Bloodless

36

From behind her monitor, it looked to Gannon like half the Savannah PD had been called out to keep the crowds behind the police cordon. The loud, zoo-like atmosphere contrasted with the stateliness of the old cemetery, with its ranks of mossy tombs speckled in sunlight, slumbering beneath giant oaks. Behind the tape, the police were still working diligently, the CSI team searching the area meticulously. Despite the activity, Gannon noticed that the weird FBI agent and his sidekick had disappeared, along with that officious police commander.

Gannon had her two camera operators well-positioned to capture everything. Pavel was filming the mayhem from various directions with the Steadicam, while Craig, on camera one, was focused on Moller. The paranormal researcher was putting on quite a show, first with the silver dowsing stick and slab of obsidian, and now with the camera that could supposedly capture supernatural images. Daisy, the ditzy historian of the supernatural, was also there — despite the fact that she had no place on the schedule — trying to insert herself whenever possible into the camera frame, with Betts sidelining her every time. The mob scene was great stuff, and it would make a fine contrast to the dark and creepy scenes Gannon hoped to get more footage of. Since Betts had changed their focus to covering the Savannah Vampire, all her shots so far had involved activity and people. What they needed to do was to come back to the cemetery at night with a couple of fog machines.

Betts came up to her. “Listen, here’s the plan. Moller says he’s getting amazing stuff, especially pictures. The press is all here, even some national. It’s a great opportunity for free publicity, to get the word out on the doc.”

She nodded.

“So Moller’s going to unveil some of his pictures right here, while all these people and press are around. We want to capture it all.”

“Pictures of what?”

“He won’t say. You know how the old fart is. But he claims he’s getting pictures of ‘spiritual turbulences.’”

“So that contraption is digital?” Gannon had always assumed you needed a film camera to capture ghost images.

“You tell me.”

The camera that Moller had been circling the tomb with was like none she had ever seen. It was beautiful, made of polished mahogany, gleaming brass, and chrome. Judging from the way the rubberneckers and press were following Moller around like the pied piper as he took what appeared to be long-exposure photographs, this was going to be quite a show.

“Where’s all this going to happen?” she asked.

“Over in that open area. In about ten minutes.”

“We’ll get set up.” She spoke to her camera operators over their headsets, giving them orders to set up on either side of the area: one for close-in shots, the other farther away. The press were starting to get restless. They were hungry for something, and Moller was going to give it to them. She saw Betts confer with Moller in low tones. Then he stepped up onto a marble slab — so much for respecting the dead — and clapped his hands.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” he cried out, his short arms stirring the air as Moller stood next to him, cradling his camera. “Ladies and gentlemen!”

The boisterous crowd surged forward, the press muscling ahead with their cameras, boom mics swinging around. It amazed Gannon how Betts had turned the interest of the press on himself and Moller.

“As you know,” Betts continued, “we have here the famed paranormal researcher Dr. Gerhard Moller. It seems his equipment has been picking up distinct amounts of unusual supernatural activity. Dr. Moller, tell us what you’ve found.”

Moller, with a look of modest reluctance and disinclination on his face, raised his head and looked over the crowd, letting the silence build. Gannon’s camera operators were rolling. The cops, guarding the perimeter, watched them warily.

“My instruments,” Moller said in a deep, resonant voice, “have registered powerful supernatural currents.” He paused again. “There is a strong presence of evil here.”

At this, a hush fell over the crowd. Even the noisy press were rapt.

“And I have captured proof of the presence.” He brandished the large camera. “In here.”

Someone shouted out, “Can we see it?”

Moller swiveled his large head toward the speaker. “Yes, indeed. That is in fact my intention: to show it to you now.”

This triggered a restless stirring. How is he going to show it to them? Gannon wondered. There must be three hundred people here.

“There are some,” Moller intoned, “who have doubted my work. Who have accused me of manipulating my pictures.” He held up the camera. “But in here are pictures I took, just seconds ago, of these tombs and surroundings. Some of them show remarkable things not visible to the naked eye — that I’ve captured using my own proprietary multispectral imaging technology. The photographs are in here, raw and unretouched. You will find this to be true, because you will have a chance to examine them for yourselves.”

He paused and raked the crowd with a fierce gaze. “I will make these pictures available to all, with no restrictions on their use. They will be sent from my camera directly to your cell phones. Please make sure Bluetooth is enabled on your mobiles, and select ‘Percipience Camera’ in your device list. In thirty seconds, I will transmit three images.”

He turned and bent over the camera. Those in the crowd, with a burst of chatter, fumbled out their cell phones and began frantically poking and swiping. The atmosphere of anticipation had become almost unbearable. It was brilliant theater — more than theater, as Moller had found a way to make his audience active participants. Gannon, watching the feed from her two camera operators on her monitors, was happy to see them nailing it.

“I am now sending,” said Moller as he turned back.

Total silence for a moment. Then, as the photos began hitting people’s phones, a great aaahhh-ing and ooohhh-ing came up like a rising wind. Everybody, press photographers included, was staring at their phone. She could even make out a few choked-off gasps and garbled sounds of fear and horror.

What was it? Gannon was dying to see, but she couldn’t break off directing to grab her own phone. She glanced at Betts. He, too, was staring into his phone, an expression of sheer delight mingled with horror on his face. She went back to covering the moment, her camera operators getting shots of people’s reactions.

A moment later, she heard Betts speak loudly. “Hey, what are you doing?” She looked over to see him advance rapidly toward the woman, Daisy Fayette, who straightened up. She had been bending over Moller’s equipment case, and now she dropped something back into it with a guilty look.

“What is this?” Moller yelled, spinning around. “Why are you touching those things?” He rushed over. “Alte Drache, how dare you touch my instruments?”

Daisy went bright red, and then recovered, saying frostily: “I was curious to see your equipment. After all, I’m also a supernatural researcher.”

“You can’t go rummaging around like that!” Betts said as Moller began rearranging his case, cheeks red with anger. “In fact, you weren’t even supposed to be on the set today at all. Johnny, see Mrs. Fayette out of here.”

Gannon watched as the woman was led off by one of the crew, protesting ineffectually. Good riddance, she thought. Fayette, the opposite of photogenic, was obviously just a busybody, angling for more camera time. Gannon had herself lobbied for engaging the woman — a local point of view was an important consideration — but as happened so often, the people you thought were going to be a bonus turned out to have no camera presence. The woman should have remained primarily a voice-over, as Betts had initially said.

Now Betts came over. “Have a look.” He pulled out his cell phone and swiped through.

Gannon took up the phone with great interest. The first of Moller’s photographs was of the tomb with the angel with a raised arm. A CSI worker was standing to one side, blurred from the long exposure. On the opposite side of the tomb, a cloud of mist appeared to be rising out of the grass, inside of which stood a figure. Amid the blurry swirl of mist, she could just make out a staring eye, and a bony hand reaching out in a most sinister way toward the oblivious CSI worker.

She swiped. The next photo showed another cloud of eddying mist, larger and more diffuse, in which she could just make out a giant face, four feet in diameter, indistinct and bloated, and of a tremendously evil aspect. The third photo was the best — or worst — of all, showing what appeared to be a demon climbing out of the very earth, its naked, emaciated arm emerging from the ground, along with the top of a skull covered with wispy hairs, with hollow eye sockets and grinning teeth.

“Holy shit,” she murmured, “these are amazing.” She could feel her heart beating like a tom-tom. They were extremely creepy, and what’s more, they looked real. The photos had obviously been taken just moments before. Could Moller have somehow manipulated them inside the camera before sending them out? It didn’t seem possible, but as a photographer Gannon knew all too well that there was an almost infinite range of digital manipulation tricks. Anyway, it hardly mattered: this was stupendous stuff, and how Moller got the images was his business.

She handed the phone back to Betts. “These will make fantastic stills for the documentary.”

“Absolutely. And there’ll be many more.”

“But...” she asked, half facetiously, “where’s the vampire?”

Moller, coming over, answered instead of Betts. “The vampire is not here. It may be somewhere nearby. What you are seeing are demonic presences excited by the recent passage of the vampire, like buoys bobbing in the wake of a big boat.”

“So you think you can get a picture of the vampire himself?” Betts asked.

“If you put me in the right place at the right time, yes.”

“Excellent!” Betts cried, slapping Moller on the back, much to his displeasure.