Gradient Mask not working?


I created a mask with a gradient rectangle to fade out an image but the transparency stops at this strange limit
that it seems to have come up against. What should be fully transparent is a translucent ghost of itself at best. What should I do to fix this?
Also, unrelated, but do people get paid to keep the adobe support community so lively, or are you guys incentivized to be on duty answering our questions? Whatever the case, it is pretty amazing!
