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    Double Exposure
    Double Exposure
    Double Exposure
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Double Exposure

    By Kat Clay

    ()

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    About this ebook

    1948. Portvieux City. A scandal photographer shoots a brutally murdered woman through his lens.

    But only he can see her.

    Thrust into a mystery that threatens his very reality, the Photographer must uncover the truth about the missing woman before he's framed for the crime. Tracking down an artist that might hold the clue to solving the murders, he delves into the seedy city with the help of Miss Loretta Marne, a society belle with a sinister past.

    As the truth comes out, the border between dreams and reality slowly dissolves like a negative in acid. Double Exposure is a thrilling hardboiled horror novella by Kat Clay. 

    "Clay pulls no punches in this noirish tale, offering readers a hardboiled, lively read - engrossing, no-holes-barred, weird yet sharply real. You'll devour it relentlessly, even if the world comes to an end in the meantime." Robert Hood, Award-winning horror author. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKat Clay
    Release dateSep 3, 2019
    ISBN9781393929888
    Double Exposure
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    Author

    Kat Clay

    Kat Clay is a crime and horror author from Melbourne, Australia. Her short story ‘Lady Loveday Investigates’ won three prizes at the 2018 Scarlet Stiletto Awards, including the Kerry Greenwood Prize for Best Malice Domestic. In 2017, she was longlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger award for her unpublished novel, Victorianoir. Her novella, Double Exposure, was released in print and e-book with Crime Factory and was longlisted for the Davitt Award for Australian women’s crime fiction.  She has been nominated for Aurealis and Ditmar Awards, shortlisted in the SQ Mag Short Story Contest for her horror tale Reef, and received an honorable mention in the Australian Horror Writers Association Shadows Awards for non-fiction criticism.  Her fiction traverses noir, horror, fantasy and the weird, exploring topics such as sinister cities, psychogeographies and the representation of women in fiction. 

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      Book preview

      Double Exposure - Kat Clay

      Nothing sold City Secrets like a dead dame. 

      Didn’t matter how she died, just that her beautiful body was on a bed surrounded by pills or blood or both. It was business. The Photographer shot divorcees in denial, sleazebags in sordid motels, estranged daughters dating dope fiends, mayoral indiscretions and the dead.

      He pushed open the half-glass, half-wood door with City Secrets in gold letters.

      It inspired a kind of class that wasn’t present beyond the door.

      Staff writer Glenn Johnson failed to remove the cigarette from his mouth before grunting hello. He tapped out an article with the persistency of a machine gun. Keith Bouton’s balding head bobbed through the venetian blinds in the editor’s office. The Photographer ducked into the darkroom to develop that morning’s pictures.

      He’d spent the early hours lodged on a fire escape waiting for Don Greely, head of Portvieux City’s planning council, to bump a broad in a downtown dive. The Photographer had to hand it to Greely – he was a no-shame bastard – he’d run down an alley naked to stop his wife from finding out about a mistress in pictorial format.

      Before he could take the 4x5 film out of the slide covers, noises came from behind the black curtain.

      Is he in here? Bouton shouted.

      Give me a minute, Keith. I’m developing the Greely pics.

      Without regard for the ‘darkroom in use’ sign, Bouton shoved in, turning on the lights. Damn the Greely pics. I got word on the 911 that there’s a room full of blood down on 1st just past Juniper’s. Landlord called it in. Here’s the address. No more details – guy sounds pretty shook up. If you go now, you might get there before the cops.

      Thankfully he hadn’t taken the film out of their cases. The Photographer put the undeveloped images back in his bag, grabbed some spare film and raced out of the darkroom without a word to Bouton.

      Fat Naked Man Runs Through Alley would have to wait.

      FOOT ON THE GAS AND through the sticks. The Photographer flicked on the windscreen wipers, slashing through the sheeting rain. Buildings grew on the city like spots on an alcoholic’s liver. The skyscrapers morphed into impressionist strokes by the sliding water on the window. A gray, overcast light filtered between the skyscrapers of 4th Avenue. A good day for portraits.

      Water congealed in the overflowing sidewalks. His car wheel sprayed mud on a soggy drunk who cursed him and curled back under cardboard. He wasn’t in downtown no more.

      The three sectors of Povie formed an unholy trinity. The financial district bordered by 4th and the encroaching estuary of the Bocalac River. To the South were the docks, sprawled in a U-shape around the peninsular. The boats dropped sailors like spores, who floated away into the dens and holes of Ol’ Povie’s Grottes.

      Fringe elements gravitated to the Grottes – illegal immigrants, unlicensed taxi drivers, perfume scammers, prostitutes, newspapers of dubious origins, drunkards and drug lords.

      The Photographer pulled onto the curb near Juniper’s supermarket and jogged across the busy street, holding his hand up to block the traffic.

      1417 1st Street, Unit 509. The heart of the Grottes, at the bottom of the peninsular, right near the main shipping terminal. About as far away as you could get from central booking without living in the water.

      Up two flights of stairs, paint moldering on the walls, the smell of damp and wood rot. The landlord stuck his head out of the front door, shouted What are you doing? You’re not the cops! A replay of the Povie Pitchers hitting a homer echoed up the stairwell.

      The Photographer took two stairs at a time, legs striding up the uncarpeted steps. A cheap walnut-stained door read 509. He turned the handle, and it opened.

      Crimson pools of blood congealed on the kitchen table, dripping onto the chair and the carpet. Blood cascaded towards the bedroom. Strokes decorated the floral wallpaper, cross hatched as if with a painter’s brush. Stepping carefully across the room, he entered the bedroom where the disheveled duvet dyed red.

      The blood ran thick on the furniture and thin on the walls. The Photographer tasted the iron in the air, the metallic taste of blood lingering on his tongue.

      It was the ultimate murder scene.

      Tick the box:

      Sexual pervert.

      Killer gone serial.

      All the elements of a great story.

      Except the body.

      There was no body.

      There wasn’t even a sign that a body had been removed. No slick dragging marks of sliding across the floor. Just blood.

      Could’ve been a pervert playing fun.

      Could’ve been a sick joke.

      Could’ve just been animal blood.

      The Photographer pinched his nose; the view seemed fuzzy. Understandable, he’d been up half the night crouched on a fire escape waiting for Greely’s girl.

      He blinked. Sirens in the distance.

      Still blurry. He shrugged. Might as well get some pictures – surely Bouton could string this into a story.

      Missing victim in room of blood.

      The bloody bedroom.

      In the ground glass back of the 4x5 Hallidax camera, the world appeared upside down. There was something there. He stretched the bellows to focus, past the four-meter mark, past the five. He focussed to infinity. A woman lay on the bed.

      Her face stared up from the bottom of the bed, her body lingering like a crucifixion. Body up, breasts pointed outwards from the heart. Gullet cut long and down; head tilted back over the end of the bed. Her brown curls matted with blood.

      He inserted the film. He pressed the shutter. The light burst in the small room.

      Her eyes bright then dull after the flash illuminated her soul one last time. A

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