Picturing Heritage

Stephanie disconnected the call and heaved a sigh. Her mother’s sudden death had been yet another upheaval in her life. Just like the night before her eleventh birthday, when she’d been ripped out of home and school to travel across the country.

Then, it had been her mother’s sudden flight from her father. She knew there’d been tension in their marriage, but no idea how bad it was. What exact thing led to their middle-of-the-night escape from home with a single suitcase her mother refused to talk about. The most she would say was that her father’s nature was impossible to deal with.

In the years that followed, Stephanie often noticed her mother looking at her as if she was unsure what she was seeing. When she confronted her mother about it, she said something about her father’s heritage. She remembered him as a large, powerfully built man, always smiling, gregarious and charming, able to talk almost anyone into anything.

When she’d first moved out to go to college, she had tried to find her father, with no luck. By the time she’d completed her undergrad degree, she’d given up.

Now, she’d had to leave in the first semester of her master’s studies to arrange her mother’s meager estate. A run-down, one-bedroom cottage on a postage-stamp parcel of land, a clapped-out third or fourth-hand car that was more rust than metal, and a modest bank account.

She’d had the car hauled off to the wrecking yard. Selling the house was taking more time than Stephanie would have liked. Unless she could find someone to buy it “as is,” there remained a great amount of work to get it to pass inspection.

That morning’s call, however, was the first time she’d heard of anything in storage. That it was in deep-freeze storage since they’d first fled was worrisome. What sort of awful thing would her mother have stored frozen?

There was nothing to be done about it but go clear out the storage. The storage fees had been pre-paid, but the company was shuttering their doors.

Stephanie found the company on the outskirts of the industrial area. The exterior of “CryoStorage Meat Lockers” didn’t inspire any confidence. The bare concrete block construction with crumbling mortar and layer upon layer of gang tags made her nervous about parking there.

Spying a security camera by the front door, she parked where her car was in direct line of sight of it. Entering the building, she felt rather than heard the hum of the cooling equipment.

“Come to clear out your storage?” The wrinkled, grey man behind the counter looked as if he’d weathered the years no better than the building.

“Yes.” Stephanie laid out a copy of the legal paperwork that declared her executor of her mother’s will. “I believe the attorney said it was lot number J-32.”

“You got the key?”

“Uh, no. We didn’t find any keys in her things. Not even house keys.”

“No problem. I got the masters.” He pulled a ring with a dozen keys from beneath the counter and shrugged on a heavy coat. “At least it’s a small one. Follow me.”

He led her out a heavy door to a hallway where the hum of machinery was uncomfortable. Heavy freezer doors lined one side of the hall, each with a letter. He stopped at the one marked “J” and picked a key from the ring before opening it. “It’ll be a mite cold in there.”

As the door swung open, biting, frigid air spilled out, creating gouts of fog swirling around their feet. The thermometer on the far wall showed it as minus forty degrees, and the rest looked more like a bank vault than a meat locker. Deposit boxes lined the walls and the old man stepped in without hesitation, putting his key in number 32 and swinging it open.

Stephanie rushed to the box and looked inside. There was a shoe box closed with duct tape that had long ago lost its adhesion. She pulled it out and hurried out of the freezer, the cold stabbing daggers into her. Around the corner from the door, she set the frozen box down as her fingers protested the chill.

The old man shut the deposit box and then the freezer door. “You going to be all right, young lady?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure what she’d want to freeze for all these years, but I guess it’s just something else to get rid of. You have a trash can?”

“I do, but you’re not putting that in it until you look.”

“Why?”

“It might be something illegal for all I know, and I’m not taking the fall for anyone but myself.”

She picked up the box and heard something inside shift. Whatever it was, it was light.

Back in the office, she set the box on the counter and lifted the lid. Inside, sealed in a freezer bag, was a disposable camera. Stephanie recognized it as the same type her mother would buy when they went on vacations, not that they’d taken any trips after leaving her father.

“So, you want me to throw that out?” the old man asked.

“I—I’ll keep the camera, but can you recycle the box?”

“Sure, sure. Looks like there’s a bit of a refund coming on that unit. Is the address on file still good?”

“Um, no. Just keep the copy of the documents and use the contact info there.”

Stephanie drove back through the downtown area, such as it was, and parked in a half-empty lot. The camera sitting on the seat next to her nagged at her. Did it have answers, or just more questions?

She pulled out her phone and searched for film developing. The nearest was a one-hour photo place on the next block. She picked up the camera and walked there.

The bored, purple-haired attendant watched her enter and set the camera on the counter. She pushed a form and pen across the counter to Stephanie. “One hour, or overnight?”

“One hour, if you can. Assuming anything is salvageable.”

The attendant picked up the camera and looked at the date stamped on the bottom. A frown crossed her face. “Thirteen years. How was it stored?”

“In that bag, in a box, in a minus forty deep-freeze. My mother must have stored it as soon as we….”

A pierced eyebrow rose. “Tell you what, I don’t trust the machine with this. I’ll do it manually, but it’ll take closer to two hours. Just put your cell number on the form, and I’ll call you as soon as it’s ready.”

“Thanks.”

Stephanie wandered around the downtown area before settling into a coffee shop to relax and wait. The town struggling to be a city bustled around her with a false sense of urgency. It hadn’t changed in the five years she’d been gone.

She was on her third cup of coffee when her phone rang. “Yes?”

“Y—your pictures are ready.” She sounded shaken.

“I’ll be right there.” She was already out the door by the time she hung up, and she joined in the bustle around her, struggling to keep herself from running.

The attendant looked as if she’d seen a ghost. The envelope of photos sat on the counter as far away from her as possible.

“How much?”

“N—nothing. Just…get those away from me.”

Stephanie pulled a twenty out of her purse. “Here, keep it.”

“Did you say your mother took these?”

“Yeah.”

“You…may not want to look at these.”

“Why?”

“If these were digital, I’d be convinced they were fake. But…if that’s real….”

With shaking hands, Stephanie pulled the photos out of the envelope and began going through them, one by one.

The first was a picture of the Casa Grande Dispatch, dated July 12th, 2007, in a newspaper rack. The photos all had time stamps in the bottom right corner and the dates agreed. Next was a picture of her father’s truck, license plate clearly visible, in a motel parking lot.

Stephanie thought she knew where this was going. The next picture was her father’s nude body, atop an unknown young woman in the throes of passion. The harsh shadows thrown by the flash fell across the cheap decor of the low-budget motel room.

The next few pictures showed her father scrambling off the top of the woman, who dove for the far side of the bed. He turned toward the camera, his eyes completely black, no whites showing at all. In the last few pictures, horns grew from his head, leathery wings sprouted from his back, and a whip-like tail swiped at the camera.

She knew it was her father, even in the last frame where his face was distorted in rage, sharp fangs on display and forked tongue curling out. She looked at the time stamps. From the first picture catching him in the act, to the tail-thrashing last was a total of eighteen seconds. Not enough time for makeup and contacts or any kind of trickery.

Now she knew why they’d fled, and what “heritage” her mother was talking about, but it raised a new question for her. If that…thing…was her father, what was she?