My Prized Shots

A sharp CLACK-POP tore through the silence of the motel bedroom.

The light vanished as fast as it came, leaving behind the faint fizz of a cooling bulb and the smell of scorched metal.

Mosely didn’t wait for his eyes to adjust to the returning dark. He plucked the spent bulb from the flash gun with a handkerchief and let it go tink-tink-tinking across the floorboards. A fresh bulb snapped into place. He slid in a new holder, aimed at the figure he had arranged on the bed, and pressed the release.

A second CLACK-POP blinded the room.

The white light revealed the stark outline of a young man, mouth open, eyes closed.

Mosely whispered, but the echo in the room made it carry, “Ah… that pool of red against the white sheet. It does make it lovely.”

“Sir, we hired you to take the pictures. Please keep your comments to yourself,” the sergeant said from the corner of the room.

“Do you not see it? The wallpaper torn from the walls, the design of that metal bed frame, this young man’s face. There is artistry even in death.”

“You’re sick,” the sergeant said, his voice strained with held-back anger. “I know you’re good, but you truly disgust me. Just take the pictures, please.”

Charles Mosely smiled. His front teeth had been rotting for years, thanks to his habit of sucking on sugar cubes. He adjusted his hat. “You should see my studio, friend. Hundreds of such works hang on its walls. Each one speaks to me.”

“I will never set foot in your demented little studio. We have another body. That makes two today. Follow me down the hallway. We need pictures of this one as well.”

“Delighted!”

The two men walked down the dark hallway, glass crunching under their feet, the remains of a struggle. The sergeant opened a door, and from the ceiling hung an old woman, swaying slightly.

“She’s in a long black wedding dress. Of all things,” the sergeant said dryly. “As you know, this is probably the killer’s tenth this year alone.”

“Oh my, this is absolutely stunning.” The words slipped out before he could think better of it. Only a thin slant of light reached the room. Someone had painted the windows black, leaving a single clear spot to light the scene.

“He does have refined tastes, you could say.”

Mosely set the tripod, and the flashes began to throw white into the darkness. The smell of hot metal filled the room as he circled, taking in every angle.

“Beautiful,” he kept murmuring.

He saved the best angle for last. It was his ritual to circle each subject twice, taking in the scene and its light before closing himself off from the world beneath the black cloth.

He shook out the heavy fabric and drew it over his head and the back of the camera. The room dimmed around him. He leaned toward the ground glass, where the scene appeared as little more than a blur of gray shapes.

Then the image came into focus, and what he saw made him go very still.

The old woman was standing. Upright, in her black wedding dress, her gray hair loose, her skin lit from within by a pale, sickly light. She pointed at something he could not see.

He tore the cloth from his head. Nothing. Only the body, swaying as before.

Mosely stood motionless for a moment, then pressed the back of his hand against his mouth. He looked at the flash gun. He looked at the window. He looked at the ceiling.

“A defect,” he muttered. “The glass.”

He wiped his eyes slowly with his handkerchief, folded it, and put it away.

Taking a slow breath, he drew the cloth over himself once more and leaned toward the glass. The old woman was still there, her finger still pointing, her eyes locked directly onto his.

“Good God,” he whispered.

He held the view far longer than he should have, waiting for her to dissolve back into rope and shadow. She did not.

“Okay… I have what I need,” Mosely growled finally, as much to himself as to anyone. He was aware of how long he had been standing there.

He fired. CLACK-POP. When he looked again through the glass, she was gone.

“I will have these developed and get back to you.”

He put on his hat, popped a sugar cube into his mouth, and walked out of the motel.

* * * * *

September 1, 1931

In the darkroom of his studio, he watched the faces of the dead emerge. It never failed to quicken his heart, the silhouettes of those he had just witnessed surfacing before his eyes like music rising in the darkness. He had always thought of them as treasures drawn up from the depths of the forbidden.

He turned to the print of the old woman, eager to find her standing there. To his disappointment, there was nothing but the rope that held her body.

“Beautiful, my fair lady,” he whispered. “Though I feel I saw you standing…”

He sucked on a sugar cube, his thoughts drifting back to the dress and to the woman who had been standing inside it.

“A wedding gown of black…”

Brrrring. Brrrring.

The telephone in the hall startled him from his thoughts. He wiped his hands and hurried to answer.

“We require your services under the Caugherton Bridge. Be punctual.”

Grabbing his leather bag of equipment, he left.

It was early morning, and the sun had barely cleared the rooftops. A very large man lay on his back, shirtless, in nothing but his underwear, a pitchfork buried in his belly.

Mosely circled the body, his hands moving as if he were framing the picture in his mind. He glanced over at the sergeant. “I bet I can get a little of that gorgeous sunrise to glisten off the handle,” he said, with a smile that made the sergeant turn his back.

He shook out the cloth and settled it over his head, and a man was staring right into his face. Mosely felt his heart skip a beat.

The man’s blue eyes were tortured and angry, and they pierced something in Mosely that he did not like. His mouth was stretched wide in a scream, the veins standing out like rivers along his forehead. Mosely heard nothing. Not a word, not a breath. Only silence.

He whipped the cloth off and saw once again only a body lying there.

“Why can’t the dead stay dead!” Mosely growled, moving closer to the corpse.

He cursed the dead man under his breath as he reset the camera. When he drew the cloth over his head again, the man was there, fully dressed and much calmer, pointing at something on the ground.

“Deceptive spirit,” he hissed. “What could you possibly need? You are dead.”

Yet curiosity made him look where the finger pointed.

Mosely pulled the cloth away, walked over, and found a matchbook lying in the dirt. Inside the cover were initials.

He leaned toward the sergeant and whispered, “I have something for you. You might want to take a look at that on the ground. I have a feeling it will lead you in the right direction. You see… I can be helpful from time to time.”

The sergeant picked up the matchbook and turned it over in his hands.

“That is a very helpful find,” he said slowly. “I have no idea how we missed it.” He glanced back at Mosely, confusion creeping across his face. “Thank you.”

Mosely only tipped his hat.

That evening he poured a large glass of red wine and spread the prints across the table, turning each one over until he found the big man’s face.

“Why did I even help?” he murmured, again and again.

His hands drifted over several boxes and stopped on one labeled My Prize Shots.

“My sweets, one day you will have your own gallery.” He leaned down and kissed the lid. His brother had been the first.

* * * * *

September 15, 1931

Another call came. This time it was a death in a copper bathtub. Mosely let himself in ahead of the sergeant and hummed as he set up his tripod.

“I would marry you, my lady,” he said with a laugh. “You are death captured in its truest form.”

He had almost forgotten the earlier disturbances until he drew the cloth over his head and found a young woman in the tub staring directly at him. Tears ran down her face. She raised a trembling finger and tapped a tile on the wall, again and again.

Mosely pulled the cloth off and paused.

“Intriguing,” he murmured. He stepped closer and studied the tile, then the dead woman’s face.

“And why should I help you?” he whispered angrily. “You’re dead. What does it matter? If anything, I wish I had been here to witness it. The man who did this is a genius.”

“Who are you talking to?”

The sergeant’s voice echoed from behind him. Mosely paused for a second, then turned and smiled, showing his stained teeth.

He drew the cloth over his head again. The woman was glaring at him now. She dipped a finger into the bathwater and began to write on the wall, and he watched the letters form, one by one.

My Prize Shots.

His hands went rigid on the camera. He tore off the cloth and leaned close to the dead woman’s ear. “I don’t care what happened to you.”

He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into her face. Then, with a warm smile, he pressed the release.

CLACK-POP.

Before the glare faded, he flung the cloth over his head.

She was standing now. Slowly, she opened her mouth and vomited a photograph, which drifted across the glass and, impossibly, landed on the floor beside Mosely’s boot.

It was a black-and-white picture of an old man in a rocking chair, holding a pipe. Mosely knew it at once. It came from his own collection.

He slipped it into his coat, then called over his shoulder, “Sergeant, take a look at that tile there. I think it might be a fingerprint.”

Without another word, he tipped his hat and walked out.

The sergeant stared after him, then back at the tile. “We overlooked this…” he said, almost to himself.

Mosely walked the alley in deep thought.

“Cursed woman!” He spat on the ground and cut onto the train tracks. He walked for hours, his equipment heavy on his shoulder, until he reached his studio apartment. There he sat for a long while, staring at the one print he had managed of her before she appeared. He poured a glass of vodka, lit a cigarette, and drew the smoke deep into his lungs, his hands not quite steady.

“How could you give me a photograph from my own private collection?” he whispered.

He sat with the question till his bottle was empty.

* * * * *

October 30, 1931

Brrrring. Brrrring.

He answered lazily. “Hello.”

“Sir,” the sergeant said, “your keen eye, twice in a row, has really advanced our investigation. That print on the tile gave us a name. I wanted to thank you for that.” He paused. “Though you honestly disgust me.”

Mosely said nothing.

“We have a body. I would rather never see you again. And on Devil’s Night, of all nights. Please come to 22 Meadowbrooke Drive. Bring your keen eye.” The line went dead.

Mosely looked at the print of the woman in the bathtub and smiled. “You are still lovelier dead than you were as a ghost.”

He pressed the red-hot tip of his cigarette into her face and watched the hole spread, black and smoking, until it ate her features away. Then he took his hat and left.

The scene was in the basement of a decayed, abandoned house. As he descended into the darkness, the old excitement returned.

A man was tied to a chair, apparently put to sleep right where he sat. The basement smelled of damp earth.

“Gorgeous knots,” Mosely murmured, photographing the man’s hands, then his face. He glanced at the sergeant, knowing the comment would disturb him.

He drew the cloth over his head and focused. The bald man in the chair was staring directly at him. They looked at each other for a long while. Finally, the man nodded and pointed with his eyes toward the corner of the room.

There, on the ground, lay a tooth.

The man raised his hands to show Mosely the blood on them. His knuckles were split, as if he had broken them on someone’s face.

CLACK-POP.

Mosely stepped out from under the cloth and knelt. The dead man’s hands were bloodied, just as the ghost had shown him. Then he saw the tooth in the corner.

He looked around to make sure no one was listening, leaned toward the corpse, and whispered, “Why me?”

He went back under the cloth. The basement was gone. In its place hung his studio, every photograph from My Prize Shots dangling from a thin string, one hundred and six of them. And they were moving. He could watch himself inside each one.

He saw the man dying in the street after a mugging, still alive, while Mosely adjusted his tripod. He saw the young man drowning, a life that could have been saved, while a man behind the lens was too enthralled to put his camera down. His eyes passed from the gutters of the slums to orphanages and hospitals. Everywhere, death approached. And everywhere, Mosely was there to capture it. The flash of light before each final breath.

And then, at the end of a long mahogany dining table, he saw his younger brother, grasping his own throat. His eyes pleaded for help. And Mosely, reaching for his camera.

CLACK-POP.

His head spun, and the blood drained from his face.

The bald man opened his mouth, and one last photograph slipped out from between his teeth. It drifted down and landed beside Mosely’s boot. Whatever was in the picture made his whole body shudder.

“What is the matter with you, Mosely?” the sergeant shouted. “You have been standing there unmoving for five minutes. I do not have all day.”

Snapped back to the present, Mosely picked up the photograph and slipped it inside his jacket. Was it really there? He stepped out from under the cloth, pale and sickly, like a man who had seen a ghost.

“Are you unwell, sir?” the sergeant asked.

“I… I am fine. Yes. If you look over there, sir, I see a tooth on the ground. And I noticed through my lens that he has cuts on his hands. Perhaps from the perpetrator? Perhaps they had some kind of confrontation?”

“Thank you again for your keen eye,” the sergeant said, already moving quickly toward the corner.

“I bid you good day, sir. I am going back to the studio.” Mosely turned his back and left.

* * * * *

In the darkroom, Mosely sank into the chair at his table and stared at his walls with a blank gaze. The cigarette burned between his fingers. A long thread of ash broke away and fell to the floor.

His hands trembled as he reached into his jacket, hoping it would not be there, hoping it had all been his imagination. His fingers brushed against it.

Slowly, he drew it out and laid it on the table before him. It was dated October 30, 1931.

The photograph showed Charles Mosely himself, in his signature frock coat, striped vest, and plaid trousers. His bowler hat sat at its usual angle.

In the picture, he was very much dead. Dead in the very room where he now sat.

He reached for a sugar cube, and behind him, he heard footsteps.

A heaviness crept over him, a paralysis that started in his fingers and swallowed his arms, his legs, his tongue. He could not move. He could not speak. His mouth had gone too dry to hold the sugar, and the cube dropped from his lips onto the floor.

Something soft and rough settled around his neck. A noose. It began to tighten.

His body would not obey him, but his eyes still could. They slid down to the photograph on the table, and he understood that it was not a warning. It was a record. It was telling him the story, one frame at a time, exactly as it was happening.

One hundred and six hands gripped the rope, each belonging to a different body, every shape, size, and age. Each second a new face surfaced from the dark, held for a moment, then faded as another took its place, every one as furious as the last. Even the old man with the pipe had his turn. They pulled the noose tighter, and their rage seemed to crawl into every cell of his body, until slowly the world dimmed.

Mosely tried to scream, but no sound left his mouth.

Then, before him, stood a man carrying an old camera beneath one arm.

He mounted it on the tripod he had brought, adjusted Mosely’s hands and feet and straightened his hat.

“We must get this photo exactly as it was taken. After all, I do like to get the details right.”

He glanced toward the dark window. “Besides, what better night for it?”

With one last adjustment, he stepped back. “Ah, yes. This is it.”

Then, with a warm smile, he said, “Say cheese.”

The scream died in Mosely’s throat. He could see it as the camera would: the rope stark against the pallor of his face, the carved mahogany of his chair, the lamplight gleaming along the curve of his bowler hat. His lips curled into a smile at the beauty of the shot.

CLACK-POP.