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CHAPTER FIVE

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F828 II Digital Camera

DOWNTOWN VILLAGE WAS one of the oldest apartment buildings in Albuquerque, rising five stories above the street below. The first four floors housed six small apartments, each door just like the one next to it. On the lower levels, the paint was still the hollow green of a hospital emergency room. It remained that way in part because all the elderly people who had settled there since the 1960s detested change—each existing in their small apartments, watching the walls of their rooms outlive their husbands and wives. The long-standing ladies of Downtown Village were sweet, lively, and almost completely deaf.

My apartment was on the fifth floor—a small floor with only two units, forming the pinnacle of the building. Years before, Mrs. Santillanes, my eighty-seven-year-old next-door neighbor, had put a gloomy green bulb into the hallway socket, giving everyone who visited a dreary complexion.

Inside my apartment, I switched on the lamp and unwrapped myself in its gentle glow. I had surrounded myself with visions of my childhood: the gray-green hue of blooming sagebrush and the red sand of the bluffs surrounding Grandma’s house filled my walls. In the living room, a giant photograph of my grandmother covering her eyes sat next to another huge photograph of the local trading post and the beautiful mountain that stood outside her door. Photos of the four sacred mountains decorated each wall. In this space, I was almost home.

Ten hours had passed since I had left the scene on the freeway. I didn’t even have the strength to take off my shoes before I lay down on the half-made bed and drifted off to sleep.


7:49 P.M.

I slept only four hours, awakening to the screensaver on my computer—a distant beach I had never been to—and slid my hand over to my mouse. I could feel my camera watching me as I nestled in bed, commanding me to back up files. I rose. I pulled the chip from its chamber and pushed it into the port of my computer. The screen brightened the whole room as the photos loaded, the blue bar measuring time with every slow tick. I emptied what was left of a forgotten cup of coffee as the first images began to pop up. The familiar uneasiness of the scene welled in my stomach.

My final photo materialized. A lifeless eye stared into the frame, and I stared back. I could see every detail of Erma’s skin, young and flawless save for the darkened blood around the edges. I sat back and studied the fragment of her face.

“What happened?”

I jumped. Erma was sitting on my couch, her shoulders rounded and her gaze on the floor. I recognized the sequins from her blouse and the denim of her jeans, but her skin looked cold and waxy. I was thankful she wasn’t sitting there in the condition she was in on the freeway.

“I don’t know,” I replied. The room rolled with cold, like a sheet of frost.

“I can’t remember anything. It’s like it’s all been erased.”

“They’re investigating—”

“I need to get home,” Erma yelled, cutting me off. It made my heart race. “Where am I?”

Erma’s ghost pushed past me and stared at the image of her face on my computer. She turned to me, and a rush of panic tingled through my skin as her scream pierced the room.

“My baby is at home.” She paced, spreading her cold into my living room. “You have to help me get back to my baby. Do you hear me? You have to help me.”

“I take photographs. I’m not sure what I can do.”

Erma moved closer. “Help me get back to my baby, or I’ll make your life a living hell.” Her desperation echoed through my body until my head nearly splintered. She shared her fear with me and fed me her despair. I wondered how long I could wait to tell her that she was never going back.





CHAPTER SIX

Nikon FE

AFTER THE EPISODE in the kitchen with my grandpa’s ghost, Grandma stood vigil in my bedroom, unaware that Grandpa’s spirit was lighting up the room brightly, like God’s flashlight in my face. I didn’t sleep all night.

Instead, Grandpa’s light told me stories about Grandma— his first sight of her, young and strong, his longing for her now. In that room, he knew she still longed for him. There had never been another man in her life since Grandpa died all those years ago. She truly belonged to him forever. But Grandma didn’t see him, and she didn’t hear him either. She just cried and cried, until she eventually lay down with me in my little bed and went to sleep. I stayed awake and talked to Grandpa, answering his questions about my mother and about the lives we now lived.

“So, did your mom finish school?” Grandpa asked.

“She is still in school. She is studying in the city. It’s a three-hour drive to visit.” I was full of information. “And I can read and do all kinds of things, like count the miles all the way.”

“And Grandma takes you there?” He smiled.

“She did. Two times. But it costs a lot of money to go, so we just stay here.” I saw his hand and reached over to touch it. My hand went straight through his shallow skin. “Why don’t you just go see her?”

“I’ve gone to see her a lot of times, but she doesn’t know I’m there. She doesn’t see me like you do. Besides, it isn’t nice to pry.” Grandpa’s ghost rolled up his sleeve. “Look at what me being here has done to your grandma. I don’t want to make her sad anymore.” His spirit flickered. “I couldn’t live without her all these years.”