The photograph 2/9

He went across to a nearby high bank and climbing up, sat down with his feet dangling over the edge and had a good look round. The pond was a perfectly normal mucky looking natural pond, with lots of weed and a few small branches floating on the surface. He stood up on the bank and could just make out a small stream trickling out at the end furthest from him, before it disappeared amongst the trees. Oh well, at least next time he followed her he’d be able to come straight here and see where she went.

Adam remembered that when he’d been a small boy, he’d often come out to ponds like this with his friends and they’d had a wonderful time trying to catch sticklebacks. Very often they’d find newts as well and of course there was always frog-spawn in season. They used to bring home jars full of the stuff, although very little of it had ever turned into frogs. Since there was nothing else to do now that he’d lost track of the kid, he decided to take a few pictures. Partly because he couldn’t remember his wife saying anything about a pond in the woods and partly just to remind himself of the good times he’d had as a child.

He took three photographs, starting at the left hand end of the pond and worked his way across to the right, making sure that each one overlapped slightly so that the final set of pictures would show the whole pond. Then he got down from the bank and walked over to the waters’ edge.

‘I wonder if there are any newts in here, I’ve heard that they’re supposed to be dying out these days!’

He knelt down on the bank and looked into the water. It was beautifully clear and he could see the bottom just a foot or so below him. A rather puzzled look crossed his face. The water shouldn’t be as clear as this in a natural pond. He looked out across the surface, surely all this had been as dirty as it ought to have been, when he’d been looking at it from the raised bank behind him. But now the water appeared to be perfectly clear for a radius of ten feet or so, with him at the centre of the circle.

He stood up and went back to the raised bank before having another look. Just as dirty as he remembered! He walked slowly forwards keeping his eyes on the edge of the pond. Sure enough, the water slowly became clearer, the weeds and surface scum disappearing as he as he got nearer. It was rather like cleaning the dirty cobwebs from an old window and finding everything clean and shiny underneath. Something very strange was going on here.

Then he remembered to have a look at the images on his camera; it was a digital type that his wife had given him for his last birthday. Of course with a digital camera you can look at your pictures as soon as they’re taken and if they’re not as good as you’d hoped, the image can be deleted and retaken, making sure that every picture is exactly what is wanted.

He sat down on a conveniently placed rock and turned a knob on his camera to ‘playback’, to see what he’d got.