little woman wore tough black boots and was otherwise quite attired in black and she marched like she had a purpose into the square and stood by the railing somewhere between the pavement and the garden, all business and determination. She was dressed, as I say, all in black and she was little, as I also say – undersized, strangely so, like there was something quite wrong about her from the start. She looked about her briskly.
And then did I see it.
The evil, I say.
The woman put her head back. Her jaw seemed to snap right open in a most unnatural way, so that the little woman’s mouth was stretched uncommonly wide. Her jaw it clicked open like the jaw of some strange creature, and there was the sound of a great snap that echoed around the square. Then, you see, I had all about me and let my camera fire, there was a burst of phosphorescence as I let my camera use its eye and take it all down. And though the picture is a little blurred you can still see it, I say, especially when the pertinent part is blown up after developing. The awful truth. For then, oh then, from the wide-open mouth of this little woman in her sharp boots, came from somewhere deep in her throat a blackness, a great blackness, more and more blackness. A darkness, like a strange small weather grown out of a single human, getting bigger and bigger, like Aladdin’s djinn out of the lamp. Soon the whole square was dark as night, and all further streets quite blackened with it.
Soon I could not even see my hands in front of my face.
Soon all was so thorough and complete dark.
Like every candle in all the world had been put out of a sudden.
Then I heard her again, the boots, the sharp boots, the click and the clack of her walking, of her feet hitting the cobbles and she was going further and further away. And all the darkness was left behind.
But I have this picture.
Of a little woman spewing out the night.
Of this evil come to my city.