Part 23 (2/2)

Maybe it's a common occurrence, I thought. Ma.s.sive spiders. Complete with human fingers. Swarming like a tide, pus.h.i.+ng out of gaps in the city, trying to engulf and consume everything they can reach. Maybe it happens once a month. Or once a week. Or every other day.

I grunted and paged on to the next image. It was a close-up of the spider with the human finger. It was a truly awful image-just bad photography-grainy and poorly framed. But I couldn't ignore it, couldn't discard it. I've got to post this, I told myself. If nothing else, I've got to give my public the finger.

It was a bad joke, I know, but it made me smile-a goofy, half-drugged smile. But the smile died as soon as the next photograph popped into view. And suddenly the joke didn't seem funny anymore. It seemed cruel and sinister.

Weasel's fingers, embedded in concrete.

It was actually the best photograph of the bunch. It was a close-up shot, not at all cryptic or confusing, and the focus was tight. Despite the horrific nature of the subject, there was absolutely no missing what it was. It was a set of fingers trapped in solid concrete. Period. End of paragraph. And I liked the lighting. I liked the look of Weasel's flesh against the gray concrete. The background was bright, lit by the camera's flash, but shadows sprouted from the base of each finger, traveling across the floor and landing on the wall. The foreground was dark and desolate; the toe of Taylor's boot was visible frame right. Looking at it now, I was surprised I was able to get such perfect focus in such a dark environment. It's a fast lens, I thought. Good gla.s.s.

I closed my eyes and paged forward to the last image.

It was the picture Taylor had taken, the two of us in bed with Danny. How did it get here, at the end? I wondered. I must have been rearranging during my first pa.s.s through the photographs. I must have put it here. But was it random chance, or was I trying to tell myself something? Was I trying to end on a high note, trying to remind myself of the good that still remained here inside the city?

The picture was out of focus and pretty much incomprehensible. Danny's head in my lap, but you really couldn't make that out. It was just a blur of blue denim, dark hair, and warm skin.

I didn't know how to feel about the picture. Conflicted, I guess. Certainly, there was a warmth and comfort in it. This was the closest I'd ever come to Taylor, but reaching up and feeling her breast, it was also the moment that the line between us had been drawn. I could come this close, maybe, but not an inch closer. And looking back, it was proof that she had feelings for me, genuine feelings, just like the ones I had for her. No matter how damaged those feelings were, how damaged she was.

I saved the seven images to an empty folder, then created a new text doc.u.ment and put together my post. It was a very simple post, just html tags for each picture, one after another: dinner table, face between the walls, real spiders, spray-paint spiders, close-up of spider, and then, in closing, Weasel's fingers. I considered including the picture of Danny and me but decided against it; even blurred and almost incomprehensible, it was too revealing.

My hands hovered over the keyboard for a couple of minutes as I considered captions. But what could I say, really? This is true, this is real, this is what the city is? It wouldn't do any good. They would believe me or they wouldn't. And I don't think I really cared anymore.

I'd been in the city for just under a week now, but I was already having a hard time imagining the world outside its borders. Were there people out there, still going about their daily lives? Were they sitting in front of their computer screens, looking at my pictures and daydreaming about Spokane, about the strange and the forbidden and the horribly, horribly romantic? Were there college cla.s.ses going on right now? Was there nightly television and pizza delivery? Was there bus service and traffic jams and drive-through windows? Was there a government out there, looking out for the public good?

And was there a physics? Was there a reality? Was there comfort and warmth and happiness?

I didn't know. I couldn't tell. It just didn't seem real anymore.

I saved my work and shut down the computer. Then I curled up on the floor, rested my head on my backpack, and let the steady in and out of Floyd's breath lull me to sleep.

My second post on the Spokane message board was the one that started attracting media attention. I'm not sure I would have launched it out into the world if I could have foreseen the response, or, more accurately, if I could have foreseen my reaction to the response.

When I first got into the city, of course, I wouldn't have hesitated. Not for a moment. That was the whole point, after all: getting attention. Attention for me and my photography. But by the time I heard-by late November, when Danny brought me that first article from the Seattle Times-I doubt I would have bothered.

The person who had taken those photographs, who had composed that post, had in the intervening weeks become someone completely different. He'd packed up his cameras and gone to ground. And he just didn't give a s.h.i.+t anymore.

The article was mostly speculation. It recounted the standard government lines-about environmental contamination and tainted topsoil, carcinogenic buildings and ongoing threats to the public's health and well-being, and, as always, the need for further study-but it did ask some important questions.

What exactly is the threat, and why is cleanup taking so long?

Is the river tainted, and do the towns downstream need to worry?

Is it in the air?

And where exactly did this threat come from, and why is there such a need for secrecy and security?

In response, the article quoted an unnamed army general: ”First and foremost, we need to a.s.sure the people that there is absolutely no need for panic or distress. We have the Spokane situation well in hand. And while we can't go into the specifics of the threat for fear of jeopardizing ongoing investigations and research, we can tell you that we know exactly what's going on. We are still testing-under the purview of the EPA and with the a.s.sistance of some of the nation's greatest environmental scientists-in order to ensure that every last molecule of contamination has been removed from this great city. The safety of the good people of Spokane is our primary concern, and we are not going to rush our efforts, not when we have the health and happiness of our citizens on the line. Only when every last one of our concerns has been addressed-only then, and not one second sooner-will we consider reopening the city to residents. In the meantime, the good people of Spokane have been well compensated for their inconvenience.”

When asked about a cla.s.s-action lawsuit filed by cancer victims and surviving family members, the commander general replied, ”No comment.”

Up until this point, the article seemed like a standard-issue snow job-the government shoveling out the s.h.i.+t and the media repeating it ad nauseam. But in the last paragraphs, the writer gave voice to several of the conspiracy theories that had been floating around since day one. Was Spokane the site of a bio-weapon experiment gone awry? Was it ground zero for a terror attack, something the government felt compelled to hide?

Or was it something stranger?

Perhaps hoping to stoke controversy or, more likely, trying to end on a note of humor, the newspaper went on to print two of my photographs: the face between the wall and the spider with the human finger. The low-res black-and-white reproductions were almost incomprehensible, but the writer went on to describe them: ”... what appears to be a disembodied human face and a spider with a human finger in place of one of its legs. Purported to have been smuggled out of Spokane, these pictures recently appeared on the-missing-city.com, an Internet message board devoted to Spokane-related speculation. The photographer is currently unknown.”

There wasn't any commentary on the photos, but the writer's message, in including them, seemed clear to me. It was a threat, a warning.

Without official word from the government-without comprehensive explanation and media oversight-the public would go about creating its own crazy theories, filling the giant vacuum left by the government's bloodless and insincere ”no comment”s. Including my pictures in the article ... this was just a taste of things to come. Without the truth, the media would be stuck publis.h.i.+ng more and more ridiculous speculation-and there was some truly strange speculation floating around out there, some downright sinister and paranoid stuff. With my pictures, it seemed like the writer was trying to force the government's hand, trying to force it-in the face of panic and confusion-to respond with information and truth.

But, I wondered when I first read that article, what happens when the truth rivals even the craziest Internet rambling? In that case, what could the government actually share?

And what does it take to drive a country insane?

Photograph. October 23, 08:45 A.M. Entryway:

The house has been abandoned. The front door stands open. There are signs of forced entry here-cracked wood around a canted doork.n.o.b. The photo frames the gaping maw, a large rectangle around a smaller nested frame. The welcome mat is cut in two by the image's edge. ”WELCOME.”

A wedge of sunlight illuminates a Persian rug on the other side of the doorway-an indistinguishable black and red scene spread across the white tile floor. Windblown leaves and pieces of junk mail form patterns on the tile and on the rug, describing eddies and gusts, describing neglect and desolation. It is a language punctuated by streaks and blobs of mud.

In the background, the house disappears into depthless gloom, hidden away from the sun's feeble reach. There's a portico back there, leading toward the rear of the house, and the dim outline of a staircase-graduated shades of gray reaching up toward the top of the frame.

There's a landing at the top of the stairs. And in the corner, away from the ledge: two pinp.r.i.c.ks of light, hidden in the dark shadows. Lidded slits, reflecting a glimmer of electric red. A s.h.i.+ny metallic pink.

Eyes. Animal eyes. Peering down at the camera. Peering down at the photographer.

There was light coming through the window when Danny woke me up.

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