Not every photo you take will be a good one, but every photo you take will be worthwhile. Because you can learn something new from every photo. That’s how you improve. A girl named Darlene Stapleton taught me that. And even though she died almost 33 years go, I’ve never stopped thinking about those words. In a lot of ways the story I’m about tell is like a photograph that’s been underexposed. There are too many shadows and dark blotches in the frame. I wouldn’t blame you for looking away from those shadows. Even I look away, when I think about them too much. But this story is one I’ve been wanting to tell for a very long time. And maybe in some ways it’s like a photo that needs to be developed and shown to the world.
Shadows and all.
Where should I start? Well, I guess I should say I never expected to fall in love with photography. Ever since I was little, sports had been my main passion. Baseball was my church. By the time I was 2 years old, I was already carrying around a small plastic bat with me everywhere I went. By the time I was 6, I had dreams of playing in the major leagues. Sports were my life. My everything. But photography? Cameras? Film? Never even crossed my mind.
Then one day in 1988 when I was 11 years, I was looking in my garage for my favorite baseball glove, which I somehow lost. I was panicking because that glove wasn’t just any glove, wasn’t just my favorite glove, it was my lucky glove. When I wore that glove I never dropped any fly balls, nor did any grounders get through between my legs. When I wore that glove I felt like the greatest baseball player on earth; or at least the greatest 11 year old baseball player in Jasper, Wisconsin. I was beginning to give up hope when I came across an old shoe box. I prayed to the baseball gods for my glove to be in there. I opened it up. There was no glove. I let out a bitter sigh of disappointment. There was no glove, but there was something else. A camera
Not one of those point and click disposable things that come pre-loaded with film, but an actual 35mm film camera. I picked up the camera gently, not really sure what to make of it. It was silver and black and had the word Nikomat written on the front. On the bottom in black letters it read: Made in Japan. Below that in faded black sharpie, it read: Property of Edward S. Trotter.
Even though I had been losing my mind trying to find my baseball glove, holding that Nikomat camera, I could almost feel my passion for baseball slipping away, the way a dream fades right after you wake up. I won’t say it was love at first sight, but holding that camera in my hands, something definitely switched inside me. It was like the gears in my mind had been going counter-clockwise my whole life and only now switched back to clockwise.
My father told me the camera had belonged to my grandfather(that would be Edward S. Trotter). He even showed me some of the photos my grandfather had taken. The photos were incredibly intimate portraits of my grandfather’s life. They were so vivid, so painstakingly beautiful. Each photo was like a window into the past. I thought if I leaned in too close, I could actually fall into the photos. Looking at those old photos, I couldn’t believe I had ever cared about something as silly as baseball. No, looking at those old photos I knew with absolute certainty, that I wanted to become a photographer.
I even gave the camera a name. Since it had Nikomat written on it(which was really the Japanese branding for Nikkormat), I decided to call it Saint Nick.
That very weekend I went down to my town’s local photo store. It was a nice little place called Ted’s Photo Booth. Before heading inside I propped my bike by the bike stand and caught a glimpse of the public community board. Normally, this board would be used to advertise festivals or upcoming bake sales, but the only thing on it now were posters for three missing people. At least 3 people in my town had gone missing over the past year and half. One adult, and two children. All separate cases. It wasn’t enough to stir national media, but it did create an uneasiness in Jasper. The kind of uneasiness that made people look over their shoulders when walking down the street at night. I stared at the posters of the missing people and the faces on those posters stared back at me with cold, frozen eyes.
I shuddered at the sight of those eyes and walked into the camera store. There was a middle age man sitting behind the front counter. He was reading a magazine. He had a slightly crooked nose and beady hawk-like eyes, framed by thick square glasses. He had a name tag that said his name was Richard. I opened up the brown saddle bag my father had given me and took out Saint Nick. I presented the camera to Richard and asked for a roll of 35mm film.
“What speed?” Richard asked, not looking up from his magazine.
“Speed? Well, I guess don’t know,” I said slightly embarrassed. “My dad just told me I should ask for 35mm film.”
Richard let out an annoyed sigh. The kind of sigh a veteran makes when dealing with a complete novice. He eyed Saint Nick. “Have you ever used that thing before?”
“No.” My cheeks flushed red.
“Look kid. That camera isn’t a toy. That’s a Nikkormat. Why don’t you run back to your dad and tell him to buy you one of those nice little disposables. They’re pre-loaded and I hear they come in all sorts of colors.”
Richard snorted out a laugh and then went back to looking at his magazine.
“But I want to use this one,” I said.
“And I wish I lived at the playboy mansion. We can’t always get what we want. Now buzz off-“
“Wow that’s some great customer service, Rick,” a new voice said. We both turned at the sound of the voice. A woman had appeared behind the counter. She was younger than Richard. She looked like she could be a senior in High School or a freshman in college. She had blonde hair and bright green eyes. Her name tag said her name was Darlene.
“Whatever,” Richard said. “I have other things to do. If you want to waste your time and show him how it works, be my guest.” Then he stormed off and went into a door with a sign above it that said: Employees Only.
“Don’t worry about him,” Darlene said. “He’s all bark and no bite. And unfortunately he’s also the owner’s brother. You said your looking for 35mm film?”
I nodded.
“But what you don’t know what speed, is that right?”
I nodded. And again I felt my cheeks flush red.
“It’s okay. Learning photography can be a lot to take in, but I’ll help you through it. Turn your camera over for me.”
I turned Saint Nick over. On the underside of the lens mount were eight numbers: 12 25 50 100 200 400 800 1600.
“Those numbers are what you call your ISO, or you film speed,” Darlene said. “Based on what film speed you buy, you’ll set your camera to that number.”
“But how do I know what film speed I need?”
“Well, it all depends on what kind of photos you want to take and when you take them. The ISO tells you how sensitive the film is to light. If you’re shooting at night, you’ll want a big number like 800. If you’re shooting when it’s sunny out, you’ll what something like 100 or 200. Does that make sense?”
I nodded and smiled. It did make sense.
“For beginners, I recommend 400. It’s perfect for indoor and outdoor shooting. It can work on bright days and on overcast days.”
Darlene reached under the counter and brought a small box of 35mm film. The box was green and written on it was the word Fujifilm, and underneath that was the number 400.
“So if I use that,” I said grabbing the box. “I have to set my ISA-“
“ISO.”
“Right, ISO to 400?”
Darlene smile and nodded. Then she said, “Now has anyone explained the exposure triangle to you?”
“Exposure what?”
Darlene laughed and then proceeded to explain one of the most important and fundamental rules of photography: Exposure. It did not matter how cool my subject or composition was if my photo was not exposed correctly. A perfectly exposed photo is one that is not too bright and but also not too dark. Improper exposure can kill any photograph’s worth. On the side of my camera were 11 more numbers: 1 2 4 8 15 30 60 125 250 500 1000. These numbers were my shutter speed. The higher the number, the faster the shutter. 125 is great for portraits, where as for something like wild life or sports photography, 500 or 1000 would be ideal.
“But now here’s the tricky part,” Darlene said after explaining shutter speed. “The faster the shutter, the less light is being let in. So you have to compensate or balance it out. That’s where your aperture comes in.”
On my camera’s 50mm lens were six numbers: 16 11 5.6 4 2.8 2.
“Those numbers control your aperture,” Darlene continued. “It’s how much light is let into your camera through the lens. Now it may sound funny kiddo, but the smaller the number, the wider the aperture gets and the more light it lets in.”
“So if my shutter speed is at 1000, I’ll probably want a really wide aperture?”
Darlene clapped and laughed. “Yes, you got it!”
“But how do I know what settings to use? Is it all guessing?”
“Well, you’re in luck. That Nikkormat of yours comes in with a built in light meter. Take a look through the view finder.”
I did. On the right side of the view finder was a small plus and minus sign, and what looked like a lever in between them.
“When you adjust your aperture and shutter speed that little lever will move. If it goes toward the minus, your photo is going to be underexposed. If it goes towards the plus, overexposed. If it lands right in the middle -“
“Perfect exposure,” I said grinning. I may have called my camera Saint Nick, but that day Darlene felt like a real saint to me. I don’t know if I ever truly would have gotten into photography if it weren’t for her kindness that day. In the afternoon sun that glinted through the store’s windows, she looked like an angel to me. Darlene went over the exposure triangle again to make sure I got it and also taught me how to load film into the camera. We laughed and made jokes the entire time. Neither of us knew that just one year later, I would find a camera that was unlike any other camera in the world. Or that one year later we’d both be tied up on the floor of a grimy basement.
Or that Darlene would be dead.
-————–
I wasn’t great at photography. Not at first. It was hard. Not just getting the exposure correctly, but finding the right subjects, the right framing. I spent the whole summer of ‘88 shooting with Saint Nick. The silver and black camera became like an extension of my right arm, I never left home without it. My parents didn’t seem to mind. I bought all my film with my own allowance. I even helped out at Ted’s Photo Booth from time to time, which might have been breaking a child labor law, but it did get me a discount on getting my photos developed. And even Richard the Terrible seemed to warm up to me.
I spent a lot of time at Ted’s Photo Booth, hanging out with Darlene and Richard, learning the rules of the game. One day when I was particularly discourage by my photos, Darlene nudged me gently on the shoulder and told me the best advice I ever learned about photography.
“Not every photo you take will be a good one, but every photo you take will be worthwhile. Because your can learn something new from every photo. That’s how you improve.”
Eventually, photography started to click. I started taking good photos, the kind that drew your eyes and were layered in both the foreground and background. That school year I entered in a local photo competition and manage to win. I even became the head of my middle school’s photography club, despite being younger than anyone else in the club.
It was the summer of 89 when I found the camera that was unlike any I had ever held or would ever hold again. I was exploring the the abandon train yard that was on the outskirts of town. This had become one of my favorite places to shoot. The overturned train cars made great subjects and the entire area was overgrown with yellow grass and weeds and there was a lot of wildlife around. And when the sun was low enough, during a time that photographers call magic hour, it became a photographer’s paradise. I took most of my best photos there.
I was walking through the train yard, when I noticed something in the weeds. At first I thought it was some kind of animal. Maybe some kind of dog? It seemed to be staring at me with yellow eyes. I was sure it was an animal, only when I blinked it wasn’t an animal at all. When I got closer, I saw what it truly was and my heart stopped.
It was a camera.
An actual camera. Just lying in the weeds. I don’t know how I ever thought it was a dog. How could I have mistaken it’s lens for two yellow eyes?
I picked it up. The first thing I noticed was how hot the camera was. Not hot the way a steering wheel heats up in the sun, but a different kind of hot. It reminded me of when I visited my aunt and uncle a few years back. My infant nephew had been sick and I only got to hold him for a few minutes. I’ll never forget his heavy breathing and the heat of his little body. That’s what it felt like to hold the camera. It was like holding a sick baby. The second thing I noticed was how wrong the camera felt in my hands. Despite it’s sleek design, it felt lumpy, misshapen. As if you could never really get a proper hold of it.
The camera was pitch black. There wasn’t any logo on it, but based on the general shape I could tell it was a 35mm camera. And it had a gorgeous 35mmf1.4 lens. Despite lying in the train yard for who knows how long, the lens did not have a single scratch or spot of dirt on it. I had dreamt of shooting with a 1.4 lens going back to the previous summer. A lens with an aperture that wide would create incredibly dream like photos. I didn’t hesitate. I loaded the black camera with a roll of film I had on me.
I looked around for a subject. There was a gorgeous sunflower sticking out of the weeds. The flower swayed in the wind as I approached, almost as if to say hello. The camera didn’t have an internal light meter like Saint Nick did. That was fine. I kept an external one with me at all times. I pointed it at the flower and it gave me the settings I would need for a properly exposed photo. However that summer I had been experimenting with under-exposing my photos. Despite what I had learned about the exposure triangle, I had also learned that under exposing photos did have it’s advantages. For one, it made colors and contrast really pop, especially with certain types of film. So instead of setting the black camera to the proper exposure settings, I set it to be under-exposed by two stops.
I pointed the camera at the flower, getting all of it except the bottom part of the stem in the frame, and snapped the photo. The shutter made a dull noise. It was far cry from the satisfying clicking-noise that Saint Nick’s shutter made. I walked around and took more photos and each time the camera made that same dull noise. Each photo I took I purposely underexposed. I was going to leave the train yard when I caught sight of the sun flower again. Based on the counter on the camera’s body, I only had one more shot of film left. I decided to take one more photo of the sunflower, but this time properly expose it. I adjusted the aperture and shutter speed and took the photo. This time the shutter did not make a dull noise. Instead, it made a horrible noise. One that sounded like bones crunching. I flinched at the sound it made.
When I brought the camera down and looked up, the sun flower was gone.
At first I just stared dumbly at where the flower had been. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing, or in this case - not seeing. How could the flower be gone? One moment it was there and then it had vanished. I looked around to see if maybe the wind had somehow blown it away during the short time in which I snapped the photo. But there was no trace of the sunflower to be found.
Only that wasn’t entirely true. Part of the flower’s stem was still there. It was the part of the stem that had not been in the frame of the camera’s view finder. Slowly the gears in my head started to spin. A thought began form, but it was too ludicrous. Too insane.
Did I….did the camera….
I pushed the thought away. I shoved the camera into my saddle bag and ran home, not daring to look back at where the sunflower had been.
That night I couldn’t get to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about the flower vanishing and what that meant. I turned over to look at my desk, where I had placed both the black camera and Saint Nick. Enough moonlight pooled into my room through the window so that I could see both cameras. The two cameras seemed to stare at each other the way two dogs might stare at each other from across the road. I know this will sound insane, but even though they were inanimate objects, I could feel a strange tension between the two cameras. I leaned over and turned Saint Nick so that it was facing the other way. Looking at the black camera I thought of the yellow eyes I had seen in the weeds and knew exactly what nickname to give it.
“I’m going to call you Black Dog,” I whispered softly.
-———–
I decided not to shoot with Black Dog again until I got those first photos I took developed. I didn’t even know if the strange camera really worked, so getting that film developed was a priority, and of course there was a part of me that was hoping those photos would hold the key to what happened to the flower.
Normally the days my photos were developed were a happy occasion. Darlene or- sometimes on rare occasions Richard - would call my house and tell me my prints were ready and then Darlene and I would look over my shots, praising and critiquing my work.
When I came in this time though, Darlene looked pale. There was not even a hint of a smile on her face.
“These photos you took were kind of strange, kiddo.”
Darlene brought out the prints. We looked over the underexposed photos first. There was the first shot I had taken of the sunflower and the other various photos I had taken in the train yard. The underexposure had given the results I had wished. The colors and contrast popped vividly, but there was something else to the photos. An aperture opened at f1.4 would give the photo a dream like look, but these photos had gone beyond dream like. There was a creamy-ness to the photos that was unlike anything I had seen before. The photos looked like paintings.
“You shooting with some new glass you didn’t tell me about?” Darlene asked eyeing my saddle bag.
“No,” I said, shifting nervously. I didn’t want to tell Darlene about Black Dog. Partially because I wasn’t sure of the camera myself, but also because technically speaking the camera didn’t belong to me. I had found it in the train yard and if someone had reported the camera lost or stolen…
I didn’t feel good about lying to Darlene, but I didn’t want to risk losing Black Dog. I felt like a character in those old fairy tales. The kind who finds a precious gem or diamond and are terrified of someone else getting their hands on it.
“I don’t even know what to make of this one,” Darlene said bringing out the last photo. Even before she revealed it, I knew what it would be. The last photo I had taken that day.
It was the photo of the sunflower. My heart stopped in my chest when I saw the picture. A cold shiver ran up my spine. Unlike the under-exposed photo which had shown a normal, if not dreamy looking sunflower, the properly exposed photo showed something completely different. It was the same sunflower, only it wasn’t. It’s petals were black and withered. Flecks of something dark and ashy looking were coming off the petals, almost as if the flower was disintegrating right before the camera.
“Are these the same flowers?” Darlene asked. She put the two photos of the sunflowers next to each other. “What’s happening in this one? How did you get the flower to look like that?”
“I have to go,” I said flatly.
“Huh? Kid, is everything okay?”
“I’m sorry Darlene. I’ll explain it later. I swear, but I have to go.”
I ran out the door, not stopping even as Darlene called after me. As I pedaled away from the store on my bike, I passed a white van. If i had known who was in that van at the time, I would have pointed Black Dog at him and ended everything right then and there.
But I didn’t. At the time, all I saw was ordinary white van. And I rode past it with out giving it a second glance. Behind me, I could still here Darlene.
That was the last time I would ever hear her voice again.
-—————-
I was standing in the abandon train yard, holding Black Dog in my trembling hands. The July sun had created a heat wave across the field of weeds and yellow grass, and I thought for a moment, I might faint. My insane theory, the one I had been trying to push out of my mind because it had been too ridiculous to even humor, had turned out to be true.
Black Dog made that sunflower disappear.
Or really I had by taking it’s photo.
In the 1/400th of a second in which Black Dog’s shutter had opened and closed, that sunflower had withered away and died, all in an instant. It withered until none of it was left, except the little bit of stem that had not been seen by the camera. But why did the flower only vanish when I took that last photo?
I think I knew, but I needed to be sure. Not far from where I was standing there was a wooden chair someone had dumped in the train yard. I took it’s light meter reading and adjusted Black Dog so that the photo would be under-exposed. Then with my hands still shaking, I took the photo. The shutter made a dull noise.
The chair was still there. It rocked back in forth in a breeze that was not quite cool enough to stop the sweat from spilling down my forehead. I wiped the sweat away with the back of my hand. The chair rocked gently, as if to say “now what are you taking my photo for, silly?”
I took another photo, this time adjusting Black Dog’s settings so that the picture would be over-exposed.
The chair was still there.
Now came the moment of truth. I adjusted the camera settings so that the photo would be perfectly exposed. My hands were shaking so badly now, I really did think I might drop the camera. I took the photo. The horrible bone-crunching noise of the shutter seemed to echo all across the train yard.
The chair was gone.
I let a small pitiful gasp. It’s real, I thought to myself. Oh god it’s real. The camera could erase anything it took a photo of, just so long as the photo was properly exposed. My head began to swim as I thought of all the terrible implications. What would happen if you took a photo of a person? Or what if I took a photo of a busy street, with a more closed aperture, so that most of the photo was in focus? Would the entire street disappear, along with every building and person caught in the frame?
What if I pointed the camera at the sun? And for one horrifying moment, I heard a voice in my head urging me to do just that. To take a photo of the sun. Go on the voice seemed to say. You’re a photographer aren’t you? Take a shot of the sun and see what happens. Not every photo you take will be good, but every photo you take will be worthwhile.
I didn’t take a photo of the sun. Instead, I let Black Dog fall from my hands. The cursed camera fell onto the yellow grass with a dull thud. I backed away from it, as if it really were a dog, that could pounce and bite at any moment.
I jumped on my bike and fled the train yard, not daring to look back at Black Dog. I resolved to tell Darlene everything, but when I returned to the store, it was closed and there was no sign of her anywhere. And all though I didn’t think about it at the time, the white van was gone as well.
I promised to tell Darlene everything the next day. But when I returned the following day, Richard was manning the store by himself. He looked worried. He told me Darlene had not shown up, had not even called in, which was not like her at all. Shortly after the police had arrived at the store, to ask questions. Darlene’s parents had reported her missing because she had never showed up the night before.
In my head I saw a new missing person’s poster being put up on the town square bulletin board. One that showed the photo of a young woman with blonde hair and bright green eyes. One that said in bold black letters: Have You Seen Darlene Stapleton?
The news of Darlene’s disappearance combined with what I knew about Black Dog had caused me to enter what I could only describe as a depressed fugue state. I spent a few days, lying in my bedroom, not sure what to do. I only returned to the train yard a few days later because something in the back of my head told me it was wrong to leave Black Dog out there. What if someone else found the camera? There was a part of me that hoped Black Dog would not be where I left it, because if the camera was gone, then it truly wasn’t my responsibility anymore. But it was there when I returned, right where I left it, laying in the yellow grass, almost smugly.
I picked it up and put it in my saddle bag and began to walk away, when someone spoke.
“Don’t scream.”
Before I could say anything, I felt two large hands wrap themselves around me, and then everything went black.
-————–
When I eventually woke up, I understood three things. One: Both my hands and feet were tied so I wasn’t going anywhere. Two: I was in some kind of basement. There was a small window that let in just enough sunlight, so that I could make out the room and the set of stairs that went up into the house. Three: I wasn’t alone. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw someone else lying on the concrete floor across from me. They were staring at me with wide eyes.
The light was dim, but I’d recognize those green eyes anywhere. The last time I had seen them they were looking at a photo of a withered sunflower.
It was Darlene.
I tried to say something, but through the gag in my mouth, it only sounded like muffled none-sense. Darlene didn’t respond. She simply continued to stare at me with her green eyes. Again, I sent out a muffled cry. Again, Darlene didn’t respond. In fact, she wasn’t moving at all. She was lying perfectly still. Seeing a dead body isn’t anything like the movies, where they use movie magic or just good acting to make the light leave the actor’s eyes. There was still light in Darlene’s eyes. They were as vivid and bright as the day I had met her. But there wasn’t any life left in them. They just stared.
I started to sob, and then stopped as I heard footsteps from the ceiling above. The footsteps moved across the floor and then the door to the basement opened. Slowly someone made their way down the steps.
He was a large man, with a bulbous neck, and a thin, wispy looking mustache. He wore dark green pants and a black work shirt. He loomed over me like a giant troll.
“I’ve been watching you,” He said. His voice was unbearably high. I never would have expected such a high and wheezy voice to come out of such of a giant man. “Oh yes, I’ve been watching you a long time.”
He bent down. “If I take that gag out, you gonna scream?” I shook my head. I didn’t know if I meant it. I wanted to scream more than anything, but the last thing I wanted was to make him angry. “That girl behind me said she wouldn’t scream. But she lied. She screamed a lot. I made her get quiet though. I made her get real quiet.”
He put one of his giant hands into my mouth and pulled out the gag. I started coughing.
“That’s fine, you can cough,” the man said, not unkindly. “Coughing is only natural, but screaming, that’s just uncalled for. It’s not good manners, you get me?”
When I didn’t respond, the man leaned in close to me. “I asked you a question.”
“Yes,” I said hoarsely. “I get you.”
“Gooood,” the man said in an almost too pleased voice. “You’re sharp. You gotta be to be a photographer right? Yes, I have been watching you. Running around town with that little camera of yours. You’re a real little photo-maniac aren’t you? I’ve even seen some of your work in the local paper. You’re good. Very good. I wanted to ask you to help me with a little photo project of my own. You think you can do that?”
I nodded.
“I didn’t heaarrrr you,” the man said in a horrible sing-song voice, cupping one of his large hands to his ears.
“Yes, yes I’ll help you.”
“Goooood. You see that pretty little lady behind me? Well, I’d like to take some pictures of her. There are people - all sorts of people - that would pay real good money for pictures of her, lying there just like that. Only problem is I’m not much of a photographer. I got big clumsy hands, you see? And some of my past clients, they’ve been none too pleased with my past work. Unless I start taking some better pictures, I might just up and lose my whole business! Can’t have that, can we? Well lucky for me. Because I got Jasper’s very own photo-extroadinare with me today. So what do you say? You take her pictures, and after that you can go on home.”
“If I take these photos for you, you’re really let me go?”
An insane grin broke out on the large man’s face. Even in the basement’s dim light, that grin was clear enough to tell me everything I needed to know. The man was not going to let me go. It was all just a game to him. He would make me take photos of Darlene’s body and then he would kill me. I was sure of it.
“Of couuuurse. Scouts honor. So we got a deal?”
“Yes.”
“Goood,” the big man crooned. And then his voice darkened. “Don’t try to run when I take your bindings off. Or I’ll break your fucking legs.”
I didn’t run after he untied me. I stood up and stretched my limbs. For a brief moment I did turn to look at the stairs and something inside me urged me to run for it. But the big man seemed to catch my eyes and another insane smile broke out on his face. One that seemed to say, go on try it. I double dog dare you.
“Now, unfortunately some of your belongings got, well a little dinged up, when I grabbed you.” Then the big man brought something out of the corner that I had not yet noticed. It was my brown saddle bag. “These big clumsy hands of mine, remember? Sometimes I just don’t know my own strength.”
He opened up the saddle bag and brought out Saint Nick. The body of the camera seemed fine, but the 50mm lens had been cracked to hell and back. Next he brought out my light meter. It was also broken.
“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. I really am sorry about that. I hope that camera wasn’t your favorite. Luckily, this one seems to be just fine.”
The big man reached one of his hands into the saddle bag, the way a snake charmer might stick his hands into a large vase, just before pulling out a king cobra. But when Darlene’s killer brought his hand out of my saddle bag, it wasn’t a snake he was holding.
It was Black Dog.
-————–
“You think you can use that?
When the big man handed me Black Dog my hands began to tremble. Not just out of fear - and I was terrified - but because the man had unknowingly signed his death warrant. Black Dog was in perfect condition. There wasn’t any scratches on the camera. It felt hot in my hands. More hot than it had ever felt before.
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes. This one will work just fine.”
“Goooood. Now get to work, Mr. Photographer.”
“I need more light. It’s too dark down here.”
“Alright,” the big man said flatly. He walked over to the other side of the basement, pulled on a cord and light bulb sprang to life. I walked over to Darlene’s body. Seeing her across the room had been hard enough, but now standing over her, I felt my knees begin to shake. If I had been standing outside, even the slightest breeze would have been enough to topple me over.
I had no intentions of making Darlene’s body disappear. I set the camera settings to what I knew would be an underexposed photo and took some shots. Each time the shutter was dull.
“Goood, that’s real good. Take a couple more. Can’t ever be too safe.”
I did and then looked down at Black Dog’s frame counter. I only had a couple shots left. Without a light meter it would be hard getting perfect exposure. Hard, but not impossible. I thought of everything I knew about exposure, about lighting, doing the mental math in my head as quick as possible. I adjusted the settings, turned, and pointed Black Dog at Darlene’s killer.
I snapped a photo. The dull sound of the shutter filled the quiet basement.
“Now, what are you taking my photo for?” the big man asked. That insane smile was still plastered on his face.
I adjusted the settings again and snapped another photo.
“Quit it,” the big man said and now the smile dropped from his face. “Quit it right now. I told you to take pictures of her, not me.”
The big man lumbered for me and reached his hand out. I stepped back, turning the aperture ring again and pointed the camera. The only thing in frame was the big man’s hand as he reached for me.
I said a prayer and took the photo. A horrible bone-crunching noise filled the room.
For a second the big man and I said nothing. We were both staring in shock. Staring at where the man’s hand had been. Now it was gone. Most of his arm was still there, but where his hand should have been, the arm simply ended in a nub.
“What the hell,” the man said. And now there was something in his voice that hadn’t been there before. He sounded as scared as I felt. “What the fuck did you do?”
He began to lumber towards me again. I stumbled and fell back wards. On the ground I could only get his lower half in the frame. I snapped another photo.
The big man’s upper half fell to the floor as his bottom half disappeared. He let out a terrible cry as his head smacked against the concrete. I stood up and looked down at him.
“What….what are you doing to me? What the hell is happening?” His voice was filled with anger and fear and tears were streaming down his face. His voice was so high now he sounded almost as if he was on helium. “Where are my legs? My hand? What the fuck is happening?!”
I pointed Black Dog at him, this time getting him fully in frame. The big man waved his handless arm at me, in a warding off gesture.
“STOP! DON’T-“
“For Darlene.”
The man’s screams disappeared in an instant as the crunching noise of the shutter filled the basement for the last time. Then, only Darlene and I were left in that cold dark room.
-————–
Not every photo you take is going to be a good one, but every photo you take will be worthwhile. Because you can learn something new from every photo. That’s how you improve. Darlene Stapleton taught me that. I’ll never be able to repay her kindness. I still wake up screaming, when I think about that day in the basement. When I think about what that man did to Darlene, or what I did to him. Or how I ran away from the camera store. What if I had stayed with Darlene until she closed? Would that man have been so brazen to attack us both together? I never told the police about Black Dog or what really happened to Darlene’s killer, because I knew they wouldn’t believe me. And as it turns out, I didn’t have any proof. After erasing the big man I ran out of the basement, which had been in a home on the outskirts of Jasper; I ran until saw a car I could wave down. I had left Black Dog in the basement. When I returned with the police, Darlene’s body was still there. So was Saint Nick, my saddle bag, and my light meter.
But Black Dog was nowhere to be found.
The police came to the conclusion that Darlene’s killer had been responsible for the other missing people in Jasper. Fine work gentleman. According to official reports from official authorities, the Jasper Killer, is still at large. But I know that’s no true. I know that somewhere out there, is a film negative, that if developed will show a legless man, frozen in time, withering away in an instant.
I don’t know where Black Dog is. I suppose it went to find a new owner. Once I thought of trying to track it down, but I knew that’d be impossible. That camera will only be found, when it wants to be found. So if you’re ever alone one day, and you think you see a dog, or some kind of animal, with a pair of yellow eyes staring at you, take a closer look. You might find it’s not a dog at all. No, you might find that instead it’s a camera. Maybe you’ll even pick it up and say, how did I ever think this was a dog?
Be sure to take a couple good pictures for me.
Just be careful who you point it at.