I handed the card to Macon. “Look at this.”
He moved over to the natural light in the doorway for a closer examination. “It’s a stereogram,” he said after a moment. “If you look at it through a viewer, the photographs merge into one 3-D image.”
“I’ve played around with photography. Double exposure and things like that, but I don’t know much about stereoscopy. The card seems quite old.”
“I’m sure it is. These things were popular as far back as the nineteenth century. I had an uncle who collected them. I wonder if there’s a stereoscope around here somewhere. Where did you find it?”
“On the floor. I think it must have been wedged between the shelves. You probably nudged it loose when you moved the box.”
I waited patiently while he rummaged through the dusty items, a man on a mission. A few minutes later, he gave a triumphant “aha” and held up an interesting-looking apparatus mounted on a wooden handle. Taking the device back over to the stairs, he placed the card in the holder and raised the viewer to the light. “Wow, this is cool. The image is so clear it’s as if they’re standing right here in front of me.”
He handed me the stereoscope and I lifted it to the light. My eyes took a moment to adjust and then the subjects leaped out at me, so much so that I was startled by the perception. As Macon said, they could have been standing directly in front of us, so sharp and uncanny the image. My gaze was magnetically drawn to each of those solemn faces dominated by dark, piercing eyes.
Then I began to notice other oddities. A small wagon-like contraption in the background. A fenced enclosure beneath the front porch where a dog might have been penned. I could even see a grainy face in an upstairs window staring down at the trio.
A familiar face.
The image blurred as my fingers tightened around the polished handle. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. It must only be my imagination, some weird optical illusion because there was no reasonable explanation for what I saw. But I was a woman who lived among ghosts. My world didn’t operate on reason and logic.
Taking a moment to steady myself, I brought the image back into focus. The girls disappeared and the man faded away until I saw only that face peering down from the upstairs window.
The eyes, the nose, the mouth—the same understated features that stared back at me from the mirror.
Four
After sipping a cup of chamomile, my nerves began to settle, but I was by no means calm. I tried to convince myself I was overreacting, but what were the chances of that stereogram turning up in the cellar at the same time I was being visited by the sightless apparition?
Macon hadn’t seemed to notice anything unusual in the image or my demeanor. A phone call had pulled him away before he could study the card further, and by the time he returned, he was anxious to get on with his work. I’d escaped upstairs with the viewer and stereogram and had taken both straight to my office, where they now sat on my desk until I could decide what to do with them.
I wasn’t particularly worried about having either in my house. I’d never believed that possessions or even places could be haunted. People were haunted. However, ghosts could sometimes use objects to communicate, and I had to wonder if the stereogram was yet another message from the blind ghost.
It was a big leap, and as I went about my business for the rest of the day, I reminded myself that now was not the time to let my imagination run wild. I had a bid to work up for Seven Gates Cemetery, my blog to update and a speech to write for the Oak Grove dedication ceremony. Until I had time to investigate, I would do well to put that card out of my mind.
But no matter how hard I tried to concentrate, my attention kept straying. The stereogram kept calling. Whether it was a facet of my personality or the nature of my business, I couldn’t rest when a mystery needed solving.
Succumbing to temptation, I inserted the card in the holder and brought it to my eyes, turning my chair to the natural light so that I could scrutinize the three-dimensional image for messages and clues. But the only thing that meant anything to me was the face in the upstairs window.
At least now I could assume that my look-alike had once actually existed. She wasn’t a vision of my future self, but a ghost from the past. That revelation should have eased my mind, but the fact remained, she’d followed me through the veil for a reason. She’d warned me to find a key, but where was I to even look?
Shivering, I set the stereo card aside and examined the viewer, noticing for the first time a small silver plate fastened to the underside. The inscription was so tiny I could just make it out: “To Mott, From Neddy. Together Forever.”