Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization

FOUR

Mason Weaver looked into the eyes of the traumatised child and wished she could not see. Photographs told so much more than being there ever did. She remembered seeing this young girl staring at her with the remains of her bombed and burning village in the background, feeling sad about it, taking the picture, then moving on. It was just a moment amongst many other bad ones, and a few minutes later she’d forgotten about the little girl.

Now, seeing the image forming and emerging in the tray of chemicals in the darkroom, Weaver realised that this was a picture that could touch nations.

You didn’t want me there, she thought, looking into the girl’s eyes. You’d hate it if you knew this picture existed. She saw that truth in the girl’s eyes and recognised it so well, because it also existed in her own.

Weaver had only ever wished to live in the background, which was why she spent most of her life behind a lens.

It was probably her father’s fault. She didn’t think about the past too much, but when she did it was with a feeling of sinking sadness rather than anger or regret. He’d been a good man, but in his goodness he’d managed to give the young Weaver a sense of insecurity that had plagued her through her teens and into adulthood. He had wanted the best for his only daughter. Nothing was ever quite good enough for her, and that included the things she did as well as the things done by those around her. If she performed poorly in a school test he blamed the school, but she always read an underlying blame in his voice for her, whether it was really there or not. In his quest to create from his child the adult he desired her to be, he forgot to consider everything that she wanted. It was a benevolent dictatorship, and by the time Weaver was old enough to even begin to understand what damage such control was bringing down upon her, it was too late. The damage was done.

She was only sixteen when he died. At the funeral she’d felt invisible, as much a ghost as he might have been, drifting from room to room during the wake at their house with no one seeing her. Her mother had spent the day standing in the kitchen making endless cups of coffee for the mourners. She had no siblings. So Weaver had wandered the house, never finding comfort in any one place and constantly seeking something and somewhere she could not find.

She’d left home six months later, going to college and returning only for brief visits, and she’d spent from then until now still seeking that thing, that place. It was only through the lens of a camera that she started to feel close.

Weaver moved the photo back and forth in the tray, waiting for exactly the right moment to remove it.

The phone on the wall started ringing. She’d been waiting for a call all day, but now was the most pressing time. If she left the photo for too long it would overexpose and be ruined, and she knew already that this was one of the best shots she’d ever taken.

“Come on, come on,” she whispered, nursing the photo towards perfection.

The phone sounded impatient.

When the exact time arrived she pulled the photo from the tray and slid it into the stop bath, lunging for the phone at the same time.

“Weaver.”

“Mason, it’s Jerry.”

Her heart skipped. This is the call I’ve been waiting for! Jerry had come to report on the war for various European news agencies, but his talents had stretched much further than being able to get a story. It turned out that Jerry could get almost anything. He’d become known as something of a fixer amongst the journalistic family in the Far East—arranging interviews with generals, embedding reporters with Special Forces teams, extracting information from embassy staff; he also had a handle on where and when big announcements would be made, and he knew his way around military circles and society like no one else.

He also had contacts in the highest and lowest places, and he often teased that he was owed many favours. For what, Weaver had never been able to discover. Any enquiries into Jerry’s life before he’d appeared on the scene had led to dead ends. Weaver assumed he’d been involved in something covert and very probably illegal, but she didn’t care. Whether his was a good heart or bad, Jerry had his uses.

She tried to rein in her excitement, but as soon as Jerry started asking how she was, what the weather was like, and whether she’d seen the news about something-or-other, she almost leapt down his throat.

“Hey, Jerry, just tell me, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, but the son of a bitch still paused for a second before saying, “You’re in.”

“Really? Oh God, thank you.” She crooked the phone between her cheek and shoulder, keeping her eyes on the photo as she used tongs once again to lift it into the fixer tray.

“Here are the details.”

“Okay, wait, let me grab a pen.” She plucked up a pen and scoured the messy desk for a spare sheet of paper. In the end she wrote on the back of her hand. “Okay, go.”

“It’s the Athena, docked in Bangkok, eighteen hundred tomorrow.”

“Got it. Seriously, I owe you.” Dropping the pen, she rinsed the picture and hung it to dry. The little girl stared at her. Where are you now? Weaver wondered, and she hoped the girl was well. She always felt a duty to her photographs but, strangely, rarely to their subjects. Weaver was there to record and share, in the hope that her work might prompt understanding and action from those who saw it. It was curious now that this girl’s plight returned to her with such an impact. It must have been her eyes.

It served to reveal the power of photography.

“What makes you think this is anything special?” Jerry asked.

“Huh? Jerry, when three sources tell you the same thing, word for word, you know they’re lying.”

“Not everyone’s a liar,” Jerry said, but she heard the smile in his voice and thought, Takes one to know one.

“There’s something else going on about this op,” she said. The girl in her photo watched with approval. “Something nobody’s talking about. This isn’t just a survey mission, and I won’t be on it just looking for nature shots.”

“Just take care,” Jerry said.

“You know me.”

“Yeah. I know you. So take care.” He rung off and Weaver was left in the darkroom, bathed in red light and staring at the information written on the back of her hand.

It was time to pack her kit.