I tried to line up a shot of some of the more elaborate bottles, but the light was far too low. I was going to have to clear some of the vines off the windows, if I was to do any serious picture-taking in this place.
My stomach growled violently at me then, and a glance at my cell phone showed it was about noon. Glad some part of my body was still properly aware of time passing... the rest of me wouldn't have been able to make any kind of guess at all as to the time. I was so lost in this place, in the odd sense of another time that hung so heavily in it, like I could smell the long years in the mustiness of the air, and it was slipping into my blood. I stretched and looked around, trying to decide where to eat. I felt far too intimidated by the vast table in the dining room to sit and eat there all alone, so I went back to the ballroom, and sat on one of the wooden chairs next to a window, one that let in a little more light than some of the others. As I pulled a sandwich out of the brown lunch bag, I caught sight of my hands, and wished I had found a bathroom first. Or maybe tried one of the kitchen sinks? I pushed the sandwich up partway out of its plastic bag, and started eating, holding it from the outside of the bag. Would the water even work? Probably not, it wasn't like anyone would have been paying the bills... but there again, had running water really been common back then? Would the villa have even been hooked up to a town line or something, this far out, that long ago, or would it have drawn its water straight from a closer source? God, there were so many questions here! And I really hadn't answered any at all. I was now pretty sure that the place was abandoned, had been for ages, and that its inhabitants had once been incredibly wealthy. That was it.
Well, no it wasn't. I knew they must have been really socially active, to have built a freaking ballroom in their little forest get-away, and have such a huge dining room, and...
That struck me as odd. Why be so far away from town, able to have some peace and quiet, if you were only going to invite company all the time? It didn't make any sense whatever way I looked at it.
They had definitely had strong artistic eyes, to have created a place such as this... or, at least one of them, I supposed. I realized that I didn't even have any evidence at all for it having been a "them" that lived here! I had just assumed it was a couple, a man and his wife, he very much in love and creating this place for her... but I laughed wryly, shaking my head. I had no way of knowing this, it was nothing more than my own longing for an interesting, bittersweet story to be attached to this place.
But I knew there had to be a story like that, the sense of it had seeped into the very walls. Only how on earth was I to read it?
I wasn't going to get anywhere by sitting here chomping on peanut butter and jelly. I shoved a cookie into my mouth, and pushed everything back into my bag, slinging it over my shoulders as I stood up. I decided I'd head up the stairs and see if they really did lead to the balcony on this side of the villa, finishing up this wing of the house before moving on to the other. The light would be doing better things outside than inside right now, anyway - it would be coming straight down, and so actually hitting the clearing, instead of being lost in the trees. And it wouldn't be able to slant in through any windows for an hour or two, so I wouldn't get much help with indoor lighting.
I left the ballroom the way I had first come in, this time actually noticing the space at the end of the entrance hallway. Large glass doors actually opened onto... well, what I guessed had once been a patio, though it was so overgrown now I could only make out what was probably the shape of a table and a few chairs underneath the rampant leaves and flowers. Indoors there wasn't much, it was a largely empty space, probably kept that way to accommodate all the traffic coming in the front door and heading into the ballroom. Ball gowns probably required having a good bit of clearance - I grinned sheepishly as I remembered my own clumsy attempts at walking around in my prom dress back in school, and I doubted that had had nearly as big a circumference as some of the skirts that had passed through here. Still, there were a few low cabinets and tables along the walls, as in the hallway, with vases and flowers and statuettes and other small things artfully arranged on their tops. There were paintings on the walls here as well, though these were very small, and floral studies.
Re-entering the hallway, I soon rounded the bend and climbed up the stairs. I stepped cautiously onto the first few steps, unsure of how sturdy they would be - but it seemed that whatever the place had been built of, it stood up to the aging process pretty well. Heck, even the front door told me that - made of wood, but no signs of rot or decay at all, after all this time? Even I knew that was impressive. I let my fingers skim lightly over the banister, leaving trails in the heavy dust. But I was feeling a little more secure here now - largely because of my increased confidence that the place was all mine, but also... I wasn't sure what, but I didn't worry so much about the villa being damaged by my being there. I knew that didn't make any sense, so I left the thought alone, to figure out later.
There was a landing at the second floor, and to the right a hallway stretched out into the wing of the house I hadn't explored yet. To the left, as expected, a short passageway led to the curtained balcony. There were heavy curtains on this side, too, and I gingerly pushed them aside just enough to slip through. They really did weigh a lot more than you'd ever expect fabric too, and up close, I could see that they were embroidered with incredible details, with metallic thread and tiny beads (gemstones maybe?), an abstract flower-and-vine pattern as far as I could tell. The thread and beads were very close in color to the fabric though, so despite the density of the pattern, it had an elegant, subtle appearance. They smelled musty, but some other fragrance hung about them a little too, though it wasn't anything I could place. The balcony itself was carpeted - as was the passage leading up to it, I now realized, in some dark color that I couldn't quite make out in the dim light. There were a handful of comfortable looking chairs, two low tables, most of these placed near the elaborate gold railing that ran around the outside. Tall vases, which stood about up to my waist, were placed on either side of the entryway. A small chandelier hung in the middle of the balcony area, though it was far overhead, maybe fifteen feet or so, the chain it must hang from lost in the shadows of the curtains, which I knew went all the way up as high as the ceiling of the ballroom.
I stepped up to the small space where the curtains were opened. I couldn't imagine how on earth to set about opening them wider, just pushing them far enough aside for me to get in here had been difficult enough. The view down over the ballroom was, as I'd expected, pretty amazing. I stood there a long moment, my imagination covering the glowing wood floor with the abstract blurs of couples dancing across it, their elaborate costumes a rainbow of colors, gemstones and gold and silver catching the light from the crystal chandeliers and making everything sparkle as a thousand colored stars...
I don't know how long I let the daydream run, but one hand was starting to fall asleep, from the way I was leaning against my arm, which rested on the railing. It took me a bit to shake it off, though, which was unusual for me... unusual, too, to have visualized it so clearly. Maybe it was because I'd been spending so much time seeing the world through my camera's viewfinder, and my visual instincts were getting a lot more attention lately. Still... something about the daydream had been incredibly magnetic, something about the world it gave me a glimpse of felt... almost familiar, and I felt an oddly yearning sense of loss now that it had gone.
Weird.
I shook my head and stretched, shaking my hand violently to wake it back up. I grimaced as the pins and needles set in. Stupid circulation. I swung my backpack in front of me, and rummaged around for a flashlight. Turning it on, I made for the stairs leading upward, which were almost completely in the dark, with these curtains closed.
I walked even more carefully on these stairs, thinking that since they led outside, they might have suffered a bit more damage over time. The lower ones at least didn't seem to have, they were made of the same golden wood as the floorboards in the rest of the house. As I neared the top, I saw that there was actually a door - which made sense, I'm sure they wouldn't have wanted winter winds spilling down through here and leaking into the balcony, and from there into the ballroom. The door was of the heavy, dark wood, but with a window set into it, an arched one with black iron trim, and colored glass set into an abstract floral pattern. It was a regular door knob on this door - the first I'd seen, come to think of it - and I moved my hand to gently turn it.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Part 24
Time-darkened ivory walls lay like aged drawing paper behind the dark ink line work of iron curlicues and leaves and vines. In the top right corner of the frame, where the leaves were most densely packed together, a golden bird peeked its head out from behind a particularly large leaf. Bright gemstone eyes (diamond?) glittered dully in the diffuse light, and its long, gracefully curling tail feathers slipped out from between other leaves farther down.
Black silhouettes of unmoving leaflets ran up the right side of brightly colored flowers, cut from dusty glass. Light streamed between the dust left by long years of neglect, catching on small motes in the air, like sunlit pollen drifting slowly away from the open blooms.
Odd, abstract blotches discoloring the wall and darkening a patch of the bright floorboards. The blackness dripped from the lower corner of a window, as if it had been left open at day's end, and the night had begun to seep in, darkening all that it touched.
A music stand leaning into an empty corner, its fluid dark lines slicing the frame into small triangles.
A perfectly-formed pale hand stretching gracefully toward some precious thing unseen, its shadow lost in the dark leaves scattered behind it.
..
I reached the end of another roll of film, and sat down in a dim corner to change it. Pulling the mini-Sharpie out of the camera bag I was using for film, I marked the just-filled canister with an X, and pulled out a fresh roll. I realized I'd used up three rolls already - almost half what I had with me. Crap. Maybe I'd just stick with this room for today, and leave the rest for another time.
...but would I be able to get in later? Could I put an invisible key in my pocket? I could feel the thing, I just couldn't see it... I hadn't even thought about that, I'd have to try it.
Still, in case, I decided to walk around the rest of the house - no way my curiosity would let me leave without taking a look around anyway. I took a final, longing look around the ballroom, still aching to know the room's secrets. I had no idea how I would ever uncover them, but... that was an issue for another day. Today was for exploring.
I decided to go out the door at the back of the ballroom, by the fireplace, and then loop around back this way once I'd explored the back wing of the house. It led almost immediately into a large, very long dining room, whose centerpiece was an immense wooden table, surrounded by high-backed, intricately carved chairs. The backs looked awfully uncomfortable, but I decided whoever was rich enough to live here must have been high-society, and probably had had way better posture than I did. The seats were cushioned, though, with what looked like velvet, all in rich, dark colors. Actually the whole decor in this room was in rich, dark colors, all burgundy and purple and emerald and sapphire, dark browns and warm golds. I had taken my digital camera out a little bit ago, to get some color shots of the ballroom windows, and some zoomed-in shots of the frescoes on the ceiling (not that those were probably going to be very good, the light was pretty dim up there). I pulled it out again, and took general overview shots of each room I went in to, to look at later and decide where to go back to. (And to see if I could spot any more clues about who had lived there, and why they had left the place to be abandoned.)
The walls were painted a warm reddish-burgundy, not quite so dark as some of the other decor in the room. The window was mostly hidden by heavy drapes, but a bit of light fell through between them, showing just how much dust had piled up on the table. There were a few paintings on the walls, all landscapes that I didn't recognize. An elaborate gold candelabra stood in the middle of the table, and there were cabinets full of what I presumed was expensive china and glassware, though I didn't actually know a thing about the stuff (except how easy it was to break - there was good reason Mom never let anybody besides herself wash dishes at home anymore). I peered in through the glass cabinet doors, and wasn't at all surprised to see how elaborate the crystal and glass all was, and what tiny details were painted on the china. Any one of these dish sets would sell for... God I didn't even know, I'd seen much cheaper looking ones at the antique store go for like two or three hundred dollars, and those were nothing compared to these.
The thought slipped through my mind that if I took only a few things from the house, and ran them down to the antique store, I could be a good couple hundred dollars richer in the blink of an eye. But the thought left as soon as it had come - not only was I not in the habit of stealing, but... hell I couldn't even mention this place in conversation to sweet harmless old people, for fear of shattering whatever it was about the place that I was determined to keep intact. I couldn't even imagine taking something out of it! Which brought me back to the question of the key, but I pushed the thought aside to deal with later.
There were three ways out of the room, the way I'd come in, an open archway into a hallway, and a closed wooden door. I went for the door, and found myself in - as I'd somewhat expected - a kitchen. Though the cabinets were made of the omni-present dark wood, this room looked a good deal brighter, since all the countertops were made of the ivory marble, as were the floors. The windows were large, and the curtains here were of a much lighter material than any I'd seen so far. Some kind of translucent material, a warm pale aqua color, which let the light in nicely - where it could get through the vines growing outside, anyway. There were sinks and stoves, wire baskets and weird looking gadgets here and there, the uses of which I could only guess. Now that I stopped to think about it, pretty much every gadget I was used to seeing in a kitchen was electrical, no wonder I didn't recognize anything here! Nothing that looked like a refrigerator, either... I figured there was probably a cold cellar somewhere, and they would have had ice brought over from the lake in the winter, to keep things cold all year. I took a few close-ups of some of the more interesting looking utensils, moving a few of them closer to the window to get better light on them. I realized that these were the first things in the house I'd really touched... my fingers tingled a little at the contact, but I was pretty sure that was only because I was focusing on it so much. Still, silly as it was, when I'd taken the pictures, I put each object back where I had first seen it.
The only other exit went out into the hall, so that's the way I went. There was only one more room on this side of the hall, and both it and the one opposite it were pretty sparse. I wasn't sure if they were storage or what, but given the lack of decoration, I was pretty sure they were rooms for the servants to use. I decided to leave prying into the cupboards for later. There were two rooms on the other side of the hall, opposite the kitchen and dining rooms. Both were decorated in dark, warm colors, though the smaller of the two looked more like a private study or office. It had a large desk, with one of those old-fashioned rolltop covers, which was pulled down. A typewriter was perched on top of the desk, and I grinned brightly as I took my camera to it. I had this weird thing for typewriter keys, just the way the letters looked inside their small rings of metal, the yellowing of the protective layer over the bit of paper with the letter imprinted on it. I splurged and took a handful of shots of the typewriter, it was close enough to the window that the light wasn't too bad. I could really bring up the contrast in the dark room to good effect though, I knew.
The room next to it, across from the dining room (and part of the kitchen, technically, since the study hadn't been very big), I guessed was a sitting room - a drawing room? One of those rooms that men had gone to smoke and drink after dinner, to get away from the women and discuss manlier things. Boys. The room smelled a little mustier than some of the others had, and I wondered if that had anything to do with cigar smoke or something. There were some bookshelves along one wall, and another fireplace. Plenty of deep sofas and chairs to sit in, some foot rests, lots of low tables. A tall, ornate cabinet stood in one corner, out of the direct line of light from either the windows or the fireplace, and on closer inspection I saw through the etched glass doors that it was, quite literally, a liquor cabinet. A huge variety of bottles, some with labels in languages I couldn't read, filled the shelves. Most were glass, a few of them colored, and the liquids in them ranged from deep red to gold to clear to... green?? Alcohol was used to disinfect so many things, I was pretty sure it didn't ever go bad, but... that still seemed like an odd color for it to be.
Black silhouettes of unmoving leaflets ran up the right side of brightly colored flowers, cut from dusty glass. Light streamed between the dust left by long years of neglect, catching on small motes in the air, like sunlit pollen drifting slowly away from the open blooms.
Odd, abstract blotches discoloring the wall and darkening a patch of the bright floorboards. The blackness dripped from the lower corner of a window, as if it had been left open at day's end, and the night had begun to seep in, darkening all that it touched.
A music stand leaning into an empty corner, its fluid dark lines slicing the frame into small triangles.
A perfectly-formed pale hand stretching gracefully toward some precious thing unseen, its shadow lost in the dark leaves scattered behind it.
..
I reached the end of another roll of film, and sat down in a dim corner to change it. Pulling the mini-Sharpie out of the camera bag I was using for film, I marked the just-filled canister with an X, and pulled out a fresh roll. I realized I'd used up three rolls already - almost half what I had with me. Crap. Maybe I'd just stick with this room for today, and leave the rest for another time.
...but would I be able to get in later? Could I put an invisible key in my pocket? I could feel the thing, I just couldn't see it... I hadn't even thought about that, I'd have to try it.
Still, in case, I decided to walk around the rest of the house - no way my curiosity would let me leave without taking a look around anyway. I took a final, longing look around the ballroom, still aching to know the room's secrets. I had no idea how I would ever uncover them, but... that was an issue for another day. Today was for exploring.
I decided to go out the door at the back of the ballroom, by the fireplace, and then loop around back this way once I'd explored the back wing of the house. It led almost immediately into a large, very long dining room, whose centerpiece was an immense wooden table, surrounded by high-backed, intricately carved chairs. The backs looked awfully uncomfortable, but I decided whoever was rich enough to live here must have been high-society, and probably had had way better posture than I did. The seats were cushioned, though, with what looked like velvet, all in rich, dark colors. Actually the whole decor in this room was in rich, dark colors, all burgundy and purple and emerald and sapphire, dark browns and warm golds. I had taken my digital camera out a little bit ago, to get some color shots of the ballroom windows, and some zoomed-in shots of the frescoes on the ceiling (not that those were probably going to be very good, the light was pretty dim up there). I pulled it out again, and took general overview shots of each room I went in to, to look at later and decide where to go back to. (And to see if I could spot any more clues about who had lived there, and why they had left the place to be abandoned.)
The walls were painted a warm reddish-burgundy, not quite so dark as some of the other decor in the room. The window was mostly hidden by heavy drapes, but a bit of light fell through between them, showing just how much dust had piled up on the table. There were a few paintings on the walls, all landscapes that I didn't recognize. An elaborate gold candelabra stood in the middle of the table, and there were cabinets full of what I presumed was expensive china and glassware, though I didn't actually know a thing about the stuff (except how easy it was to break - there was good reason Mom never let anybody besides herself wash dishes at home anymore). I peered in through the glass cabinet doors, and wasn't at all surprised to see how elaborate the crystal and glass all was, and what tiny details were painted on the china. Any one of these dish sets would sell for... God I didn't even know, I'd seen much cheaper looking ones at the antique store go for like two or three hundred dollars, and those were nothing compared to these.
The thought slipped through my mind that if I took only a few things from the house, and ran them down to the antique store, I could be a good couple hundred dollars richer in the blink of an eye. But the thought left as soon as it had come - not only was I not in the habit of stealing, but... hell I couldn't even mention this place in conversation to sweet harmless old people, for fear of shattering whatever it was about the place that I was determined to keep intact. I couldn't even imagine taking something out of it! Which brought me back to the question of the key, but I pushed the thought aside to deal with later.
There were three ways out of the room, the way I'd come in, an open archway into a hallway, and a closed wooden door. I went for the door, and found myself in - as I'd somewhat expected - a kitchen. Though the cabinets were made of the omni-present dark wood, this room looked a good deal brighter, since all the countertops were made of the ivory marble, as were the floors. The windows were large, and the curtains here were of a much lighter material than any I'd seen so far. Some kind of translucent material, a warm pale aqua color, which let the light in nicely - where it could get through the vines growing outside, anyway. There were sinks and stoves, wire baskets and weird looking gadgets here and there, the uses of which I could only guess. Now that I stopped to think about it, pretty much every gadget I was used to seeing in a kitchen was electrical, no wonder I didn't recognize anything here! Nothing that looked like a refrigerator, either... I figured there was probably a cold cellar somewhere, and they would have had ice brought over from the lake in the winter, to keep things cold all year. I took a few close-ups of some of the more interesting looking utensils, moving a few of them closer to the window to get better light on them. I realized that these were the first things in the house I'd really touched... my fingers tingled a little at the contact, but I was pretty sure that was only because I was focusing on it so much. Still, silly as it was, when I'd taken the pictures, I put each object back where I had first seen it.
The only other exit went out into the hall, so that's the way I went. There was only one more room on this side of the hall, and both it and the one opposite it were pretty sparse. I wasn't sure if they were storage or what, but given the lack of decoration, I was pretty sure they were rooms for the servants to use. I decided to leave prying into the cupboards for later. There were two rooms on the other side of the hall, opposite the kitchen and dining rooms. Both were decorated in dark, warm colors, though the smaller of the two looked more like a private study or office. It had a large desk, with one of those old-fashioned rolltop covers, which was pulled down. A typewriter was perched on top of the desk, and I grinned brightly as I took my camera to it. I had this weird thing for typewriter keys, just the way the letters looked inside their small rings of metal, the yellowing of the protective layer over the bit of paper with the letter imprinted on it. I splurged and took a handful of shots of the typewriter, it was close enough to the window that the light wasn't too bad. I could really bring up the contrast in the dark room to good effect though, I knew.
The room next to it, across from the dining room (and part of the kitchen, technically, since the study hadn't been very big), I guessed was a sitting room - a drawing room? One of those rooms that men had gone to smoke and drink after dinner, to get away from the women and discuss manlier things. Boys. The room smelled a little mustier than some of the others had, and I wondered if that had anything to do with cigar smoke or something. There were some bookshelves along one wall, and another fireplace. Plenty of deep sofas and chairs to sit in, some foot rests, lots of low tables. A tall, ornate cabinet stood in one corner, out of the direct line of light from either the windows or the fireplace, and on closer inspection I saw through the etched glass doors that it was, quite literally, a liquor cabinet. A huge variety of bottles, some with labels in languages I couldn't read, filled the shelves. Most were glass, a few of them colored, and the liquids in them ranged from deep red to gold to clear to... green?? Alcohol was used to disinfect so many things, I was pretty sure it didn't ever go bad, but... that still seemed like an odd color for it to be.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
note
Sorting out architecture in your head is freaking hard. My sketchbook has a few more pages filled now... and I'm still not sure I'm happy with it, but at least I'm pretty sure it's all physically possible now! ugh.
Before you think that my vine-covered walls are completely ridiculous, this was actually my jumping-off point. I had a general idea of what I wanted, but googled for references, and when I saw this I was like YES! EXACTLY! and was happy. :) I think my decor has made the room a lot darker than that one, but it feels a bit cozier to me, and anyway it suits a Phisto a bit better. Well, this one, anyway. Anytime I'm not paying attention, Meres once lived here, but... I don't know if that makes sense for him to have done. The obsession with intricate details is very much him anyway. <3
About 1,100 words ahead again, which is fanfreakingtastic, since I have a hunch Thanksgiving is going to interfere with my nightly writing time.
I'm starting to think this story would make a better video game than a novel. I would absolutely love to walk around in this place, poking at things and finding little clues beneath the dust...
Further inspiration tonight came from this site, which turned up randomly as I was trying to figure out what kind of floors turn-of-the-century ballrooms would have had. I don't even know where this place is, somewhere around Great Britain, but this guy's trying to restore a pier and the old pavilion on it... the pavilion was built in the 1930s, and had an *amazing*, gorgeous art deco stained glass ceiling over part of it, which some horrible morons in the '60s COVERED UP. The place had been mostly empty for a few decades, and renovations in the '60s covered up a lot of the details, people had wallpapered over these incredible murals and things... It looks like it was a stunning place, and it's heartbreaking to see what happened to it, I'm so happy someone's working with such love to restore it. Even though it's, uh, highly unlikely I'll ever even be anywhere near it. I'm absolutely under its spell tonight.
...I only wish something like that had happened at Charlotte Beach back home, I'm so unbelievably thankful that the carousel is still there, but still haunted by the entire amusement park and waterfront area that once stood there.
Before you think that my vine-covered walls are completely ridiculous, this was actually my jumping-off point. I had a general idea of what I wanted, but googled for references, and when I saw this I was like YES! EXACTLY! and was happy. :) I think my decor has made the room a lot darker than that one, but it feels a bit cozier to me, and anyway it suits a Phisto a bit better. Well, this one, anyway. Anytime I'm not paying attention, Meres once lived here, but... I don't know if that makes sense for him to have done. The obsession with intricate details is very much him anyway. <3
About 1,100 words ahead again, which is fanfreakingtastic, since I have a hunch Thanksgiving is going to interfere with my nightly writing time.
I'm starting to think this story would make a better video game than a novel. I would absolutely love to walk around in this place, poking at things and finding little clues beneath the dust...
Further inspiration tonight came from this site, which turned up randomly as I was trying to figure out what kind of floors turn-of-the-century ballrooms would have had. I don't even know where this place is, somewhere around Great Britain, but this guy's trying to restore a pier and the old pavilion on it... the pavilion was built in the 1930s, and had an *amazing*, gorgeous art deco stained glass ceiling over part of it, which some horrible morons in the '60s COVERED UP. The place had been mostly empty for a few decades, and renovations in the '60s covered up a lot of the details, people had wallpapered over these incredible murals and things... It looks like it was a stunning place, and it's heartbreaking to see what happened to it, I'm so happy someone's working with such love to restore it. Even though it's, uh, highly unlikely I'll ever even be anywhere near it. I'm absolutely under its spell tonight.
...I only wish something like that had happened at Charlotte Beach back home, I'm so unbelievably thankful that the carousel is still there, but still haunted by the entire amusement park and waterfront area that once stood there.
Part 23
I stepped softly on the floor, feeling as hesitant as I would on freshly-fallen snow, not wanting to disturb it any more than I had to. I almost hesitated to breathe, not wanting to push away anything that was a part of this strange place. I lifted my camera to my eye, looking through to check the light levels. Pretty dim... I doubted I'd be able to get a clear shot if I held the camera, my hands would shake too much in the amount of time the film would need to be exposed, blurring the image. I'd have to stay close to the windows, or find something to set the camera on. (A portable tripod was something still on my photographic wish-list, not something I often needed, but really should have for times like this!)
I had no idea where to actually start taking pictures... I wanted to get an overall shot of the room, to have a reference later, and for my own memory, but it was so hard to get a good angle on that large a space. I didn't know if I could contain my curiosity long enough to focus on a single room without having even glanced at the rest of the house, but at the same time... I was so eager to learn the villa's secrets. Though now that I was inside, I realized my chances of doing so were incredibly slim. What did I expect to find, someone's home videos playing on loop in the living room? I had to laugh at that, but I found myself only smiling silently, unwilling to disturb the stillness. The atmosphere of the place was sinking quickly back into me, its air infiltrating my body with every breath.
I aimed my camera up at the chandelier, which caught some of the light from the window over the door. I took a few steps around, trying for different angles, finally settling on one with the window behind the hanging pieces of crystal, the metalwork looping gracefully along one side of the frame. I knew I could always adjust the lighting a bit in the dark room, that would help some.
I tread softly on the ancient carpet as I moved forward, its once-warm colors muted by dust and age. There was a hat tree to my right, in the corner beside the door, elaborately carved in the same dark wood as everything else. There were a few empty hooks on the wall nearby, then an open archway into another room, which I guessed was a parlor of some sort. The stairs to the left had an ironwork railing running up them, with a handrail of dark wood. As my eyes followed the stairway up, I realized that it didn't just cut off from sight where the second floor was. Instead, there was an arched opening to the left, where the second floor should be. I frowned a little - it hadn't looked from the outside like there was a second story to the large room, the windows had stretched up much higher than that, and I didn't see a floor drawing a line across their middles. Odd.
Ahead of me, the hallway extended forward to what looked like a wider, open space, light spilling in I assumed from windows. There was a narrow table running along the right side of the hall, its legs of dark wood and its top of... marble, maybe? It looked a little more ivory than the flagstones outside, but it was difficult to judge with the light and the dust. A delicately-wrought vase of spun glass sat on top of this, with an arrangement of dried flowers poking stiffly out from it. I wondered if they had been dried when put there... or simply dried as they stood, left unattended for so long. I moved closer to the table, trying to get into a position where there was enough light to capture the dead bouquet... but no luck. I stepped back and opened the door wide, letting light spill in, and I grinned as I checked my light meter. It made just enough difference that the shot might work.
From there, I looked around a moment, then decided to move ahead down the hall. If I went right, it would take me into the wing of the house filled with smaller rooms - which would be interesting, I knew, but I was absolutely dying to figure out what the huge room to the left was. I followed the hallway past the table, and into the open area.
The first thing I saw was a huge archway to the left, marble pillars with intricate vines wrought of iron twined around them. The pillars were a deep ivory, and were huge, they must have been ten feet tall. The opening between them was also large, about the width of two or three normal-sized doors. But there was no door, only the golden wood floor passing between the pillars into a huge open expanse, small scraps of colored light dropping from stained glass windows...
I didn't even take the time to look around the area I'd stepped into, I moved forward as though physically pulled, walking as if in a dream, drawn in through the pillars... My fingers brushed against them as I stepped through the entryway, the metal was so cold, like ice, and I knew that neither sunlight nor the warmth of a human hand had touched those cold vines since long before I had been born. Once I was through them, my eyes went wide, and I stood silent and motionless for a long while, just drinking it all in.
It was a ballroom. It had to be. The expanse of floor was incredible, the room really did take up the whole area denoted by the tall windows, and it looked even larger on the inside. The walls were the same creamy ivory as the pillars leading into the room, and were covered in the same twining vines... only here and there, they burst into flower, with tiny gold stars of blossoms, and golden birds peering out from the dark leaves. It was incredible - like that old-fashioned wallpaper or fabric you sometimes see, covered in tiny little details, what was it called, some French word, toile maybe? Only wrought much larger, and with more depth, and... real. The flourishes and windings were all tangible, I couldn't even imagine how long making something like this would have taken...
And the ceiling! Two huge chandeliers hung from it, dripping millions of tiny crystals and pearls like beads of water after a rainstorm. But stunning as they were, my eyes barely lingered on them, my gaze was drawn on upwards to the elaborate murals covering the ceiling...
It was a garden of pleasures, exotic tropical plants reaching up toward a gleaming sun between tall pillars and graceful archways, elegant figures draped in Grecian robes, women and men of equal beauty. There were animals as well, leopards and white tigers, unicorns and black stallions, cats and peacocks, everything with fur as luxurious as the attire of the people. Pearls and gemstones, so many intricate details I was sure I would never even be able to see...
The windows were still difficult to see properly, as the vines growing over them outside blocked the light, hiding many details and colors, but they seemed to show the lower levels of the garden painted above. I could make out dense ferns, rainbow-colored leaves, and a hundred kinds of flowers, orchids and others I couldn't hope to name, all cast in the most brilliant colors I'd ever seen... at least, I was pretty sure that was the case. I knew there had to be as many layers of grime on these windows as on all the others, and they were shaded by leaves, so I could only imagine just how vibrant they would be if cleaned and cleared. There were tall pillars set on either side of each window, I realized, and arches stretching over them, all painted (or sculpted in something that was) a warm gold.
I don't think I blinked for a solid five minutes.
Eventually, I took a long breath and shook my head. I looked down at the floor, saw that it was clear apart from dust, and I sat down. I leaned back on my hands, looking up and around. This was incredible... how had a place like this been left untouched for so long? There was a gorgeous old opera house in town that had been restored maybe a couple of decades ago, and pretty as it was, the craftsmanship of it was nothing compared to this. And that was like a public landmark, a bragging point for the town. And all the time, this had been hiding, forgotten, in the middle of the freaking woods!
I managed to drag my eyes down to floor-level, now that I was sitting there. I could see, in front of me and up to the left, the doorway that led out to the little side porch I'd walked on the week before, where I'd taken the nice picture of the chairs and the vines behind. Oh God, where was I even going to start with pictures in this room??? I pushed the thought aside, letting myself just drink in the place for now. To the left of the doorway, tucked into a corner, was a raised dais, maybe a foot or so above the rest of the floor. I was puzzled at this, until I realized there were a few music stands (of the same intricate ironwork as everything else) pushed up against the wall. A bandstand! Well, orchestra-stand, more likely.
The main expanse of the floor was empty, to provide as much space for dancing as possible, but there were plush-looking chairs and sofas scattered along the walls here and there, mostly in small clusters of four or five. Small tables of dark wood and marble tops stood near some of the chairs. Down at the far end, to my right, was the biggest fireplace I'd ever seen, or even heard of. Marble, again, with a fancy iron grate, which matched the ironwork tracing up the walls. Set on top of the mantle were huge sculptures, one a man, one a woman, clad only in wind-blown drapery, in graceful poses like ballet dancers, but looking toward each other longingly, reaching out toward each other's hands. I wondered vaguely how on earth I'd get a good angle to take photos of them, they looked like they might be life-sized, but I had a hunch the top of the mantle was going to be way above my head.
The wall beside me, to the right, had more chairs and loveseats scattered along its length, with a smaller doorway down at the far end, bracketed by pillars like the ones I had come in through, only with a gold arch over it---
I leaned my head back to look behind me. There was a gold arch over my doorway, too, I just hadn't seen it. Then my eyes went wide, and I turned to look toward the one area I hadn't looked at yet, the space that had been at my left when I entered, across from the door to the patio. Those stairs had been leading to a balcony! Maybe more like a box seat, like those in opera houses, there were immense burgundy curtains that hung from the ceiling all the way down to enclose the sides of the balcony. They were open at the front, though, so I could see the gorgeous gold railings, decorated with more vines and leaves, that ran around the box. I couldn't see much more from here, but it looked like there might be stairs that went even farther up from there - maybe those went to that overgrown balcony, out on the roof? I'd have to investigate.
I had no idea where to actually start taking pictures... I wanted to get an overall shot of the room, to have a reference later, and for my own memory, but it was so hard to get a good angle on that large a space. I didn't know if I could contain my curiosity long enough to focus on a single room without having even glanced at the rest of the house, but at the same time... I was so eager to learn the villa's secrets. Though now that I was inside, I realized my chances of doing so were incredibly slim. What did I expect to find, someone's home videos playing on loop in the living room? I had to laugh at that, but I found myself only smiling silently, unwilling to disturb the stillness. The atmosphere of the place was sinking quickly back into me, its air infiltrating my body with every breath.
I aimed my camera up at the chandelier, which caught some of the light from the window over the door. I took a few steps around, trying for different angles, finally settling on one with the window behind the hanging pieces of crystal, the metalwork looping gracefully along one side of the frame. I knew I could always adjust the lighting a bit in the dark room, that would help some.
I tread softly on the ancient carpet as I moved forward, its once-warm colors muted by dust and age. There was a hat tree to my right, in the corner beside the door, elaborately carved in the same dark wood as everything else. There were a few empty hooks on the wall nearby, then an open archway into another room, which I guessed was a parlor of some sort. The stairs to the left had an ironwork railing running up them, with a handrail of dark wood. As my eyes followed the stairway up, I realized that it didn't just cut off from sight where the second floor was. Instead, there was an arched opening to the left, where the second floor should be. I frowned a little - it hadn't looked from the outside like there was a second story to the large room, the windows had stretched up much higher than that, and I didn't see a floor drawing a line across their middles. Odd.
Ahead of me, the hallway extended forward to what looked like a wider, open space, light spilling in I assumed from windows. There was a narrow table running along the right side of the hall, its legs of dark wood and its top of... marble, maybe? It looked a little more ivory than the flagstones outside, but it was difficult to judge with the light and the dust. A delicately-wrought vase of spun glass sat on top of this, with an arrangement of dried flowers poking stiffly out from it. I wondered if they had been dried when put there... or simply dried as they stood, left unattended for so long. I moved closer to the table, trying to get into a position where there was enough light to capture the dead bouquet... but no luck. I stepped back and opened the door wide, letting light spill in, and I grinned as I checked my light meter. It made just enough difference that the shot might work.
From there, I looked around a moment, then decided to move ahead down the hall. If I went right, it would take me into the wing of the house filled with smaller rooms - which would be interesting, I knew, but I was absolutely dying to figure out what the huge room to the left was. I followed the hallway past the table, and into the open area.
The first thing I saw was a huge archway to the left, marble pillars with intricate vines wrought of iron twined around them. The pillars were a deep ivory, and were huge, they must have been ten feet tall. The opening between them was also large, about the width of two or three normal-sized doors. But there was no door, only the golden wood floor passing between the pillars into a huge open expanse, small scraps of colored light dropping from stained glass windows...
I didn't even take the time to look around the area I'd stepped into, I moved forward as though physically pulled, walking as if in a dream, drawn in through the pillars... My fingers brushed against them as I stepped through the entryway, the metal was so cold, like ice, and I knew that neither sunlight nor the warmth of a human hand had touched those cold vines since long before I had been born. Once I was through them, my eyes went wide, and I stood silent and motionless for a long while, just drinking it all in.
It was a ballroom. It had to be. The expanse of floor was incredible, the room really did take up the whole area denoted by the tall windows, and it looked even larger on the inside. The walls were the same creamy ivory as the pillars leading into the room, and were covered in the same twining vines... only here and there, they burst into flower, with tiny gold stars of blossoms, and golden birds peering out from the dark leaves. It was incredible - like that old-fashioned wallpaper or fabric you sometimes see, covered in tiny little details, what was it called, some French word, toile maybe? Only wrought much larger, and with more depth, and... real. The flourishes and windings were all tangible, I couldn't even imagine how long making something like this would have taken...
And the ceiling! Two huge chandeliers hung from it, dripping millions of tiny crystals and pearls like beads of water after a rainstorm. But stunning as they were, my eyes barely lingered on them, my gaze was drawn on upwards to the elaborate murals covering the ceiling...
It was a garden of pleasures, exotic tropical plants reaching up toward a gleaming sun between tall pillars and graceful archways, elegant figures draped in Grecian robes, women and men of equal beauty. There were animals as well, leopards and white tigers, unicorns and black stallions, cats and peacocks, everything with fur as luxurious as the attire of the people. Pearls and gemstones, so many intricate details I was sure I would never even be able to see...
The windows were still difficult to see properly, as the vines growing over them outside blocked the light, hiding many details and colors, but they seemed to show the lower levels of the garden painted above. I could make out dense ferns, rainbow-colored leaves, and a hundred kinds of flowers, orchids and others I couldn't hope to name, all cast in the most brilliant colors I'd ever seen... at least, I was pretty sure that was the case. I knew there had to be as many layers of grime on these windows as on all the others, and they were shaded by leaves, so I could only imagine just how vibrant they would be if cleaned and cleared. There were tall pillars set on either side of each window, I realized, and arches stretching over them, all painted (or sculpted in something that was) a warm gold.
I don't think I blinked for a solid five minutes.
Eventually, I took a long breath and shook my head. I looked down at the floor, saw that it was clear apart from dust, and I sat down. I leaned back on my hands, looking up and around. This was incredible... how had a place like this been left untouched for so long? There was a gorgeous old opera house in town that had been restored maybe a couple of decades ago, and pretty as it was, the craftsmanship of it was nothing compared to this. And that was like a public landmark, a bragging point for the town. And all the time, this had been hiding, forgotten, in the middle of the freaking woods!
I managed to drag my eyes down to floor-level, now that I was sitting there. I could see, in front of me and up to the left, the doorway that led out to the little side porch I'd walked on the week before, where I'd taken the nice picture of the chairs and the vines behind. Oh God, where was I even going to start with pictures in this room??? I pushed the thought aside, letting myself just drink in the place for now. To the left of the doorway, tucked into a corner, was a raised dais, maybe a foot or so above the rest of the floor. I was puzzled at this, until I realized there were a few music stands (of the same intricate ironwork as everything else) pushed up against the wall. A bandstand! Well, orchestra-stand, more likely.
The main expanse of the floor was empty, to provide as much space for dancing as possible, but there were plush-looking chairs and sofas scattered along the walls here and there, mostly in small clusters of four or five. Small tables of dark wood and marble tops stood near some of the chairs. Down at the far end, to my right, was the biggest fireplace I'd ever seen, or even heard of. Marble, again, with a fancy iron grate, which matched the ironwork tracing up the walls. Set on top of the mantle were huge sculptures, one a man, one a woman, clad only in wind-blown drapery, in graceful poses like ballet dancers, but looking toward each other longingly, reaching out toward each other's hands. I wondered vaguely how on earth I'd get a good angle to take photos of them, they looked like they might be life-sized, but I had a hunch the top of the mantle was going to be way above my head.
The wall beside me, to the right, had more chairs and loveseats scattered along its length, with a smaller doorway down at the far end, bracketed by pillars like the ones I had come in through, only with a gold arch over it---
I leaned my head back to look behind me. There was a gold arch over my doorway, too, I just hadn't seen it. Then my eyes went wide, and I turned to look toward the one area I hadn't looked at yet, the space that had been at my left when I entered, across from the door to the patio. Those stairs had been leading to a balcony! Maybe more like a box seat, like those in opera houses, there were immense burgundy curtains that hung from the ceiling all the way down to enclose the sides of the balcony. They were open at the front, though, so I could see the gorgeous gold railings, decorated with more vines and leaves, that ran around the box. I couldn't see much more from here, but it looked like there might be stairs that went even farther up from there - maybe those went to that overgrown balcony, out on the roof? I'd have to investigate.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Part 22
Saturday morning, I woke up incredibly early. Actually, I woke up several times - my subconscious knew my plan for the day, and I was so eager to get an early start that I had a lot of false alarms. At 5:30, though, the sun was finally rising, so I rolled out of bed and into the shower. I felt pretty bleary, since I had barely slept the night before, but the shower woke me up a bit, and I knew the crisp morning air would do so even more. I threw on a sturdier pair of jeans, and a t-shirt with slightly longer sleeves. I could always rolls the sleeves up if I got too warm, but if I was going to be doing any more battle with rose bushes, I wanted however much protection I could get. I ran a comb through my hair, being a bit more violent with the tangles than usual, and threw it into a high ponytail, slipping a couple strong barrettes in to keep the stray hairs out of my face. My small backpack was already packed, with brown bag full of a couple of sandwiches, an apple, some cookies and a granola bar, as well as two bottles of water. Inside the backpack was also the small camera bag I'd used before, stuffed full of blank rolls of film. (I'd wait until I'd gotten through the woods before I snapped it onto my belt loop - it would be more convenient there, but I wasn't going to risk it falling off somewhere in the woods. I wasn't about to go through that mess again!) My digital camera was tucked into the bag too, just in case I wanted it for anything. I'd thought about bringing the flash and some extra lenses for the SLR, but decided to hold off for today. I wasn't sure I'd need them, and I hated carrying the lenses around, they were huge and I was so paranoid about damaging them. I had a flashlight, and my cell phone was in my bag too. (And I'd left a note on my desk, just in case).
By six o'clock, I was out the door. The air was pretty chilly, the dew laying heavily and sparkling on every blade of grass. I took a deep breath, and let my head fall back to gaze up at the sky, grinning brightly. It was going to be a gorgeous day, there were only the slightest clouds in the sky, I'd have great lighting. Tempted as I was to take some pictures around the yard...I'd done that already, and I wasn't about to use up film I might want to use at the villa!
It took me a little while to find my way back, though not as long as I'd feared. I took the creek route, partly because I knew it would be easier to find (I couldn't quite remember where I'd come out on the road on the way home before), and also so I could time it, and see which way was actually quicker, following the creek or following the road. This way was prettier, anyway. The light didn't filter strongly enough through the trees to make for good photos, which was just as well, but it was really nice to walk through, so still and quiet. I caught a few glimpses of deer off in the distance, but they heard me and leapt away out of sight before I got anywhere near them.
I approached the villa slowly, cautiously. I walked all the way around the clearing first, to see if there were any signs of life. I still didn't see anything, there weren't any signs anyone had walked around recently - though even the paths I'd plowed through the gardens had closed back in on themselves. I did find a small building a short distance away, which I decided must have been the carriage house at one time. Peering in through a filthy window, I could see where there had been a small stable for the horses - I could see some hay pushed into a corner, and some harnesses hanging on a wall. In a window set in a large doorway, I could see a wide open space, presumably where the carriage had once been parked, the door being big enough for one to pass through.
No car in sight - no means of transportation at all. And no sign that the carriage house had been used in, I had no idea, decades anyway. None of the door handles would budge - but they felt rusted shut as much as locked, the mechanisms barely moved. ...which made me a little more nervous about the house, since the door handle there had moved cleanly enough. But I still didn't see anything to confirm anyone had visited the clearing besides me.
I took a few photos around the carriage house, but I still felt a little nervous, so I made my way toward the villa. I walked quietly, listening, but kept in plain sight of the house, trying to not look suspicious. It occured to me that it was still pretty early in the morning, it couldn't be much past seven o'clock. Still, normal people got up between seven and eight, I wasn't exactly on campus at the moment. I decided to just bite the bullet and get the worst over with...
I walked up to the front door and looked at the handle. There was no key.
I knocked. Again. Still feeling ridiculous.
I waited a good five minutes, then knocked again, louder. Still nothing. I looked at the door handle again. Still no key.
...what the hell was going on here? How did a freaking key get in my photo?? There was no one here. There were no signs of life. The door handle still looked like it hadn't been touched in countless years. The windows were still as filthy as they had been the previous weekend, there was still no movement anywhere, no old guy screaming at me to get off his damn property, no psychopathic hobo rapist chasing me down, no bleak old romantic wreck telling me his sob story.
Oh screw this, there was one way to settle this once and for all. I took a deep breath and wrapped my hand around the door handle. I lifted it. It was locked. I groaned and let go, bringing my hand up---
I froze, my fingers stinging. I had been about to put my hand to my forehead in exasperation, but on the way up... it had hit something. Something near the door handle.
Trembling a bit, I moved my hand back down toward the lock on the door, my fingers stretching out searchingly into the empty air.
They touched something cold and solid, that felt awfully like metal...though I couldn't see a thing there. I knelt down, feeling a little weak, and also to try looking from a different angle. Still empty air, to my eyes at least. My fingers, though... I slid them lightly along the short metal rod, and found a cloverleaf-shaped end, with an uneven surface that felt like intricate ironwork, like the knocker and the doors and everything else around the villa.
I turned the key in the lock, twisting it one way and then the other, until I could feel the mechanism release. I let my fingers fall away from it, looked at my fingers, looked at the lock. It was there... I'd felt it, it was there. My camera had seen it...
Holding my breath, I tried the handle.
It opened.
I could actually hear my heart pounding, and I would have called out to anyone who might have been inside, but I could barely breathe, let alone speak. I rapped at the heavy door, then slowly pushed it open.
I didn't even have to set foot inside to see that no one had been inside. Dust lay almost an inch thick on the floor, there were bits of fallen plaster and other debris all around. No foot prints in the dust, no areas cleaned. No one had stepped on the once-golden floorboards in decades. I took a deep breath and managed to call out, but my voice echoed flatly in the empty air.
There was no one there. The house was empty, and a ghost had left me its key to get inside.
I took another deep breath, trying to get my heart beat under control, and stepped into the villa.
It was quiet. Unearthly quiet, there was no sound anywhere. I could hear a bit of birdsong in the distance through the open door behind me, but inside the house was an almost tangible silence. I felt nervous about closing the door, like it would cut off my only connection to the world I lived in, so I left it a little ways open. It was dim inside, since the windows were covered not only in grime but also in vines. I hadn't even thought about that aspect, it would make taking pictures a lot more difficult. But I could use more practice with taking really long exposures anyway...
The door opened to a foyer, a short hallway stretching ahead and a stairway to the left, with a surprisingly high ceiling. The half-circle window I'd noticed from outside, maybe four or five feet above the front door, let a bit of light into the entryway, but not much. The walls were covered in wallpaper, now peeling away in places, ivory with maybe a gold patterning to it. Wood trim - the same dark, almost black wood that the door was made of - ran around the edges of the room, carved into flourishes near the ceiling. As my eyes moved upwards, they widened at the sight of a huge chandelier, hung with hundreds of faceted crystals. They were covered in dust, but even so I could tell that it had been a stunning, incredibly expensive fixture. The metalwork still glinted faintly, and the crystals caught a little light here and there. The crystal - or glass, or maybe diamonds for all I knew! - literally dripped from every curve. I squinted, and thought I could see candle stubs, but I wasn't really sure. Definitely no light bulbs though.
By six o'clock, I was out the door. The air was pretty chilly, the dew laying heavily and sparkling on every blade of grass. I took a deep breath, and let my head fall back to gaze up at the sky, grinning brightly. It was going to be a gorgeous day, there were only the slightest clouds in the sky, I'd have great lighting. Tempted as I was to take some pictures around the yard...I'd done that already, and I wasn't about to use up film I might want to use at the villa!
It took me a little while to find my way back, though not as long as I'd feared. I took the creek route, partly because I knew it would be easier to find (I couldn't quite remember where I'd come out on the road on the way home before), and also so I could time it, and see which way was actually quicker, following the creek or following the road. This way was prettier, anyway. The light didn't filter strongly enough through the trees to make for good photos, which was just as well, but it was really nice to walk through, so still and quiet. I caught a few glimpses of deer off in the distance, but they heard me and leapt away out of sight before I got anywhere near them.
I approached the villa slowly, cautiously. I walked all the way around the clearing first, to see if there were any signs of life. I still didn't see anything, there weren't any signs anyone had walked around recently - though even the paths I'd plowed through the gardens had closed back in on themselves. I did find a small building a short distance away, which I decided must have been the carriage house at one time. Peering in through a filthy window, I could see where there had been a small stable for the horses - I could see some hay pushed into a corner, and some harnesses hanging on a wall. In a window set in a large doorway, I could see a wide open space, presumably where the carriage had once been parked, the door being big enough for one to pass through.
No car in sight - no means of transportation at all. And no sign that the carriage house had been used in, I had no idea, decades anyway. None of the door handles would budge - but they felt rusted shut as much as locked, the mechanisms barely moved. ...which made me a little more nervous about the house, since the door handle there had moved cleanly enough. But I still didn't see anything to confirm anyone had visited the clearing besides me.
I took a few photos around the carriage house, but I still felt a little nervous, so I made my way toward the villa. I walked quietly, listening, but kept in plain sight of the house, trying to not look suspicious. It occured to me that it was still pretty early in the morning, it couldn't be much past seven o'clock. Still, normal people got up between seven and eight, I wasn't exactly on campus at the moment. I decided to just bite the bullet and get the worst over with...
I walked up to the front door and looked at the handle. There was no key.
I knocked. Again. Still feeling ridiculous.
I waited a good five minutes, then knocked again, louder. Still nothing. I looked at the door handle again. Still no key.
...what the hell was going on here? How did a freaking key get in my photo?? There was no one here. There were no signs of life. The door handle still looked like it hadn't been touched in countless years. The windows were still as filthy as they had been the previous weekend, there was still no movement anywhere, no old guy screaming at me to get off his damn property, no psychopathic hobo rapist chasing me down, no bleak old romantic wreck telling me his sob story.
Oh screw this, there was one way to settle this once and for all. I took a deep breath and wrapped my hand around the door handle. I lifted it. It was locked. I groaned and let go, bringing my hand up---
I froze, my fingers stinging. I had been about to put my hand to my forehead in exasperation, but on the way up... it had hit something. Something near the door handle.
Trembling a bit, I moved my hand back down toward the lock on the door, my fingers stretching out searchingly into the empty air.
They touched something cold and solid, that felt awfully like metal...though I couldn't see a thing there. I knelt down, feeling a little weak, and also to try looking from a different angle. Still empty air, to my eyes at least. My fingers, though... I slid them lightly along the short metal rod, and found a cloverleaf-shaped end, with an uneven surface that felt like intricate ironwork, like the knocker and the doors and everything else around the villa.
I turned the key in the lock, twisting it one way and then the other, until I could feel the mechanism release. I let my fingers fall away from it, looked at my fingers, looked at the lock. It was there... I'd felt it, it was there. My camera had seen it...
Holding my breath, I tried the handle.
It opened.
I could actually hear my heart pounding, and I would have called out to anyone who might have been inside, but I could barely breathe, let alone speak. I rapped at the heavy door, then slowly pushed it open.
I didn't even have to set foot inside to see that no one had been inside. Dust lay almost an inch thick on the floor, there were bits of fallen plaster and other debris all around. No foot prints in the dust, no areas cleaned. No one had stepped on the once-golden floorboards in decades. I took a deep breath and managed to call out, but my voice echoed flatly in the empty air.
There was no one there. The house was empty, and a ghost had left me its key to get inside.
I took another deep breath, trying to get my heart beat under control, and stepped into the villa.
It was quiet. Unearthly quiet, there was no sound anywhere. I could hear a bit of birdsong in the distance through the open door behind me, but inside the house was an almost tangible silence. I felt nervous about closing the door, like it would cut off my only connection to the world I lived in, so I left it a little ways open. It was dim inside, since the windows were covered not only in grime but also in vines. I hadn't even thought about that aspect, it would make taking pictures a lot more difficult. But I could use more practice with taking really long exposures anyway...
The door opened to a foyer, a short hallway stretching ahead and a stairway to the left, with a surprisingly high ceiling. The half-circle window I'd noticed from outside, maybe four or five feet above the front door, let a bit of light into the entryway, but not much. The walls were covered in wallpaper, now peeling away in places, ivory with maybe a gold patterning to it. Wood trim - the same dark, almost black wood that the door was made of - ran around the edges of the room, carved into flourishes near the ceiling. As my eyes moved upwards, they widened at the sight of a huge chandelier, hung with hundreds of faceted crystals. They were covered in dust, but even so I could tell that it had been a stunning, incredibly expensive fixture. The metalwork still glinted faintly, and the crystals caught a little light here and there. The crystal - or glass, or maybe diamonds for all I knew! - literally dripped from every curve. I squinted, and thought I could see candle stubs, but I wasn't really sure. Definitely no light bulbs though.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Part 21
It must have been a good five minutes before I could steel myself to go anywhere near those chemicals again. I still couldn't get the stinging scent out of my nose, but, I could breathe at least. I took a few last deep breaths of fresh air, and turned the sharp corners of the short hallway back into the dark room. I decided that this was the last shot I'd do prints of that night, so I straightened up some of my things while waiting for the chemicals to finish washing off the print. After a few minutes, I drew the photo out of the running water, let it drip, then carried it into the next room to take a look.
I pulled out a shelf on the drying rack, and laid my picture down on the thin wire mesh, smoothing the corners down to make it lay flat. I tucked a stray strand of hair back behind one ear as I leaned over the image. Overall, it looked alright, but I decided the shadows weren't quite dark enough, I'd have to do another print with a little higher contrast. Especially the door, it looked a little too flat there... and there was something wrong! I'd have to check the negative, that smudge was totally still there by the handle. I bent down even closer to the picture, trying to decide if it was something on the paper, or if it had been something on the negative, or even a fly or something that flew by just as I took the original photo. I squinted, peering intently...
And it wasn't any of those.
It was something attached to the handle, something I didn't remember seeing at all...
And I could swear it was a key.
...no way. It had to be a smudge of some kind that just looked like a key, like seeing shapes in the clouds. No freaking way there was a key in the door, I looked right at the handle! I tried opening the damn door, I think I'd have noticed something like that. I laughed wryly at myself, shaking my head. And here I'd made fun of those "ghost photos" people always tried to use as proof of ghosts, where there was some weird blotch on the image that, if you looked at it right, looked kind of like a face. Guess I was just as susceptible to that as anyone else...
But I couldn't quite shake it off. I ran a fingernail over the paper, but the surface seemed smooth, it wasn't anything weird on the paper. I pulled the negative out of the enlarger, brought it out into the light, but there was no dust or anything on it. The door handle was way too small in the negative for me to be able to tell if the splotch was on there or not, I could barely make out the handle let alone anything else. I had no way to figure out if it had been something flying between the door and my camera when I took the picture... so I decided to run off another print, I'd wanted to anyway. I set everything up, making the adjustments I'd wanted, and exposed the paper to the projection of the negative. I tried to see if the "key" showed up in the projection, but it was too dim, I really couldn't see the details that clearly.
When I brought the developed image into the other room, I saw the "key" was still there. I was so confused, I tried looking at it from all different angles, trying to figure out what it could be... but couldn't sort it out. Otherwise, the print looked great, so I left it on the rack to dry. I'd have to take a fresh look at it later, and decide whether it was enough of a blot on the picture to actually ruin it. I really hoped not, the composition had worked really well, once I'd adjusted the lighting...
I went back to the enlarger, and flipped the light on, letting the image shine down onto the empty paper frame beneath it. I enlarged it as big as I could get it, focused as sharply as I could, and brought the brightness all the way up, staring intently at the portion with the door handle. Whatever it was, it really looked like it was on the same plane as the handle itself, it didn't seem to be something in between the door and my camera... I turned off the light, and grabbed a sheet of paper, slipping it underneath the enlarger. I made a guess at the exposure time - it didn't really matter if this was perfect, I just wanted a close-up look at that handle. I ran off the print, developed it, and brought it into the other room. I grabbed a sheet of paper towel and put it underneath the print, flopping down in a chair next to a table in the center of the room.
I shook my head slowly, completely dumbfounded. It was a key. It couldn't be anything else. I was looking at an image of the handle four inches tall, and there was no mistaking it. It was a key. The lighting wasn't all that great, especially since I'd made such a guess at the exposure, but it was definitely a bit of metal sticking out from the lock just above the handle, with what looked like a pretty intricate clover-leaf shaped top. I sat back, looking away, taking a few solid breaths and moving my eyes around the room. Then I looked back at the photo. Still a key there. Unless breathing in those chemicals had really done a number on me, there was a key there, that somehow, I hadn't seen when I was standing right there in front of the freaking door.
This was completely ridiculous. How had I not seen it?? Granted, I hadn't like stared at every inch of the door, and most of the time I had looked at it had been spent looking at the intricate door knocker, but... I'd tried to get in. I'd looked at the handle, used it, seen the lock, realized it was locked.
...unless someone had come by while I was walking around the house, and put a key there. I shivered. That was really creepy... But what else could it be? I'd been pretty caught up in the house, and made plenty of noise floundering through the weeds and other plants, I wouldn't have heard anyone else walk up to the house. And I didn't really look at the handle when I came back to the door the second time, I'd just looked the check the light, and taken a shot of the knocker, and then backed up to take one through the wisteria. I guess I might not have noticed it, if it had been there at that point...
But if someone had come by, wouldn't they have heard me? If they'd gone into the house, surely they would have heard me banging around outside, or seen me through a window... maybe not, if they'd been busy with something, but... Oh this was too creepy! If they'd gone in the house, they wouldn't have left the key in the lock, would they? I mean I'd done it once or twice when my arms were full or whatever, but... No, there couldn't have been anyone living there, the place looked so abandoned! There hadn't been anything like a footpath through the yard or gardens. Even the path through the wisteria, there were so many little tendrils hanging down over the entryway, if someone was living there they would have pruned it back...
Unless they weren't supposed to be living there, or just didn't want anyone to know they were there. The image of the heartbroken fiancé I'd concocted a few days ago popped into my head right alongside the image of a psychopathic vagrant murderer.
I shouldn't have gone there alone, and really shouldn't have gone without telling anyone where I was, all they'd known was that I was in the woods by the creek, that was a huge area to cover. I realized I was shaking a little now, thinking about just how much danger I might have been in.
...but I knew already I'd have to go back. I'd be more aware of my surroundings, but, I had to go back. I had to see if that key was really there, if anyone was living there, or if the house was as empty as I'd thought it was. It had to be abandoned, I'd been so sure of it... Some small rational part of my brain wondered if it wasn't just my girlish romantic fantasies that were rebelling against the prosaicness of everyday life, and that I just really really wanted the house to be abandoned, but... I'd been so sure!
God this whole situation was just too weird. I sighed heavily and stood up, then moved the close-up of the handle over to the drying rack. It was time to go home and get my head away from these fumes for awhile, I'd come back tomorrow and see how things looked.
Things looked pretty much the same the next day.
I'd tried to put it all out of my head, but hadn't had a bit of luck doing it. All night, I'd stared at that photo in my memory, trying to puzzle it all out. I really had looked, pretty hard, for signs that someone was living there, and I hadn't seen a darn thing. That door was awfully heavy, and the walls old - if it had been opened and closed, surely I would have heard it, it wasn't like walking around the house took me that far away from the front of it, it wasn't that big a place. And if someone was living there, and they were forgetful enough to close the door with the key still in the lock, they would definitely have left signs of life somewhere around the place. I hadn't seen any other path leading out of the clearing, besides the one I'd come in on, and that only went down to the creek.
I was going to have to go back. I wouldn't have time until Saturday... and I still had to decide what I was going to do about the safety issue. I'd make sure to take my phone, and maybe I'd leave a little note with a map in my room or something - an "in the event I don't return..." kind of note. Silly as it was, that idea actually made me feel a lot better. I could just tell someone where I was going, or take someone with me, but... somehow I couldn't bring myself to do it. The villa felt so private, so untouched by the world, that I felt a little anxious about leaving more of my own footprints there, let alone making its existence known to the whole world.
...that was really my strongest reason for feeling there was some other explanation for the key. It wasn't something I could really put into words, but that feeling I'd had while I was there, that ethereal atmosphere, that wasn't something that a vagrant, or absent-minded old man, would create. That was the feeling of a love story gone sorrowful, it was the feeling of beauty and regret. There was some story there, and I had to go back, to see if I could listen closely enough to hear a little more of that story...
I pulled out a shelf on the drying rack, and laid my picture down on the thin wire mesh, smoothing the corners down to make it lay flat. I tucked a stray strand of hair back behind one ear as I leaned over the image. Overall, it looked alright, but I decided the shadows weren't quite dark enough, I'd have to do another print with a little higher contrast. Especially the door, it looked a little too flat there... and there was something wrong! I'd have to check the negative, that smudge was totally still there by the handle. I bent down even closer to the picture, trying to decide if it was something on the paper, or if it had been something on the negative, or even a fly or something that flew by just as I took the original photo. I squinted, peering intently...
And it wasn't any of those.
It was something attached to the handle, something I didn't remember seeing at all...
And I could swear it was a key.
...no way. It had to be a smudge of some kind that just looked like a key, like seeing shapes in the clouds. No freaking way there was a key in the door, I looked right at the handle! I tried opening the damn door, I think I'd have noticed something like that. I laughed wryly at myself, shaking my head. And here I'd made fun of those "ghost photos" people always tried to use as proof of ghosts, where there was some weird blotch on the image that, if you looked at it right, looked kind of like a face. Guess I was just as susceptible to that as anyone else...
But I couldn't quite shake it off. I ran a fingernail over the paper, but the surface seemed smooth, it wasn't anything weird on the paper. I pulled the negative out of the enlarger, brought it out into the light, but there was no dust or anything on it. The door handle was way too small in the negative for me to be able to tell if the splotch was on there or not, I could barely make out the handle let alone anything else. I had no way to figure out if it had been something flying between the door and my camera when I took the picture... so I decided to run off another print, I'd wanted to anyway. I set everything up, making the adjustments I'd wanted, and exposed the paper to the projection of the negative. I tried to see if the "key" showed up in the projection, but it was too dim, I really couldn't see the details that clearly.
When I brought the developed image into the other room, I saw the "key" was still there. I was so confused, I tried looking at it from all different angles, trying to figure out what it could be... but couldn't sort it out. Otherwise, the print looked great, so I left it on the rack to dry. I'd have to take a fresh look at it later, and decide whether it was enough of a blot on the picture to actually ruin it. I really hoped not, the composition had worked really well, once I'd adjusted the lighting...
I went back to the enlarger, and flipped the light on, letting the image shine down onto the empty paper frame beneath it. I enlarged it as big as I could get it, focused as sharply as I could, and brought the brightness all the way up, staring intently at the portion with the door handle. Whatever it was, it really looked like it was on the same plane as the handle itself, it didn't seem to be something in between the door and my camera... I turned off the light, and grabbed a sheet of paper, slipping it underneath the enlarger. I made a guess at the exposure time - it didn't really matter if this was perfect, I just wanted a close-up look at that handle. I ran off the print, developed it, and brought it into the other room. I grabbed a sheet of paper towel and put it underneath the print, flopping down in a chair next to a table in the center of the room.
I shook my head slowly, completely dumbfounded. It was a key. It couldn't be anything else. I was looking at an image of the handle four inches tall, and there was no mistaking it. It was a key. The lighting wasn't all that great, especially since I'd made such a guess at the exposure, but it was definitely a bit of metal sticking out from the lock just above the handle, with what looked like a pretty intricate clover-leaf shaped top. I sat back, looking away, taking a few solid breaths and moving my eyes around the room. Then I looked back at the photo. Still a key there. Unless breathing in those chemicals had really done a number on me, there was a key there, that somehow, I hadn't seen when I was standing right there in front of the freaking door.
This was completely ridiculous. How had I not seen it?? Granted, I hadn't like stared at every inch of the door, and most of the time I had looked at it had been spent looking at the intricate door knocker, but... I'd tried to get in. I'd looked at the handle, used it, seen the lock, realized it was locked.
...unless someone had come by while I was walking around the house, and put a key there. I shivered. That was really creepy... But what else could it be? I'd been pretty caught up in the house, and made plenty of noise floundering through the weeds and other plants, I wouldn't have heard anyone else walk up to the house. And I didn't really look at the handle when I came back to the door the second time, I'd just looked the check the light, and taken a shot of the knocker, and then backed up to take one through the wisteria. I guess I might not have noticed it, if it had been there at that point...
But if someone had come by, wouldn't they have heard me? If they'd gone into the house, surely they would have heard me banging around outside, or seen me through a window... maybe not, if they'd been busy with something, but... Oh this was too creepy! If they'd gone in the house, they wouldn't have left the key in the lock, would they? I mean I'd done it once or twice when my arms were full or whatever, but... No, there couldn't have been anyone living there, the place looked so abandoned! There hadn't been anything like a footpath through the yard or gardens. Even the path through the wisteria, there were so many little tendrils hanging down over the entryway, if someone was living there they would have pruned it back...
Unless they weren't supposed to be living there, or just didn't want anyone to know they were there. The image of the heartbroken fiancé I'd concocted a few days ago popped into my head right alongside the image of a psychopathic vagrant murderer.
I shouldn't have gone there alone, and really shouldn't have gone without telling anyone where I was, all they'd known was that I was in the woods by the creek, that was a huge area to cover. I realized I was shaking a little now, thinking about just how much danger I might have been in.
...but I knew already I'd have to go back. I'd be more aware of my surroundings, but, I had to go back. I had to see if that key was really there, if anyone was living there, or if the house was as empty as I'd thought it was. It had to be abandoned, I'd been so sure of it... Some small rational part of my brain wondered if it wasn't just my girlish romantic fantasies that were rebelling against the prosaicness of everyday life, and that I just really really wanted the house to be abandoned, but... I'd been so sure!
God this whole situation was just too weird. I sighed heavily and stood up, then moved the close-up of the handle over to the drying rack. It was time to go home and get my head away from these fumes for awhile, I'd come back tomorrow and see how things looked.
Things looked pretty much the same the next day.
I'd tried to put it all out of my head, but hadn't had a bit of luck doing it. All night, I'd stared at that photo in my memory, trying to puzzle it all out. I really had looked, pretty hard, for signs that someone was living there, and I hadn't seen a darn thing. That door was awfully heavy, and the walls old - if it had been opened and closed, surely I would have heard it, it wasn't like walking around the house took me that far away from the front of it, it wasn't that big a place. And if someone was living there, and they were forgetful enough to close the door with the key still in the lock, they would definitely have left signs of life somewhere around the place. I hadn't seen any other path leading out of the clearing, besides the one I'd come in on, and that only went down to the creek.
I was going to have to go back. I wouldn't have time until Saturday... and I still had to decide what I was going to do about the safety issue. I'd make sure to take my phone, and maybe I'd leave a little note with a map in my room or something - an "in the event I don't return..." kind of note. Silly as it was, that idea actually made me feel a lot better. I could just tell someone where I was going, or take someone with me, but... somehow I couldn't bring myself to do it. The villa felt so private, so untouched by the world, that I felt a little anxious about leaving more of my own footprints there, let alone making its existence known to the whole world.
...that was really my strongest reason for feeling there was some other explanation for the key. It wasn't something I could really put into words, but that feeling I'd had while I was there, that ethereal atmosphere, that wasn't something that a vagrant, or absent-minded old man, would create. That was the feeling of a love story gone sorrowful, it was the feeling of beauty and regret. There was some story there, and I had to go back, to see if I could listen closely enough to hear a little more of that story...
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Part 20
Work seemed to drag on forever the next day. It really shouldn't have, I was only there for maybe four and a half hours before everything that needed done was finished, and I was shooed out of the office. My co-workers had noticed how antsy I'd been the whole day, so there had been all sorts of jokes about me having a hot date that night. I just laughed and said that yeah, I was actually heading to a red-light district right after work. (It took them a minute to get it. My jokes are awful, they really are.)
It was all I could do to not flat-out run across campus to the dark room, and in my hurry I almost dropped my ID card when I went to swipe it in the lock on the door. I sighed in relief as I stepped inside the dim entryway, my eyes relaxing to the gloom of the dorm basement after the brilliance of the sunlight outside. I clanged open the metal locker door and took out the iPod speakers, setting them on a table next to the lockers. I hauled the negative binder out of my bag, then folded my backpack over a few times and crammed it into the tiny cubby, flinging it shut again. Binder and speakers in hand, I quickly made my way through the winding hallways, past the empty classroom and locked computer lab, and slid in through the spinning doorway to the dark room. I flipped on the red lights, then darted from one corner to another, grabbing pans and filling them with chemicals, arranging everything to where I needed it, letting my eyes adjust to the dusky light. I plugged my iPod into the speakers, which I set on the long counter behind my usual enlarger. I started it on a playlist of random Japanese pop music - something a friend of mine had gotten me into, most of it was ridiculously bubbley, high-pitched and fast-paced, but that made it great stuff to work to. I couldn't stand those stupid "techno" remixes of old pop songs that most people used for work-out music, so this was my substitute.
Finally, everything was set to go, so I leaned against a counter, away from the wooden cubbies that separated the enlargers, where the light was brighter. I opened my binder, and flipped through the pages of negatives and contact sheets, trying to decide where to start...
Oh who the hell was I kidding?? I grabbed the pages en masse and moved them all aside, and unclipped the last two pages, pulling them out and setting the binder aside. This was my summer, to do the pictures I wanted to do. So, I'd start with the villa. I skimmed over the shots I'd marked for enlargement, and decided to just start at the beginning of the villa shots, and work my way through.
As much as I hated doing test-strips, it wasted less photo paper overall. A town as tiny as this, with the campus bookstore closed for the summer the only way I could get more was to order it online, and photo paper was heavy, so shipping costs would be awful. Since I was outside for all of the shots, none of the exposures were way off, nothing really too bright or too dark, though a few were a little shadowy. I skipped the ones I'd tried taking through the wisteria for the moment, starting with one that had more normal lighting conditions. I'd taken a close-up of the wisteria twisting around one of the pillars at the beginning of the entryway, where the light was nice and bright, so I started there. I decided to go with a slightly higher contrast than normal, so I swapped out the bit of acetate in the enlarger accordingly. I didn't do a full-out test strip, just a few different exposure times, since I had a general idea of how long the exposure should take. Once I'd developed that, I swung myself around the sharp corners of the short hallway that led to an adjoining room, where the drying racks were set up, and regular white lights were turned on. I checked my test sheet, and decided which settings looked best, then went back and ran off a few full-sized prints, using the two settings that had looked best on the test strip.
I pseudo-sang along with a few songs (not knowing more than a handful of words of the language) as I processed the prints, watching raptly as the developer did its work, trying to get into the swing of doing a few prints at once. I had a lot to do if I was going to be caught up again by the weekend - which was my goal, since I'd probably take another dozen rolls worth of shots this weekend, if I could just find a way into the villa. I left the prints to float in the running water unattended, while I started setting up the next shot to print. I decided to take advantage of having the whole lab to myself, and put the next strip of negatives into the enlarger next to mine - this way, if I needed to make another print of that first shot, I wouldn't have to reset everything, and meanwhile I could start in on the next. I glanced over the contact sheet, and decided to go for a close-up of a rose bush, a vine-covered stucco wall of the house as a backdrop. I adjusted the composition a bit as I set it up, letting the projected image spill over the edges of the area the paper would fit into, balancing the rose with a particularly dense spot of ivy that was above and to its right in the shot...
Once the photo of the rose was floating in the running water, I pulled out the pictures of the pillar with the ivy wrapped around it. I held them over the sink for a few seconds, letting most of the water drip off, then followed the twisty hallway into the drying room, where I could take a proper look at them. I'd definitely been right to up the contrast, it really brought out the texture of the weather-worn pillars, and made the vines stand out better, now that they were a bit darker. I decided I might crop off a little of the side later, but I'd let them dry first. God it was great to have the place to myself! Usually you had to move everyone else's pictures out of the way, and cram yours into the one shelf of wire mesh you were technically allotted... but now I had the whole rack if I wanted it! Until the summer classes started up, anyway - and I wasn't really going to use the whole thing, I couldn't possibly make that many prints in less than the time it took for them to dry, and anyway I knew there were a few other people who might pop in at any time to use the lab. Hoped they wouldn't mind the music.
After about two hours, I had nearly finished with the prints of the villa. I'd done a few more than I normally would have, I let myself be a little indulgent and print some that I doubted I'd ever do anything with - I just wanted pictures of the place to look at, until I had a chance to get back there. Anyway, I reasoned that having these would help me plan out other shots I wanted to take, other spots I wanted to get a better look at. Finally, I came to the last one I planned to do - the shot of the front door, as seen from partway up the wisteria path. I took a little longer setting the print up, since the lighting hadn't really been the best at the time. I ran off a couple of different test strips, one for the darker areas of the picture, one for the lighter areas, and one for the middle-ground. I was going to do a full-sized print with a normal exposure, but then I'd probably have to play around with exposing some part of the paper longer than others, since I wanted the door to stand out a bit more, and not nearly enough light filtered down through the walkway to light the door like I'd wanted. I frowned as I looked at the projection of the image, trying to get it in focus, which was difficult due to the poor lighting. I tried to find something that I knew should be in sharp focus, and decided to stare at the door knocker, using that as my baseline. I fiddled with the focus knob on the enlarger, trying to get it just right... I gave the rest of the image a quick glance, just to see if anything else had been thrown completely out of whack. My brows furrowed as I squinted at the door handle - had some dust gotten onto the negative? Something didn't look right... but I couldn't tell what, so decided just to run off the print and then take a look at it in the light, and see what I needed to do.
I watched the chemicals drift lazily back and forth over the blank page, watching as the image slowly appeared, the blankness washing away and leaving behind intricate patterns that formed the thousand details of the photo. Never got tired of watching this... There it was again! I leaned down close, trying to figure out what was wrong with that handle, the shape wasn't quite right... was I just remembering it wrong? Or was there something on it?
---I started and stood upright, hacked and gasped for breath. I should really know better than to breathe in when I was that close to the developer! Ugh, my sinuses were burning, I shook my head back and forth, snorting air out through my nose. Ick, oh that was strong! Then I glanced at the clock in panic - but I still had five more seconds until the picture needed to come out, thank God! I reached for the tongs and pulled it out, letting the chemicals drip off, holding my breath. I moved it into the stop, then the fix, then plopped it into the running water, and half-ran out of the room into the hallway, for some fresh air and a drink from the water fountain. Ugh, I could not get the smell out of my nose!
It was all I could do to not flat-out run across campus to the dark room, and in my hurry I almost dropped my ID card when I went to swipe it in the lock on the door. I sighed in relief as I stepped inside the dim entryway, my eyes relaxing to the gloom of the dorm basement after the brilliance of the sunlight outside. I clanged open the metal locker door and took out the iPod speakers, setting them on a table next to the lockers. I hauled the negative binder out of my bag, then folded my backpack over a few times and crammed it into the tiny cubby, flinging it shut again. Binder and speakers in hand, I quickly made my way through the winding hallways, past the empty classroom and locked computer lab, and slid in through the spinning doorway to the dark room. I flipped on the red lights, then darted from one corner to another, grabbing pans and filling them with chemicals, arranging everything to where I needed it, letting my eyes adjust to the dusky light. I plugged my iPod into the speakers, which I set on the long counter behind my usual enlarger. I started it on a playlist of random Japanese pop music - something a friend of mine had gotten me into, most of it was ridiculously bubbley, high-pitched and fast-paced, but that made it great stuff to work to. I couldn't stand those stupid "techno" remixes of old pop songs that most people used for work-out music, so this was my substitute.
Finally, everything was set to go, so I leaned against a counter, away from the wooden cubbies that separated the enlargers, where the light was brighter. I opened my binder, and flipped through the pages of negatives and contact sheets, trying to decide where to start...
Oh who the hell was I kidding?? I grabbed the pages en masse and moved them all aside, and unclipped the last two pages, pulling them out and setting the binder aside. This was my summer, to do the pictures I wanted to do. So, I'd start with the villa. I skimmed over the shots I'd marked for enlargement, and decided to just start at the beginning of the villa shots, and work my way through.
As much as I hated doing test-strips, it wasted less photo paper overall. A town as tiny as this, with the campus bookstore closed for the summer the only way I could get more was to order it online, and photo paper was heavy, so shipping costs would be awful. Since I was outside for all of the shots, none of the exposures were way off, nothing really too bright or too dark, though a few were a little shadowy. I skipped the ones I'd tried taking through the wisteria for the moment, starting with one that had more normal lighting conditions. I'd taken a close-up of the wisteria twisting around one of the pillars at the beginning of the entryway, where the light was nice and bright, so I started there. I decided to go with a slightly higher contrast than normal, so I swapped out the bit of acetate in the enlarger accordingly. I didn't do a full-out test strip, just a few different exposure times, since I had a general idea of how long the exposure should take. Once I'd developed that, I swung myself around the sharp corners of the short hallway that led to an adjoining room, where the drying racks were set up, and regular white lights were turned on. I checked my test sheet, and decided which settings looked best, then went back and ran off a few full-sized prints, using the two settings that had looked best on the test strip.
I pseudo-sang along with a few songs (not knowing more than a handful of words of the language) as I processed the prints, watching raptly as the developer did its work, trying to get into the swing of doing a few prints at once. I had a lot to do if I was going to be caught up again by the weekend - which was my goal, since I'd probably take another dozen rolls worth of shots this weekend, if I could just find a way into the villa. I left the prints to float in the running water unattended, while I started setting up the next shot to print. I decided to take advantage of having the whole lab to myself, and put the next strip of negatives into the enlarger next to mine - this way, if I needed to make another print of that first shot, I wouldn't have to reset everything, and meanwhile I could start in on the next. I glanced over the contact sheet, and decided to go for a close-up of a rose bush, a vine-covered stucco wall of the house as a backdrop. I adjusted the composition a bit as I set it up, letting the projected image spill over the edges of the area the paper would fit into, balancing the rose with a particularly dense spot of ivy that was above and to its right in the shot...
Once the photo of the rose was floating in the running water, I pulled out the pictures of the pillar with the ivy wrapped around it. I held them over the sink for a few seconds, letting most of the water drip off, then followed the twisty hallway into the drying room, where I could take a proper look at them. I'd definitely been right to up the contrast, it really brought out the texture of the weather-worn pillars, and made the vines stand out better, now that they were a bit darker. I decided I might crop off a little of the side later, but I'd let them dry first. God it was great to have the place to myself! Usually you had to move everyone else's pictures out of the way, and cram yours into the one shelf of wire mesh you were technically allotted... but now I had the whole rack if I wanted it! Until the summer classes started up, anyway - and I wasn't really going to use the whole thing, I couldn't possibly make that many prints in less than the time it took for them to dry, and anyway I knew there were a few other people who might pop in at any time to use the lab. Hoped they wouldn't mind the music.
After about two hours, I had nearly finished with the prints of the villa. I'd done a few more than I normally would have, I let myself be a little indulgent and print some that I doubted I'd ever do anything with - I just wanted pictures of the place to look at, until I had a chance to get back there. Anyway, I reasoned that having these would help me plan out other shots I wanted to take, other spots I wanted to get a better look at. Finally, I came to the last one I planned to do - the shot of the front door, as seen from partway up the wisteria path. I took a little longer setting the print up, since the lighting hadn't really been the best at the time. I ran off a couple of different test strips, one for the darker areas of the picture, one for the lighter areas, and one for the middle-ground. I was going to do a full-sized print with a normal exposure, but then I'd probably have to play around with exposing some part of the paper longer than others, since I wanted the door to stand out a bit more, and not nearly enough light filtered down through the walkway to light the door like I'd wanted. I frowned as I looked at the projection of the image, trying to get it in focus, which was difficult due to the poor lighting. I tried to find something that I knew should be in sharp focus, and decided to stare at the door knocker, using that as my baseline. I fiddled with the focus knob on the enlarger, trying to get it just right... I gave the rest of the image a quick glance, just to see if anything else had been thrown completely out of whack. My brows furrowed as I squinted at the door handle - had some dust gotten onto the negative? Something didn't look right... but I couldn't tell what, so decided just to run off the print and then take a look at it in the light, and see what I needed to do.
I watched the chemicals drift lazily back and forth over the blank page, watching as the image slowly appeared, the blankness washing away and leaving behind intricate patterns that formed the thousand details of the photo. Never got tired of watching this... There it was again! I leaned down close, trying to figure out what was wrong with that handle, the shape wasn't quite right... was I just remembering it wrong? Or was there something on it?
---I started and stood upright, hacked and gasped for breath. I should really know better than to breathe in when I was that close to the developer! Ugh, my sinuses were burning, I shook my head back and forth, snorting air out through my nose. Ick, oh that was strong! Then I glanced at the clock in panic - but I still had five more seconds until the picture needed to come out, thank God! I reached for the tongs and pulled it out, letting the chemicals drip off, holding my breath. I moved it into the stop, then the fix, then plopped it into the running water, and half-ran out of the room into the hallway, for some fresh air and a drink from the water fountain. Ugh, I could not get the smell out of my nose!
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