Page 28 of Illuminated

He walked over, and I took the case from him, set up the camera. I positioned it to capture part of the house with the front steps and the half rotten front door to the right.

With the light being part cold winter light and fading sunshine, I wanted to try a long exposure. If the wind stirred leaves and branches, it would give me an even scarier, more haunted look.

A small, round window up on the second story of the attic was another point that drew the eye, because while the window was broken, glass still clung to parts of the frame, and that high up, it caught the light. I had completely missed that window in the dark before, and was now sad about that, wondering what effects the flash reflecting off the glass would have given me.

Auris seemed content to watch me work, though I quickly forgot he was even there. There were a few more angles I wanted to capture in long exposure, so I dragged the tripod around until I had them all.

When I was satisfied with the outside of the house, I ventured inside. I saw the disturbed dust on the cabinet on which I had placed my camera that first night Auris had wrapped me in the warmth of his lust and pushed me up against the wall.

I squatted to take a photo of these lines in the dust, the angle giving them contrast. Once more, I just explored with the lens between me and reality, my trigger finger clicking away on autopilot.

Floorboards creaked beneath my feet, but a candleholder in a patina of mottled green distracted me from the creaky floor. The staircase was stone, smoothed with age and dirty with abandonment. I loved the way the angles of it cut patterns into the fading daylight and took a few dozen pictures of it.

When I was done with that, I turned only to find Auris standing under a lintel, still as a ghost. My lens was drawn to him again, and I took a picture. The light was turning, and if I wanted to make the most of this delicate interplay of shadows, I had to hurry to get what I could. Everything after that would have to be done with the flash.

I worked without thinking, and eventually, it was the darkness that stopped me. Auris handed me the flash before I could ask for it, and I went outside, back to where I could see that round window looming. I let the light echo back in aged brightness, and it was perfect. Spooky, but also beautiful.

My fingers stilled then, and I exhaled as if I had run or fought or fucked. Photography worked that way for me sometimes, an intense wave that just stopped when something inside of me told me it was time to stop.

“Satisfied?” Auris said from the front door’s threshold.

I rubbed my neck. “For now.” A joyful exhaustion settled over me, the same feeling runners describe after really pushing themselves.

“I suggest we return. You had only coffee all day, and coffee is not food. I’ll get your tripod,” he said, then vanished back inside.

I packed my camera away and became aware of how cold I was all over. Winter really did rush along the coast and inland on quick feet. “I think I might have to make you take me back here again.”

Auris, with the tripod case back over his shoulder, walked down the front steps with a low chuckle. “Ethan, are you returning the flattery I paid you earlier? Or do you just enjoy me acting as your assistant and sometime model?”

I zipped my camera case shut. “Maybe. Though I think you are trying to be my muse rather than my model.”

“Flattery it is, then, my sweet,” he said and pulled me to him for a quick kiss. “Now let’s go back to the car while there is still a modicum of light for you to see by.”

Chapter Six

I needed the flashlight for most of the way back, that, and Auris’s hand to steady me and keep me from falling.

When we were back at the car finally, I was so tired that I dozed off as we drove through the lightless landscape.

I blinked my eyes back open and tried to rub the sleep away when the lights of civilization washed over my face. “This is not Brightam,” I stated, stretching in my seat.

“No, we’re in Cromere,” Auris said.

I turned to him. “I thought it wasn’t safe to go back here?”

He looked over to me with dark eyes and brushed my cheek with the gesture I was beginning to take for a show of affection. “It is not safe to linger, but a careful visit at nighttime should not bring any trouble.”

“So we are going to your old place?”

He shook his head. “No, that would be unwise. But there is another small restaurant here that I don’t think will appeal to the priestly kind, and you need food.”

“Please don’t tell me you are using my nutritional needs as an excuse to do something stupid?”

“My sweet, I am learning to care for you as you deserve, and this little check-in with my old home is just a side benefit. Don’t fret. Trust me.”

I stared over to his shadow-veiled face and watched as streetlights illuminated it every few seconds. “I found you strapped to some splintery wood in a haunted church. Forgive me for not wanting a repeat of that.”

Auris slowed the car and neatly parallel parked it in another small, cobblestoned street. He turned the engine off before he pulled me toward him for a kiss. “It was during the day that they took me.” Another kiss. “A lucky encounter on their part, and not one that I’ll easily give them a chance to repeat. Not when I need to watch over you.”

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