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...

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!

Parts 18-19

[Day 18 I took a day off due to a migraine, but hell if I'm going to make my post numbers all wonky halfway through! That, plus the peculiarities of word counters got made up for today, so it's a beast of a post. I have no idea how much I actually wrote.]

This was the one part of developing and processing that I actually enjoyed every bit as much as taking the photos and having the final prints. Contact sheets weren't nearly as exciting as a full 8x10 print, but they were still more than a little magic. The moment the enlarger's light clicked off, I slipped the sheet of paper out from under it. I'd already poured the chemicals out into their separate wash bins, and found all the tongs for moving the paper in and out of them. (I also made sure the tongs were clean - I would have to pretty much hunt down and murder a fellow student if I found my pictures contaminated by the wrong chemical at the wrong stage.) I carried the apparently blank sheet of paper gingerly over to the long metal sink that held all the chemical tubs. Not that it mattered with these, but getting anything on the paper, the oils from your fingertips especially, would leave a mark on the print. Then, grinning, I slid the paper down into the first tub, filled with developer. (Well, not quite filled, since I was the only one down here I didn't want to pour out more of the chemicals than I absolutely needed.) I made sure the paper was completely submerged, pushing it down gently with the tongs. Then I set the tongs aside, glanced at the glow-in-the-dark hands of the clock on the wall, making note of where they were. I carefully lifted the side of the tub nearest me, and began to gently tip it back and forth, letting the chemicals swoosh in low waves over the paper. Keeping the chemicals moving meant a more even development, and though technically this was an unnecessary step, I'd always found it kind of soothing, watching the liquid flow back and forth like this. Like watching the ripples in a pond you were poking with a stick, or the waves on a beach slowly rolling in... though the light down here was a little more apocalyptic than most people would find comfortable.
        After about thirty seconds, the paper suddenly changed. A faint ghost appeared on the white paper, and I watched it raptly, seeing the details slowly fade into view, appearing out of nothingness, shadows coalescing out of thin air to collect on the blank page, burning paths across the paper and leaving small images behind... The black border of the page filled in first, then the small, square images of the negatives (though now reversed back to positive images). I peered close, trying to see, but the liquid distorted things, and anyway contact sheets had such small images. Straightening up, I inhaled again - I learned months ago not to breathe in when leaning too close to the chemical baths!
        When it looked like the details had all filled in, I glanced at the clock - and forced myself to count out a few more seconds. The light in here was always deceptive, what looked too dark under the red lights might well be not dark enough out in real light. Using the tongs, I carefully lifted the paper out of the chemicals, letting it drip for a few seconds, peering at the small images, excited to get a first glimpse at the shots I'd taken. Then I slid the paper under the surface of the next chemical, the stop, which would keep the chemicals in the paper from developing any more. Then it was on to the fixer, which would keep the paper from reacting to light any more than it had already. Finally, I slid it into the tub beneath the tap, where cold water was constantly pouring in and spilling over and down the drain. I watched the paper float for a moment, then scampered back across the dark room, to start the next contact sheet exposure. Once I got going, I could have a few prints being processed simultaneously - and with this many contact sheets to run off, that's what I did for the rest of that evening.


        It was after dark by the time I got back to the Mayhew's, and though my eyes were a little bleary from the dim light and the chemicals, I couldn't not check out the millions of thumbnail images. I usually let my prints air-dry, but I'd been too eager that night, and had actually used the miniature hair dryer to dry off the prints so I could bring them back to the house without them getting stuck together. The sheets still smelled pretty strongly of the chemicals they'd been dunked in, but it wasn't really a smell I minded anymore, it was almost comforting. Kind of a halfway between ink and hydrogen peroxide.
        I took a stack of empty sheet protectors out of the back of my negative binder, and set them on the bed as I sat down, the pile of contact sheets on the other side of me. As I looked over each contact sheet, I slid it into a sheet protector and clipped it into the binder behind the corresponding page of negatives, so it would be quicker to find the negatives I needed when I went to make prints. I tore off little bits of masking tape to stick onto the plastic by the images I wanted to make prints of later.
        This quickly added up to an awful lot of little bits of masking tape, so the ones I really really liked, I drew a little star on with the Sharpie.
        My contact sheets were mostly in order, so I wound up mentally re-living the past couple of weeks. I giggled aloud at some of the shots I'd gotten of Caleb, and his cousins. The two girls really were precious. I had a shot of the two of them leaning over a bale of hay, flopped on their tummies, looking down at a small swarm of kittens, and the composition had lined up for a great classic shot. No new artistic ground broken, I was sure, but hey, it was almost guaranteed a ribbon at the county fair. I spent a comparatively long time looking at the shots I'd taken outside in the early morning fog that one day, peering closely to see what details the camera had grabbed hold of and kept for me. A lot of these weren't in my usual style, they weren't half so clear and distinct and...well, postcard-looking, as my shots usually were. But something about them really grabbed me, I couldn't help but smile as I looked at them, my heart rate picking up a bit - I think I really had caught the atmosphere of that morning, the sense of otherworldliness...
        There were a lot of Sharpie stars on that page. Though I wasn't as sure about many of them as I had been of, say, the shot of the girls with the kittens... I was really curious to see how some of the shots worked full-scale. That one of the tree in particular, I was really eager to see how far I could push the contrast of light and dark, of the heavy black but delicate branches of the tree, the pale sheen of the morning sky...
        The pictures of the boys' fort were a mixed bag. I hadn't really gotten the sense I wanted, of an old thing reclaimed and made young again, at least not in the shots of the fort by itself. The ones where the boys were actually working on it were better, and the one with Caleb peeking in through the window was really nice, I was pretty sure I'd be happy with that one.
        And then there were the pictures from Saturday... I sifted through the shots of the woods and creek more quickly than I had the rest. They were pretty repetitive, anyway, though there were a few nice ones in there. But I wanted to see the villa. I was almost scared to get to that roll, like the shots might have disappeared, faded away from the page like developing in reverse, faded from sight in the harsh light of... well, alright, not daylight, but maybe the prosaic light of a desk lamp. I'd seen the images on the negatives, they'd looked fine then, really I had nothing to be nervous about... but my fingers still shook a little as I held up the contact sheet for the first roll I'd taken there.
        I was anxious as hell to get back there - I only had a roll and a half of photos of the villa. I'd been able to squeeze a few extra shots out of each roll (one of the great things about doing your own processing and everything, if you wound the film just right you could always get a few extra frames out of it), but it still wasn't half what I would normally have taken there.
        Still, it had made me more selective about the shots, so there were a higher percentage of good ones. They felt a little more dull than some of the more interesting and unusual ones I'd been taking lately... but I could still sense that they were better than what I would have taken even a month ago. My professor really had been right - you couldn't help but get better if you plowed through taking tons and tons of shots, and paid a bit of attention to what you were doing. My compositions were definitely getting more varied, and I had a much better sense for light and shadow than I used to. I didn't feel the urge to re-imagine any of these shots in color, like I did so many times when I started out in photography - these were perfect in black and white alone.
        I looked through these sheets slowly, focusing in on each tiny image, studying the details the film had remembered and my mind forgotten. There was a really great shot of those iron chairs on the side patio... I'd gotten pretty close up to the detail of the iron work, showing just enough of the chair's frame to make it clear that it was, in fact, a chair, but the bulk of the shot was taken up by the ironwork itself, the intricate swirls and spirals of the black lines tracing gracefully across the image. In the background, mostly out of focus, I could just make out the gray lines of vines set against the bright sky--- I squinted and pulled the page even closer to my eyes, eagerly. Yes! The vines curled a lot just there, and the curves they made created a perfect echo of the ironwork of the chairs! Oh that was going to be a fantastic shot, I couldn't wait to blow it up to full size!
        Grinning happily, I sprawled out on my stomach, the two sheets with pictures of the villa clutched in my hands. I started to examine the rest of the shots - then rolled over and reached toward the desk, scrabbling for a scrap of paper and a pen. As I went along, I started jotting notes of things I wanted to go back and do, different angles on a table, I wanted to see what I could do with that stone bench I'd sat on, and I had to see if I couldn't get closer to that overgrown balcony on the roof, that was such a stunning image and I hadn't done it justice at all yet.
        I walked back around the house, the pictures replacing eyesight, the tiny thumbnails filling my vision. The shot I had tried to take into the window I couldn't quite reach, on the side of the house, I found that the camera had seen a bit more than I had. I'd only seen the vague outlines of a chair, but the camera noticed a lace shawl draped over the back of that chair, and through the screen of the curtains I could just make out a cabinet of some sort in the room, and an ornate-looking rug on the floor...
        Coming back around the front of the house, I could almost feel the trellised wisteria close in around me, its ethereal fragrance flooding in through my nose and spreading through my whole body, filling me with a strange sense of some distant time, some far-removed place... I drew up to the front door, and studied the intricate curls of the door knocker. I frowned a little, and placed my fingers over parts of the tiny photo, seeing if a different composition might improve that one, it was too dull just having it smack in the middle of the frame. I stuck a bit of masking tape over the sides of the frame, marking out the new composition. That should be better...
        Finally, my eyes moved on to the last shot I'd taken of the villa, looking back at the front door through the walkway of wisteria. I held the page close to my eyes, trying to see what details had made it into the shot. The overall composition had worked well, I really would have to lighten that doorway up in the darkroom, but the pinpricks of light through the wisteria were definitely there like I'd hoped. I really liked that shot, I was tempted to make that my first full size print the next day, it evoked everything about the villa in my mind.

note

No, the interwebs didn't break - I took a day off yesterday. I had a migraine that refused to let up, for a good 24 hours, and it was hard to keep my eyes open without puking, so... I rested on my word-count laurels, and slept a lot.

Unfortunately for me, that buffer isn't *quite* as big as I'd hoped. I was a good 2400 words ahead, which means that even with the day off, I still had, what, 800 or so more than scheduled?

But, NaNoWriMo's Official Word Count Validator went up today. And I don't know how they program their word counter, but no matter WHAT program I'm using on my own to count my words (and over the years I've used...what, five different things?), their counter ALWAYS counts fewer words in my novel than my programs do. So I'm down by A FREAKING THOUSAND!!?! now. siiiiiiiigh. Doubly-glad I had that buffer now...uh, not that it made up the difference. gahhh.

Due to the migraine yesterday, I really don't want to push too much caffeine on myself (I ate more Excedrin than I was apparently supposed to, and that stuff's got nearly as much caffeine as coffee). So we'll see how well plugging through 1,667 goes tonight without it... *crosses fingers*

Part 17

        It didn't take me all that long to get back to the Mayhew's, I was back in time to throw on some fresh clothes and join everyone for dinner. It took a little over an hour to find my way to the road I knew ran perpendicular to the one the Mayhew's were on, and once I reached it, it was hardly another hour before I was back. Sweaty and with sticks in my hair, but I'd made it.
        "You didn't get lost out in them woods there, did you?" Mr. Mayhew asked with a sly grin.
        I laughed. "Actually, no, I didn't... Took me a little while to find the creek, just because it curves so much, but I followed the road back."
        "Well that's good," Mrs. Mayhew commented. "Did you take a lot of pictures?"
        "Too many, as usual. I think I'll stay on campus after work all of next week to use the dark room, I'd like to start making prints of some of these, if I can get caught up with developing all this film."
        "You'll have to show us some, when you do!"
        Part of me was dying to ask if they knew anything about an abandoned house out in the woods - they'd both lived here their whole lives, they must have heard some rumor or another. But a much bigger part of me was reluctant to say anything, though I wasn't entirely sure why. Partly, I suppose, because I wanted it to be my discovery, my own private little place. And I knew it would be hard to explain my fascination with it... and I think I felt like it would take away from the ethereal feeling of the place, if everyone knew about it. Like if I told other people, suddenly it would have empty beer bottles scattered around the yard, and the windows would be cracked and broken, and there would be graffiti on the walls, and...
        "You're awful quiet tonight, you tire yourself out today?" Mr. Mayhew broke in, scattering my thoughts.
        "Yeah... yeah I think I did, I haven't taken a hike like that in a long while. The woods back home weren't anywhere near as big as this, I don't think they were more than a quarter mile deep at any one point. Just a bit of divider between housing tracts, really."
        "Well, you be sure you're careful out there," Mrs. Mayhew advised. "You know what kind of snakes to look out for, things like that?"
        I nodded. "Oh yeah, I did a lot of wandering through the woods as a kid, my dad beat all of that into my head pretty well." Of course, it occurred to me that I really hadn't been keeping an eye out for that sort of thing while poking around the house. Just because I couldn't get inside, didn't mean that wild animals couldn't. I'd really have to be a lot more careful. I had already started a mental list of things to have on me when I went back - some means of getting a lock open, a flashlight, a bandanna or something to breathe through, in case the air inside the house had gone weird, because of asbestos in the walls or something... I didn't realize until I got back that I hadn't had my cell phone on me, I should definitely not forget that again, I'd be screwed if I got hurt way out there.
        Mrs. Mayhew shooed me out of the kitchen after dinner. "There's hardly any dishes to be done, when Caleb's not here. You go on up to your room and rest, you look awfully drained, dear."
        I protested, but weakly. I had so much on my mind, and I really did feel pretty tired. It felt like years ago that I'd been worried over finding my lost roll of film, how on earth had that been only that morning? I took a hot shower and changed into my pajamas. Though it was hours earlier than I usually went to bed, I laid down, thinking I might read for awhile or something, but I couldn't get my mind off the house. I turned the radio on low, and sat back against the pillows, looking blindly out the window. The sky was a faint purple-ish red, the color from the sunset spilling into the rest of the sky, staining it with rich saturation.
        Caleb wouldn't be back until next weekend, I was pretty sure, though I could always look up picking locks on the Internet or something. But apart from tomorrow, I'd be busy all week anyway, with work and the dark room. I should go out tomorrow and run some errands, I really needed more film. And if I stayed around the house, all I'd do was think about the villa... not that I was going to be able to stop thinking about it anyway. There were too many mysteries, too many strange things...and I hadn't even been inside yet! What on earth would I find there? Even though my common sense kept telling me it would be largely empty inside, I kept imagining ancient wood furniture, elegantly wrought brass lamps, crystal chandeliers, once-luxurious carpets that had faded over the decades...



        Sunday, I rode my bike into town and ran errands, cashing paychecks and picking up film, food, a few other things. I rode back the long way, away from the strips of giant chain stores and fast food places, and went through the actual town, which was somewhere around a hundred and fifty years old. It really was a gorgeous town (though I'd already photographed it half to death during the school year), tall old brick buildings, a huge Greek-styled bank, all the buildings restored and kept in good repair. As I approached the two small squares of park space in the middle of town, I was looking at a large white house on the corner beside the park...and the words on the sign, though I'd read them a dozen times before, sunk in.
        Darwin R. Barker Historical Museum.
        I nearly skidded to a stop right there - but caught myself, and slowed gradually, backing up to take a better look. I'd known it was there, I just hadn't been all that interested before. I parked my bike and walked up to the front door. It was a tall house, brick painted white, with pretty wood trim along the entryways and windows. An addition onto the back butted up to the small local library, but this portion still looked like a house on the outside. A sign on the door proclaimed the place closed, as I'd suspected. I skimmed over the hours they would be open, though, and tried to commit them to memory. I'd have to come back sometime, and see...
        But I didn't even know the address of the villa! No road had ever seemed to run by there, though there must have been something like one somewhere in the past... how did you look up a mysterious house in the woods? Maybe someone working there would have heard a story... I remembered an elementary school trip to one of the local museums in the city not far from us, and how the tour guide there seemed to know absolutely everything that had ever happened in the city. With a town as small as this, there were bound to be records still of nearly everything that had ever happened, especially involving wealthy residents in the town's formative years. Though I still had no idea when the villa had been built, or abandoned, I only knew that it was before electricity became ubiquitous. Probably before cars too, though I was still pretty sure there had to be at least one more building nearby that I hadn't found yet. No way someone that rich would've walked clear out there from town. Unless they were a crazy hermit or something... maybe it had been a young man whose beloved had died some tragic death, and she loved flowers, and he'd built the house for her, they were engaged to be married, and when she died he was so heartbroken that he holed up in the house, alone and cut off from everyone else, and tended the gardens in heartbroken memory or her...
        I started laughing, and I couldn't contain it enough to do it silently, either, I was laughing too hard. I got back on my bike and started racing out of town, back to the Mayhews. I was out of my freaking mind. I really had to stop being such a recluse myself, or I really would lose all touch with reality.

        True to my resolution, all that week I went to the dark room after work, staying until just before the sun went down every night. I got all the film developed - I really was getting better at it, I was doing it so often now that I finally started to get a better feel for winding the film onto the reels in the dark. There were still a few times I was on the brink of just throwing the damn things into a wall, but, I battled through it, and those battles were getting fewer and fewer. As a result, I was losing fewer frames on the negatives, which was a huge relief. I was actually looking forward to checking the negatives out when they were ready, instead of unrolling them in dread of seeing just what gorgeous shots I'd lost.

        Wednesday night, I made contact prints of everything. These were relatively quick and painless to do, once I got the light and time setting about right for the exposure, I could just do one after another, since the lighting conditions for the photos had been pretty consistent, and these were just tests anyway. I didn't need to fiddle around with focusing the enlargers, all I had to do was set the light timer, and the amount of light coming through. I'd plop a sheet of photo paper into the frame under the enlarger, set the page of negatives on top of it, make sure it was laying smoothly, and hit the button to turn the light on for however many seconds I needed. From there, it was just a matter of inhaling chemicals for awhile, and I was used to that.
        I had picked up a set of small speakers for my iPod on the previous Sunday, so I had music on but could still hear noises in the building around me. Such a small difference, but it really made me feel loads more comfortable in the dark room. Though I'd always been more comfortable in the printing rooms than the developing ones - you never really got used to the complete and utter darkness of the film-rolling room, your eyes could never adjust because there was no light at all for them to grab at, it was so unsettling. This room, though, with its dim, warm red lights, always made me realize that, hey, I really was a photographer! It felt so reassuring, to know that I really did know what I was doing, I could set up the room from scratch and do everything I needed to do to make my photos a tangible reality.
        And then there was the magic of the developer bath.

Part 16

        The windows were set higher up on the walls than I had first realized. It was hard to get right up to them, but the one I did, even standing on tip-toes I could barely see inside. Lace curtains hung in front of the window, and it was so darkly shadowed that I couldn't make out anything beyond what might have been a wood chair right in front of the window. Frustrated, I tried vainly to pull my self up to get a better view, but all I got for my trouble were my fingertips scratched raw by the rough stone windowsill. I never had been any good at doing pull-ups. I sighed, and leaned against the cool stucco wall for a moment, letting my gaze drift over the grounds. All I could make out were more overrun gardens... no, there was a gazebo of some sort at the edge of the clearing, but that too was covered in vines. What wasn't? As frustrating as it made reconnaissance, it made for gorgeous photos. I was entranced by the way the vines interlaced, the way the tendrils curled, the lazy grace of the lines they drew over every surface. I groaned when I thought of all the film I'd have to develop in the next few weeks, but inwardly I smiled, knowing what fantastic shots I could get here, especially once I had sorted out the best times for sunlight around here.
        I closed my eyes a moment and let my head fall back, resting on the wall. When I opened my eyes, it was to see the vines silhouetted almost pure black against the bright blue sky, tracing their delicate curls across the canvas of the sky. I grinned broadly, pulling my camera up, shifting back and forth to try to get the line of the house to fall straight across the image I'd take. The shadowed wall looked even darker when set against the sky, and I made sure to adjust for the brightness of the sky, rather than the dimness of the wall, so the contrast between the two would be even sharper (though I could of course adjust that in making the print itself). I couldn't zoom nearly as much as I wanted, I'd have to see what I could do with enlarging and cropping. I wanted the image half light, half dark, with the intricate tendrils of dark arcing up into the light...
        I trudged my way up along the rest of the house, looking up longingly at the windows, pushing past bushes to check for small doors, still seeing absolutely no way of getting inside. Hopefully Caleb was a good lock pick... My parents had never let my sister or I have a lock on our bedroom doors growing up, so while I knew the paper clip theory, and the credit card theory, I'd never tried putting either into practice. Gardens, gardens... they must have spent a fortune on landscaping this place, and there had to be someone tending it. I wondered vaguely if there would be a small house nearby, a servants' cottage, or if they had had rooms in one of the wings of the main house? But there had to be a garage, or more likely a carriage house, nearby too, and I hadn't seen one yet.
        I turned the inside-corner of the "L" of the house, and followed the back side of the portion of the house with smaller windows. Somehow I had already decided that these were the bedrooms, the sitting rooms, the library maybe, and the windows at the back of the house looked out from the kitchen and dining rooms. I still had no idea what sort of room the huge windows were a part of... a sun room of some sort? The windows were more cathedral-like than greenhouse-like, but it did have an exit to the back porch...
        No luck seeing inside of any of these either, though a few of the windows seemed to have window boxes or something, as there were fresh bursts of plant life trailing downward from them, different shades of green and the added texture of differently-shaped leaves. Reaching the side of this wing, I found another small door, again of wrought-iron curlicues, with a wooden door set behind it. Locked, but at least there had been a path leading up to it. Finally, I rounded the last corner and faced the front of the house again. It felt a little less forbidding now, but I was every bit as twitchy to get a look inside. Rationally, of course, I knew the place would probably have been gutted when the last residents left, there would be little more than bland furniture that wasn't worth moving, and a few odds and ends that had no emotional importance to the owners. Artistically, though, I held out hope that there might be a few small things left... some small memento, a lost earring, a scrap of a note, something. Things always got lost when people moved, there had to be something... I wished I knew more about plants, I was sure there were all sorts of hints to the personality of the people who had lived here in the gardens, but, I had no idea what was supposed to be there and what were weeds, let alone if any of the plants were rare or anything. I knew roses were picky to grow, so I was pretty sure they'd had a gardener, at least to help, but---
        But if roses were so picky, how could these have done so well so long on their own? I'd have to talk with Mrs. Mayhew, and sort that one out. I knew it was too cold here in the winters for really delicate plants to survive, and I knew - from my mom's own failed attempts - that all sorts of weird things could kill off roses. Weird.
        I laughed at myself. Right, the roses were weird, but a mansion in the middle of nowhere that was gorgeous but apparently no one wanted, that wasn't strange at all.

        The sun was getting lower, dipping into the tops of the trees, and I knew I was going to be exhausted by the time I made it back to the Mayhews'. Before I left the clearing, though, I went back to the front porch, ducking low under the wisteria, and took a picture of the intricate knocker, now that the light caught it better. I still wasn't entirely happy with the light balance, I'd have to see what I could do about the contrast when I printed it. Partway back out the wisteria tunnel, I turned back, and took a picture of the door, with the dark vines leading up to it. The light wasn't quite at the right angle to get the effect I wanted, but it was close - little stars of light twinkled throught the vines, which were mostly very dark, curling around the lighter arched entry, the dark wooden door cemented in the center of the image. I might have to try that shot again another time, with different lighting, but I was down to my last two frames on the roll. (I never completely used up all of my film until more film was less than five minutes away - you never knew when something really striking would catch your eye, and I hated the way images I missed would haunt my memory. I couldn't draw for crap, so if I missed the photo, I really had no way to communicate the image... Even if I could, the lighting would undoubtedly be off, and the camera always caught details your memory lost, if you had even noticed them in the first place.)
        I moved slowly as I walked away from the house, constantly turning to look back... Unreasonable though I knew it was, each time I looked back my heart skipped a beat, half-expecting the house to not be there, to it have all been some sort of odd dream. ---God damn, if this was one of those dreams I took all sorts of gorgeous pictures in and then woke up and didn't have them---! I prayed like anything that it wasn't, I wanted so badly for this place to be real...but not too real. I almost didn't want to come back, for fear of shattering the dream-like qualities of it, the ethereal atmosphere.
        If I ever woke up and found it foggy outside, I was making a beeline for this place. I'd have to spend like a week straight in the dark room, but I didn't care. It looked like I'd be doing that soon anyway, at the rate I was going. How many rolls had I polished off today, four? or was it five? I had to get into town soon, and see how much Rite Aid was charging for the film I needed. Probably more than I could get it for on the Internet, but I'd have to see what the shipping charges might be...
        I was at the edge of the clearing now, standing at the first marker of piled stones. They were such a vivid red, I had to wonder if they hadn't been painted or something at one time. I smiled wistfully back at the house, silently promising I'd be back soon.

        I decided to strike out for the road I knew couldn't be far off, which meant actually circling up around the house again, going past it. While it might have made sense to start from the back of the house...I wasn't about to try to fight my way through the wild of the gardens. A little distance away from the house, the woods resumed their normal density, and the canopy of leaves far overhead kept the underbrush at bay, making walking much quicker than it had been around the villa.
        The villa. That suited it much better than "the house", "house" was such a small, commonplace word, and this place hadn't been that at all...

Part 15

        I started backing my way out of the entryway, thinking I'd take a walk around the house, and see if there were any side or back doors, that might be less formidable to wiggle loose. The lock on this one looked as un-corroded as the door knocker and handle, and I'd never actually tried to pick a lock before. My camera bumped heavily against my side as I stumbled on a crumbling step---
        My camera! Why the hell hadn't I been taking pictures?? I'd been so wrapped up in what I was seeing that I totally forgot! Though really, it was just as well - I only had a roll and a half left, I'd have to be much more stingy about taking shots than I had been in the habit of lately. That knocker was too pretty, but the light in the entryway was incredibly dim, I'd have to try a little later, when the sunlight was at a lower angle, maybe then some would spill in. (I knew from experience that using a flash would only destroy the balance of light and shadow - I hadn't even bothered to bring it with me that day, not thinking I would need it anyway.) I slowly made my way back through the wisteria, taking a few pictures when I spotted something especially nice. I tried taking one through the tunnel, looking down through it toward the light at the end, but I wasn't sure the heavy atmosphere would show the way I wanted it to. It was too bad I couldn't photograph the scent...
        I couldn't walk as close as I wanted to the outside of the house, it was too overgrown. The gardens really had been incredibly lavish, once upon a time, and what had once been lush had turned into a jungle over the decades (or century?) since the house had been let go. The flowers on what I presumed were fruit trees were just beginning to fade, and there were splashes of color among the plants on the ground, but mostly, it was just green absolutely everywhere. I could hardly see the walls of the house in places, let alone get near it...
        I started on the side with the giant windows - which really were stained glass, I'd been right. It was hard to make out the designs on them, with the vines grown up everywhere, but it looked like they were incredibly detailed, really finely done. I tried pushing up through the plant life to see inside the windows, but no luck, there were all sorts of vines that had spread not only on the walls, but also entangled themselves in the other plants growing around the house, which made it pretty much impossible to walk through. That, and some of the vines were rose vines, which I really didn't want to tangle with.
        Past the large windows, there was a small patio off the back of the house, with an archway leading into the outdoor room. The archway was large enough that the vines hadn't completely claimed it, so I stepped through. It was freezing here, too, hidden from the sunlight. It smelled damp and... not quite musty, but definitely a bit moldy, the air felt almost clammy here. Plants pushed their way in under the roof, so it was hard to make out what had bordered this area from the outdoors besides the extent of the roof. There were some pots scattered around, and a small table with gracefully curved iron legs. Two matching chairs were pulled up to it, and I circled these for a few minutes, trying to find an interesting composition that still showed off the intricacy of the ironwork. Everything here had such detail to it, whoever had lived here had an amazingly artistic eye.
        I looked to the wall the patio shared with the house...and saw a door. This was a lighter one than the front, designed with the same detailed ironwork as the table and chairs. But again, when I tried the handle, it refused to budge. It wasn't exactly a screen door, it wasn't as formidable as the massive front door but it was still ironwork, and fairly heavy iron at that. Behind it was a solid wood door, presumably due to the cold winters here more than aesthetics (though I could still see a border of carvings running around the edges, less elaborate than those on the front door). I tried slipping my hand between the curving lines of iron, to reach the handle on the wood door, but without success. There were windows to either side of the door, but they too looked solid, the glass unbroken and the metal frames still set firmly in place.
        I exited the patio through an arch on the opposite side I'd entered it from, intending to follow a path of marble slabs set in the ground. Unfortunately, the path seemed to have wound through a garden, and thus was nearly impassable now. It must have been a rose garden, there were thorns absolutely everywhere I looked, and I sighed heavily in frustration. I'd have to wear more durable clothing on the next trip, jeans with fewer holes and maybe even a long-sleeved shirt, I'd be torn to pieces in there! Instead, I tried the third exit from the patio, which led away from the house. There seemed to have been a bit of an open space here, where now there was nothing more intimidating than field grass. A few sapling cherry trees were scattered around in the grass, and looking around, I could see their parents making almost a perfect circle around the grassy area. This spot would have been stunning just a few weeks before, with the trees all in bloom... Walking through this way, I was able to make my way around the rose garden, circling wide of the house, but at least able to see more of it now. The room with the large windows stretched much farther back than I had thought, though at the far end the large windows gave way to smaller windows, the interior seeming to become split into two floors, like the other side of the house. I couldn't get close enough to look in any of them until I had circled around almost to the very back corner of the house.
        Farther up the wall, back in the direction that I'd come, the way was blocked by a huge tree that had fallen - it hadn't touched the house, but had come perilously close to doing so. I was beginning to feel like the house really was enchanted, somehow, could anything touch it? My fingertips tingled a bit, where I had earlier touched the front door, and I grinned wryly at myself. Magic, right. I should eat the rest of my lunch, my brain must be out of nutrients to run on. At the thought of food, of course, my stomach growled insistently. I laughed, and looked around for a good spot to sit. There was a stone bench a little ways off, so I struck out toward that, though it led a little farther from the house. Fortunately, no more roses barred my way, and I actually found a few scraps of the marble pathway again. The bench was made of some warmer colored stone, almost a red-orange, and was - predictably - covered in ornate little traceries, though these looked more geometric than those I'd seen so far. It had a Greek sort of feel to it more than anything. It was clear of debris, so I sat down, and set my bag and camera beside me. I dug out the sandwich, keeping it inside its plastic bag so my now-grimy hands wouldn't touch what I was eating, and took a few more swigs from a water bottle. The sun wasn't so nearly overhead any more, it was probably mid-afternoon now. I made the mistake of thinking about the walk back, and groaned aloud. I shouldn't stay here much longer, I had a long way to go... I had a general idea of where I was in relation to the Mayhew's, and I knew I probably wasn't more than a mile or two away, but... it felt like I was in a completely different world here, it was so quiet and detached from the rest of the world. There was such a strange atmosphere here, it felt... oh, "haunted" kept coming to mind, no matter how many times I pushed it away. It did feel haunted, but in a sweet, melancholy, beautiful sort of way. Like reading a sad love story, it was a poignant, beautiful pain.
        I shook my head violently, laughing. I could really work my thoughts into weird states when I was alone too long. I stood up and stretched, spreading my arms wide and breathing deeply. The air was fresher here, a bit of a breeze slipping in among the trees, carrying hints of fragrance from...some flower or another, I had no idea. I looked around, trying to find a way to continue around the house. Once I'd done that, I'd head back to the Mayhew's, and come back another day - with more film. And maybe a paper clip or something. Caleb seemed like exactly the kind of kid who'd know how to pick locks, I'd see if he had any ideas.
        I was able to follow the marble path most of the way to the back of the house, which was much narrower than the front - it only extended back from the width of the large-windowed room, the tower and the other side only came back far enough for there to be a hall running through them and (normal-sized) rooms on either side. The house was basically a large "L", with the tower marking the corner. There was no door at the very back of the house, just windows, but coming around the corner I could see a small door at the end of the long wall closest to me. I pushed past vast amounts of fragrant leaves - an herb garden? - and reached the wood door, which looked simpler than the others, probably a servant's entrance, into the kitchen or something. But again, it was locked, so I continued picking my way along the wall, as close to the house as I could manage. The windows here were as sturdy as the rest, and if there was a door leading down into a cellar or anything, I didn't see it. (It might well have been hidden beneath all the plants, though.) The vines weren't quite as pervasive on this side, I figured because it was a bit shadier here.