In places the debris was thigh deep, with empty and full boxes piled haphazardly. There had been an attempt to fire some of it, but it looked as if it hadn’t caught with some inflammable packing material.
There were sophisticated camcorders and all sizes of ordinary cameras. Mainly 35 mm models, with some 25 mm models, compacts and triple-reflex jobs. The owner had installed a small hi-fi section with some tiny SHD cassette players, as well as the CD vid hardware.
Hardly anything was unbroken.
Kyle stooped and picked up a magnificent Hayakawa 3-D instant camera, but someone had put his heel through the delicate lens, smashing the crystal glass.
“Some coffee, Kyle?” called Carrie from the other room, where the fire crackled merrily.
“Coffee?”
She laughed. “It’s wet and very hot and kind of a brown color, Kyle.”
“Sure. Be right in.”
He dropped the Hayakawa amidst the rest of the rubbish. His eye was caught by a tripod at the far end of the store, farthest away from the side door. When he picked it up, he found there was a camera still attached to it.
Kyle whistled. It was a reflex Ryuichi instant, one of the best on offer, that presented a totally developed print without more than a second’s delay.
He set it up, pointing down the length of the shop, making sure it was level. There was a timer that Kyle set for five seconds, then positioned himself in front of it and waited.
A tiny red eye blinked, and then there was the dazzling flash that made him blink.
“What’s that?” shouted Sly. “You want help, Kyle?”
“No, thanks. After I’ve had a drink I’ll take some pix of us all with this.”
The print hung from the front like the extruded tongue of some techno-beast. It was perfectly sharp and detailed.
“Christ! I look about a hundred years old,” Kyle said. “Every day in every way I’m getting more and more like my father. Real scary.”
“Show us,” called Jim.
“In a minute. One more.”
There was a faint sound from behind him. Kyle turned around, but there was nothing to see in the deep shadows. He reset the camera and posed in front of it, hand on chest, teeth bared in a cheesy grin.
There was the same bright starburst flash that seemed to scorch the retina, followed by the tiny whir of the motor, propelling the print out of the camera.
Kyle took a half-dozen careful steps toward it and stooped to try to make out his image by the flickering golden light of the oil lamp.
There he was, teeth white, head slightly on one side as the timer sprang the shutter release, his bushy hair spreading around his face like a halo. Kyle hadn’t realized quite how long it had grown in the past few weeks and made the decision to ask Carrie to cut it for him before they moved on in the morning.
He was beginning to grin at himself when he noticed something else in the photograph.
Behind him, in the darkness toward the hidden door, around the corner. Something that didn’t…
Kyle leaned closer, squinting and turning the picture to catch the light so that he could see…
See the old man coming toward him in the photo, holding up a short-hafted chopping ax, its honed blade catching the silvery gleam of the camera flash and making it look like the sword of an avenging angel.
Kyle Lynch opened his mouth to scream as he started to turn around to confront his doom, hand reaching for his Mondadori .32, the developed print fluttering to the floor at his feet.
The ax crashed into the center of his face, pulping his nose, cutting a path into his forehead, between the staring eyes, slicing his lips apart and smashing teeth.
Kyle’s last sentient thought as he slipped from life was the taste of splinters of charred wood on his tongue.
Chapter Eight
The voice was thin and querulous. “Fucking stealing nigger!”
Jim Hilton, .44 in his hand, was first through the door into the shop, where the flickering light of the oil lamp revealed a horrific scene.
Kyle Lynch was sitting down with his back against the remains of one of the camera store’s counters, his legs splayed in front of him, a dark, wet patch staining the crotch of his jeans. His eyes were staring blindly in front of him, hands lying in his lap, the fingers knotted together in a rigid grip. There was a massive gash running vertically down the middle of his face, dividing his forehead, crushing his nose, smashing both upper and lower jaws. Blood was flooding from the wound, though across the forehead Jim could also see the stark ivory gleam of bone.