Asking After Dark

“You mean the double exposure stuff?” he asks, and this is where it gradually begins to break down. She doesn’t know it yet, doesn’t know what those words mean. She can hardly even see him in the dark. 

“Double exposure?” 

“Yeah, you know.” He glances sideways at her, continues walking. “Like, two exposures in one picture. If you’re doing film photography.” 

This is what she likes about him, the boy from her chemistry class. He has an artistic air of intrigue that she’d like to command herself. They’ve been texting at night—an intimacy reserved for high schoolers who sneak glances at each other from opposite ends of the classroom. She finds him fascinating. She has snuck out of her bed to see him tonight, even though she has to be up early for church in the morning. 

But she doesn’t know what he is talking about; she has never picked up a film camera. She is quiet for a moment, deciding whether or not she should lie. Silently unsure if boys prefer girls to be knowledgeable or looking to learn something. 

“Oh yeah, I guess so,” she finally says, something safe in the middle. “That makes sense, that that’s what it is. It just sort of freaks me out.” She smiles nervously, because this is new to her—talking in the dark. 

“Yeah, well, you should look it up,” he says. It sounds like he might start laughing, though with her or at her, it’s unclear. “Spirit photography. It’s totally fake.”

-

The words cling stubbornly onto some part of her brain, the sliver that is not consumed with the way he doesn’t kiss her or say anything other than “Good night, Eve” before she slips back through the screen door. 

spirit photography

She types it into Google on her phone, briefly imagining him knowing she’s doing it, this thing that he told her to do. Then, reading.

He’s right, obviously. Double exposures and lens flares, unknown words that sound correct. This thing that she is scared of, undone and explained away. Eve feels silly, all of a sudden, for not looking this up a long time ago. She hears him laugh and say it’s fake and it’s so uncomfortable, suddenly remembering this, that she has to dig a fingernail into her wrist.

But then the feeling passes, and she can get out the thing she wants to see. It doesn’t take her long, in the moments between thinking of him, to find a particularly old notebook under her bed. She keeps them all in a box— every journal in its half-empty entirety, occasional pages of abandoned habits and intermittent poetic musings. The one she grabs is worn and purple, the pages headed with Bible verses and lined with her youthful penmanship. 

She flips all the way to the back. She knows exactly where it is, although she usually doesn’t like to look at it. 

-

“Look at this one,” Alice gasps. She is flipping so quickly, Eve does not have a chance to read the little words under the pictures. “Look at how long her nails are!” 

“So long,” Eve breathes, drinking in the glossy photo.

“And kind of weird,” Alice decides. She grabs the page with the reckless command of a nine-year-old who has just given a gift. “Let’s keep going.”

Eve is eight and it’s her birthday, a night of pizza grease and presents. She unwrapped the heaviest one first at her older cousin’s command, and now they lay splayed over their sleepover setup, reveling in a hundred pages of uncomfortably unbelievable images. 

Alice spends a long time looking at a weird picture of a ghost.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” says Eve, the word alone making her nervous. She knows the things you don’t believe in can’t be any good at all.

“Lucky,” sighs Alice, peering closer at the picture and shivering. “I believe in ghosts. My mom says that they’re scary.”

Eve watches Alice study the photo, a pit of unease settling in her. This is her family. They are supposed to believe the same things. Alice finally turns past the page, but Eve’s brain is still stuck. Her new gift seems suddenly eerie. She feels a little confused. 

That night, once Alice is asleep, Eve crawls over to the book and finds the picture she hates beneath her night-light. She tears the whole page out, tucking it carefully into the trash. 

But the next day, the guilt chips away at Eve. She rescues the sheet from the garbage can, careful not to look. She can’t put it back in the book where someone could possibly see what she’s done, so she reaches instead for her new purple notebook, the most private thing she owns. The diary she calls a journal because that word makes her feel less embarrassed. She flips the sheet and tapes it, backward, this thing she doesn’t know yet is fake. This thing that makes her feel afraid, even though she doesn’t believe in it. 

-

“We don’t believe in ghosts, right?” 

Occasionally, Eve likes to check. 

Eventually, her mother will hesitate. “Spirits are in the Bible,” she’ll admit; this is code for something we have to believe in, whether we like it or not.

“But… not ghosts, though?”

“Spirits, ghosts,” her mother says vaguely. “As long as we put our trust in God, we don’t need to worry.”

Eve is still, thinking of the backward photograph in her old purple journal. That night, when her stomach feels too strange to sleep, she imagines all the different ways she could destroy it.

-

By high school, Eve is realizing that she’s supposed to believe in more than she originally thought.  

“My older brother sees demons,” a girl in her Bible study says. 

“Like, ghosts?” Eve checks. 

“Demons are worse than ghosts,” the girl answers. “Because they’re from Satan. My brother has seen them flying above the ceiling fan in our house. And once, he saw one wrapped around a man’s knee at a bus stop. He asked the man if he could pray for him, and after he did, the man said his knee was healed. Apparently, it had been hurting him for years.” 

“Was the demon… gone?”

“Yeah.” The girl shrugs. “I guess it went somewhere else.” 

Then, one night, the youth pastor makes an announcement. “There is only one unforgivable sin,” he proclaims. He pauses to let the children wait in their chairs— to wonder if they have done it. “The only unforgivable sin,” he says, “is asking Satan into your heart.” The people around Eve listen and nod. Her stomach starts to hurt, even though she’s never done this. Even though this is not something she has ever thought to do. 

-

The boy from chemistry class eventually has a name that Eve can sheepishly confess to her friends. She tells them that she has been texting Luke, but she leaves out the habitual Saturday sneak-outs that her weeks have begun to revolve around. After he finally kisses her, Eve imagines retelling them the story. But then she remembers the way that she stood there and how she told him she’d never kissed anyone before, and the memory becomes so strangely uncomfortable that she has to bite down on her finger. This must remain a secret. She imagines the thrill she feels when she sees him, and she knows it would be wrong to talk about.

Normally, Eve and Luke go walking. She will never invite him over. She tells him that her house is small, that her family is asleep, that they have to be up early for church. 

Church, she has realized, is fascinating to Luke.  

“Every Sunday?” he asks, as if he has to make sure.

“Yeah.” They are passing under a street light, and she tries to read his expression. She wants to change the subject. Talking about religion feels too private; it has always made her uncomfortable. And with him, in the dark, she wants to be a different Eve. She wants to be a version of herself who keeps secrets and kisses interesting boys on the street corner.

“I’ve never really understood religious people,” Luke tells her. “I don’t believe in God.”

“Lucky,” says Eve, before she can think. Before she can think about saying it.

She feels stunned and dirty, like she has lied. She isn’t sure if she has.

-

This is new; the demon thing. Eve does not think she wanted to know about this. 

She is used to being scared of the ghost picture, and for a while, she has a solution. Whenever she remembers it while lying in bed, all she has to do is start praying. Prayer is good— everyone says so. Her parents, her pastor, God.

But one night, as she is saying her prayers, she worries she is inviting a demon in. She doesn’t mean to, but it just happens; she is praying and imagining demons. It’s happening too fast to keep track of her brain. She doesn’t know what she is thinking. She is desperately praying. She thinks she is praying. She is frantically summoning Satan or the Lord. 

Eve scrambles up out of bed and paces around. She can barely catch her breath. When her mind finally stops praying in panic, she wonders if she is going to hell.

Once, when she thinks of the ghost picture, Eve gets out of bed and lights a candle. She considers burning the image. She almost goes to get the journal out, but then instinctively, her mind starts to pray. The typical thoughts of demons and Satan.

She walks the familiar route around her room. 

-

After the first walk, the journal is moved. Eve places it under her pillow. Sometimes, she lies and touches it softly, considering religion and Luke. She imagines telling him she’s frightened of demons, but the thought makes her pinch down on her hand.

Her new solution will arrive abruptly one night when her brain is threatening to summon the devil. She suddenly has the urge to get on her phone and search it—to see it isn’t real. 

spirit photography

“It’s totally fake.” She hears him almost laugh at her. 

“Fake.” Eve tries the word out loud. She realizes her brain isn’t fighting her. “Fake.” She types some more words into the search engine, wondering what else is unreal. Her mind doesn’t go to the girl in her Bible study.

 This part will be gradual.

-

“What are you most scared of?” 

When Eve sneaks out for the first time, the night sky is ominously overcast. She can’t see the boy from her chemistry class unless she looks up under a streetlight. They walk awkwardly far apart at first, making only small talk. But eventually, they slip into the variety of questions you only venture to ask after dark. 

Eve does not know how to answer. 

She can’t say demons or suffering in hell for eternity or not believing in the things she’s supposed to.

“I don’t know,” she sort of starts to lie. “I don’t really like those pictures of ghosts.”