The Seer of Shadows by Avi

Author:Avi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

I MUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP at last. When I woke next morning, the first thing I did was snatch up the print and look for that fifth image.

It had vanished.

Enormously relieved, I told myself that it had been a dream after all. In fact, I was quite prepared to consider everything I thought I had seen and done a bad dream. Of course, when I checked the photograph, those four images remained. No matter. The fifth image did not exist, and for the moment that was enough. It enabled me to put aside my irrational ideas of ghosts. My old sense of reason reasserted itself. I had no doubt I would find an explanation for the rest. And yet . . . and yet . . . it wasn’t long before my unease returned.

Mr. Middleditch soon arose. He was still feeling very chipper, and over our usual breakfast of oatmeal and coffee he insisted upon regaling me with an account of the good time he had enjoyed the night before. His mood was so jaunty I ventured to ask, “Were you bragging about what you did?”

“Me?” he cried with a guffaw. “Brag about the spirit photography business? I should hope not. I might as well run an advertisement in the Daily News to tell other photographers how they could horn in on my business. But Horace, I’ve been thinking how we should prepare for the next round.”

“What next round?”

“Mrs. Von Macht will call us back.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“You’ll see,” he said with a grin. “She’ll want another photograph, the better to determine if what she saw was a fluke.” He laughed. “I intend to be prepared.”

“In what way?”

“She’ll ask me about the image. I’ll remind her that when she first visited me at my studio she spoke of souls, or ghosts, and . . . what was it? Ectoplasm. That she felt her late daughter was restless. Something like that. I’ll remind her that it was she who had to convince me there was an image among the palms. And that’s not all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve decided we should go to the cemetery—Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Photograph that poor girl’s grave.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell Mrs. Von Macht I was so touched by her story—by her deep-felt grief—that I was moved to visit the girl’s resting place. What’s more, I felt absolutely compelled to photograph it. And voilà! Another spirit photograph.”

“But—”

“We’ll use the spy camera—the more practiced we are, the better.”

Of course, he said we, but I knew perfectly well he meant me. “Must I?” I said.

He laughed. “Now, Horace, am I not your devoted teacher? And you, my loyal apprentice? So of course you must go. And since it’s a long way, you’d better get started.”

With much reluctance I did so.

The sky was dull that morning, the air chilly with a feel of impending rain. I was glad I had my coat, though the jostling spy camera was a bother.

All the same, I traveled to the bottom of Manhattan and paid two pennies for the South Ferry across the crowded East River to the city of Brooklyn.

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