34. The Camera

The next day, Mom is quite angry. Not because I disappeared last night and almost lost my life. She doesn’t know anything about that thanks to my decision to close that magical trapdoor below her sink. It’s because of Midnight’s upset stomach. And it’s not even that she’s furious about having to clean up a trail of puppy vomit from the couch to the back door. No, she’s furious because of why she needed to clean it up.

The conversation goes like this:

“What have you been feeding her?”

The little tuft of black on the couch obviously doesn’t know we’re talking about her.

“I don’t know.”

“I buy her dog food.”

“A dog wouldn’t eat that generic stuff.”

“So what has she been eating?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I give her hot dogs and stuff.”

“What?”

“I saw it on one of those shows. That’s how you train dogs. You give them little hot dog treats.”

“What show was that?”

“I don’t know.”

She looks in the fridge and discovers the pack of twenty-four hot dogs missing.

“Chris!”

Yeah, so maybe the dog whisperers don’t give their dogs that many hot dog treats.

Hey, if that’s the only drama for the day, I’m happy.

It’s Sunday night, and it’s been a productive day. While Mom went to work and I was given a reason not to do much of anything, I found a hammer and some nails and bolted that door in the cabinet down.

Do you really think that’s going to keep away the boogeyman, you moron?

I don’t answer that voice because there’s no answer I can come up with. I’d need to find a special store dealing with ghosts and spirits in order to answer it.

So you gonna tell Mom?

No. Not quite. Not yet. I will.

I spend the rest of the day searching the cabin. I don’t find anything.

I do, however, decide to finally check out more on Uncle Robert.

It’s about time, Chris.

Yeah.

To be honest, I’d forgotten about the flash drive and the digital camera and the letters I found in my room some time ago. I’ve been borrowing T-shirts like The Pixies one I’m wearing or the Interpol one I’m going to wear tomorrow. I’ve been listening to his music and sleeping in his bed, but I haven’t looked closely at Uncle Robert’s personal stuff.

Tonight I decide it’s time.

I start with the camera. It’s an expensive digital model. I turn it on and find over a hundred photos waiting to be seen.

I see pictures of the cabin as if they were taken when Uncle Robert first moved here. Then I see snapshots of my uncle, first outside on the driveway, then on the deck, then inside. He looks older and heavier than I remember him. He also looks amused in the first few shots, like he’s laughing at whoever is taking them.

The first twenty-five pictures are all like this.

And then I see a shot of my uncle with someone.

The woman. The lady who picked me up in the silver SUV.

She’s holding a hand up in front of her face as if trying to shield it. I still can’t see her eyes, but I know it’s the same woman. She looks attractive, and from the way my uncle has his arm around her, it looks like he thinks so too. A few shots following are blurry, as if they were taken of someone who didn’t want to be photographed. The lady perhaps? The mysterious woman in hiding? Who was she hiding from?

It dawns on me to look at the dates. I scroll back and see that the photos of my uncle and the woman were taken a couple of years ago.

The next dozen shots are of scenery, landscapes and hills and forests and flowers. I scroll through them quickly until something makes me stop.

There it is, just like it looked the first time I saw it, just like it looks in the magazine page I was given.

Maybe it wasn’t a magazine page.

On the small screen of the digital camera, I can’t be positive that it’s the exact same shot, but I believe it is.

I’m looking at a photo—maybe the photo—of Heartland Trail, the road I took by the church that dead-ends in the woods.

Following it I see more pictures of the woods themselves. There is one that looks like a trail. Another that shows what might be an opening to a cave that looks like a mouth of a giant on its side. Another few shots are dark and blurry, and I can’t make out anything.

Then I see something else that makes me pause.

Hanging off what appears to be the limb of a tree is an upside-down cross. It’s the cross itself that makes me feel deep dread. It resembles two carved-out blocks of wood, carefully whittled down in a very crude fashion. Both pieces appear to be dipped and covered in something dark and shiny, and they’re fastened together by some type of metallic coil.

It looks ancient, this cross. And it looks designed specifically to be hung upside down.

I don’t know much about the occult and people worshiping the Devil, but I know this is one of their symbols.

Maybe it’s the town logo for Solitary, too.

The next few photos are of something that resembles a tall, spiked tree. Since it’s so big and it looks like the pictures were taken at night, they’re too hazy and gray to make sense.

The next twenty or so shots are of the woman, and this time she’s not hiding behind glasses. She’s beautiful.

There are a few more shots of her with my uncle, as if he’s holding up the camera.

I see a couple of shots that appear as if the woman is hiding underneath covers, as though my uncle woke her up holding the camera.

That’s the bedspread on the bed my mom sleeps in.

Then the photos end.

I try to remember that brief car ride I had with her.

The movie star.

I try and remember her words. I was a friend of your uncle.

They appeared to be a little more than friends.

Maybe she knows why Uncle Robert disappeared.

I suddenly wonder if Jared knows about this woman. Crazy, soap-opera-like thoughts go through my mind.

Is this Jared’s mother?

But Jared is older than I am. And this woman doesn’t look anything like him.

I’m too tired and too fried to check through the flash drive. I don’t want to know what’s on it.

But I need to find the woman in these photos and ask her what happened to my uncle.