By The Light Of The Moon When there is no light, the branches and leaves of the trees seem to exude a light of their own. Through their skins. Like a human being. Through the membrane of nothingness that covers everything. Every twig, every leaf. Every inch of flesh. But the best places, the ones with the most light, were these, where the secret, buried people waited. Their long and patient waiting made a light breathe from the earth. My eyes could not see the light, but it was there, and I realized I could trap it, as hands can trap a moth as it flutters around a flame. I captured it with my camera. I had been coming out to the local cemetery for years, photographing the graves of the dead, in hopes of capturing their light that had seemed to fade away with death. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't. But just visiting them made me feel better, made me feel as though I'd made their day by remembering them. I had been hesitating coming here for years, but she kept calling to me; Come. Just for a short visit. Come and take pictures of the place where I wait. Here in my quiet kingdom of fading light. You know how much I ...love you. I would come and climb the wall, balanced there, cradling my camera. I would sit taking in the view, then jump down to walk among the waiting strangers. Even now, even used to these surroundings, I weep as I used to weep before I came. Please, I used to pray. Please leave me alone. I am with the living, you are with the dead. But it was just a visit; no reason to cry anymore. I see how the strangers lay in their great pleasure knowing I am among them now. My eyes could not see them where they rose from their secret places, and stood gazing at me. Please.....leave me alone, I wept. But their lights would grow bright, and I would hear their voices; But we cannot leave you alone.....you are the reason we are HERE..... captured forever on your film........ My hands would tremble, but I clung to the camera for dear life, the thing I knew could see them. The lens was subtle than the naked eye. I told myself; I'll take a few pictures, then go. Just a few pictures. Thats right, I would hear a voice say, from it's secret home far across the field of stone monuments. This first visit, you can just take a few pictures, seal them up in your camera, take them home. We have plenty of time to kill. I have waited this long for you to come and visit me...my son. Just a few pictures. Then I'll be done, I thought. I had always preferred this sort of light. I had won prizes for the starlight look. But, no one knew why I had been learning to coax light out of places where the naked eye could not see. Come closer. Take a picture of me first... No! Over here! I'm much prettier, even with my throat slit.... No! Come to me! Come to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.... I crept across the cold grass, but then stopped myself. This was enough. I had had enough. It was only a visit, and now I'm through. Click click click click click.....there, now I've taken your pictures. Now you can leave me alone. I don't like being apart like this, she said from her secret place across the dark field of the dead. Come closer. Just a little closer... I closed my eyes. I did not move. Please...leave me alone. But they cannot. For I am the reason they are here. I am the only one who can capture their light again, and let it shine. I'm the one who put them here. I take a few pictures. I look at one of them; A mouth with yellow teeth gaping wide. A skull with bird's nest hair, cavernous eye sockets filled with earthworms. I take a few more pictures, then take them home to let them shine. The stones were nothing but gray words pressed into a surface as black and dead as a burnt out field. I could not see them, see their light - but if I looked away, toward the total empty blackness, they were all around me. So....you have come again, they all say in unearthly unison. We know why you are here. Yes...they all knew why I was here. I could sense them - almost hear them - inhaling the emptiness around them. Inhaling the darkness. Trying to breathe me. But I was almost empty tonight; there was almost nothing left. There was only the other me now, that little voice that called me and breathed life back into me. But I was fading fast, overexposed. Even in my darkroom my film would cloud up. Even far away from their lights, or any lights at all. I felt blank now....empty. I thought: You have not left me alone. Of course not, the voices said, the voices inside me like pleasure. You know how much we love you. Come to us.... Not wanting to say it, face it, but wanting it. That was all that was left of me now. Yes.....we know this. Then why have you waited so long to come to me? Show me your lights? Come to us....we'll show you.... I thought: Just a few more pictures...then I'll go home. My camera. My friend. I clutched it tightly to my beating chest, thankful for it. I never brought along my tripod, though. I didn't want to be obvious to passersby, seeing me dragging a tripod over these walls and into this place. It could slow me down, and they could catch me here. They wouldn't understand. Just a few pictures.... I hold my breath......... My hands tremble again... ...Just a few pictures....then I'll go. The camera seemed colder and heavier than usual, becuase I was weak....all the strength evaporating from me. Before their strength. We've waited so long.... Don't worry...just a few pictures, then I'll go. Come and see us, then.....let us LOVE you....bring your camera. We want everything you want. The granite is so cold.....so perfectly cold, cold through it's skin and into it's heart. I press my forehead against the stone, but I cannot enter it. I cannot plunge myself into the perfect, other world. Come to me.....Their voices like a bow across a cello's strings, a tight, hard string. They wanted me..... and I wanted them. But it was too cold... and the camera too heavy now, and my arms melt like hot ice. I run now, weeping. Please....come to us.... NO!! Leave me alone! Come back....their voices like silk across granite....please...come back... Their voices are me...their strengths perfect....don't make me wait anymore... Okay. Just a few more pictures, then I'll go. We knew you'd stay. Let us see our lights shine again. Don't I always? Sometimes I speak to my pictures, my images. Sometimes, they speak back, after I've shed their light. I pick up an image of a beautiful young girl, hazel eyes, long red hair. I speak to her in the light. ''You have such a beautiful light about you.'' ''Thank you. Are you an artist?'' ''Yes,'' I say, flattered that she noticed. ''I am an artist.'' ''I am too. Or, I was.'' ''Oh, really?'' ''Yes.....I was a painter.'' ''Ah....did you know that photography is an art, too? Like painting?'' ''I'm beginning to see that it is, yes.'' ''There is something very impressive about painting. What do you paint?'' ''Mesas.'' ''Ah....scenes from a desert. That is a very big place to paint.'' I change the subject. I want to show her something. ''Would you like to see my collection of moths?'' She is silent for a moment, then; ''You collect moths?'' ''Yes. I collect them from the tombs, from the mausoleums.'' I pulled out a mason jar sealed with wax, pop it's lid, empty it's contents next to her image. ''Ugh....what is that terrible, shriveled thing?'' ''A death's head moth,'' I say. ''It was bound to happen, you know. It dying, shriveling up, I mean.'' ''Everything dies eventually, doesn't it?'' she said. ''Yes....I'm afraid so. That's why I keep my images around. I'll have their lights forever.'' ''That's so sweet....you aren't so bad, I guess.'' I didn't like the sound of that. ''Why do you say that? Has someone told you that I'm a bad man?'' She paused. Then: ''Well....you did KILL me.'' ''That is incidental now. It's ....over.'' I pick up the dead moth, hold it up for her to see. ''I did give it everything it needed. I gave it....it's light back.'' ''Of course you did. And I'm sure it was verry happy for awhile.'' ''And it is UNHAPPY now?'' ''You see, naturally, it thought this day would come, but it thought it would be years from now, not this soon, before it even had a chance to live. It felt safe here.....so secluded from harm. But now look at it. It feels....betrayed, even in the light.'' ''So I should feel guilty now? '' I ask. ''Perhaps you would like me to take it's remains outisde then? Give it a decent burial?'' ''I think that would be a good idea, yes.'' ''It always wanted to be invisible anyway,'' I said. ''So I will make it invisible now.'' ''Good.'' I rose up, opened the door, tossed it into the snow. I would let mother nature and father time take care of it's funeral. I sat back down. ''Satisfied?'' I asked her. ''Yes, thank you. Did you know it spoke to me as it lay there?'' ''Oh? What did it say, pray tell?'' ''It told me that darkness was BETTER than light. It said that the light just showed the surface of things, whereas in the darkness, you could see what was really there. Especially in the heart's light.'' I found this amusing to say the least. ''And what did it see in MY light, or my darkness?'' ''The hunter,'' she said. ''The reaper.'' ''That's nothing but a lie. I don't hunt. I am an artist....I CREATE life.'' ''The moth? he also said that he was never really in that jar.'' ''Oh? He did? Where is it he says he was at?'' ''Somewhere dark.....and he wants me to FIND him.'' ''He awaits you somewhere else besides out in the snow then?'' ''Yes. And he says he wants you to follow me there.'' Before I could reply, the image stopped talking to me, and burst into flames, creating it's own light. I picked up my camera, and followed the light. There was nearly nothing left of me by the time I got there. A residue of my former self, and their voices, wanting what little of me was left. Even with their strengths in me I was afraid. But I had come back at last; the camera around my neck to record the moment, my light. I ran through the darkness as a lost puppy might run. I flung myself over the gate, and the iron I carried rang against it once. The long, cold iron; the crowbar. You won't have to wait, I breathed. Not much longer. And then the ecstasy bloomed in me, hearing their voices once again. Yes....their voices breathed into me and through me like ghosts. Yes...come to us....to your light... Why am I cold? I thought. Was this the night everything would change forever? I was trembling I was so cold, coming this close to the voices. Suddenly, I saw shapes; some small, some large. Black silhouettes puncuating the darkness. Dark, but emitting a bright light that played over the stone monuments. Then the light fell, forming an oblong shape and shifting along on the ground, coming, coming, coming closer. You see? the voices said. You see how you are? That was the world of the living. The world you and I are destined to escape. Look at how unseeing you were, until you came back to us. Yes.....I can see it now, I thought, as the light suddenly made a sharp hole in the dark, ripping the ground open as I flung my camera around to record the scene; Click click click click...and then I ran out of film. No matter, though. History records things too. Don't betray us, the voices whispered now, as the hole in the ground began to spread open to reveal my bed, my place of rest when the lights went out. Don't betray us, we belong together. An open casket lays beneath the dirt I see. I know why I brought the crowbar. I hop down into the hole, pry open the lid. The iron, the bronze casket, the air were all cold, but I did not shiver. I found the smallest crack, where the Secret was sealed. The light. I leaned against it, panting. You can do it. The voices tell me. You have my strength in you. Why are you hesitating? The iron did it's work. A black split appeared in the casket. A bolt lifted itself out of it's socket. Another joined it. These were not human arms. This was not human strength. Over death. Hurry. Another bolt. I collapsed against the wall of the grave. My arms numb. Do it now. I pushed and pushed and pushed. At last it creaked open, with a musical, grinding sound. At last. I trembled. Don't be afraid, the voices told me. I swung my camera around, knowing it was empty, leaned down into the dark secrets. But it wasn't a secret anymore. I saw what had been calling to me all of those years. Kiss me. I kissed the lipless mouth, and reached out to the cold, damp body to embrace it...and something breathed from the body into me, and ate through what was left of me, like a fire consuming spiderwebs. This was a good thing...to keep this forever. I saw the lights.
Copyright © 2003 David Boyer |