The Maid from the Ash:
A Life in Pictures
by Gwendolyn Kiste
Illustration by Luke Spooner |
The Maid from the Ash: A Life in Pictures
Museum
of Postmodern Art
Limited
Engagement
Thank
you for joining us at the opening of The
Maid from the Ash: A Life in Pictures. This program will guide you through
each of our eighteen exhibits. For the sake of other visitors in the museum as
well as for your own safety, we caution against any use of photography, flash
or otherwise. During the installation of this collection, we learned too well
that some of the photographs prefer if you don’t stare too long. So please keep
this in mind and do be courteous during your stay with us.
Exhibit
1: “The Maid from the Ash” (Polaroid Instant, Forensic photographer)
This is the first known image of the Maid
from the Ash, taken the day she was discovered at a ramshackle abode in rural
Pennsylvania. In the picture, two uniformed men escort her away after a fire,
but she drags her feet and stares back at the place she called home. Due to the
widespread commotion of the police and fire trucks, nearly everything in the
picture is blurred. Only her eyes, eternally gazing heavenward, are in sharp
focus.
It
started with a 911 call. A hiker reported smoke coming from an area of the
forest believed to be uninhabited. Emergency services arrived at the scene of a
two-story shack surrounded in a ring of flames. Not until they extinguished the
blaze, a feat that took nearly an hour, did they find the girl sitting on the
front porch, her dark eyes the color of dusk. While the grass and surrounding
property were scorched to the salt, she and the house were untouched except for
the ash.
“She
wasn’t scared,” said the sheriff, retired by the time we interviewed him. “She
wasn’t anything at all. Just stone-still and serene, like a body preserved in a
morgue.”
In a
melee that appeared to annoy the girl, the paramedics checked her vitals (heart
rate 80, blood pressure 90/60) as officials all agreed the house had no
business in that location, that no one had applied for the requisite building
permits, that nobody—not even a park ranger—frequented that area, which was
inaccessible besides a dirt path that flooded six months of the year.
When
they asked the girl why she was there, she shrugged and said, “It’s my home.”
But
it wasn’t much to speak of. The forensics team described it as “a lopsided
sepulcher.”
The house—if you could call it that—was
spackled together with lark feathers and sinewy thatch and ancient birch faded
to a silvery gray. Not one nail or proper board on the whole property, wrote
one of the Philadelphia-based investigators called in after the fire. Certainly not a place fit for a young girl.
The
team’s initial tests uncovered higher-than-normal calcium deposits in the walls,
leading to early rumors that the house was constructed of human bones, but further
examination all but proved the structure was banal in origin.
(The
fire itself was later determined to be the result of heat lightning, which dovetailed
with the girl’s own crude description of “a great fire from the sky.”)
This
photograph, circulated by the police in hopes of uncovering the girl’s identity,
appeared in the local newspaper and quickly went viral, eventually gracing numerous
national magazine covers with the headline, Who
is this Maid from the Ash? Issues that featured the photograph performed
unexpectedly well, thanks to eager readers determined to solve the mystery
themselves.
Still,
even with the assistance of enthusiastic housewives and sleuthing college
students, they never found her parents or learned anything else about the girl.
According to all extant records (the sheriff’s office suffered an inexplicable basement
fire six months before the debut of this exhibition, so files are limited), no
official search was ever conducted to locate her family members. Likewise, she
never asked for them or mentioned their names.
“It
was as if,” the sheriff said, “she was born from those flames.”
Exhibit
2: “Day in Court” (Cell phone snapshot, posted on the Gabby Gossipmonger website)
In this blurry image taken on a 2009-model flip
phone, the girl is seen exiting the courthouse after the judge’s ruling on her
emancipation status. Despite the image’s pixilated quality and the crowd of
hundreds surrounding her with cameras, she is easy to spot, off to the left
side of the frame, her hair a mussed curtain across her eyes.
No certificate
of live birth could be located for the girl, so after the fire, the police took
her to a local physician who determined she was no more than sixteen. This
prompted juvenile services to enter an official case file under the name of
Jane Doe. (The aforementioned doctor would not respond to requests on precisely
how he made that determination of age, nor would he release any of her medical
records for this installation.)
At
her hearing, the judge had to demand order six times to quiet the packed courtroom.
By this point, the public couldn’t get enough of the Maid from the Ash. A crowdfunding
page was set up in her honor (donations peaked at $415,674, though whether or
not those monies were ultimately sent to the girl is unclear), and in a recent online
search, we located more than two-hundred fan pages on Facebook, Twitter, and
other social media set up in her honor, most of which have long since been
abandoned.
The
hearing, which permitted bystanders direct access to the girl for the first
time, proved irresistible. Dozens camped out at every motel, spare room, and
rest stop in the Central Valley.
“It’s
not every day you have a chance to make a difference like this,” said one
Missouri housewife who had towed her three children to the courtroom that day.
“We need to help this poor, young creature.”
At
the girl’s request, the court was ruling that day on whether or not she was fit
to take care of herself. But the judge had apparently made his ruling long in
advance.
“Why in
the world at the age of sixteen should we allow you to live on your own?” he
asked, glowering at her over the edges of his little square glasses.
“Because
I want to be on my own,” she said. “I can cook and clean and forage. I survived
just fine by myself.”
“Until
the fire. You nearly died.”
The
girl shook her head. “The house wouldn’t let anything hurt me.”
“Houses
can’t help you, dear,” the judge said, and the crowd chortled in agreement. “We
have to give you somewhere to belong.”
“What
if I don’t belong with you?” she said, but her words were lost among the
crashing of a gavel and the screech-owl cries of a crowd certain they’d done
the right thing.
Exhibit
3: “The Maid from the Ash: One Year Later” (Print article, The Observer News Gazette)
A human-interest piece documenting the
girl’s progress, released on the anniversary of the fire. Accompanying the article
are three black-and-white photographs of her sitting with her latest family,
the Whitcombs. Her new mother and father are all dazzling smiles, but the girl has
no expression at all. She simply sits at the far edge of the room on a
three-legged ottoman, her lips twisted to one side and her eyes set on the
ceiling, studying something that isn’t there.
By
now, the girl was on her third family. She had fled the previous two placements
in Pennsylvania, and during one escape, she’d made it as far as the county line
near her former home before the police caught her. When they demanded to know
why she ran, all she said was she had somewhere to be.
In an
attempt to curb further flights, juvenile services moved her to upstate New York,
several day’s walk from her property. At the time of this article’s release,
she had a new hometown of Ogdensburg and a new name: ‘Flannery.’
“It was
important to call her something,” her latest mom Jeanette is quoted as saying.
“She needed to feel like a whole person, a real
person.”
The
reporter asked the girl if she liked her new moniker, but Flannery only
shrugged.
“It’s
as good as any other,” she said.
Her
new parents blathered on about school supplies and school clothes and
Flannery’s new private school, all while repeating that the public had not
forgotten the Maid from the Ash.
“Not
a week goes by that someone doesn’t come up to the door, sometimes whole
families, eager for a photograph with her,” said her father, who the reporter described
with words like loquacious and beaming. (However, we found him to be
neither—he refused to participate in this exhibit in any way, having relocated
to Utah following his divorce from Jeanette last year).
“And
she photographs so well,” Jeanette said, smiling incandescently (again, the reporter’s word of choice). “Everybody
tells us how beautiful she is.”
Exhibit
4: “A New Beginning” (Webcam image from the Whitcombs’ computer)
Flannery stands against a blank wall in an
unfurnished bedroom, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes lined in liquid
green. This was her debut post to social media, and by the end of her first
week online, she boasted over 50,000 followers, a number that at the height of her
popularity would top out at 10 million.
This
image appeared two weeks after the previous article hit newsstands, and curiosity
about the Maid from the Ash surged once again. Given her previous reticence,
the precise reason why Flannery became interested in an online presence is
unknown, and debate exists on whether she wanted this image taken or if the
Whitcombs cajoled her into it.
In our
interview, Jeanette insisted the idea was all Flannery’s. “She wanted to meet
other people. I think she hoped that one day, she might find someone like her.”
And
though it probably wasn’t who she intended, she did find plenty of people. In
her first month online, Flannery uploaded twenty-five more photos (all of which
were eventually deleted along with this one, printed here as a screencap). After
every new post, the comments and likes poured in.
“Everybody
just adored our little girl,” Jeanette said brightly.
In
those early weeks, fans reached out repeatedly to Flannery, and while she was
never gushing, she did respond to many of their questions. An example of such
an exchange—this time during an Ask-Me-Anything chat—is archived below.
#
ashfan4E: hi, flannery! so great to meet
you! i’ve been following you since the beginning! super glad you’ve got a
family now. and a name! WOOT! do you like your new home?
flimflan: I guess it’s okay, but I liked my
old house better. I can’t wait to turn eighteen so I can go back there.
teamflannery: OMG SO AMAZIN TO TALK WITH U,
FLANNERY! I’M UR BIGGEST FAN!!! SO I’VE GOT A QUESTION FOR U! IF U COULD HAVE
ONE THING IN THE WORLD, WHAT WOULD BE UR WISH???
flimflan: To return home.
teamflannery: BUT THERES NO POWER OR
COMPUTER THERE, RIGHT?!?!?!?! HOW WOULD U TALK WITH US?
ashfan4E: yeah, we totally cant live without
you! so... what’s your second greatest wish? ;)
flimflan: That people would stop carving off
pieces of my house. It makes my chest ache every time they do.
#
“She
would invent the strangest tales,” Jeanette said when we asked about the last
comment. “Carving off pieces of the house? We never told her that, and she
hadn’t been back there since they rescued her. Why would she say such a thing?”
Exhibit
5: “The House that Flannery Built” (Digital photograph for a college student’s
senior project, taken approximately the same timeframe as Flannery’s
Ask-Me-Anything chat)
The colorless house stands sullenly in the
shadows of dusk. In the thirteen months since the fire, the property remained
more or less the same (the scorched grounds never grew back), but the ring around
the house seemingly protected it from decay. However, if you examine the image
closely—we’ve provided a magnifying glass—you might notice what look like small
notches on the corners of the house where it appears as if fingers dug out bits
of the feather and birch.
In
the year after the fire, police chased away scores of fans who made their macabre
pilgrimages to the property. After he noticed trails of shredded wood along the
foundation, the sheriff questioned one of the girls he caught there.
“This
is a holy place for us,” she said to him, fumbling with her oversized bag. “But
we would never take anything as a souvenir. Never.”
“There
wasn’t much we could do to stop them,” the sheriff told us. “The house legally
belonged to nobody. It would be like telling a kid not to carve their initials into
a tree trunk. You can try, but it’s almost impossible to enforce.”
The
most intrepid fans would stay on site overnight. No one, however, ever made it
the whole evening inside the house. Instead, they would turn up at the
sheriff’s office at three in the morning to report a distant weeping in the
walls. When we inquired about the wails, the sheriff waved us off. He claimed
he investigated multiple times and could attribute it only to the wind.
“The
woods are a haunted place at night,” he said. “People think they can hear God
himself speaking.”
Exhibit
6: “Test Shots” (Twenty-five slide photos of Flannery, the best images marked
with red grease pencil)
In her first semiprofessional photographs,
Flannery wears a carnation pink dress that is too loose around the waist and
too tight around the shoulders, giving the illusion that her body is convex,
the inverse of an hourglass. She doesn’t smile in the images, and her eyes are
obscured by a blur the photographer could never explain.
(Special Note: Please ignore the significant
charring around the edges of the slides. This damage was due to a projector
overheating when we were reviewing the images prior to this installation.)
After
the success of her social media posts, a fashion photographer in Albany contacted
the Whitcombs about submitting pictures of Flannery to major modeling agencies
in New York.
Little
is known about this particular shoot, and even the photographer, who has since given
up his camera and is now an accountant in Florida, had almost no insight.
She didn’t say much, he recently
recalled via email. But she didn’t have
time to talk. Her parents were always hovering on set and offering “helpful”
suggestions. Once, when they were out of the room for a smoke break, she did
mention to me how she was counting the days until she turned eighteen and could
escape.
“Modeling
was a great way for her to meet people,” Jeanette said. “And remember: that’s
what she wanted. It was always her choice.”
Within
two weeks of the shoot, Ionize Modeling Agency contacted the Whitcombs and
signed Flannery that day. She started work within the month.
I felt bad for the kid, the former
photographer wrote in closing. She’d been
through enough, and I’ve always wondered if my photographs only made it worse.
But I was trying to help, you know? I thought it would make her happy. How was
I supposed to know it would turn out this way?
Exhibit
7: “Haute” (Tear sheet from Fashion Heir
Magazine, taken by photographer Ray Hendrickson)
A stone-faced Flannery glides down the
runway in a floor-length dress constructed of peacock feathers. (Our apologies
about the condition of this exhibit; we believe the heavy wrinkling is from
water or possibly heat damage.)
Following
a series of promotional jobs—including an all-night appearance at Times Square
that sent twenty-seven of her overzealous, dehydrated fans to the hospital—Flannery
made her runway debut at Fashion Week. This was perhaps her happiest since the
fire, not because of the job, but because of the date. The next week, she was
turning eighteen—or what the court had ruled was her eighteenth birthday.
“This
is my first fashion show,” she said to the reporters before the event, “and it
will be my last too. So enjoy it now!”
She was
unaware of the Whitcombs’ recent (and unusually private) conversations with the
court.
“Unfortunately,
she wasn’t making enough progress,” Jeanette told us. “She was still such a
restless girl. And withdrawn too. At night, she would murmur in her sleep that
the wolves were at the door. How could we abandon her in that condition?”
Jeanette shook her head. “I couldn’t fail her like that.”
To
ensure Flannery’s safety, the court ruled that the Whitcombs could continue
their conservatorship of her for an indefinite period.
“Or
until she was better,” Jeanette repeated three times in our interview with her.
“We only wanted her to get better.”
Just
before the show, the press heard a single scream backstage, presumed to be
Flannery learning of her parents’ subterfuge, though this was never confirmed.
After
the event, no one saw her leave, but the following morning, during a lightning storm,
she crawled out her second-story bedroom window. It was too far for her to
reach the wilds of Pennsylvania, but that didn’t matter. She ran. For a hundred
miles, through thickets and along back roads, she ran. They found her two days
later tangled in briars, unconscious and barefoot and hypothermic. Her recovery
took almost six weeks.
During
her convalescence, one fan asked how she was doing. Flannery was very clear on
her intentions:
flimflan: I don’t care what they do to me. I
won’t ever stop trying to get home.
Exhibit
8: “Everything to Dust” (Blurry Smartphone Image, Anonymous fan)
Flannery’s property at dusk. The house is
gone, and in its wake, all that’s left is a pile of rubble.
The
fans knew what they needed to do.
“It
was in her best interest,” said the individual who submitted this picture. “As
long as that house was standing, it would always torture her. We had no choice.
We had to set her free.”
At
first, the flash mob tried to burn it, but their matches flitted out, leaving
behind only a lonesome stench of sulfur. So they opted instead for their old
standby: they disassembled the house, piece by consecrated piece. With over one
hundred people gathered there, it took less than an hour.
Exhibit
9: “The Cover” (Film Stock, Fashion Heir
Magazine)
An extreme close-up of Flannery’s face. Her
cheeks smolder with a preternatural rosiness, and black tears from her dark eye
makeup drip down to the curve of her jaw.
That
same afternoon, Flannery was on set in New York for a cover shoot, working with
Ray Hendrickson, the same photographer who had taken her picture at the fashion
show (he had specifically requested to work with her again). At the moment her house
was turned to sawdust (approximately 1:57 p.m. Eastern Standard Time), Flannery
let out a banshee-wail and collapsed in her locked dressing room. When they
broke down the door, they found her curled in the corner, covered in angry red
scratch marks, and repeating one word over and over: wolves. Her injuries were later attributed to the sharp edges of
her acrylic nails that the makeup artist applied earlier in the day, although
the depth and shape were not consistent.
Jeanette
begged them to curtail the shoot (“Under those circumstances, no normal person
would have made her continue”), but Ray insisted on taking just a few images.
“He
claimed her pain was too beautiful to waste,” Jeanette said.
So
they swathed Flannery’s skin in pancake foundation to conceal her wounds, and
they shoved her beneath the blaring lights.
And without
a word, she posed for them, her figure almost liquid, almost unreal against the
flimsy paper backdrop. She moved with purpose, with a clarity all the previous
photos lacked. Like an angel, some said at the time. Like a demon, some say now.
Although
we don’t recommend it, if you look closely, they say you can see a ring of flames
in her eyes, but Jeanette assured us that it was only a trick of the light.
Exhibit
10: “Real Me” (B&W self-portrait, posted to social media)
Flannery stands alone in a field, dressed in
a tight sheathe. Her eyes are not turned upward, and she’s not edging bashfully
to one side. Instead, she’s in the center of the frame, and she’s staring
straight into the camera. Into you.
Following
the destruction of her house, Flannery vanished from public view for almost six
months. The Whitcombs said she needed time to recuperate (“She didn’t stop
crying for weeks,” Jeanette confided), but other reports suggested Flannery was
perhaps not such a delicate hothouse flower. Among conspiracy theorists is the
claim that she spent her sabbatical in deep meditation, not leaving her bedroom
for weeks at a time, sleeping and eating and living in the dark.
When at
last she reemerged, it was with this picture captioned, “Real Me” (hence the title
of this exhibit). Nobody knew where the photograph was taken or with what
camera, but overnight, it became her most liked image—and perhaps her most
controversial.
“Everybody
was so glad to have her back,” the sheriff said, “that we didn’t want to bring
it up.”
What
they chose not to discuss at the time was the effect of this particular
picture. In the weeks after the image materialized, thousands of fans reported
a rash of headaches, nausea, and blurred vision as well as complaints about the
inexplicable scents of campfire and earth in their homes. If you examine this
exhibit too long even now, the room might suddenly smell of flames and sorrow
and childhoods lost long ago.
So perhaps
it’s best to move along.
Exhibit
11: “The Stew of My Blood, Bone, and Heart” (Twelve self-portraits, first
appeared in Conway’s Haute Style)
In a dim room, Flannery poses in a black
dress and a flowing black veil. In the first picture, she stands against the
far wall, no more than a tiny inkblot. But as the images progress, she creeps
closer to the camera until in the final picture, her face fills up the whole frame,
and all you can discern is a single eye, draped in gauzy chiffon, watching you.
This
strange photo collection appeared in the offices of Conway’s Haute Style one morning, bearing no address of any sort.
The envelope was inscribed with a simple note: For Your Consideration.
Upon
the pictures’ release, critics vacillated wildly in their critiques, with some
calling the series “overwrought” and “childish” while others gleefully
christened Flannery “the Cindy Sherman of the macabre.” Even Conway’s was initially skeptical.
“We
weren’t in the habit of publishing such crude selfies,” the senior editor told
us, as she sipped chocolat chaud as
thick as mud at a mostly abandoned Madison Avenue cafe. “But something made us
change our minds. She made us change
our minds.”
Of
course, now it’s easy to understand the appeal.
(WARNING:
We would prefer if you proceeded now to the next exhibit. Even among those with
no preexisting conditions, these pictures bring considerable risk; for example,
several otherwise healthy college interns became light-headed during this
installation and could not continue with us despite their best intentions.)
We
know you’re still here. We wish you weren’t.
Fine.
For
the strong-stomached, please inhale once, and a perfume of wintergreen will
make your eyes heavy and your skin buzz. The room might spin for an instant,
and your head might loll like a useless ragdoll.
Inhale
twice, and every sinew in your body will hang heavy on your bones, as the air twists
with the scent of rotten thorn apple. You might not have realized you knew what
thorn apple smelled like, but now you’ll never forget it again.
We don’t
recommend inhaling a third time. Instead, please move on to the video room located
to your right.
Exhibit
12: “A Maid Looks Back” (Footage on loan from the Smithsonian)
A never-before-screened documentary
featuring Flannery. The interviewer is Ray Hendrickson, who had been desperate
to work with her again after their cover shoot. This documentary was his
brainchild, since it provided him an intimate opportunity to speak with her.
The running time is a full hour, and we
understand that given the recent harsh weather, you might want to be home
before dark, so we’ve included the transcript of our favorite scene below.
#
Flannery:
Rather rude, don’t you think? Destroying a person’s home? I can’t fathom
anything so devilish as that.
Ray (from behind the camera): I guess. But
you were about to tell me about that day the police found you.
Flannery
(smiles to herself): Yes, I was,
wasn’t I? (She twists her lips to one
side.) I wasn’t ready for them. What happened with the fire proved that. I
was young, and the young are always such fools. If I’d been ready enough, I would
have hidden.
Ray:
And how would you have done that?
Flannery:
Maybe I would have disguised myself as a great elm or been as invisible as the
wind. (She hesitates.) But I wasn’t
strong then. I was trying to be strong, but I failed.
Ray:
And now? Are you stronger now?
(Flannery says nothing. She merely shifts her
eyes upward and smiles to herself again, as the camera dissolves to black.)
Exhibit
13: “From the Char-Black Ash” (Smartphone picture, Courtesy of the sheriff)
An image of the grounds where the house once
stood, one year after its destruction. While the police received no reports of
vandalism on the property, and Flannery was nowhere near the area, the house is
no longer a heap of shredded rubble. Instead, there is a vague outline of a mud
foundation, and pale tree limbs pile in the place where the porch once stood.
The grass remains scorched in a ring, and when compared to the previous images
of the property, you will notice that the decomposing land casts a wider girth,
spreading beyond the initial border of the fire to the edges of the frame and
beyond. This blight, however, does not touch the renewed framework of the
house.
In
the weeks after this photograph was taken, the rubble grew several feet higher.
No
longer were there sporadic reports of an unknown individual weeping. Instead,
police fielded at least a dozen calls a week from hikers in the nearby forest
who claimed to hear a gentle thrum rising from the ground, as though a sleeping
child was singing or murmuring to herself.
“We
could never locate the source,” the sheriff said. “We wanted to believe it was just
the wind spooking city folk who didn’t know what to expect out there.”
It is
also worth noting that this was the first season the crops in surrounding areas
withered on the vine or refused to ripen altogether. As you now know, it was
not the last.
Exhibit
14: “From Tears to True Love: Ash Maid Meets Her Match!” (Photocopy of two-page tabloid spread)
An article about Flannery’s love life,
accompanied by four full-color photographs. In each one, she’s smiling next to Ray.
After
the documentary, Ray repeatedly contacted the Whitcombs until they agreed to
allow him to take Flannery to dinner.
“He
was such a huge fan of hers,” Jeanette said, smiling. “He had all her press
clippings.”
(Perhaps
in an attempt at diplomacy, Jeanette never used the words that some of
Flannery’s fans chose to describe him, which included obsessed, creepy, and stalker-ish.)
At
first, Flannery wasn’t too keen on dating, but Jeanette said she eventually
thawed to the idea.
“When
she learned he was from Pennsylvania too, that gave them something to talk
about, especially with everything happening there at the time,” she said in
reference to the dying crops in Clinton, Tioga, and Potter counties.
As
one date gave way to dozens, it’s impossible to know how Flannery felt about
this relationship—unless you think she’s speaking to you now. Take a moment to
lean closer to this exhibit, and you might notice how her gaze slides slowly
away from her beau, as she stares to the sky, her eyes as cold as the ancient
dead. Then she’ll smile to herself, a specter of a grin, and you might think
you’ve gone crazy.
(But
don’t worry. You aren’t the only one who sees it.)
In all
these photographs, the Whitcombs are in the background, chaperoning the young
couple. At this point, despite having reached the age of twenty-one, Flannery
remained under conservatorship. Technically, even now, she’s still under
conservatorship. These days, though, there’s not much left to conserve.
Exhibit
15: “Something Borrowed” (Tear sheet from White
Weddings Magazine; please note
the sidebar titled “What to Do if Your Wedding Spot is in the New Dust Bowl”)
An aerial shot taken during Flannery’s
wedding reception. She lingers alone in the center of the crowd, arrayed in her
embroidered satin gown and a lace train that stalks a full ten-feet behind her,
like a shackle or a leash. Beneath the incandescent glow of the white string
lights, she could be a ghost hiding in plain sight.
After
six months of dating, Flannery and Ray were married at a private estate in
upstate New York. This is the sole photograph from the wedding that we could
locate. At Flannery’s request, no cell phones or personal cameras were
permitted at the ceremony, and her husband refused to release any images from
his own collection.
“Those
pictures are ours,” he said when we contacted him for this exhibition. “They’re
not for prying eyes.”
Despite
repeated phone calls and emails (and even one painfully thwarted house visit),
that was the only quote we could glean from him. Since the wedding and the
failed excursion that followed it, he quit the fashion industry and relocated
to the hills of Oregon where even the trees are different enough not to remind
him of her.
Exhibit
16: “Moon of Honey” (Image recovered from the memory card on Ray’s camera,
donated to us by a magazine assistant who prefers to remain anonymous for fear
of litigation)
Flannery stands among the Ringing Rocks of
Pennsylvania, wearing a white cotton dress, and flashing a smile so bright it’s
nearly blinding.
This is the last confirmed photograph of
her.
Following
the wedding, Flannery insisted on doing another photo shoot with her groom.
“She
was ready to get back to work,” Jeanette confirmed.
For
their first editorial together as husband and wife, Flannery requested to visit
the area near her groom’s birthplace. It was the first time she’d returned to
her home state since joining the Whitcombs in New York. The Pennsylvania Tourism
Bureau, desperate for any and all attention since the farmland plight had overtaken
a twenty-county radius, welcomed her with open arms. After all, the return of
the Maid from the Ash—one of the state’s greatest exports—was a welcome
occasion.
When we
asked if they worried about Flannery being near her former property, Jeanette bloomed
a hundred shades of red.
“Why
should we have been concerned? There were thirty people on the set. Everyone was
watching her, especially her husband. She had a new life. She was happy.”
“Besides,”
Jeanette added, red splotches lingering on her cheeks, “the location was a four-hour
drive away from where they found her. How could she possibly make it home on
foot?”
Of
the six assistants we interviewed who were on set, everyone agrees the day started
out humdrum enough: Ray conducted a couple quick light tests before they
commenced the photos. And that’s when it all goes gossamer.
Though
nobody can remember quite what happened next, they all agree on this: with Flannery’s
every smile, every tilt of her head, every toss of her hair, their vision
blurred, and they found themselves fading out. They leaned against one another
to catch their breath. Then the aromas of campfire and wintergreen and regret
filled them like empty hourglasses, and they wilted, the same as the fallen wheat
of Pennsylvania. Together, they curled in the laps of trees, and slept a sleep
so deep and dreamless that it might as well have been the slumber of the long
interred.
“She
knew what she was doing,” said the assistant who donated this photograph. “She
probably had it planned out from the first time she heard Ray was from
Pennsylvania.”
Though
the memory was filmy, the last thing anyone can remember seeing was Flannery with
a grin on her face, her feet quivering off the ground.
“What
a sacrilegious lie,” Jeanette said. “My girl wasn’t a witch.”
Perhaps
she wasn’t, but what we do know is that by the time the crew stirred awake, their
heads stuffed with gauze, dusk had ushered in a lightning storm, and Flannery
was gone.
Exhibit
17: “Going Home” (Film Stock, Anonymous Photographer)
This is the only image in the collection
that we cannot substantiate as Flannery. However, it was taken at sundown on
the day of the failed photo shoot, and the figure in the image is wearing the
same white cotton dress. Her back is turned to us, which makes her identity
forever a mystery.
Though sharp at the edges, the center of the
image is blurred, so that her dress and the slant of the fading afternoon light
create the illusion that she is becoming one with the house.
A
male hiker, who preferred not to be named, was photographing the wilting
wildlife when Flannery materialized among a patch of weeds.
“Like
she dropped straight from the sky,” he said with a laugh.
Over
a ten-minute phone call with us, he explained how he didn’t recognize her.
“I
don’t read magazines,” he said from his home in California. “That tabloid junk
is the undoing of the world.”
Other
than her entrance, nothing about their interaction was inexplicable.
“She just
smiled at me,” he said. “Then she walked toward the house. The sight was so
pretty and peaceful that I couldn’t help but take a photo of her to capture
that moment.”
The
property has been subsequently closed off due to the blight that’s overtaken
all of Pennsylvania and spread due north into New York and beyond. But that
day, the man said the forest was as beautiful as she was.
“No
rot, at least nothing that could detract from her.”
He
left before she came out again. “Something told me she would be okay, that she
would be safe there.”
He
hesitated on the phone, a wave of lonesome static crackling between us.
“She
belonged there,” he said before abruptly ending the call.
Exhibit
18: “Epilogue” (Digital Photography, Original for this installation)
A recent image of the house. The Army Corps
of Engineers has cordoned off the area with electric fencing, so the closest we
were permitted was a quarter mile away. Even with a high caliber telephoto
lens, the house remains obscured in shadows and strange angles. From this
distance, it looks like a tower of thorns.
Flannery—or
whatever name she prefers now—has not been spotted in over two years.
“We’re
terrified she died in there,” Jeanette said to us, but her voice snapped apart
as though she was more terrified her once-daughter didn’t die at all. (We recently
attempted a follow-up interview with Jeanette, but her phone had been
disconnected without notice.)
Unfortunately,
with no sighting of Flannery and no access to her house, we couldn’t report
much from the property. But one thing we noticed: the ground there no longer weeps
or murmurs. Now it laughs without reservation, laughs with the echo of a voice
you might recognize, a voice we wish we could forget.
In
the sheriff’s last conversation with us (like many others in the region, he has
since moved West with his family to escape the ever-growing decay), he shook
his head when asked for any parting wisdom.
“Maybe
I was wrong before,” he said. “Maybe she didn’t come from those flames. Maybe
it was always the other way around.”
Thank
you again for attending The Maid from the
Ash: A Life in Pictures. On your way home, please take care in your travels.
Given the unseasonably warm temperatures, meteorologists predict the recent heat
lightning will continue throughout the evening, possibly bleeding into next week
or even next month.
Or perhaps
there will always be lightning now.
Gwendolyn Kiste is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, from Trepidatio Publishing; And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, from JournalStone; and the dark fantasy novella, Pretty Marys All in a Row, from Broken Eye Books. Her short fiction has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, Daily Science Fiction, Shimmer, Interzone, and LampLight, among others. Her limited edition chapbook, The Invention of Ghosts, is forthcoming from Nightscape Press. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, two cats, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com
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