“Being vampires,” a female voice said behind me.
Eyes wide with disbelief, I spun around to find Fran smiling over my shoulder at Ben.
“Sexy, sexy vampires,” she added with a little sigh of pleasure.
Panic hit me then, hard and hot in my gut. I looked around wildly for an escape, throwing to the wind my desire to photograph Imogen. There was no way on this green earth I was going to spend any more time with people who thought they were three-hundred-year-old vampires!
“Io, let me introduce you to my ghosts. They’re Vikings, and although they’re supposed to be in Valhalla, they claim they were sent back to help Ben and me with a little project—”
I didn’t wait for Fran to finish her sentence. I bolted, wanting nothing more than to escape the insanity that seemed to surround me.
July 11
“Are you sure you’re all right on your own, Io?” Gretl watched me for a few seconds, her brow furrowed. “You’re not feeling ill, are you?”
I set my small camera bag on a smooth boulder just off the shoulder of the road, giving her a reassuring smile. “I’m not sick, and I’ll be fine. I was just tired last night at the GothFaire, nothing more, but I’m right as rain this morning.”
She bit her lower lip, still eyeing me. “You were so distraught last night, insisting on returning home early…. If Imogen’s brother said something to upset you—”
Like he was a three-hundred-year-old vampire? Oh yeah, that would do the job, but I would never admit to Gretl that her friends were wack jobs, since they obviously acted perfectly normal around her. I rubbed my bare arms against the chill of the memory of the previous evening. “I told you that he didn’t do anything. I was just having low biorhythms or something. I needed some rest, and as you can see, I’m peachy keen today.”
“Mmm.” She glanced over my shoulder to the woods beyond, shivering a little at the sight. “Why you wish to come here to photograph when you know the area is said to be haunted…and it is where Imogen said her father was killed. I think maybe you should find somewhere else to take your photos.”
“Imogen may not want to be here—not that I blame her if it has such a bad connotation for her family—but there’s no reason I can’t take some pictures of the woods.”
I turned to consider the dense growth of trees. I knew from perusing Gretl’s map of the area that the forest was fairly small, probably under ten acres, and shaped roughly like an oval, lying between the town of St. Andras to the south, the castle to the north, and, to the east, a mountainous rise that curved to the neighboring town. To the west, the trees petered out, the land sloping down into the valley where the GothFaire was currently camped.
“I suppose not,” Gretl said slowly, doubt evident on her face. “Although it’s so spooky. I would never go in there.”
I had to admit, there was something about the woods that raised the fine hairs on the back of my neck, a sense of a place that wasn’t quite in sync with the rest of the world. “I think it’s beautiful. I love fir and pine trees so densely packed together that you can see the sunlight streaming through their branches. That’s an awesome look. See over there, just past that boulder shaped like a sleeping cat—see how the sunlight pours through the tree like honey? And those vines, whatever they are, are like streamers of green and brown tangled through the lower branches of the trees, wafting down to the ground where they gently wave.” I took a couple of steps forward, intrigued by the woods, studying the scene with a critical eye for composition, and finding nothing at fault. “It’s the breeze that moves the vines, but honestly, Gretl, can’t you imagine them as some form of sentient life, beckoning the unwary traveler into their midst, pulling you deeper and deeper into the cool, dark, mysterious heart of the woods until you find—”
“Find what?” Gretl’s voice was at the same time hushed and high-pitched, but it was enough to break the spell that had gripped me.
A little shiver ran down my back at the thought of what lay in the heart of the forest. Then with a mental shake of my head at such fanciful thoughts I turned back to my cousin with an apologetic smile. “More woods, no doubt. I’m sorry if I spooked you. I’m normally a very feet-on-the-ground sort of person, but there’s just something about those woods that makes me go emo.”
“Emo?” She shivered and rubbed her arms again. “Emotional?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t blame you. I don’t like the woods, Io. They are bad, and I do not like you spending the day there. It is unnatural.”
“Ah, but don’t you see, Gretl—it’s just that unnatural sense of an otherworld that I’m seeking for my photos. Can’t you envision a shot of Imogen set against it as a background? A little Photoshop magic, and voilà, I’ll have a killer series of pictures that I just bet I can sell. Or at the very least, add to my portfolio.”
“But you’ll be all alone in there.” Her brows were pulled together in worry as I collected my bag from the rock, removing from it my camera, which I slung around my neck on its strap. “Aren’t you afraid?”
“Me? No, I’m a curious little kitty. I like to poke around mysterious sorts of places. Besides…” I pulled from the bag a small canister the size of the palm of my hand. “I have your pepper spray, so should there be any weirdos camping out in the forest who feel like attacking me, I’ll be set. OK?”
“I don’t like it,” she repeated, shaking her head.
“I know, but just wait until you see the pictures. They’ll knock your socks off.” I glanced at my watch. “How about you pick me up at six? Will your book group be done by then?”
“Yes, six will be fine. Io, be careful.”
“Promise! Nothing will happen except I’ll spend the day in the spooky woods getting bit by mosquitoes and taking tons of fabulously moody shots.”
“I hope that is all you are bitten by,” she said darkly, but, to my relief, got into her compact—but expensive—car and started it up.
I waved, straightened my navy and white print sundress, hoisted the camera bag, and with a deep breath started for the woods, musing on her words. “She hopes that’s all I’m bitten by?” I shook my head as I left the warm sunshine and entered the coolness of the shade cast by the dense growth of trees, the pines filling the air with scent, while the sound of discarded needles crunched underfoot. “Like what else would bite me? A vampire? Ha! I laugh at that.”
I did laugh, but it came out strained and curiously flat, as if I was trying to convince myself.
“I am so not afraid of trees and vines and the weird trick of light that makes it look like there are little sparkles of things floating in the air around here. It’s just a small wood, nothing more.”
The words were brave, but the sensation of closeness seemed to wrap around me, almost like an embrace, leaving the everyday sounds—the noise of cars traveling on the road, the occasional airplane droning high overhead—muffled and distant.
“It’s just muffled by the trees,” I told myself as I pushed aside a long tendril of vine to march resolutely toward a particularly bright spot where light streamed through the branches. “Trees do that to things. Even the normal stuff like birds and insects get damped down by the—” I stopped as I listened intently for a few seconds.
There was no birdsong, no whine of insects. There was no noise whatsoever except the muted rustle of the vines as they rubbed on the branches.
Just like they were alive and reaching for me.
“It’s all that talk of vampires and Viking ghosts and haunted forests. That’s what’s making you scare the bejeepers out of yourself,” I said with a nervous laugh, trying hard to shake off the feeling that everything around me was aware that I was in its midst. “You’re not in a Tolkien book, Io, and there are no Ents around here to scare the snot out of you, so just mellow out and get down to business, or you’ll have to explain to Gretl why you spent the entire day sitting on the rock next to the road because you scared yourself.”
That little pep talk did the trick—mostly—and with a squaring of my shoulders, I walked resolutely toward the spot I wanted, and spent the next few hours snapping photos of it, and various other locations. There was a particularly magnificent outcropping of rock that rose some twelve feet in the air, almost like it was part of the ruined castle to the north, all covered in ferns and creepers, surrounded by budding little pine trees. I shot it from all angles, imagining in my head the composition of a series of pictures with Imogen set against it.
“This is going to be great,” I said quietly to myself as I pushed deeper into the woods. The sunshine was less plentiful here, since the trees fought for space, their branches tangled and twisted together, making an effective fir canopy. The air was cooler, as well, and sharp with the scent of the trees and earth, enough that it made me shiver a little as I skirted another large boulder. Although I continued to speak aloud, more to bolster my own spirits than because I was of the habit of doing so, my voice had taken on a hushed quality normally confined to places such as churches or graveyards. “I can’t wait to get back to my laptop and see how they turned—whoa. What the heck is that?”
I plucked from my arm a vine that had somehow snagged me, and I slid between it and a massive pine tree to stop and squint at the object in the center of a small clearing about thirty feet in width. The ground rose slightly to the center, where a sort of cloud seemed to hang, slowly twisting and turning upon itself.
“Well, that’s not something you see every day,” I said slowly, and shuffled forward a few feet to get a better look at it. It still looked like a cloud, faintly bluish black in color, just lingering over the spot at the top of the little rise. “How on earth…? Is there, like, a hot spring or something beneath here?”
There didn’t seem to be anything dangerous about the cloud, so with a glance around the clearing, I took a few shots of it from three different angles before approaching it, holding out my hand to feel any steam that might be leaking through a crack above a hot spring. My fingers brushed the edge of the cloud, making them tingle.