No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) (11 page)

I wanted
to see what she’d created.

I could
imagine it, because I’d seen the place it came from. I understood her process
back then, and I wanted to see if it was different.

I really
hoped it was.

The
squat is a small house; three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the remains of a
living room and kitchen. It’s hard to say how long it’s been empty or how long
it’s been inhabited.

Empty
of Other people, I mean; inhabited by shadows.

I’m not
a shadow, like Jake and Lucia. I’m only a tourist here. I have a place I can go
back to — people in the Real who I can call. They don’t. There will always be
that division between us.

Billy
is shorter than I expected. I’m not sure why I thought he would be big. I
suppose one imagines leaders to be larger than average.

He has
curly black hair and a round face. The look in his eyes is similar to the one
in Lucia’s, only more fragile somehow. Brittle, in fact, as though he’s on the
cusp of letting something go.

“You
brought friends, good,” he says, and he beams and shakes my hand with both of
his. “Where is everyone?” Lucia asks.

“Errands.
You know how it is?”

This
last is put to me. Billy searches my face before he speaks again. “You’re
between things, aren’t you?”

Jake
looks at me, hands coming up defensively. “I never mentioned you.” “It’s
something he does,” Lucia explains. “He’s a reader, you could say.” “It’s not
hard, when you know how,” he says.

He tries
to reassure with his smile, but it has the opposite effect. Lucia sees I’m
nervous; maybe something on my face was giving it away.

“It’s
alright, really.”

“Would
you like to see where she paints?” Billy asks, gesturing through a portal with
no door.

“It’s a
blast,” she adds, moving to stand next to him.

“Today
we are going further. Lucia would like to finish a piece that has been giving
her trouble.”

“Really
goin’ down the rabbit hole, eh?” Jake almost waves it away, but I can see he’s

excited.

People
take their release where they can find it; he’s no different. I don’t want to
be left out and despite my reservations, I really do want to see her work.
Watching the creative process is fascinating, and I’ve seen few fascinating
things up to this point.

“As
long as we won’t be in your way?” “No, not at all.”

The doors
opened and a steady trickle of people began to enter. It soon became a stream,
though the paintings were not yet unveiled.

Waiters
moved through the crowd with trays of champagne flutes. I lifted one, deciding
I needed something for my hands to fiddle with. The alcohol is secondary, but
it will help too.

Laura
nudged me gently in the side. Following her gaze, I saw Gregg looking over at
us. He offered a wave, which I returned slightly less enthusiastically than
Laura did.

I pinched
her arm. “Stop it.”

“He likes
you,” she told me unnecessarily. Her smile is so disarming. It’s hard to stay
mad at her, but I’ve tried never to trust a smile.

“I’m
taken.”

“Yeah, I
heard something about that.”

It was my
turn to smile, which came easily, to my surprise. One of the things that drew
me to her was the way she could bring things out in people. I think it came
with her job; an ease of manner so people would talk about their art. Art is,
of course, the most personal part of themselves.

“How do
you feel?”

“Better,”
I said, waggling the flute. “This seems to be helping.” “Maybe just nerves, or
the crowd.”

She knew I
didn’t do so well with crowds anymore. I couldn’t tell her the real reason why.

My head
feels overfull, crowded out by things that are still happening somewhere in
time behind me. They will always be happening. It’s where all pain and memory
come from.

Believe
me, I know.

I’m
surprised at the neatness of the space in the basement. Unlike the rest of the
house — strewn with empty cans, bags, and wrappers — this place is pristine.
Several large squares lean against the walls, four that I can see. They’re
covered with stained sheets, what look like old curtains almost.

“My
other paintings,” Lucia explains. “Also unfinished.” “You work on a few at
once?”

“I like
it that way.”

Drugs
would make it hard to focus on each one for the time it took to finish it, I
assumed.

What
seems interesting during one high would not always be the next time.

Billy
moves ahead and tugs the sheet from one board, or rather, canvas. The style is
hard to define. Contemporary, but expressive and figurative. The shapes in
front of me lacked hard lines, the colors bleeding into each other as they were
painted or smeared on.

It’s a
woman. She’s thin — too thin. Her arms are more like sticks than flesh and
blood.

Her
skin is pallid, a washed-out grey, which is why her shape was hard to pick out.

She’s
standing in a grey pool of water, partially illuminated in what must be
moonlight.

Her
hair falls to her shoulders. It has the same look of the reeds rising from the
water around her; only, her face is empty. Lucia hasn’t painted it yet.

The
water she’s standing in fills most of the canvas. Overhanging skeletal trees
and stands of reeds describe its shape, but the far shore is only a thin line.
“A lake,” Billy points out. “It has an old name.”

“Hali,”
Lucia says, lifting a palette of colors and a fine brush from a small table.
“She’s going to be baptized in it.”

Nothing
about the scene suggests anything holy. More the opposite, but I don’t give
voice to the idea.

Billy
walks to each of us in turn and presses a tiny triangular pill into our hands.
It’s red; the color of calf’s blood. Lucia swallows her own first and steps to
the painting. Then Jake, then me, and finally Billy himself takes one.

Whatever
it is, it acts fast. I feel it rising from the pit of my stomach, where it
nudges and kicks into the back of my head. I sway, but steady myself and take a
seat on a rickety stool. Jake slides down to the floor against one wall, but I
only half notice.

The
light from the room’s only bulb begins to fuzz, smearing over everything like
the paint on the unfinished work in front of Lucia. The buzz from the filament
grows louder, filling up the room; a drone of flies to drown out other sound.

The
water. The water in the painting moves, runs, ripples around the woman’s body
and the reeds.

I can
see it.

It’s
not that the paint is wet where it wasn’t before, because it’s not paint
anymore. It’s not a painting anymore either — more like a window where there
shouldn’t be one. The drone changes in pitch, growing softer and more rhythmic.
It’s like a wind rustling through trees before long.

“Hali
is a door,” Billy mumbles, as if his tongue is fighting against him. “A
b-bridge between. He sees and she does too.”

Jake
puts his head between his legs. Is this what happened before?

Lucia
raises the brush and the woman in the painting turns, really turns towards us.
Her face isn’t a face, because Lucia hasn’t painted it yet. The way she stands
makes her seem impatient, as if she’s waiting for the gap to be filled.

Something
tightens around my pelvis and between my thighs, screwing its way up under my
stomach. If I scream, I’ll vomit. I don’t want to vomit, but the more I think
about not doing it, the more I’m sure it will happen.

My head
is hot and cold. Sweat runs into my eyes, and then Billy is in front of me,
holding my hands. His eyes are clear, focused, but there is something else
moving behind them. Something not him; something that is only wearing him for
the moment, but something he finds familiar — otherwise, he wouldn’t let it in,
would he?

He
doesn’t say anything when Lucia starts to scream.

One by
one, they uncover the paintings, beginning in one room and moving to another so
the crowd is funneled in one direction. The first dozen or so are simple enough
— landscapes — but while they are different in content to the paintings I
remember Lucia making, I can see all the hallmarks from before.

They have
the same blurring of lines, the same figurative elements that lend each the
quality of something Other. Something elemental and ethereal, which I realize
is what she’s always captured. The pictures speak to people. They make them
think of places we can never go, but which could be all too real.

Laura
seems impressed, though later she won’t be able to say why exactly and her
write-up will be filled with abstracts. Only suggestions of feelings and ideas,
but little in the way of in-depth analysis; even the ideas will be difficult to
capture. It will be enough to entice people, which I think is the point.

Draining
my second glass of champagne gives me the legs to carry on.

The
landscapes give way to portraits. Her style hasn’t changed; I can see it in
their faces, and the memories come back. Whatever dam is there breaks and the
trickle becomes a flood. Even the champagne can’t hold it back.

I can’t
see past Billy; his grip on my hands is too tight.

Lucia
screams and screams, but what I can see of her over Billy’s shoulder suggests
she’s still painting. The woman in the picture leans in closer, as if she’s
having make-up applied.

“Notyetnotyetnotyetnotyet,”
Billy’s mouth almost trips over the words, they run together so fast.

Colored
smoke drifts in the sclera of his eyes, burning at the edges like something corrosive.
Lucia stops screaming. Not gradually, more like her voice is switched off.
Billy lets go of my hands and steps back.

The
light in the room dims, though the bulb burns with the same brightness as
before. In the painting, the woman is as she was. Only where her face was
blank, now it’s there.

Black
eyes and mouth; a theatre mask half turned so the audience can’t tell if it’s a
mask of tragedy or comedy.

On the
floor, Lucia flops and writhes; a fish tossed onto land. She finally sits up,
her arms limp at her sides and looks at me, though she can’t see anymore. I
know because of the way she stares, unblinking and unseeing, even though she’s
looking right at me.

A
theatre mask half turned. Comedy or tragedy, but more like a scream frozen at
the moment before it breaks from the woman’s throat.

I’m not
drunk by the end, but tipsier than I should have been. If Laura noticed – and
she must - then she said nothing about it. The headache from earlier had
subsided to a tiny throb in the base of my skull.

We were
with the crowd in the main room of the gallery. All the paintings were
uncovered.

The faces
looked out at me as if trying to remember where they saw me last. I think each
of them knew who I was, but couldn’t place me exactly.

When they
didn’t move, I was almost disappointed, but more grateful than anything else.

Being
carried away screaming wouldn’t be the best way to end the night — though at
this point, I’m not sure what would be.

Finally,
Lucia arrived. She was just suddenly in the crowd where she wasn’t before,
moving in from the edges. She used a cane to guide her, and its gentle tapping
was the first sign that she’s here. The crowd parted and a small wave of
applause built, most likely kept low so as not to startle her. Her white hair
suited her now. Her face was aged, as though it had caught up to the grey
curtains framing it.

Laura
pressed forward, tugging me along. I was just tipsy enough that I couldn’t
muster the strength to fight.

Making a
space at the edge of the channel formed by the crowd, Lucia passed close enough
to touch. She turned as her cane tapped my foot.

“Oh,
sorry,” she said, smiling.

Only her
eyes were the same as I remembered from the last time I saw them. They had the
quality of shattered glass, and something else seemed to tug at the smile, like
her lips were being slowly pulled wider by hooks only she could feel.

She no
longer needed eyes to see, and the Other thing drifted behind her dead pupils.
It saw me.

“It’s
okay.”

If she/it recognized
my voice or my face, it did nothing. Only nodded and carried on,