Marie slips the nail of her ring finger beneath the sleeve of her thick woollen jacket, peeling it back to reveal the watch face. Its little hand paces impatient circles around eight forty-five, collecting frantic seconds. She sighs with frustration, shuffling her boots in the snow. He is fifteen minutes late.
The newspaper has tasked them with the compilation of filler images, again. This time it is for the weather column. It is nearing middle January, and under a frigid haze of cloud, snow has accumulated in swathes over the cobblestones and draped itself from rooftops, dripping like lace from lamp posts. Maria huddles beneath the awning of a brick apartment building, drawn to the yellow light with hope that warmth must surely escape the seals of those eighteenth-century windows. A rising breeze billows down the street, gusting moisture like a shower of broken glass, cutting her cheeks red-raw. There is a knot in the small of her back, it pulls taught as something unfolds itself out of the dark.
“Oh, Christ’s sake Johnathan!” Maria startles. Her colleague grins and drops his gloved hands back into his pockets. She scans the dark pavement from which he had lurched at her.
“Where is the gear?” Maria huffs, heaving her anger back into composure.
“In the van.”
She does not want to follow him, and lingeres by the CCTV camera guarding a shuttered shopfront as he unloads the bag and drags the van door closed.
The Rangefinder is a reassuring weight in her hands. She slips the camera strap over her neck and unclips the lens cap carefully, slinging her bag over her shoulder.
“Ok, I’ll meet you back here in half an hour.”
He seems disgruntled by her request, but only watches as she walks away, saying nothing. Maria trudges uphill to the church where she crouches under the granite gaze of Mary to photograph a sweeping landscape of the town in sleep. Buildings blink drowsily as she hops across patches of light, capturing street fronts and back alleys and parks with meticulous clicks and flashes. She is precise, and has quickly travelled all the way down to the river. When Maria lifts the camera for a view of the stagnant, slushy water, a shape flickers in the trees on the opposite bank. She shivers, snatches her phone from her pocket, and calls. Johnathan answers.
“There’s something behind you”
“Where?” he turns a cautious circle on the riverbank, looking around obliviously.
“Wait,” Maria’s hands are quivering as she shifts the phone to her shoulder, lifting the
camera back to her eyes. Within the frame of the viewfinder, a figure stands behind Johnathan with twisted posture, its head leaning to one side, waiting.
The camera flashes, Maria’s phone falls and shatters on the icy pavement, still live on an active call, the cracked screen lies in the snow, counting 02:36, 09:12, 45:51…
It waits.
Adrienne is in her third year studying a Bachelor of Arts (Writing and English Literature) at UOW. She moved to the Illawarra from the Central West to develop her skills as a writer and textiles artist. She writes short fiction pieces for the Tertangala in poetry and prose form. Her work is underlaid with a witty commentary on the shared experiences of the pandemic, student life and moving from home. Using threads of these common themes, she aims to weave connections across environments and communities.
*This was originally published in the ‘Tertangala: Horror Issue’ (2023)