Uh oh, I thought.
Lesley
We all went over to Tom’s office. Me and Will went together, so at least we had moral support. I’d spoken to Ashton and Jonno on the phone after they’d gotten the call. I assumed Tom was going to sack us — cancel our contract and tell us we were on our own. We’d still have the first album and whatever piddling royalties that generated, after he’d been paid back for everything he’d spent on Wylding Hall. Without Julian, we no longer had a second album, or a band. Windhollow Faire was dead.
Ashton
Tom waited till we all arrived, then led us into the back room, where the photos were all laid out on a table. He didn’t say anything except, “Look,” and stood back to wait for our reactions.
I thought it was some elaborate, incredibly cruel joke he was pulling. I think everyone else felt the same, except for Les. She actually had to run out of the room because she got sick. By the time she returned, Will and I were shouting at Tom, and Les and Jonno had to pull us off before we knocked him down.
Jon
I knew immediately that they weren’t fakes. They were very grainy, more like cheap newsprint photos, but they were real. What else could they have been? It looked just like her, the girl who’d run off with Julian.
Only the photos had been taken a week before that happened. And, of course, she hadn’t been there the day we did the outdoors recording.
Tom
It took me a good quarter hour to get them all calmed down. I explained as best I could about the photos — which wasn’t much explaining at all, just sharing of information. I’d bought loupes for them all, so everyone spent an hour looking through those pictures like they were searching for gold dust. They were eight by ten enlargements, cropped to accommodate the square format of the film. Like I said, not the best quality, but it was clear to me that they weren’t fakes.
When everyone else appeared to have accepted that much, they all stopped arguing and looked at me. Lesley said, “Now what?”
We debated it all afternoon, into the night and the following morning. At one point we broke for dinner, Jonno ran out for takeaway, and Will popped down to the Off License and bought some whiskey. The consensus we finally came to was that the three photographs were real. The figure staring out at us was the same girl everyone had seen at the pub a week later. It appeared that she had stepped out from the woods behind the walled garden, and that her intent was to reach Julian. Why she was staring directly into the camera was anybody’s guess.
Who she was—what she was — was another matter entirely. We never figured that one out. Everyone had a different theory. Mine was that everything that had occurred, up to and including our arguments around the table in the Moonthunder office, was a horrible group hallucination. Sadly, this didn’t seem to be the case.
Ashton
The photos were truly frightening. Not the first group, where we’re all playing around in the grass, throwing roses at each other and laughing. I love those pictures. I think they capture what was best about Windhollow Faire, what was best about all of us. That was our golden moment — we were all young and beautiful and gifted and so incredibly fortunate to have found each other. That was the peak. It was pure serendipity that Billy Thomas was there with a camera to capture it.
The other photographs … I hardly like to think about them, let alone talk about them. When we had the vote as to whether it should be the album cover, I was the one voted no.
I know that seems out of character. I’m the one always laughed or lost my temper when anyone would start to go on about the occult. I believe that there is a rational, scientific explanation for everything. But I have never been able to understand or explain those photographs.
So, I voted no. I would not be swayed. We all agreed that the other two photos should remain unpublished. Technically, Billy owns them, but he agreed that he wouldn’t ever make them available to the public. Especially now, when they could go viral in a heartbeat. He’s a man of his word and I trust him. He never had a career as a photographer — he became an estate agent back in the village, as you know. So it’s not like these are lost photographs that would revive his career. Or ours.
There were three pictures in which you could see her. The first one, she’s at the back of the garden, towards the woods. On the right-hand side of the frame, same as Julian, who was staring up at the sky along with the rest of us.
You might almost think she’s a statue. She’s facing the camera directly, hands at her sides, bare legged, wearing the same white dress as when I first saw her. Too far off to get a proper look at her face. There was a bit of a breeze, you can see the grasses rippling and everyone’s long hair blown by the breeze. Her hair, it hung lank and straight to her shoulders, unmussed by the wind, and the dress straight to her knees. That’s the photo on the album cover.
The second one, she looks exactly the same. Only now she’s about fifteen feet closer to the camera, maybe ten feet behind Julian. Who does not appear to have moved a fraction of an inch. None of us have. We’re all in the exact same positions as the previous photo, all still gazing at the sky.
The only way you’d even realize any time has passed is if you look really carefully. You can see Julian’s hair has been blown across his cheek, and Lesley’s eyes are closed — she blinked. The light is nearly unchanged: a few more tiny shadows thrown across the grass as that flock of birds flew in front of the sun. I’m still shading my eyes, staring along with the rest. It’s very clear that Billy took that photo immediately after the first one, a millisecond later.
So how did the girl move so quickly across the lawn? It’s like she’s a chess piece someone slid across the grass in a straight line. You can see her better in this one. Her white dress was soiled at the hem, her hands are clenched into fists. You can see her face. Her eyes are open and you can see there’s hardly any iris in them at all. They’re black and staring right at you without any expression. Her mouth is open. Not all the way open, but her lip curled back so you can see a bit of her front teeth. Like a dog starting to snarl.
In the final picture, she’s right behind Julian, still moving in that unbroken line across the grass. A bit to the side so you can see her clearly, perhaps a foot away from him. He doesn’t see her. None of us see her. We’re all still gazing up at the sun.
But now she’s so close, you can see that her eyes are utterly black. No iris, no pupil, no sclera. There might be something in there, but I don’t want to think what it might be. Just these round black holes. Her skin is so white the capillaries look like a web covering her face. Her hands are turned outwards and her fingers have started to unclench, white fingers with sharp little nails. Her mouth gapes open as though she’s screaming. And you can see that inside it she has more than one row of teeth.
Lesley
It was too ghastly for words. I was sick to my stomach, first time I saw them. They all stayed in there arguing, as though that might explain anything. I could hear them from across the hall and that was bad enough. Just knowing those photos existed was bad enough. The only reason I went back inside was because Will finally came to check if I was all right. He said we all needed to decide together: What were we going to do with the pictures?
Chapter 15
Tom Haring
We put it to a vote. Ashton voted no. The others all said yes. And me, of course. It was only after we voted to use it as the cover art for the album that Jon asked, “What album?”