XIV.

Regina appeared to be very angry, staring accusingly at the coal residues of the extinguished fire. Her dress was dusty from kneeling and probing through the ashes while the embers were still dangerously glowing. Her fingertips were slightly burnt.

"You actually threw it", Regina muttered, "your burned it."

Her calmness was nothing but a pretence; fury radiated from her in heavy sighs. Stuart was ashamed like a mischievous boy, regretting his misdoings, but what was his culpability really about? Memories of last night came to him like scattered pieces. The only things he remembered vividly were his dream and the photo lightened by the moonlight. When Regina's strong knocking on the door woke him up hours after his usual early awakening, he told her what he supposed happened afterwards. He worked himself into a delusional frenzy and, unaware of his doings, threw the photo in the fireplace. He tried to explain how terrified he was when he saw that the picture had changed, but left his dream unmentioned. He couldn't deal with her accusing him of insanity, and if he was to mention being under the impression of a nightmare, she was sure to take it into account when assessing the credibility of what he claimed to had seen.

"We could've used it", she said in a reserved tone, accepting their loss. "If it really had changed."

"It had", he was convincing her. He had no doubt. The girl had appeared in his dream for a reason. Simultaneously thinking about his first dream experience with her and the last night's one, he considered that he might have went through it all because his conscience somehow knew that something will be off with the photo in the end. "You must call those press people you sold other photos to and ask whether something unusual had happened..." Before he finished, Regina threw newspapers on the desk between them. There was an article about the unsolved murder by poison in Edinburgh and the photos he had taken were printed next to it.

"Others turned out just fine. And stayed that way." Sighing out, she smoothed her hair, a calming gesture hinting that she had enough of stress and was ready to move on. "Stuart, are you sure you truly saw the girl standing in the bath?"

"You saw photos of that dead woman", he reminded her, "so you must trust me when I tell you it has repeated."

She lifted her hands in surrender. "Fine, fine, I believe you, I only wish we had a proof."

"What would we do with it anyway?" The question induced a silence of uncertainty.

"Take proves to the police?", Regina recommended. "Or I could call a photography expert to check them... Yes! That's exactly what we should do! In fact, why wait?" Turning to him, cheeks rosy from excitement and readiness for action, she commanded: "Bring me photos of that woman, I'll take them to him before the day ends!"

Stuart was left without a helper to do another day of work. He was muddleheaded and more than once a persons he was photographing had to ask him for how long will they have to stand, even though they had been motionlessly waiting for minutes, and Stuart had neither turned the hourglass nor started the camera.

"Gee, Stuart", an old customer whose dead first wife Stuart had photographed, before and after death, told him after Stuart gave him the daguerreotype of his twin daughters, "you're business is quickly growing!" This was more than true. Regina's commercials and some useful rumours changed people's opinion of his studio from hell to heaven. "But you look addle-headed. And you're too pale! Go easy on yourself, buddy!" He tapped Stuart on his back, almost overturning him over the counter, and left with two ten-year-old daughters obediently following.

Buddy still rang in Stuart's ears after the man left. He was finishing job in the dark room, developing last marital portraits when it came to him when was the last time someone called him a buddy.

"Nice try, buddy", Oliver had shouted to him across the playground. It was his way of teasing his younger brother. Oliver's roommate, a terribly snobbish rich boy, addressed everyone he disliked and preferred not to talk to as a buddy. Nine out of ten people he met were honoured by a nickname buddy, probably because he didn't even try to memorize their name. In Oliver's case, he was the one who disliked the rich boy. George was spoiled and picky about everything and everyone, but Oliver tolerated him until he met Stuart. Not only was Stuart the first one in the line of buddies, but George constantly made fun of his roommate's brother and considered himself extraordinarily amusing. Stuart wasn't bothered by his mocking. After all, he was used to much worse offence among his colleagues, but this was the first time Oliver heard someone openly making fun of Stuart and he wasn't going to put up with it silently. During the summer holidays, Oliver was contemplating about a revenge.

"It must be something memorable", he said as they walked to the house after finishing a game of cricket.

Stuart wanted to talk him out of it. He was scared that he'll get into trouble. Everyone would blame Stuart, of course. Their parents thought it impossible for Oliver to do anything wrong. But more importantly, Oliver could get a reprimand from the principal and Stuart knew how school was important to him. Unlike himself, Oliver was a brilliant student from the day one.

Oliver was impossible to dissuade. "No patsy rich simpleton shall insult my brother." Turning his head to the kitchen door he was about to enter through, he added to himself: "After all, they're all fools. They don't know you. You're hundred times better than any of them." Then, looking back at Stuart with pride which made Stuart feel like an adored king, said: "Let's go eat some o Gilda's strawberry jam!"

Of course Oliver wasn't a capricious kind of person and he planed everything in advance. His revenge was completed on the day when his school team was competing against another one in cricket. Before the game began, boys of opposing teams provoked each other in joke, as they usually do. Oliver called out George and said to everyone that he was the worst batter. Oliver watched many a game in which George, always the captain of his team, participated. He even made notes about his skills which he later showed Stuart. His brother didn't really believe Oliver would go as far as to dare George to take the position of a batter, or, even if he did, he thought George would never accept the challenge. But Stuart was wrong. George's pride, his most precious treasure, was hurt, and he took the bite. George was terrible in this role. By the end of the match, he became the object of ridicule. His team was disgracefully beaten. George figured out he'd been fooled. Angry and unused to such harsh treatment, he prepared himself to kick Oliver while his back was turned to him, but the teacher just came out and stopped him. George was suspended. Oliver got a new roommate. In the later years, whenever George passed by Oliver in the hallway, he'd look down at him, but with carefulness of one who knows that he's the one who's actually subaltern. He never spoke a word of mockery about Stuart again.

The bell rang and Stuart turned to greet another customer. He was glad to see Regina on the doorstep. However, she didn't seem satisfied. Taking off black gloves, she reported: "Nothing. He said that everything in the photos is legit. I haven't mentioned the woman in them is supposed to be dead. According to him, the photos are perfectly normal."

They sat in silence next to the fireplace for some time before Regina announced that it's time for her to leave. Sentenced to spending another night alone, Stuart was alerted. "Wouldn't you stay for the night?" Regina stroke him with a horrified question in her eyes. "I'm scared", he admitted. "I don't want to be on my own. I'm starting to get nightmares..."

She hesitated, but in the end sat back. Minutes merged into a full hour and neither of them spoke. Then, as if triggered by a secret stimulus, Regina reached for one of the daguerreotypes displayed on a desk next to her. It was a post-mortem picture of a young man who suffocated. When Stuart told her this, she sighed out. "How sad it is. I'll never figure out how can you stand it." She discreetly looked at him. "You're such a soft, gentle soul."

"Me, a gentle soul?" Stuart almost laughed. "I signed up for army and drew a shame upon my whole family. I enjoy photographing the dead. What's soft in that?"

"The truth", she answered. "I've got to know you well by now, Stuart, but I still haven't managed to grasp a piece of your core. I guess nobody has."

The fire was dying down as the sleep was taking over both of them. In dark and piece, two photographers were lost to the world outside of their dreams. Stuart was flowing on the edge between awareness and hidden conscience. He heard the last remnants of coal in the fireplace crackling, while behind his lids a blurry face appeared and disappeared, a sign of a dream which was never to be unfolded.

A loud knocking pulled Regina and Stuart out of their private worlds. Regina momentarily straightened her back, eyes wildly circling around the room. Notwithstanding Stuart's remaining passivity when the knocking repeated, Regina jumped to her legs and was running up the stairs before Stuart realized that the knocking had indeed come from the studio. Someone must've been at the door. "Now?", he whispered to himself, just figuring out it wasn't usual to have visitors in the middle of the night.

Too wrought up to wait for Regina to come back, he slowly followed her upstairs. He found her standing at the doorstep, holding the doorknob of the open door with one hand and yelling to the invisible person outside: "Show yourself! Who are you?" She sounded upset, Stuart was scared to ask what provoked her so much. She yelled until her voice broke and a sound similar to gargling came out of her mouth. Suddenly alerted by the coldness of the outside, Stuart approached her and mantled her shoulders with a blanket. Just then he noticed an envelope placed on the outside of the entrance, next to Regina's feet. Sighing out in surrender, she picked it up and retreated inside. As they climbed down in silence, Stuart turned once more towards the door, waiting whether another knock would be heard, but his expectations weren't met.

After igniting the fire to illuminate the envelope, Regina tore it and without hesitation took out the piece of paper. It was a photo of an empty room. Big bed with fine blankets and lavish rug on the floor, mahogany cabinet and an empty vase painted with oriental motives and a framed gobelin imitation on the wall.

"Looks like a calm place", Stuart commented just to break the uncomfortable silence. "Fancy sheets, red carpet, all in order..."

Regina nodded slowly, but froze in an instant. "Red carpet?", she repeated. "Stuart, it's black and white." Stuart was puzzled. Of course the photo was colourless, but the word red didn't just slip out to him. He took another glance at the photo. The room was familiar to him. He remembered that the carpet was red. "Do you know where this room is? You know what the delivery of a photo means..."

"I know what you presume and what your father thought", Stuart spoke rationally. "It's just a photo. Someone is playing with us."

Regina was deadly serious. "It means another crime will take place in this room if it hadn't already happened. Another murder."

Stuart had a hard time avoiding her persuasiveness. The memories came back to him; not only the red carpet, but the framed needlework on the wall. Wasn't it the same one Gilda made for Oliver when he was getting married? The one he took with him to his new home in Edinburgh? And the vase, had he not seen it before, as if in another life, when Carol brought it to his parents' home in the village as a gift for his mother? And later, when his mother passed away, their father gave it back because he couldn't stand seeing things that used to be dear to his wife in house she herself wasn't a part of any longer. Albeit those memories were true, he saw those items more recently, in the exact room in which he slept the night after Oliver's funeral.

"Carol", he pronounced in a whisper. He thought of her sleeping clueless of someone sneaking in her house to take a photo of the guest room. Then his thoughts wandered in a terrifying direction; Carol might already be dead while they're contemplating over the ridiculous photo. Not just her, but his brother's son and his family, too. "No! I must go to convince myself that everything's all right at once!"

Completely captivated by the call to help his family, Stuart was already rising to his legs and grabbing through the air in want of his coat, but Regina got up faster and pushed him back. "Wait, Stuart! What are you talking about? You can't go anywhere, it's still dark!"

"But they might be in danger!" Stuart's voice was trembling. His conscience burned him with guilt. He rejected Carol's plea to become a part of the family once again. If he'd accepted it, he might have been there when the intruder came, he would've stopped him, saved Erwing, his wife and kid, saved Carol... "My family", he finally said.

"I thought you had no family."

"My brother's family", he corrected himself, though he no longer thought of them as such. "That room is the guest room in my nephew's house in Edinburgh"

Regina assumed a sympathetic expression. "I'm sorry, Stuart. We'll go there first thing in the morning, but there's no way for us to get going right now. Look", she pointed towards the window. It was foggy outside. "The roads are probably covered with snow."

He had to admit defeat. They waited through the night, overwrought and impatient. Constantly turning to the window in hope of seeing the daylight, Stuart was shuffling his thoughts scooping up scattered memories of Carol. They were never very close, but in his thoughts she always stood like an indestructible pier. Her graceful manners, innate talent of befriending everybody, kind soul and scholarly mind. She was very prominent among women of her generation. When she came to stay with them in their village home, and Oliver had to stay in Edinburgh, they spent many hours together. As always, Stuart was timid, but Carol didn't mind his shyness like other people did.

"Stuart, let's take a walk together! Look at the brightness of the sun, isn't it gorgeous?", she'd say and take him by the hand outside. "Would you be so kind as to accompany me to the bakery? Would you allow me to read you something out loud?..." Her ideas to occupy them in a joint activity reached indefinitely. She was the one and only person Stuart felt comfortable with besides Oliver.

But when his brother came to the village, Stuart discovered that he was capable of feeling something he was so ashamed to admit he started avoiding both Oliver and his fiance. He was jealous. He couldn't stand seeing fiances together. Carol was found of him, but it was obvious that she adored his brother in a way nobody would ever admire Stuart. Everyone loved Oliver, but Carol's love was unique and absolute.

"Stuart, darling", she asked him one day when she found him alone in the dining room. He wanted to escape, but there was no way to do it without offending Carol. "Stuart and I are going on a picnic. We'd love it if you'd come along. Please, say you will!"

Just like he rejected Carol's invitation a month ago, Stuart then shrugged his shoulders and answered with a pretence of indifference: "I'm not in the mood." After it, he declined almost every offer from her. Convincing himself that he didn't matter, that she asked him to accompany them only out of politeness, he ignored obvious signs of her disappointment.

"Stuart, wake up!" Regina shook his hand. His eyelids seemed to be glued to each other. Fighting dreams, Stuart got up from the chair and took the lead as they climbed up the stairs. They walked to the main square where Regina stopped the first available cab and paid in advance for a ride to Edinburgh.