Spectral Evidence

Abbott: What is, Carra?

Devize: That. Don’t you…no, of course you don’t. There, in that corner, warping the uppermost stains. See? You’ll have to strain a bit.

Abbott: Is that…an orb?

Devize: That’s Emma, Doc. Face-on, finally. God, so sad.

Abbott: (After 72-second pause) I’m afraid I’m still not—

Devize: (Cuts him off) I know. But there she is, right there. Just about to take shape.

Abbott: Not fly-the-lights?

Devize: Emma had fly-the-lights, like mice or roaches, except mice and roaches don’t usually…anyway. But Madach, and that poor little spoon-bender wannabe Barbie of his? By the end, what they had…was Emma.

—

Conclusion:

With Imre Madach in jail, Emma Yee Slaughter and Eden Marozzi dead, and the official files closed on all three, the discovery of the preceding photographic array would seem—though, naturally, interesting in its own right—fairly extraneous to any new interpretation of the extant facts of the case.

Recommendations

• From now on, access to/possession of library books on the Freihoeven collection’s “hazardous” list must obviously be tracked far more effectively.

• In the initial screening process for evaluating prospective Freihoeven employees, whether contracted freelancers or in-house, far more emphasis needs to be placed on psychological mapping. Issues thus revealed need to be recorded and re-checked, rigorously, on a regular monthly basis.

• Similarly, fieldwork teams should be routinely broken up after three complete assignments together, and the partners rotated into other departments. This will hopefully prevent either side of the equation developing an unhealthy dependence on the other.

• Finally, the Institute itself needs to undergo a thorough psychic cleansing, as soon as possible; lingering influences must be dispelled through expulsion or exorcism, and the wards must be redrawn over the entire building. outside experts, rather than Freihoeven employees/experts, should be used for this task (Dr. Abbott suggests consulting Maccabee Roke, Nan van Hool, Father Akinwale oja S.J. or—as a last resort—Jude Hark Chiu-wai as to promising/economical local prospects).

• Photographs #1 through #10 will be properly re-filed under #FI5556701 (cross-referentials: Madach, Marozzi, Slaughter).

Filed and signed: Sylvester Horse-Kicker, March 5/06

Witnessed: Dr. Guilden Abbott, March 5/06

GUISING

When I was a kid, out in the woods on the Dourvale Shore, I saw faces in the bushes, sometimes: wizened like nuts, smooth like peeled birch, smiling, snarling, but always with holes—small or large, dark or empty—where you’d expect their eyes to be. Sometimes, at night, I saw wavey little versions of those faces looking out of my bedroom walls, from the spaces in the pattern of the wallpaper.

You probably think I’m speaking metaphorically. Everyone else did, for years—said it was just hypnagogic imagery, a kind of waking dream, a manifestation of the trauma going on around me. And after getting tired of attempting to persuade them otherwise, I eventually managed to kind of convince myself they were right.

But I really wasn’t speaking metaphorically then, and I’m sure not doing it now.

I remember trying to draw the face I saw most, then having that drawing taken away from me by my grandmother, who burnt it in her iron-bellied kitchen stove. I remember she and my Dad arguing about it, later on, when they thought I couldn’t hear.

This was just after my parents broke up, when Dad took us home to Overdeere, to stay with his mother until he got a job that’d support us. He’d been a late baby, and as a result, my grandmother was the single oldest person I’d ever seen. Her heavy braid of hair was the dull brownish-yellow of nicotine stains, matching the DuMaurier cigarettes she was always chain-smoking, her hands wrinkly-soft and peppered with age spots. She kept her teeth in a jar and her own “eyes” in a case—they were contact lenses, really, but that didn’t stop my Dad from telling me, when I asked once where Grandma was: “oh, she’s upstairs, sweetie, taking her eyes out.”

“I’ll be out of here by Christmas,” Dad told her, to which she simply sniffed.

“You’d better be,” she replied.

Dad and Mom just didn’t get along anymore, was how he’d eventually explained it, and I’d nodded as though I agreed—though, looking back, I found I couldn’t really remember when they had. They were different people, to say the least; she came “from town,” which in this case was Barrie, and had hoity ideas about what constituted decent living standards. Dad, on the other hand, was a Lake of the North boy, born and bred—managed to bull his way through a Forestry degree, but not quite to find a place in his preferred area. She’d stood there with a disapproving look on her face, watching him slip down into a Rona Gardening job (“You’d be a glorified florist, Kieran!”) which eventually became unbearable, after which he got his trucker’s license and began to do long-haul, gone three weeks out of every four. Her own stuff she could do from home, at night—she’d majored in Computer Tech, with a Design minor, which kept her busy building other people’s websites. But it wasn’t enough.

I don’t blame her, I guess—not now, anyways. But I did then.

Most days, in fact, I can barely remember her face, aside from that one photo the papers found, reduced to newsprint or LCD pixels. All I have left of her is her scent, a celebrity perfume they don’t make anymore, and the memory that the day she finally took off, she was wearing her favourite set of green ribbons trimmed with silver foil in her long, dark hair. Just gone, out the door and down the road in a cab to meet the boyfriend we’d never known she had. And the next day, Dad’s car pulled out of our former driveway in the exact opposite direction, with me riding shotgun and everything we had in the back.