Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
T he front page of the family album had a handwritten note about how precious moments with family are, yada yada.
I flipped past it to the pictures. The first photos were really old, like tin-style in black and white with the chemical layer peeling, or disappearing, or whatever you call it. They were all damaged.
In the photos, the people stared at the camera as if they were frozen in time.
Their eyes oddly all looked in the same direction.
I turned a few more pages. The old photos were the cardboard type in sepia tones, and all the eyes seemed focused at the viewer.
More pages flipped by, and I was back in black-and-white-land but with more modern paper photos.
The same deal, with portraits of people I didn’t know, staring at me. Like really staring.
The kind of shivers you get when people walk over your grave crawled down my back, but I also couldn’t stop looking at them.
Whoever’d put this together had a weird taste for the creepy.
I don’t think I’d ever seen this many photos with people lined up in the same direction, all staring at the same thing. It was kind of bizzarro.
Wald settled into the chair across the room. His eyes were behind sunglasses, but the scrutiny was apparent from the tilt of his head. Whatever this book was, interested him. I shifted, settling the book on my lap.
The eyes in the photos moved.
I must be imagining it. I purposefully slid the album to one side and my body to the other. The eyes followed me, so they were still staring. I squealed and slammed the book shut.
“What the hell is this thing?” I asked, lurking in the desperate place between wanting to look at them again and wanting to run away.
“It’s not a thing. They are our family,” Agatha said, returning from the hall, carrying two tall glasses full of ice and a clear red liquid. She set one glass on the table beside me, then handed the other to Britannia. They exchanged glances that unsettled me more.
“But the pictures moved. Are they people?”
“Of course. You looked at them. They weren’t trees.” Britannia laughed, but her expression was a cross between a cat eyeing a mouse and a hyena watching a lion finish off a gazelle. Why was this so interesting to her?
My thoughts jumped around. Britannia, Wald, and Agatha weren’t normal people, so their family album might be a little strange too, right?
I mean it tracks. But the pictures moved like they were watching me.
Like they were real people. “So all these photos are people in your family? But there are no photos of you?”
“Of course not,” Agatha said, waving a hand as if it would explain. “The family in there have all passed through.”
“To where? Like, are they trapped in there?” The words blurted out, then bounced around my head as I tried to make sense of them. The running away option was becoming the attractive one.
“There’s no trapping. They’ve merely passed through.” Agatha laughed a bit too maniacal for my taste.
“Passed through what?”
“Life, of course. Try your drink. I only make it for company I haven’t met before.”
I looked at the glass, my hands still in a death grip with the book. I didn’t want to be rude.
“So, the photos are of dead people?” I choked back a laugh.
“Family who have passed through this life. You might consider them dead,” Agatha replied, nodding at the glass that had beaded up from the ice. She should have brought a coaster with it.
“You don’t consider them dead?” I pried my left hand off the book. I wasn’t moving the right one, which held the book closed. That was a sane thought, right? The dead people one, not the keeping the book closed. Taking my hand off at this point would be insanity.
The glass was sopping now, the ice-sweat dripping on my corselette as I moved it to my mouth. I took a sip of the unnaturally bright red concoction, smiling over the glass at Agatha.
It was sweet, sickeningly, like the powdered kids’ drinks with all the chemical dyes, but it had a kick of something, bourbon maybe.
It was hard to tell from the sugar level.
There was a mint leaf floating on top. It wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever put into my mouth.
I took another sip and smiled at Agatha, then set the glass down, lining it up with the wet ring.
I couldn’t leave that alone. Britannia’s eyes were glued to me.
Her lips looked like she was holding back a snake strike.
Now, I was worried. Drinking more of it wasn’t happening in this lifetime.
“Do you have a tissue or a napkin or something that I can put under this?” I asked, nodding at the glass.
“Don’t worry about it, honey. Didn’t you say you had something to show me?” Agatha asked.
“What?” I asked, taken off guard. “Not that I know of.” I hadn’t said anything about the box burning a hole in my pocket, and I wasn’t hauling it out with Britannia in the room.
I also wasn’t done with the photo album.
This time I opened it about halfway. The photos were color, and the people were still all looking at me.
I moved my upper body to the left, and the eyes followed.
I moved to the right, and they still followed.
I reached out with a finger to touch a photo of a little boy riding a bike with training wheels.
“Don’t touch the photos,” Agatha said.
The words roared silently in my head. My hand snapped back, and I looked up. Britannia laughed and took another sip from her drink. I didn’t like her tone. I never liked her tone.
“Okay, what the fuck is going on? You’re talking to me, without talking, about not touching a photo of a dead person, who’s able to move in what looks like a regular photo. Either you’ve drugged me, or I’m insane, or a bit of both. Can I get some clarity here?”
“Agatha has some special talents. She can read your mind when she pleases,” Wald replied.
“But she hasn’t licked me,” I said but wanted to take it back in so many ways. Britannia’s head cocked sideways, her eyes narrowing as she all but snarled at Wald.
Wald’s lips widened into a smile, but he didn’t look at her .
“There are no drugs involved. Agatha is very special, as I mentioned,” Wald replied.
Agatha leaned over to pat Wald’s knee. “Aw, honey, you say the nicest things. The photos allow the family to come and go as they please. You know what they say, death is not the end? Well, they’re right.”
I glanced at the album, still uncertain if it could bite. “Can they escape from the photos?”
“Honey, the photos are like an open door. The family isn’t trapped. They can decide which side of the photo to be on.”
I was liking her explanation less and less. “Okay, for example then, can this little boy come out of his photo?”
“Not in the way you are thinking,” Agatha replied in my head.
“Stop that,” I yelled at her. Talk like normal people , I said in my head.
Agatha’s face screwed up with distaste. “Wald, I expect guests of yours to be polite.”
Damn, wasn’t I being polite? “Okay, look, whatever woo-woo stuff you can do is really not that important. We need to get a ring fixed so I can get back to the normal life I once had with no mind reading, moving pictures, yellow eyes, or snake bites. Got me? Let’s get this done,” I said, jumping up and closing the photo album with a bang.
I set it on the coffee table and stuffed my hand into my pocket.
Britannia sneered and walked into the kitchen.
“And take this,” I said under my breath, handing the box to Agatha.
My fingers fumbled and the old leather slipped out of my grip as the room began to spin.
I looked down at the floor. The box wasn’t there, and the mirror looked back with eyes that weren’t mine.
I screamed and strong arms banded me, lifting me as I fought against them .
When the darkness cleared, I was looking into yellow eyes. Wald sat back. This was not the mirrored room. I was on a bed.
“What in the nine hells just happened?” I asked, running a hand through my hair and sitting up. The cocktail was drugged. Right, I knew I shouldn’t have drunk it. The room was flamingo pink from the carpet to the pink crystal chandelier over the bed.
Wald raised an eyebrow and the corner of one side of his lips turned up while he kept them pressed together.
Iconic and maddening. “No, you weren’t drugged.
Agatha’s house and things can have effects, but we didn’t think you would be susceptible.
Perhaps our time together has changed you.
” He rolled sideways off the bed then walked to the window and peered out.
I’d almost forgotten there were those things after us.
Okay, okay, get it together, Harlan, I said to myself. Getting the fricking ring fixed was the prime directive. After that, we could get back to not-going-to-jail or almost-dying. I got up too.
“Did Agatha fix the ring yet?” I asked, walking toward the door.
“She’s working on it right now. We should leave her to it.”
“Well, I think we should see how it’s going,” I said, opening the bedroom door.
Mistake after mistake. Such is my life.
Wald leapt at me in his lightning fast move and had the door closed in an eye blink. Beyond the door was the swirling vortex of nightmares.