Now the cherry tree was dead. The branches were bare, the leaves brown and shriveled, scattered over the lawn. Even the trunk seemed to have turned gray and the whole tree was bent over like a sick, old man.
“What’s happened?” Christopher opened the kitchen door and walked out into the garden. Elizabeth followed him. He reached the tree and scooped up a handful of the leaves. “It’s completely dead!” he exclaimed.
“But a tree can’t just . . . die.” Matthew had never seen his mother look so sad and he suddenly realized that the cherry must have been more than a tree to her. It had grown alongside her marriage and her family. “It looks as if it’s been poisoned!” she muttered.
Christopher dropped the leaves and wiped his hand on his sleeve. “Perhaps it was something in the soil,” he said. He pulled Elizabeth toward him. “Cheer up! We’ll plant another one.”
“But it was special. The Cherry Orchard . . .”
Christopher put an arm around his wife. “At least I took a picture of it,” he said. “It means we’ve got something to remember it by.”
The two of them went back into the house, leaving Matthew alone in the garden. He reached out and ran a finger down the bark of the tree. It felt cold and slimy to the touch. He shivered. He had never seen anything that looked quite so . . . dead.
At least I took a picture of it . . .
Christopher’s words echoed in his mind. He suddenly felt uneasy—but he didn’t know why.
The accident happened the next day.
Matthew wasn’t up yet. Lying in bed, he heard first the sound of the front door crashing open—too hard—and then the voices echoing up the stairs toward him.
“Liz! What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Oh, Chris!” Matthew froze. His mother never cried. Never. But she was crying now. “It’s Polonius . . .”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know! I don’t understand it!”
“Lizzie, he’s not . . .”
“He is. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry . . .” That was all she could say.
In the kitchen, Christopher made tea and listened to the cold facts. Elizabeth had walked down into Crouch End to get the newspaper and mail some letters. She had taken Polonius with her. As usual, the Labrador had padded after her. She never put him on a leash. He was well trained. He never ran into the road, even if he saw a cat or a squirrel. The truth was that, at nearly twelve years old, Polonius hardly ever ran at all.
But today, for no reason, he had suddenly walked off the sidewalk. Elizabeth hadn’t even seen him until it was too late. She had opened her mouth to call his name when the Land Rover had appeared, driving too fast around the corner. All the cars drove too fast on Wolseley Road. Elizabeth had closed her eyes at the last moment. But she had heard the yelp, the terrible thump, and she had known that Polonius could not have survived.
At least it had been quick. The driver of the Land Rover had been helpful and apologetic. He had taken the dog to the vet . . . to be buried or cremated or whatever. Polonius was gone. He had been with the family since he was a puppy and now he was gone.
Lying in bed, Matthew listened to his parents talking, and although he didn’t hear all of it, he knew enough. He rested his head on the pillow, his eyes brim ming with tears. “You took a picture of him,” he muttered to himself. “A picture is all we have left.”
And that was when he knew.
At the car-trunk sale, Matthew had taken a picture of a mirror. The mirror had smashed.
His father had taken a picture of the cherry tree. The cherry tree had died.
Then he’d taken a picture of Polonius . . .
Matthew turned to one side, his cheek coming into contact with the cool surface of the pillow. And there it was, where he had left it, on the table by his bed. The film that he had found inside the camera when he bought it. The film that had already been exposed.
That afternoon, he took it to the drugstore and had it developed.
There were twenty-four pictures in the packet.
Matthew had bought himself a Coke in a café in Crouch End and now he tore the packet open, letting the glossy pictures slide out onto the table. For a moment he hesitated. It felt wrong, stealing this glimpse into somebody else’s life . . . like a Peeping Tom. But he had to know.
The first ten pictures only made him feel worse. They showed a young guy, in his early twenties, and somehow Matthew knew that this was the owner of the camera. He was kissing a pretty blond girl in one picture, throwing a baseball in another.
Art students. Three of them . . .
The man at the car-trunk sale had rented part of his house to art students. And this must be them. Three of them. The camera owner. The blond girl. And another guy, thin, with long hair and uneven teeth.
Matthew shuffled quickly through the rest of the pictures.
An exhibition of paintings. A London street. A railway station. A beach. A fishing boat. A house . . .
The house was different. It was like nothing Matthew had ever seen before. It stood, four stories high, in the ruins of a garden, slanting out of a tangle of nettles and briars with great knife blades of grass stabbing at the brickwork. It was obviously deserted, empty. Some of the windows had been smashed. The black paint was peeling in places, exposing brickwork that glistened like a suppurating wound.
Closer. A cracked gargoyle leered at the camera, arching out over the front door. The door was a massive slab of oak, its iron knocker shaped like a pair of baby’s arms with the hands clasped.
Six people had come to the house that night. There was a picture of them, grouped together in the garden. Matthew recognized the three students from art school. Now they were all dressed in black shirts, black jeans. Two more men and another girl, all about twenty, stood behind them. One of the men had raised his arms and was grimacing, doing a vampire impersonation. They were all laughing. Matthew wondered if a seventh person had taken the picture or if it had been set to automatic. He turned over the next photograph and was taken into the house.
Click. A vast entrance hall. Huge flagstones and, in the distance, the rotting bulk of a wooden staircase twisting up to nowhere.
Click. The blond girl drinking red wine. Drinking it straight from the bottle.
Click. A guy with fair hair holding two candles. Behind him another guy holding a paintbrush.
Click. The flagstones again, but now they’ve painted a white circle on them and the guy with fair hair is adding words. But you can’t read the words. They’ve been wiped out by the reflection from the flash.
Click. More candles. Flickering now. Placed around the circle. Three members of the group holding hands.
Click. They’re naked! They’ve taken off their clothes. Matthew can see everything, but at the same time he sees nothing. He doesn’t believe it. It’s madness . . .
Click. A cat. A black cat. Its eyes have caught the flash and have become two pinpricks of fire. The cat has sharp, white teeth. It is snarling, writhing in the hands that hold it.
Click. A knife.
Matthew closed his eyes. He knew now what they were doing. At the same time he remembered the other object that the man had been selling at the car-trunk sale. He had noticed it at the time but hadn’t really thought about it. The Ouija board. A game for people who like to play with things they don’t understand. A game for people who aren’t afraid of the dark. But Matthew was afraid.
Sitting there in the café with the photographs spread out in front of him, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. But there could be no escaping the truth. A group of students had gone to an abandoned house. Perhaps they’d taken some sort of book with them; an old book of spells . . . they could have found it in an antiques shop. Matthew had once seen something like that in the shop where his mother worked: an old, leather-bound book with yellowing pages and black, splattery handwriting. A grimoire, she’d called it. The people in the photograph must have found one somewhere, and tired of the Ouija board, they’
d decided to do something more dangerous, more frightening. To summon up...
What?
A ghost? A demon?
Matthew had seen enough horror films to recognize what the photographs showed. A magic circle. Candles. The blood of a dead cat. The six people had taken it all very seriously—even stripping naked for the ritual. And they had succeeded. Somehow Matthew knew that the ritual had worked. That they had raised . . . something. And it had killed them.
They disappeared. Just took off . . .
The man at the car-trunk sale had never seen them again. Of course they’d returned to his house, to wherever it was they rented. If they hadn’t gone back, the camera would never have been there. But after that, something must have happened. Not to one of them. But to all of them.
The camera . . .
Matthew looked down at the prints. He had worked his way through the pile, but there were still three or four pictures left. He reached out with his fingers to separate them, but then stopped. Had the student who owned the camera taken a picture of the creature, the thing, whatever it was they had summoned up with their spells? Was it there now, on the table in front of him? Could it be possible . . . ?
He didn’t want to know.
Matthew picked up the entire pile and screwed them up in his hands. He tried to tear them but couldn’t. Suddenly he felt sick and angry. He hadn’t wanted any of this. He had just wanted a birthday present for his father and he had brought something horrible and evil into the house. One of the photographs slipped through his fingers and . . .
. . . something red, glowing, two snake eyes, a huge shadow . . .
. . . Matthew saw it out of the corner of his eye even as he tried not to look at it. He grabbed hold of the picture and began to tear it, once, twice, into ever-smaller pieces.
“Are you all right, love?”
The waitress had appeared from nowhere and stood over the table looking down at Matthew. Matthew half smiled and opened his hand, scattering fragments of the photograph. “Yes . . .” He stood up. “I don’t want these,” he said.
“I can see that. Shall I put them in the trash for you?”
“Yes. Thanks . . .”
The waitress swept up the crumpled photographs and the torn pieces and carried them over to the trash can. When she turned around again, the table was empty. Matthew had already gone.
Find the camera. Smash the camera. The two thoughts ran through his mind again and again. He would explain it to his father later. Or maybe he wouldn’t. How could he tell him what he now knew to be true?
“You see, Dad, this guy had the camera and he used it in some sort of black-magic ritual. He took a picture of a demon and the demon either killed him or frightened him away and now it’s inside the camera. Every time you take a picture with the camera, you kill whatever you’re aiming at. Remember the cherry tree? Remember Polonius? And there was this mirror, too . . .”
Christopher would think he was mad. It would be better not even to try to explain. He would just take the camera and lose it. Perhaps at the bottom of a canal. His parents would think someone had stolen it. It would be better if they never knew.
He arrived home. He had his own keys and let himself in.
He knew at once that his parents had gone out. The coats were missing in the hall, and apart from the sound of vacuuming coming from upstairs, the house felt empty. As he closed the front door, the sound of the vacuum cleaner stopped and a short, round woman appeared at the top of the stairs. Her name was Mrs. Bayley and she came in twice a week to help Elizabeth with the cleaning.
“Is that you, Matthew?” she called down. She relaxed when she saw him. “You mom said to tell you she’d gone out.”
“Where did she go?” Matthew felt the first stirrings of alarm.
“Your dad took her and Jamie up to Hampstead Heath. And that new camera you bought him. He said he wanted to take their picture . . .”
And that was it. Matthew felt the floor tilt underneath him and he slid back, his shoulders hitting the wall.
The camera.
Hampstead Heath.
Not Mom! Not Jamie!
“What’s the matter?” Mrs. Bayley came down the stairs toward him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“I have to go there!” The words came out as a gabble. Matthew forced himself to slow down. “Mrs. Bayley. Have you got your car? Can you give me a lift?”
“I still haven’t done the kitchen . . .”
“Please! It’s important!”
There must have been something in his voice. Mrs. Bayley looked at him, puzzled. Then she nodded. “I can take you up if you like. But the Heath’s a big place. I don’t know how you’re going to find them . . .”
She was right, of course. The Heath stretched all the way from Hampstead to Highgate and down to Gospel Oak, a swath of green that rose and fell with twisting paths, ornamental lakes, and thick clumps of woodland. Walking on the Heath, you hardly felt you were in London at all, and even if you knew where you were going, it was easy to get lost. Where would they have gone? They could be anywhere.
Mrs. Bayley had driven him down from Highgate in her rusting Fiat Panda and was about to reach the first main entrance when he saw it, parked next to a bus stop. It was his father’s car. There was a sticker in the back window—LIVE THEATER MAKES LIFE BETTER—and the bright red letters jumped out at him. Matthew had always been a little embarrassed by that stupid line. Now he read the words with a flood of relief.
“Stop here, Mrs. Bayley!” he shouted.
Mrs. Bayley twisted the steering wheel and there was the blare of a horn from behind them as they swerved into the side of the road. “Have you seen them?” she asked.
“Their car. They must be up at Kenwood . . .”
Kenwood House. It was one of the most beautiful sights of the Heath; a white, eighteenth-century building on a gentle rise, looking down over a flat lawn and a lake. It was just the sort of place where Christopher might have gone for a walk . . .
Gone to take a picture.
Matthew scrambled out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Already he could imagine Elizabeth and Jamie with their backs to the house. Christopher standing with the camera. “A little closer. Now smile . . .” His finger would stab downward—and then what? Matthew remembered the cherry tree, colorless and dead. Polonius, who had never stepped into the road before. The mirror, smashing at the car-trunk sale. A gush of blood from the fight it had provoked. Even as he ran along the pavement and swung through the first entrance to the Heath, he wondered if he wasn’t mad, if he hadn’t imagined the whole thing. But then he remembered the pictures: the empty house, the candles.
The shadow. Two burning red eyes . . .
And Matthew knew that he was right, that he had imagined none of it, and that he had perhaps only minutes in which to save his father, his mother, his younger brother.
If it wasn’t too late already.
Christopher, Elizabeth, and Jamie weren’t at Kenwood. They weren’t on the terrace, or on the lawn. Matthew ran from one end of the house to the other, pushing through the crowds, ignoring the cries of protest. He thought he saw Jamie in the ornamental gardens and pounced on him—but it was another boy, nothing like his brother. The whole world seemed to have smashed (like the mirror at the car-trunk sale) as he forced himself on, searching for his family. He was aware only of the green of the grass, the blue of the sky, and the multicolored pieces, the unmade jigsaw, of the people in between.
“Mom! Dad! Jamie!” He shouted their names as he ran, hoping against hope that if he didn’t see them, they might hear him. He was half-aware that people were looking at him, pointing at him, but he didn’t care. He swerved around a man in a wheelchair. His foot came down in a bed of flowers. Somebody shouted at him. He ran on.
And just when he was about to give up, he saw them. For a moment he stood there, his chest heaving, the breath catching in his throat. Was it really them, just standing there? They looked as if
they had been waiting for him all along.
But had he reached them in time?
Christopher was holding the camera. The lens cap was on. Jamie was looking bored. Elizabeth had been talking, but seeing Matthew, she broke off and gazed at him, astonished.
“Matthew . . . ?” She glanced at Christopher. “What are you doing here? What’s the matter . . . ?”
Matthew ran forward. It was only now that he realized he was sweating, not just from the effort of running but from sheer terror. He stared at the camera in his father ’s hand, resisting the impulse to tear it away and smash it. He opened his mouth to speak, but for a moment no words came. He forced himself to relax.
“The camera . . .” he rasped.
“What about it?” Christopher held it up, alarmed.
Matthew swallowed. He didn’t want to ask the question. But he had to. He had to know. “Did you take a picture of Mom?” he asked.
Christopher King shook his head. “She wouldn’t let me,” he said.
“I’m too much of a mess,” Elizabeth added.
“What about Jamie?”
“What about me?”
Matthew ignored him. “Did you take a picture of him?”
“No.” Christopher smiled, perplexed. “What is all this, Matthew? What’s the matter?”
Matthew held up his hands. “You haven’t taken a picture of Jamie? You haven’t taken a picture of Mom?”
“No.”
Then—the horrible thought. “Did you let them take a picture of you?”
“No.” Christopher laid a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “We only just got here,” he said. “We haven’t taken any pictures of each other. Why is it so important anyway? What are you doing here?”
Matthew felt his knees go weak. He wanted to sink onto the grass. He felt the breeze rippling past his cheeks and a great shout of laughter welled up inside him. He had arrived in time. Everything was going to be all right.