Chapter 12: The Stains on the Glass

Night fell over Whitby, bringing with it a biting frost that turned the mud of Grape Lane into hard, rutted iron. Arthur sat alone in his rented workshop near the harbor, illuminated only by the dull red glow of his darkroom safety lamp.

The final glass plate rested on the wooden workbench before him.

He had not yet applied the protective amber varnish to the emulsion. To lock a wet-collodion negative permanently, a photographer had to warm the glass over an alcohol flame and pour a thin layer of tree-resin varnish across the silver film. Without varnish, the image remained raw, delicate, and susceptible to the air.

Arthur picked up his magnifying glass and leaned close to the glass pane.

Under the lens, the detail was terrifyingly sharp. The deck of the Dolphin was rendered in minute detail: the rot in the timber grain, the rusted iron bolts along the gunwale, the fraying hemp of the halyards. And standing along the rail were the twelve crewmen.

Their faces were no longer blurred smudges. The blinding flash of the magnesium powder had locked their features into the silver with microscopic precision. Arthur could see the cracked leather of Captain Vance’s boots, the salt-crusted weave of his heavy coat, and the dark, hollow sockets where his eyes should have been.

As Arthur watched, a cold drop of sweat dripped from his forehead onto the edge of the glass.

Click.

Arthur jerked back, nearly dropping his magnifying glass.

The sound had come from the plate itself—a tiny, sharp sound like ice cracking under a heavy tread.

He leaned down again, bringing the amber lamp closer. Across the surface of the negative, right beneath the feet of the standing specters, the gray silver collodion was beginning to shift. Tiny, fern-like tendrils of white frost were spreading outward from the center of the plate, creeping toward the edges of the glass.

Where the frost touched the silver image, the dark outlines of the sailors seemed to shudder.

"No," Arthur whispered. "It’s bound. The silver locked it."

He reached for his bottle of spirit varnish and the small brass alcohol burner. If he could seal the plate under a coat of glass-hard resin immediately, the air would be cut off entirely, stopping whatever chemical decay was occurring on the emulsion.

He lit the burner. The pale blue flame flickered, casting long, dancing shadows across the cramped pantry walls. Arthur picked up the heavy glass plate by its corners, holding it two inches above the flame to warm the glass—a necessary step, for if cold varnish touched cold glass, the resin would turn milky and ruin the image forever.

As the heat from the blue flame touched the underside of the pane, a thick, white vapor began to rise off the top surface of the plate.

It did not smell of heated glass or alcohol.

A suffocating, icy draft spilled out from the surface of the negative, extinguishing the alcohol burner instantly. The tiny darkroom was instantly filled with the suffocating stench of decaying sea kelp, stagnant brine, and ancient mud.

On the glass, the white frost patterns dissolved into droplets of clear, frigid sea water. The water gathered in the center of the plate, pooling over the image of Captain Vance’s face, before slowly beginning to flow upward against gravity, spilling over the top edge of the glass onto Arthur’s bare thumb.