“
Shelly! What is the matter with you tonight?”
“
Jeez, Evan, honey I’m so sorry,” she apologized and rushed off to the bathroom to get her finger bandaged.
Evan sat without moving, the unseen image just under the protective cover on the holder. He could not help think she was avoiding the plate, and she certainly looked it, when she came back in and headed to the window instead of the couch where he sat.
“
Shelly, what are you afraid of?” he challenged her. “You are barely paying attention to anything tonight.”
She stood in the window with her head down and her foot rubbing the carpet, and did not answer him.
“
Do you want me to pack all this up and just leave it for a while? Are you afraid to see this?”
“
No,” she sighed.
“
Would you rather leave, come back tomorrow?”
“
No, Evan,” she was annoyed again. “I want to be with you tonight.”
“
Do you want to sit back down? It’s right here.”
“
No! Evan, stop it!”
“
Shelly what do you want?” he said angrily as he rose from the couch and walked to the window.
He thought for an instant she might bolt and run, she shifted her glance and her balance, to dart aside as he approached, but it changed so quickly and she was turning instead to cuddle up against him. Her arms went around him as suddenly as she had appeared ready to flee. He asked her again as he pulled her into a tighter embrace.
Something was very wrong. This did not feel like Shelly.
“
What do you want, Sweetheart?” he asked, and his blood froze when she answered.
“
Would you kill to set me free?” she asked quietly against his chest, and her arms seemed to tighten enough to hurt him.
It was impossible she could hold him, if he wanted to break her embrace, but he could not move, he recognized the darkness around her. Wherever she wandered with him, the damned spirits had gone along, trying to hide. She brought them into his arms and he felt laughter, as he felt it in the attic, before he tumbled into the shelves. Something waited, content to stay in the building - until they made her image with Papa’s Waterbury, and they unknowingly pulled it free so it could follow them. Follow her.
Evan panicked, and they fell as he struggled to loose her arms.
The fall rocked his head and he was instantly dizzy, nauseous from the jolt. He was trying not to hurt her, but he was fighting her, and the pain, it was became more struggle than either of them should have been able to make. Evan was truly afraid and her eyes were mad with desire to get him back. When she lashed out blindly to prevent his escape, she battered him in the forehead with such force his eyes swam with tears, and he rolled to his side groaning with pain, trying to stay conscious. She hit him hard enough his ears rang from it, and he could not help but faint, his eyes were darkening and his every heartbeat was a rush of pain behind his eyes.
“
I will kill for you Shelly!” he pleaded as he lost the sense of where she was. “I will do it.” As he stopped his struggle to be free of her.
She released him and he fell forward onto his face.
He seemed to grip her with such strength she nearly cried out from the pain. His attempt to hold her caused them to fall to the floor in a tangle, and he seemed bent on holding her with all his weight as she struggled, trying to push away without striking him. Her fright was driven to sheer panic when he laughed in her ear ‘I will kill you Shelly! I will do it.’ But he was on his face on the floor, not moving now. She kicked loose of him, sobbing, her lip bleeding again, her blouse torn from the struggle, and she heard laughter. She felt laughter, she was laughing. Shelly screamed, but she did not, the laughter grew louder.
“
Evan!” she screamed. But she did not.
She was laughing.
Evan awoke alone.
Under the window where they had fallen, he had lain for hours. Shelly was gone, he called her name. It took him a great long while to feel right enough to turn and get off his face. There was bile in his mouth; his arm was twisted and numb. His shirt was torn and pulled down hard, cutting off the blood in his arm. Evan tried to move and rearrange the tangled way he laid, without harming his head more. He still pulsed in pain with every beat of his heart, but it was lessening now.
It hurt to try to move his legs. They seemed numb as well, so heavy he could not move them. He was not alone as he thought. Shelly lay across his legs, pale, damp from sweat. Her breathing was slight. His head hurt too badly to try and lift himself; she was preventing him from moving enough to get control of his arms. Without his arms, he could only roll, and that caused excruciating pain behind his eyes.
It hurt to try and free his legs, but soon he moved one enough to get his foot free and push against Shelly to move her. He cried as he worked, breathing hard with each push, and she rolled away silently. It was necessary to wait longer to move again and he lay exhausted, his face into the carpet again and his eyes flashing colors behind their closed lids.
Shelly sobbed and shuddered, but lay still again. Evan felt as though his body were squeezed to the point of being crushed, every part of him in terrible pain. He heard garbage trucks in the alley, on the street below his open window. They had lain nearly all night after the attack. Able finally to roll onto his back, Evan began to stretch out his legs, and again pushed against Shelly. This time she sobbed, and continued to weep, not in pain, but in sorrow; the sorrow that drew him to the attic.
“
They told me you were dead,” she sobbed. “Evan, they told me you were dead!” and she rolled to her side to see him. They could not touch their hands but she reached to him. She reached alone.
“
If you had been any stronger, they would be right,” he moaned as he turned his head to see her at his feet. Shelly was a mess. “Are you okay?”
“
No” she whimpered, “When you said you would kill me, I knew it wasn’t you. I knew it was them. But it was the worst part of it, hearing you say it.”
“
It did not happen that way, Shelly. They are lying to us. It is all a constant lie. I did not say what you heard. You said things you did not hear yourself say.” Evan closed his eyes and refused to say anymore. His head hurt too badly even to think now. She waited.
“
If you can, if you’re not hurt, you should go,” he said. Shelly lay at his feet and felt her heart break into pieces.
Evan did not know how much longer they lay there, but she cried quietly for a time, and then moved to the couch. Evan protected his aching head and kept his eyes closed. He could hear the lid on Papa’s chest closing and a few minutes passed before he heard her bare feet shuffle across the carpet, and out to the hall. But he was wrong, still dizzy from the aches behind his eyes, he could not tell where she was any more, until he felt her tears on his cheek.
“
It’s her, Evan. The girl who died with Yousep. The image is beautiful. She’s so beautiful she doesn’t look real.”
Shelly had looked at the plate. After nearly killing each other hours before, she just sat down and looked at the plate, as he lay battered on the floor.
“
You were wrong about her.” She kissed him as she cried. “She’s not dangerous. This wickedness can’t be her.” Shelly Reisman cried her way to his door and closed it quietly behind her; she had not even taken Papa’s chest. The image of Yousep’s love was on the floor beside Evan so he would not have to cause himself more pain when his heart told him it really was safe to look.
The plate shield was slipped aside later that morning, and Evan could not help the gasp that escaped his lips, as he looked at the young girl in the sunlight. Yousep had not captured an image; he somehow put a living person into the glass, with the strength of his love. It could never have been posed. She was floating. Evan could not see how she was touching the ground. The billowing cloth behind her seemed to lift her into the sunbeams and her hair followed the cloth.
Her smile was laughter, was pleasure, and was joy. He was shocked as he saw her again after blinking his eyes, she was utterly naked and free, and Evan had not noticed. The power of the image hid her skin from his eyes, until he drank in all the beauty of her face. This was nothing like any photograph Evan had ever seen. He understood perfectly, he held a negative image, reversed from reality, but if printed to paper, it would make him weep. If the tales were true, Yousep was in love with this girl with such conviction he faced his death for her. Evan understood the maddening grief Papa felt, knowing this angel died so close to happiness.
That she died so quickly after, it broke Evan’s heart as well.
There had nearly been murder in his apartment that night; some spirit, haunting Shelly, really tried to kill one of them. They could not be together; not anymore; not for a long while at least. They could not be together until Evan found out who was doing the haunting. He did not leave his apartment for several days as he sat alone and tried to put the puzzle together in his mind. The phone would not stop ringing, and Evan was determined to let it ring until everyone gave up. He did not care which clan it was, or how desperately they might be worried about him. He was sure Shelly was not talking to anyone either.
When his door was pounded furiously a few days later, by one of his friends, he merely opened it enough to say, “Not open for business,” and closed it again before they could speak to his face. They spoke in friendly tones to the door instead and Evan did not care, he walked back to his bedroom. They waited for him at his street-side door at night so they could hold him until he listened, they were concerned, he was being selfish, it was only a girlfriend he lost. He pushed his way passed his friends, and walked away to eat alone again.
After two weeks of his obstinance and refusals, they did give up, they left Evan completely alone. He would sit in his den and look at the image on Yousep’s plate, and wonder. Why would the girl haunt with such evil intent? Why would Yousep seek such vengeance on innocents? Would Evan kill to set Shelly free? He would not return to his life and his family, or to Shelly, until he could answer those questions. Their lives depended on it.
When the phone rang once again, one mid-day, Evan answered it. He knew in his heart that it would be Shelly.
“
Do you love me, Evan?” whispered the softest breath she could make. She was shaking with fear and he could hear it.
“
Yes.”
“
Will you have me again?” her plea was barely a sigh.
“
No,” and he quietly set down the phone. He did not want to hear her cry.
Evan sat for another week in his den, passing hours watching shadows, as they slid slowly across the floor in front of him. It crushed him to lie to her. But her hope would bring them more pain. He could not be near her at all. He understood, Yousep died trying to save his lovely angel and still failed. Evan would die trying to save Shelly, and she as well? He would never touch her again, if that was the saving choice. But he would help, and he was finally ready to get out of his apartment, and find the reason Shelly Reisman needed to be free.
The spirit in Yousep’s image meant Evan no harm in the nearly three weeks he laid his heart bare before it. He dreamed of her, they were sweet and warm dreams, even deliciously intimate. He talked to her because of the dreams. He yelled at her, to feel something different he knew would be her. She never came to the anger. She filled his dreams the way Shelly filled his heart. Shelly told him it could not be the girl, mad to hurt them both. Shelly knew this spirit and was right. Evan did not believe it was Yousep's spirit preventing them from being together either.
Evan knew only two other troubled spirits who might have been haunting Shelly, but he could not understand why Menashe Reisman would be upsetting his own family. He died in their arms, his mind ruined in grief, not under circumstances that would move his spirit to revenge.
What of the murderer? The person never found. Evan had never heard anyone say justice was carried out on any person who took the two young lovers from this world. That person would have much to hide, perhaps even after death. The spirit of a murdering fiend, preventing Shelly from escaping his touch? That idea scared Evan so badly he was in anguish to give in, and run to her. But it would be much worse the next time they were trapped by the spirit. It had nearly been too much already. Evan's poor head could not take any new damage; he suffered in real danger during his struggle with Shelly.
He knew by his fear that he must be right; the murderer himself may have returned, now searching the rooms of the Reisman Portraits.
Evan would have to learn as much as he could, about the event in 1919, and he already knew the month the murders had taken place. He would have to investigate the news archives in July of that year, and he hoped the search would provide him some clues, as to what became of the murderer, that he would return with as much evil intent, as that horrible night all those years ago.
It was also time to bring Yousep's darling girl back to life in print. Evan was in love with the beauty of that sunlit moment, he desired to see her as Yousep knew her. How did she drift from the ground? Was there a clue to her rapture, her joy? Could Evan see why she wore such bliss? The question really did haunt him. It was so horribly heartbreaking that she died, likely within a few weeks of that miraculous instant.