“The Native Americans used to believe that a camera could steal your soul and place it into the picture.”
Simon Chapman walked into the small village photo shop at eleven forty-five in the morning. This meant he was forty-five minutes late for work again. He had only been working for “Chapman’s Photography” since he turned eighteen, which was just two months ago, but this was the ninth time he had been late. Simon stood there in his brown leather jacket, dripping wet from his short, rain-drenched walk to work. He knew the owner would not mind his constant lateness; that was one of the perks of working for your dad.
He looked around his dad’s empire. It was a tiny, old fashioned looking shop, clean and tidy with everything in its place, cameras all laid out in a row and a faint smell of polish lingering in the air. When his granddad had purchased it back in the nineteen-twenties it had been a popular little shop full of customers. Today it was almost empty, apart from an amateur photographer and his wife scanning the shelves for a reasonably priced, reliable compact camera. Simon watched Donna serve the two customers. When she had finished with couple she turned to Simon and spoke in her strong Irish accent. “Stop dripping, and get some bloody work done!”
“Much to do?” Simon asked the red-headed girl as he walked over to the blue roll of paper towel and began to dry himself. He watched her slowly make her way to the shop’s exit.
“Na, it’s been pretty dead today, but there is one film you can develop for me.”
She paused for a moment. “The man who came in scared the b’jesus out of me.” she paled as she recalled the man who had given the camera to her, then changed the subject to stop herself from getting even more frightened.
“Anyway I’m going for lunch, see you in an hour”.
Donna walked out of the door and Simon nervously picked up the strange camera. A black leather cover had been tightly pulled over its frame. Imprinted on the leather appeared to be fingernails and hair. Simon’s rational brain told him it must have been made to look like human flesh, but his irrational brain told him otherwise.
He fed the film into the machine and waited for the black shiny negatives to spill out of the other end. Taking them he put them into the computer. This was the best part; he got to look at everyone’s photos and select which ones to print. But what came out on the monitor sent a chill down his spine.
The first thing to unnerve him was that thirteen photos appeared on screen; the rest were a reddish-yellow blur. More unsettling than the apparent unlucky numbers were the pictures themselves. The first three were of an attractive raven-haired lady in a nineteen- twenties style scarlet satin dress; she wore long black silk gloves and a headband with a crow’s feather in it, which complemented the colour of her hair. In the next five she was in an old phone box, making a phone call. He recognised this old phone box, it was at the end of the village, and from the gothic black spike on the top and the white finish looked like it too dated back to the nineteen-twenties.
The next four eerie photographs were a close-up of the misted glass of the phone box. Written into the mist were letters dripping down the glass like blood; they read ‘Help me’. The last photo made Simon’s heart miss a beat. It was a picture of the scarlet lady lying in a pool of crimson.
For the next twenty minutes young Simon Chapman paced up and down the shop. The photos started to print. He tried not to look at them while he packed them into the folder, but accidentally glanced at one. It was of the nineteen-twenties lady in the phone box. He became transfixed by the photo. He looked beyond her dark eyes, almost seeing into her soul, then had a feeling of uncontrollable lust. Two pale hands reached out of the photo. In a daze Simon took hold of them; they felt cold, and they gripped hard and pulled him into the photo.
Simon stood there with the scarlet lady. She embraced him. He ran his hands down the silky, satin dress and rested them on her hips. They kissed; he felt as if he had known her for ever and never wanted this moment to end. He started to kiss her neck. The smell of her perfume excited him, it was like summer flowers. He lifted her dress up and she wrapped her legs around his body. Then pushed him away a little and said in a frail, haunting voice, “Simon, don’t let this happen”. Just as the last word left her rose, red lips a silver scythe shattered its way into the phone box, severing her spine. Smashed glass lay scattered around the broken woman. She reached up for Simon, he reached back. His hand grabbed hold of hers tightly and then her arm started to fade away until it became invisible. Simon looked around and everything was fading. Eventually he was standing in a blinding white area. Bit by bit the familiar surroundings of the shop morphed in to focus. Simon ran to the computer and searched the internet for clues. He found two articles of interest. The first told of a local nightclub singer from the nineteen-twenties who had mysteriously disappeared. He clicked on the image of her and even though the picture was faded and grainy he could tell it was the same lady he had just held in his arms. The second article told of a local myth about a soul collector who used an old skin-covered camera to steal people’s spirits. Suddenly the door opened and an evil looking man walked towards the counter.
He wore a dirty brown trench coat and a matching fedora. The hat cast a shadow over his face, leaving only his jaw visible. An earthy smell came from him; it reminded Simon of graveyards. The man mouthed the word “film” but Simon could have sworn no sound was made. The menacing figure held out a claw of a hand and Simon nervously handed over the folder. The man left the shop just as Donna returned. Simon grabbed his brown leather jacket and ran out after him. “Look after the place!” he shouted to Donna.
Simon followed at a safe distance; the rain was still heavy. By pursuing this man he might prevent a murder. Deep down he knew he should phone the police, but how could he explain what had happened? The man went round the corner. Simon quickened his pace, got to where the man should have been, but he had disappeared. Just in front of Simon, rain smashing down over its black gothic spike, was the old phone box. The downpour made it hard to see inside but Simon could just make out a red blur. “It must be her,” he said to himself. He ran towards the box shouting, “Get out!” The red blur did not move. He was close enough now to make out the perfect female form inside. “You’re in danger, get out!” Still no response. He opened the door. She stood there speaking on the phone. He recalled how amazing he had felt kissing her, but this time she did not notice him. She just did the same thing over and over. She started by picking up the phone, talking into it then putting it down, then starting the whole process again.
A shape ghost-like in the rain, started to move outside the phone box. Simon could see it was holding a scythe. “Get down, he is going to kill you!” Still the scarlet lady repeated the pre-recorded motions, Simon flung himself at her, expecting to feel the silky satin of her dress, but as soon as he touched her she turned into a red mist. The scarlet smoke was absorbed into the air, leaving the lingering smell of summer flowers.
Confused and frightened, Simon rested on the glass to get his breath back. The silver scythe came smashing into the box. Shattered pieces of glass surrounded Simon’s broken body. His brown leather jacket was torn and soaked in blood. His fingernails screeched down the fogged-up glass. Just before he blacked out and faded into darkness he heard the shutter of a camera. In a short moment death had taken him.
“Sometimes the evil use the good to do their deeds.”
Weeks passed and Simon Chapman was considered a missing person; no evidence existed of that nightmarish day. Donna was upset but felt she owed it to Simon to keep the shop running. She shuddered when she saw the familiar old black camera. It had a note attached written by Sammy, one of the part-timers, the note read ‘Process for creepy guy’.
Slowly Donna began to process the film. She took the negatives and fed them into the computer. Thirteen pictures came on the monitor, the rest were the colour of October leaves. The photos were of the old village phone box down the road. She looked at the last photo; it was of a young man in a brown leather jacket. He lay face down in a pool of his own blood on the floor of the old phone box. At first Donna did not recognize him. A painful cramp hit her in the stomach when she finally worked out who it was. She looked closely at the crimson-stained glass; she could just make out the words ‘Help me’ written in Simon’s blood. Donna grabbed her coat from the hook and ran towards the old phone box.
THE END