A Box of Night

London, 1992

“Wilding had a cottage on the highland moors. He was Scottish, you know, by pedigree, although he grew up mostly near London.” Sir Peregrine waved his cigar to indicate the city outside his comfortable West London club. “That’s where I last saw him, that cottage he called Mousefoot Farm. Wasn’t a farm, mind you. Just a patch of rather tangled garden snatched up against a stone house with a massive red deer rack over the door, and that wild, rugged land all about. Bit isolated and rough for a man with a dicky leg, I always thought. Never understood how the man’s wife could bear it out there, and I suppose she’d had enough of it, at that. When our gang were last assembled there, she’d come down to London to live in civilized style. Wilding, though, he was another story. He’d seen enough of the world of men.”

The young man seated across from him in deep leather comfort leaned forward, his long arms on his long thighs, his eyes burning with interest. His name was Bradley Connors, and he found himself in London on his first photography assignment for Travel Candy Magazine, an in-flight photo teaser aimed at stimulating the appetites of jaded jetsetters. He was barely twenty-three years old, in love with the romance of the world, and could not imagine having seen enough of anything.

Sir Peregrine Randall, edging into his eighties, had a better grasp on ennui and disgust with his own kind. Still, he liked his little vices of smoke and bourbon, and he liked the quiet, manly coddling of his club. He even enjoyed the company of his fellow members, mostly sober old sorts who were as world-weary as he, and the occasional young up-and-comer for zest. This boy, Connors, for instance – he’d known the kid’s grandfather quite well back in their youth. He could see the ghost of his friend in the young man’s intense gaze and easy smile. Billy had been a wartime photographer, like Wilding, but that was where the similarity ended. While Billy Connors had been a competent hand with a camera, he had not possessed the magic way of seeing into subjects that had characterized Wilding’s work. Billy had gone on to other pursuits after the war, happy enough to leave the photography to Wilding. He’d been at Mousefoot that last time they were all together, and no doubt would have shared the story with his grandson if he’d had the chance. But Billy Connors had died in a plane crash over the American Rockies while this lad was still wearing nappies.

“I’d appreciate hearing anything you can tell me about Charles Emory Wilding, sir,” Connors said. “He’s the reason I became a photographer. I have some journals my grandfather kept, and they mention him often as a genius with both camera and darkroom. Of course, I’ve studied Mr. Wilding’s body of work, and I agree.” Connors hesitated before continuing in a low voice. “The journals imply that Wilding gave up photography and disappeared because of some…madness.”

“Inspired you, did he?” Sir Peregrine chuckled and pressed the bell on the cocktail table beside his chair. If he was going to tell this story—and he was, indeed, going to tell it—he’d need another knock of bourbon. Hell, the lad would probably need one.

“Good old Charlie, he was a strange duck but solid and true as an iron rod. You could do worse for a hero, and the man had a wizard’s touch with that camera. Was never without it. I think he even slept with it, another reason the wife took herself off, I guess.”

Markham, the club attendant, made his appearance, and Sir Peregrine gave his order for two stout tumblers of Woodford Reserve, waving away Connors’ protest. Markham departed, and Sir Peregrine brandished his cigar at the snapping fire in the fireplace and at the plush January snow outside the window drawing down night and silence on London.

“See that, my boy? We’ve all the makings of an evening fit for ghostly tales, and what better setting for speaking of the dead. For in my heart, I know Charlie’s gone. Certainly, your own grandfather is no longer with us, and he was there the night I heard the story I’m about to tell. Heard it from Charlie’s own lips, and whatever we may think of it, Charlie believed its truth to his core.”

The bourbon arrived on a silver tray, accompanied by an assortment of nuts, cheese, and dark chocolate. Sir Peregrine lifted his glass and inhaled the rich complexity of the bouquet.

“Go on, son,” he encouraged Connors, and settled more comfortably into his chair to tell his tale.

____________________

“We went to Mousefoot in the autumn, 1955. Your grandparents were getting ready to go back to America, Rex Stephenson was planning a trip to Australia (where he eventually settled), and I was desperate to get away from London. The city was still something of a wreck from the bombing, but rebuilding was in full swing and I’d been working with an architectural firm, so immersed in it all, I’d barely come up for air. Your grandfather, Billy … he’d been working with me, but home was calling him. When Wilding sent out his invitations to join him at Mousefoot Farm, we thought it a cracking idea. A jaunt up the Scottish Highlands, away from the bustle and noise, was just what we needed, especially as it would be the last gathering of our old gang from the war days for quite some time. The last time we’d ever see some of them again, as it turned out. You never can predict such things, son.

“We assembled there on a Thursday. A week without the ladies, although Wilding’s wife had put her personal boycott on Mousefoot months earlier. The cottage had already reverted to that slightly shabby bachelor comfort it had enjoyed before their marriage. Wilding was a meticulous man in the darkroom but dusting and mirror-polishing were not his forte. The great room was a wild chaos of books, cameras in various stages of disassemble, pipes, and stacks of photographic prints among sagging leather furniture and tartan throws. The fireplace smoked a bit, but as it was large enough to count as a room itself, it heated the place so efficiently the windows were often open, and so a little smoke was no trouble.

“Billy and I found a driver with a battered Jeep in the nearest village and bumped and racketed over the moors on what I can only describe as a cow path to Wilding’s door. Stephenson had tramped in from the same village, a distance of some seven miles, and we found him lounging in the garden when we arrived. Wilding came to stand in his doorway as we roared up, puffing at his pipe while we dragged forth our rucksacks. He’d grown quite thin, his face all hollows and angles, and I wondered if he’d been ill.

‘Good of you blokes to come. You’re in time for pre-dinner cocktails,’ he drawled. ‘Stephenson has the jump on you.’

Leaning his head out around the doorjamb, he shouted into the garden. ‘Ho, Rex! Mix up some more of your special poison.’

Stephenson heaved himself out of the wicker basket chair he had sprawled in and went through to the kitchen to begin rattling bottles. Our taciturn driver turned the Jeep and went off in a belch of black smoke across the moor. We shook hands all around, heartily glad to be among such friends on a fine day. Inside, the late-day autumn sun drifted through the windowpanes like wafers of gold leaf and lay across the Persian carpets Wilding had brought back with him from North Africa. A beef joint perfumed the air in savory fashion, spitted and roasting in the fireplace like the feast of a barbarian king. Neeps and tatties and hunk of charred meat still red on the inside … no better fare for a man.

‘When did you learn to cook?’ I asked, clapping Wilding on the shoulder as Stephenson slouched in with our drinks.

Wilding gave me a smile that was more like a grimace of pain. ‘I’ve learned quite a few useful things, Perry, the least of which was how to feed myself.’

‘I’d like to hear about some of those things,’ Billy said, and I knew he meant the photography. He’d mostly given up his own camera work, but he’d followed Wilding’s career with interest.

Wilding gave him a queer, haunted look. ‘Would you, really? Well, maybe after dinner, I’ll tell you something that’ll leave you bloody gobsmacked. For now, drink up, and let’s hear the news from London.’

“The four of us draped ourselves over the leather sofa and chairs and got up a lively conversation, luxuriating in the impressive heat of the fire as the chill evening drew in purple against the cottage, and sipping the good whiskey that Stephenson had barely adulterated with simple syrup and bitters. We ate, drank, and made merry as though we were old school chums, as though it hadn’t been war that had brought us together. And why not? We had survived and made good lives for ourselves, although I was aware of a transient brooding fluttering about Wilding like a shadow. Several times, I had glanced over at him in his firelit corner and found him staring into the ether, a grim little smile on his lips and his head tilted as though he were listening for a whisper. I had just made up my mind to ask him what troubled him when Billy began quizzing him about the many cameras scattered about the room.

‘What are you shooting with these days? Any of these?’ He stood in front of a library table littered with cameras and lenses and all manner of photographic what-not. ‘Geez, Charlie,’ he said, ‘you’ve torn the guts out of them.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Wilding said. ‘I’m giving up making pictures.’

‘The hell you are,’ Stephenson exclaimed.

‘No, no, it’s true,’ Wilding said. He began to fill his pipe with tobacco, not looking at any of us. ‘I’ve no more stomach for photography. I’m selling Mousefoot and leaving for America at the end of the year. Jane won’t be coming … she’s said she’s had enough, and I don’t blame her a bit.’

“Well, we were thrashed. Billy sat down hard in his chair. Several minutes ticked past during which all that was heard was the crackling of the fire. Wilding smoked in silence and offered nothing more in the way of explanation. I thought of his strange demeanor when we had arrived and his moody lapses all the evening, his eerie attentiveness to something unseen. I thought of his established withdrawal from the world, with more time spent at Mousefoot every year, fewer photographic assignments accepted. My wife and I had seen Jane in London. She had been charmingly vague about her husband and their plans, and while Evelyn had expressed the opinion that the marriage was on the rocks, I chose to interpret Jane’s glibness as nothing more than a distaste for Wilding’s isolated property. Now I feared that my friend might have fallen prey to some disease of the mind or spirit that had affected his reason.

‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘what’s this all about? You’ve a brilliant career you’ve worked hard to build. Good god, man, you’ve risked your life for it. Surely you can’t mean to throw it away.’

‘Aye,’ Wilding said after a long moment during which we all stared at him in bafflement. ‘I’ve risked my life for it. Given my life to it, to be accurate. There’ll be no more pictures. What I’ve got on film to be developed is the last of it, all but what’s loaded in that.’

“He pointed at an old Zeiss Super Ikonta sitting alone on a shelf in a fussy Victorian curio cabinet. It was the camera he’d been issued as a freelance wartime photojournalist, the camera he’d taken with him into North Africa. It was the eye through which he had seen, and shown, the bloodshed and devastation of the war. I knew he’d retired it when he came home, switching to lighter, smaller cameras.

“Billy, always a quick, impulsive fellow, darted to the cabinet to stare in at the camera. His hand was on the door latch, and I felt a sudden cold douse of fear that he would take out the camera and turn it upon us. Funny, that. I haven’t thought of that in ages, and of course I didn’t believe the story Wilding told us that night, but I can remember that ridiculous icy moment of terror as if it happened yesterday.

“Wilding shot to his feet. ‘Don’t touch it! For god’s sake, get away from there.’

“Billy snatched back his hand as though the latch had burned him and turned an astonished gaze on Wilding. Stephenson, who’d been quiet all this time, sat up from his half-reclining position with a grim and alert look on his face.

‘I think you’d better tell us what this is all about, Charlie,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Wilding said, folding himself back onto his chair. ‘It’s time someone else knew, although I don’t expect you chaps to believe a word of it.’

This is what he told us…”

____________________

Egypt, 1943

The press and bustle that is Cairo…I cannot convey it to you. You must experience it. I have a thousand fevered impressions of my time there: dust; wind from the Nile delta so heavy with the smell of life it is like the beginning of time; towering palms against enamel blue skies; the cacophonous language of the place, everyone talking over the next fellow in the marketplaces; veiled women carrying or herding grubby-faced children; and the heat that tries to make a relic of you. I loved it all. The smells of spices, coffee, smoke from the shisha pipes, ancient corners where the shadows are thousands of years old. The sounds of the muezzin’s cry at dawn, the bellowing of camels, the rapid beat of the tabla that stirs the blood and the limbs.

It didn’t matter there was a war on, not to me in my youth and brashness. I was drunk on being alive and mostly able-bodied after my auto accident. I’d seen horrors and been in mortal danger, but all of it only caused me a fierce sense of personal victory over death. If I had that camera in front of me, I felt invincible--removed from it all, a mere observer and chronicler. It was like I’d drifted through everything hidden behind a magic shield, quite a feat when plenty of my fellow camera jockeys were killed or captured. When I stopped to think about it, it crashed in on me, so I didn’t stop often. When I had time to do some darkroom work, watching the images come up through the chemicals…that’s when it hit me.

I went out on my own whenever the opportunity presented itself, shooting for myself the things that spoke to me or pleased my eye. The souks, or open-air markets, were some of my favorite haunts. One evening in the Khan el-Khalili, as I searched for candid portrait subjects, I saw a face of such exquisite expression that all other faces have seemed dull masks since. A woman, dressed in floating indigo veils over a loose gown the creamy color of a gardenia blossom, stood among the glowing lamps and smoking incense burners, haggling in spirited fashion with a shopkeeper. She seemed to be toying with him, although I could not hear her words. The man, blanched and sweating, appeared to be pressing a lamp upon her in offering.

Of course, she was lovely. In profile, the curve of her cheek gleamed like burnished almond, and above the sheer blue of her veil flashed an eye as dark as starless night. But her beauty was not what attracted me as I raised the camera. There was that in her face and posture that simultaneously animated and subdued the air around her, as if she were a strong flame in windy darkness, and I thought to capture that sense of power. I was not quick enough. She had turned her back to me and crouched among the shop’s wares, her slender hand pointing at what she wanted, the indigo veils pooling over the cobbles.

“This one,” she said in Arabic, and named a price that made the shopkeeper’s pained smile tremble.

He made her a small bow and the exchange was swift. I saw her press a ring into his hand, gleaming a dull gold in the lamplight. She turned toward me, and at her back the man jabbed his fingers in the air as though warding off a curse, his lips moving silently. I thought him a superstitious fool and a poor sport and gave him a glare, but he only made a slight shake of his head, his eyes darting toward the woman. I had no time to puzzle out his meaning as her gaze fell upon me and the camera I still held before me. The unfathomable depth of her black eyes froze the blood in my veins even as it stilled my nervous fingers on the camera. Behind the gossamer veil, I could see the outline of a sharp smile that did not reach her eyes.

“You are British,” she said in perfect English, with only a hint of Egypt in it. Her voice was soft, but deep. “You are not a soldier?”

I bristled a bit at that, but she could not have known about the smashed leg that had kept me from service.

“I’m a photographer, here with the British Army,” I stammered, brandishing the camera. “May I take your picture?”

She laughed, a musical sound but hollow. “No, never. It is the worst kind of luck. You would not wish me harm?”

“Certainly not,” I said.

My head swam as though I’d had too much drink, and every hair on my body rose up, electrified. My feet, which seemed a mile from my addled brain, wanted to carry me far from her regard, but I could not obey them. Over her shoulder, I could see the shopkeeper watching us, a frown on his face. He caught my gaze and, crossing his arms over his chest, gave another slight but vigorous shake of his head.

“I am Keket,” the woman said, reaching toward the camera. “I have seen your fellow photographers. They swarm after death like coffin flies.”

Her fingertip touched the lens of the camera, and shadow bloomed there. I shook my head to clear it, disbelieving my eyes as I never had before. A hot, humid breeze stirred the hanging lamps and threw weird shapes over the walls of the khan, and with it came the intoxicating scent of the woman – lily, myrrh, and cinnamon.

“This eye…” Keket said, stirring the smoky shadow collected about the lens with her retreating fingers, “You should be careful what it looks upon. Sometimes, one invites darkness by looking into it.”

Her last words hung in my ears like whispers before the vibrant noise of the souk rushed in. Time seemed to slip and judder like a hitch in a reel of film. I staggered back a step, jostling a fellow with a tray of cheap jewelery and earning a peeved expletive, but Keket was gone. I turned about, staring into the shifting crowd, but could see no trace of indigo veils nor detect the fragrance of her perfume. I thought to question the lamp seller, but his little shop had gone dark and a trio of young boys was busy packing the wares into crates.

Out of sheer habit, I raised the camera to my eye to snap a shot of the boys. I could see nothing through the viewfinder but a roiling black. Not the flat dark of mere blocked light--this had depth, as though I could fall forward endlessly into it. I felt I was looking at something; more accurately, at someplace. Vertigo seized me, and I jerked the camera from my eye. I would have cast it from me if the strap had not been about my neck.

I decided I was unwell and made my way back to my quarters on shaky legs, my limp more pronounced than ever. The night had turned cool and slunk after me like a hungry hyena. I shivered as I turned down the dark little alleyway to my rooms behind a corner café. Nassor, an Egyptian fellow who had attached himself to me as a sort of guide and casual manservant, had found the place for me. I saw, as I passed under the archway to the narrow arcade that ran along the ribs of the building, that he had been by and lighted the lamps. Grateful for the welcoming illumination, I staggered through my door and pitched onto my bed fully clothed, the camera rolling away among the many pillows. I fell into a fevered sleep and knew no more until the sunrise.

____________________

With the morning came Nassor, bearing newspapers and a flask of strong, hot coffee. Already, I was awake and examining my camera with a fresh perspective. The viewfinder remained dark, though I could see no defect anywhere.

“What is wrong with your camera, Charles,” said Nassor, dumping his bundle of newspapers on the table across from me.

“What makes you think anything is wrong with it?” I growled around my cigarette.

I squinted up at him through the smoke, and he gave an eloquent shrug and turned toward the tray that held the brass dallah into which he decanted the coffee. His quick brown hands poured perfect cups of the bitter brew, aromatic with cardamom. From some hidden pocket, he magicked a brown paper parcel and unwrapped sweet dates.

When the tray was between us and he had pulled up his chair, he said, “You peer at it the way my young nephew peers at a favorite toy that is broken--full of curiosity to mend it, and at the same time angry that it should not function properly.” He gestured at the tray with its steaming cups. “Please to have some coffee. The dates are very nice. Sahtain.”

We saluted one another with our cups. The coffee cleared the last of the fog from my brain, and the dates were, indeed, quite nice.

“I met a woman in the khan last evening,” I began, feeling for the words to describe my encounter.

Nassor’s brows rose in amusement. “Ah. And in your passion for her, you dropped your camera, yes?”

“This isn’t a joke, Nassor. She did something to it, I don’t know how. She touched the lens, and now everything is dark. If I can’t repair it, I will need a new camera as quickly as I can lay hands on one.” I scowled at him. “And that means you will be out hunting for one. I have darkroom work to do.”

The smile faded from his face. “She touched the camera? May I look at it?”

“Certainly.” I handed it across the table. “You can’t see any damage at all. The mechanism works. I can only assume her touching it before it went black is nothing more than coincidence.”

My words sounded rational to my ears, and yet I did not believe them. The memory of my bewilderment and fear of the previous night was fresh, slumbering just below my skin, and it stirred, causing a shudder. The truth was that I could not bear to look through the viewfinder of the camera at the living darkness there. Still, I was curious to discover if Nassor would see what I had seen. He turned the camera about in his hands, examining it as if he had never beheld such a device, and then he raised it to his eye.

“Allah y’een,” he gasped, lowering the camera to the table. “This woman, Charles. Tell me of her.”

I leaned forward and put my hand over the camera. “What did you see, Nassor?”

“That which is written, but no longer believed.” He looked away, clearly distressed, and my heart hammered in my chest. “Do you know this woman’s name?”

“Her name is Keket, and she told me some nonsense about being cautious when looking into darkness. I presumed she meant my work for the army. She seemed to have had a poor opinion of the photographers here in Cairo.”

“Old wives’ tales, surely,” muttered Nassor, but his gaze fell on the camera and he shook his head. “Charles, listen. This creature you met in the khan, what was she doing there when you saw her?”

“Haggling over a lamp. She reduced the lamp seller to a quaking kitten. He closed his shop directly afterward, and the evening was young.”

Nassor nodded. “We will go to the khan, Charles. We will see this lamp seller. Then I may tell you all that is in my mind. I pray that we will laugh about it.”

“What about my camera?”

He shrugged, once more aloof. “We will find you another in the souk.”

____________________

The bustle and din of the souk had not diminished a whit. If anything, the day trade was more vigorous. The heat was stifling, and the delicious aromas of food and perfumes wafting from the khan was corrupted with the stench of goats and camels choking the street. We shoved our way through the press, Nassor clearing the livestock and beggars from our path with sharp taps from the riding crop he carried for the purpose. In the nominal cool of the khan, we made our way to the lamp seller’s corner, but we did not find him. Instead, a slim young man with doleful black eyes had set up a shop selling rugs where lamps had been. We approached, and Nassor questioned him. The young man spread his hands in a helpless gesture and there ensued a rapid-fire exchange of Arabic which I could not follow. The fellow smote his chest in an attitude of grief and indicated his wares.

“Let us go from this place,” Nassor said, turning to me.

The young rug merchant called after us, but Nassor continued out into the blinding sun of the street, and I followed. My friend stalked along the street in silence, his face a study in deep thought. We approached a café, and as Nassor indicated that we should sit beneath its awning, we claimed a corner table. I was hardly in the mood for more coffee, but we went through the rituals of ordering it and accepting it before he would speak.

“You must leave Egypt, Charles,” he said. “You must go in haste. My friend, you have attracted the notice of something…unimaginable.”

I was speechless, caught between laughter and anger.

“What the devil are you blathering about? Did that rug merchant tell you a bogey-story?” I snorted in derision. “Nassor, don’t tell me you believe such superstitious drivel. Where is the lamp seller? We went there to speak with him.”

“The lamp seller is dead.” Nassor’s expression had closed, his eyes hooded. “There will be more death and sorrow. The Mother of Darkness is among us.”

“Dead?”

My mind reeled. I recalled the frightened face of the lamp seller, his reluctance to accept the gold ring Keket had pressed into his palm. I recalled how he had tried to warn me away from her and how her proximity had inspired a mindless fear in my body as if I were in the presence of a hunting lion. For a moment, I was overcome by a profound sense of hopelessness, and then I rallied.

“Well, I am sorry to hear of his death, but such things happen every day. There is a war on, after all. And I am here to document it. I have no plans to leave Egypt any time soon.” I hesitated, then asked, “Who is the Mother of Darkness?”

Nassor sighed and sipped his coffee.

“Keket. She is part of old Egyptian lore, the Bringer-In of the Night, and a twin or consort to Kek, the god of obscurity and chaos. Kek rules the hours before the dawn, he is the Bringer-In of the Light. With Keket comes the night, the hours after sunset.”

“That is mythology, and neither of us believes it.” I looked at Nassor for confirmation of this, but he would not meet my gaze. “For argument’s sake, let’s say it is true. Bringing in the night doesn’t sound like a bad thing. There is an entire mythology about the movement of the sun and the moon. It merely seeks to explain natural phenomena.”

“I did not say Keket was bad,” Nassor said in a soft voice. “She simply is. She is not of the night the way you and I know it. She is of the first darkness, that which existed before anything else. That is what she brings, that is where she would return”--he gestured at everything around us--“all of this.”

I brooded on this fantastic concept for several minutes, and Nassor watched me. Finally, I pushed my cup from me and stood.

“I do not have an explanation for what happened to my camera,” I said. “But this is not it. Now, I am off to find another so I can be ready to work when the division moves out. Will you accompany me?”

Nassor nodded, and we returned to the souk.

...to be continued