Page 16 of Overexposed

He nodded. “Typical, for a child of this epoch.”

I sighed. “Always so judgy.”

Auris chuckled. “Just when it comes to you. I reserve all my judgment for you, my sweet, and later on, I get to savor your pouts and breathy complaints. It’s something I quite enjoy.”

“Objection.”

He looked at me, the dashboard’s faint electronics illuminating his face. “I’ll overrule that. You can try again later when I put you to bed and kiss you goodnight.”

His voice told me there would be nothing so innocent as a goodnight kiss later, and I was looking forward to it. It took my mind off the memories, not completely, but enough. I just hoped there wouldn’t be any priests at the church.

* * *

I hadn’t considered that the church would be closed, but of course, it was. I looked at windows we could possibly smash to get inside, and Auris gave me a funny look and said he would go and find the church’s caretaker.

That left me to wander, my breath fogging the air. The church grounds stretched behind a wall, and the building was surrounded by a cemetery, headstones vanishing from sight where the lights that sat at intervals along the footpaths couldn’t reach.

I had my camera with me, and my flash as well, but I didn’t want to draw too much attention to our presence, so I stuck to low-light photography for now. I hadn’t really thought about adding a bone church to the project, but from what I’d seen online, it made a pretty good fit. If I could take photographs that weren’t the kind of thing you could already find online, all the better. And even if not, there was a fascination growing inside me already. I was looking forward to seeing the ossuary for myself.

I went around the church and captured a few headstones, although they didn’t seem old and abandoned. If there were still living relatives, I couldn’t possibly put up photographs of the last resting place of their loved one.

That meant I focused on the building, apart from one shot where I captured the tips of gravestones like an ocean at the bottom of the frame, the wall in the background, and a tree, naked and with winter dark bark, caught in a play of shadow and light that made the branches look alive and monstrous.

Auris came back with a man, somewhat past middle age. He wore a woolen cap with a tear in the fabric.

“You entranced him?” I whispered when the man unlocked the church for us.

“Yes,” Auris said. Then, he handed me the flashlight he’d brought from the car. “Ready?”

I nodded. “Oh, yes.”

The caretaker left Auris with the keys, and I wondered about that. “He’ll stay by the entrance to the church grounds, in case someone comes by and sees light through the windows. He’ll tell them there’s a photo shoot.”

“Right,” I said. “That’s smart.”

Auris ran a hand along my back. “Thank you,” he said, amusement brightening his melodic voice.

The church was dark around us, and cold, though not as cold as the November night outside. My flashlight told me what I’d been certain of already: Sedlec Ossuary was not your average church, not by a long shot. There were the normal church things -- candles, crosses, paintings of saints -- but what ruled the space were the bones.

They weaved along the ceiling in garlands of vertebrae, cast shadows from a massive chandelier, and generally filled every wall space, from below eye level to high above it. There were so many bones here, all ordered, taken apart and rearranged into nothing at all resembling a human body.

“Wow. It says a lot about me that I don’t find these scary, doesn’t it?” I said and took my first picture, looking up at the ceiling, bones looming above in serpentine curves.

“Probably,” Auris said.

His voice came from my right, but I didn’t immediately see him. I followed, photographing as I went, but we weren’t here for a photo shoot, not really. There were pyramid-shaped arrangements to our left, and the skulls watched us.

“There,” Auris said after a while.

He pointed at a stretch of darkness. It was possible that piece of darkness was a little grayer than all the other darkness around us.

“I don’t see anything,” I said.

“It’s the sacristy. The crypt will be in there. I think. It doesn’t exist on any floor plan I have seen, but the priests said it was here. We’ll have to go look. I can go by myself.”

“Leave me while you get to explore in search of the secret crypt? No way,” I said.

Auris turned, held out his hand. “There is no one here. You don’t have to be frightened of anything, but watch your step.”

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