Ivory (26 page)

Martin studied
each in a display of interest that he forgot was lost on Ebony. “It
must have been awful to lose them.” Martin clutched at empathy to
stay the execution of his presence.

“
It was. After their deaths I was half the man I
was.”

“
Your art is what kept you going?”

“
In a way. I sold my house and travelled Europe, moving from
village to village making toys to earn my keep and for the children
that gave me their precious time and interest. Seeing the pleasure
in their faces was a glimpse of the joy I could have had with
Emily. It was enough to keep me sane and alive.”

In the largest of the paintings, the woman was seated but
accompanied by a young black man with a soft slender face and a
thin but solid framed body, standing proud behind and beside her.
Ebony’s conspicuous chocolate eyes were surreally intense, but
their stare was forgotten when he found a carved scrawl in the
paint;
‘My darling M. Love, your
Ebony.’
“I think you are mistaken though.
These can’t be you and your wife – the date on them…”
‘1768.’

Ebony stood
like a statue for some time, leading Martin to question whether he
had heard him. “There is no mistake.”

Martin laughed
spontaneously to avoid expressing the emotion that swelled urgently
in his chest into his neck and swelling through veins into his
temples. “You are expecting me to believe that you are over
three-hundred years old?”

“
I expect nothing.”

Martin
clenched his fists to stop them from trembling and paced from foot
to foot, his face burning. “This is ridiculous,” he exclaimed as
evenly as he could manage. “You are living in a fantasy world!”

“
Your judgement is not asked for and your understanding is not
my burden. You are a trespasser and I demand that you leave my home
this moment,” he growled clutching up his staff before him like a
brandished weapon.

“
Oh, don’t worry – Ivory has made a joke out of me and now you
do the same, so I am going.” Martin stalked towards the door, his
sudden movement and direction startled Ebony and he flattened
himself against the door to allow Martin to pass. Martin denied a
spontaneous urge to sweep Ebony’s creations from the cabinet that
ran beside him as he went. It would achieve nothing, except destroy
things Ivory cherished. His instinctive concern for her frustrated
him further.

The sudden
change from carpet within Ebony’s house to the hard flooring of his
own kitchen caused Martin to be unsure about his footing and
stagger momentarily across the room, absently punch drunk from his
memory’s assault on him. The drawer that was still in his grip came
free of the kitchen unit and the weight forced it out of his hand.
It cracked the tiles on impact and spilled its contents in a
cacophony of noise. He had fought his own way free this time. His
memory was playing out yesterday’s events in a linear path that he
did not want to follow to its conclusion. The frustration from his
encounter with Ebony was swollen within his chest as though he had
relived the experience. In the corner of his eye he glimpsed
something low to the ground move past the door. In the second it
took him to react and look up, there was nothing to be seen. He
clutched the rolling pin firmly in his hand and drew the biggest
knife from the selection in the block and cautiously headed back
into the hall. He was sure the moving shape that he had seen had
headed into the back room where he needed to be.

Chapter Twenty One

Martin peered
into the shadowy room. Once again, apart from the mess he had made
in his desperate attempt to break the glass, the room looked as
unassuming and without threat as it always had. He gingerly stepped
into the room and his attention was snatched by the sound of a fit
of scampering from behind the sofa. Martin navigated to the French
doors by going around the outskirts of the room and gave the sofa a
wide berth.

Checking
around him to ensure that he was immediately safe, he planted the
point of the knife against the window and drew the rolling pin
behind him to strike. White fire tore through his mind causing his
aim to shift. He smashed the solid pin against his own hand, but
the pain in his head anaesthetised him against the blow. He knew
the head pain meant remembrance but he did not want to remember. He
rushed through the tapestry of memories he had used before, took
dizzying turns in the corridors of his mind. Childhood. Family.
Adulthood. Adolescence. Work. Friends. The pain lashed whip-like
across the tender tissue of his brain, forcing him to his knees.
All corridors seemed to lead to the same place, but he persevered.
Family holidays. Dusty Sunday school song books. Giving
lectures…

Following
Ebony’s command to leave, Martin reached the front door. He
realised he had now been in both reception rooms on the ground
floor of Ebony and Ivory’s home and he couldn’t recall seeing a
workshop in the garden from the rooms he had visited. Ebony’s
workspace had to be upstairs. With little thought Martin ran up the
staircase, narrowed from its use as shelves to support books and
papers, while Ebony bellowed for him to stop over the cacophony of
Martin’s feet against the bare wood of the stairs. He lanced his
staff through the banisters to trip him. His reflex had been quick,
but Martin was three steps ahead and climbing two at a time. “Curse
you!”

Martin threw
open the first door that he found on the gloomy drab landing, but
guessed from the layout that it would be the bathroom and although
he was glad of the cleansing daylight that spilled out from within,
he didn’t hesitate to study it. He threw open the second door and
plunged into the room. The soft yellow light that filled the room
fled from him and circled around him chasing the shadows. He knew
in that disorientating moment, that although this room was not what
he had expected, he had found what he had been searching for. He
caught his breath from the sudden climb, and the nerves of the
candles that were scattered throughout the room settled from
Martin’s explosive entrance and returned to a steady soft glow.

The room was
gloomy and had no window, like the hall and landing it held books
and parchment filled with sketches and notes, except these were not
stacked one on top of the other but laid out for easier access on
shelves of bookcases, among jars of powder and liquids, or were in
use and spread out on the large work bench that ran across the far
wall. The bench held intricate mechanical pieces in various stages
of construction and scattered tools suited for detailed works. A
bubbling sound undulated in the air from earthenware cauldrons that
stood on the desk or were held in wrought iron stands, their milky
contents boiled – strangely without any source of heat, and filled
the air with mists and curious earthy odours.

The floor was bared uneven boards, while the walls looked to
be in bad shape with the plaster blown or missing and baring the
bricks beneath. Much of the walls were covered by book cases that
ran to the ceiling or were patchily papered with large anatomical
sketches of skeletons and musculature, of a similar nature
to
Grey’s
anatomy
or Da Vinci’s
Vitruvian
Man
. The ceiling held racks of stored jars
and scrolls that could be winched down on pulleys, and were hung
with tools and larger more complete mechanical
structures.

From the
middle of the ceiling, muslin or mosquito netting hung down to the
floor and surrounded the dark shape of a raised bed. Ebony’s heavy
footfalls pounded up the stairs and a sense of urgency conspired
with Martin’s sense of discomfort that had settled its weight upon
him from the claustrophobia of the cluttered room. Martin reached
forward to a gap in the drapes with a hand that trembled, not for
fear of Ebony’s impending arrival but at what he might see beyond
the veil. He pulled it aside and peered within.

Ebony bundled
through the door as Martin recoiled from the gauze curtains, acid
burning at the back of his throat as his stomach reflexed at what
he had seen. “What is this? What the fuck is this!” he
wretched.

“
The truth,” Ebony announced with dark solemnity.

“
Murderer!” Martin cast his eyes back to the shroud,
illuminated from within by candles that were set into the earth
that filled the raised wooden bed as though it were a makeshift
shrine.

“
I understand what you think you are witness to… but this is
not the work of
Mort
this is the work of beginnings – Genesis.” Ebony was
impassioned. He moved into the room, still a powerful obstacle
against any escape attempt, and moved a panel of the shroud aside
with the tip of his staff.

The body lay
before them on the bed of dusty soil that crawled with insects, yet
the flesh appeared healthy and unspoilt by their appetite. The
naked skin was aglow with the candlelight and held the allure of
nude life and not the obscenity of nakedness and death. Yet the
face...

“
It looks so alive...” Martin made himself look upon its face
again, and prayed that it was not alive with the face it had. “Yet
it is dead. It couldn’t live like – like that.”

Martin was briefly aware of being on his knees in the back
room of his home – the horror of the face in his memory causing him
to recoil and not wanting to relive the events that would follow.
The whip of pain lashed across his mind, punishing his resistance.
A reedy whisper, barely a voice, accompanied the whip.
“reeemeeemberrr…”

“
Not dead. Simply awaiting life.” Ebony’s passion jumped
emotion and became a low growl that caused the briefest of snarls
on his face. “My toys and gifts became highly sought after. The
ones I had used to barter for shelter and comfort were being
tracked down and bought for high prices. Soon I was no longer
making toys for the children I encountered. They were being
commissioned by wealthy land owners for their already privileged
children, and for the entertainment of nobles and
royalty.”

Martin doubled
over with a griping wretch from the abhorrent ghost-image in his
memory of that things face, and stabbed a finger in the direction
of the body. “What has your story got to do with that!”

Ebony
approached the bed and ran a hand over the arm of the corpse and
the athletic muscles appeared strangely firm but supple for a dead
body. Martin was disturbed to his core by the pride in Ebony’s face
for the body stripped of its face.

“
The money was great, affording me the chance to build bigger
and greater machines: life-size mechanical men and women who could
play simple instruments and imitate life in small ways. They,
however, attracted the attention of others.”

“
Others?” Cold sweat drenched Martin’s body while his bowels
burned with the heat of urgent fear; he was engaging with the
ramblings of a murderer. A man who believed he was over
three-hundred years old. A blind man who believed he was an artist.
A man who had twisted a young girl into his will. A man who had
taken the face off a young male and displayed him like a relic in a
shrine.

“
Yes, others. The ones that brought this form of art to
compliment my own.”

“
I don’t understand.”

“
Then understand you will. The success I made was not
satisfying. The circles I was moving within led me to lose my
connection with the people and villages I was used to – the life I
would have had with Emily. I missed the children. Wealth and renown
was not what I sought. I decided that my journey was at an end. I
tried to take my life.” Ebony stretched his arms out before him and
his sleeves slid up to reveal a thin ochre scar across each wrist.
“I lay on the floor of my workshop in Prussia, my life draining
from me. Then they came as a single pillar of black smoke. Four of
them; each distinct in appearance and chilling personality, but
taking their turn in possessing just one body within the smoke.
Shifting in and out of existence within one silhouette, their skin
as white as a burial shroud, their eyes as black as a starless
night.”

“
These people you saw, what did they want with you?” Martin
asked tentatively, energy that had writhed around his heart during
Ebony’s explanation washed over him, running up the hairs of his
neck into his hairline causing his jaw to quiver. He wanted to
think it was the unnerving experience of talking to a lunatic and
engaging in his world, and not a fear born from the consideration
that what Ebony spoke of as being real.

“
They offered me a deal. They wanted me to live and they would
see to it that I did not die from my wounds. They would give me
life extended. Free from natural death. I did not want it, but they
needed it. For their work to be fulfilled it would take longer than
mortal man’s time. They admired my work and they wanted me to
continue it for them. However, there was a price for anyone who
undertook their work, and for me it was my sight. They took my
sight… Only when I worked would my vision return to aid me in my
tasks.

“
They commissioned larger dolls, but instructed me of strange
new substances and materials, either unknown or forgotten to man.
The others would provide the missing element that would give my
creations life; souls. My creations would become vessels for souls
who had been taken before their time was due. In return, when my
work for them is over, I am to make one last figure in the form of
my wife and they will bring my Emily back to me. I had a purpose
again. My sight was a price that I gave gladly if it meant my wife
to be reborn.”