Shivers 7 (33 page)

Did she lay silently afterward, her hair spilling onto his pillow?

If they were to have a son, would he look like Stuart?

“My word!” William said. He had retrieved the last photograph, and on standing directly faced
Typing the Canvas.
James distinctly saw his legs wobble, and his upper body tilt forward, just a fraction, but enough to note.

“My new painting.” James sprang from his chair and stood at his brother’s side. “Isn’t it delightful?”

“You did this?”

“No. I bought it.” James indicated the signature in the bottom left hand corner. “It’s an original Edward Stickling. Have you heard of him?”

“Of course not,” William replied. “Abstract art isn’t a passion, James. You know that.”

“Yes, I suppose.” He grinned. “Do you still have that wonderful print of
The Hay Wain
in your living room?”

William jerked his gaze from the painting. His posture realigned, shoulders square, and he regarded James with disdain. “You’ve no place for snobbery, James, looking like you do.”

He turned away and James placed one hand on his upper arm. The charcoal on his fingers left gray smears on William’s shirt.

“Is there anything…familiar about it?” James asked.

William looked at the painting again. He shook his head.

“Something in the pattern—in the placement of the lines?”

“Nothing.” William leaned forward again. His eyes shone. “Should there be?”

“I don’t know,” James said. His hand fell from William’s arm. “It just triggers something, and I can’t think what.”

“It’s ghoulish.” Again William pulled his gaze from the piece. “Looks like blood.”

“Well—”

“Abstract nonsense.” His upper lip curled, as if he had an unpleasant taste in his mouth. “But then, our tastes have always been different.”

“Except in women, it would seem.” James said.

“
Touché,
brother.” William pushed past him. Their shoulders butted aggressively. He strode across the living room, but paused at James’s easel and regarded the blank canvas with a bemused expression. “A potential masterpiece?”

“A work in progress.”

He rolled his eyes. James led him into the hallway and showed him the door.

“Always a pleasure.”

“You know,” William said. “There was another reason for my coming here today, quite aside from collecting Annie’s photographs.”

“Oh?”

“I was hoping we’d begin to smooth things over. We’re brothers, after all.”

It was James’s turn to sneer.

“We still have a long way to go, I see.”

James pointed at the unhappy face on his chest.

“Get some help,” William said, and left.

James slammed the door, then reeled back into the living room, sat in front of his canvas, and fell into its emptiness like a beaten man.

* * *

He never made it to the conference in Brighton. The next thirteen days passed in a storm of pain, delusion, and despair. He spoke only to his partner—furious Harrington, who called him a condemnable bastard and slammed down the phone—and his doctor, who immediately arranged for tests at Bickford Hospital. James had every intention of going. The possibility of a tumor seemed suddenly very real. It perhaps being psychosomatic, caused by the power of persuasion, mattered not; the interminable headache and frequent nosebleeds could no longer be discounted, and demanded a more reliable diagnosis. James showered thoroughly—washing the crust of blood from his upper lip and the doodles from his body—and dressed in clean clothes. He faltered, however, when it came to leaving the house, getting only as far as the front door before collapsing in a fragile heap.

He burned through painkillers. Crunched them dry. Dozens every day. They masked the headache, but didn’t eliminate it. He ordered more when his supply ran short and had them delivered to his house. The alcohol in his liquor cabinet took a hit, too, but coupled with the painkillers offered no relief—only a bleak, slumberous wave of hallucination. He saw faces at his living room window. Shadows without reason. A bloodstained dress draped over the shower rail.
None of this is real,
he thought, and sometimes just had to laugh—mad, whooping sounds.
Not real. Not at all.
Eventually, he took the bottles from his liquor cabinet and hurled them spectacularly against the wall.

Breaking things helped.

While James found the act of destruction satisfying, the breaking sounds—particularly when they matched the frequency of his mind—were altogether soothing. A long period of anxiety was lifted when he took a cricket bat to his television set. Smashing an antique lamp gave him a brief rush of optimism. His insecurity faded, albeit temporarily, when he shattered his collection of Waterford figurines. And feelings of worthlessness were suppressed when throwing crockery on the kitchen floor.

He also broke two mirrors, a coffee table, the shower door, the bathroom cabinet, six picture frames, three light bulbs, a mantel clock, and his entire CD collection.

Sleep brought no such relief, because of the nightmares. He tried staying awake, but always succumbed, often weeping. Into the cold…the darkness. His dreamscape was a desperate place, where sometimes his dead son stood alone, and always the red drips of Stickling’s painting tried to lure him deeper. He followed—what else could he do?—but always woke up before the end, like those dreams of falling…never hitting the ground.

* * *

The little girl stood at the foot of his bed. Maybe ten years old. Long black hair and a bloodstained dress. Her face was a gaping hole. It looked like she had been broken with a hammer.

“Who are you?” James asked.

The details of his bedroom were exact. The stains on the walls. The sweat-stink of the sheets. Even the sounds outside his window: distant cars and rattling branches. If this was a nightmare, its realism was unsurpassed.

“Are you from the painting?”

She crossed to the dresser and picked up a photograph of Stuart—the one taken in James’s old office. She looked at it with her empty face for a long time. James watched her a moment longer, then hid beneath the sheets.
Not real,
he decided, and by morning the little girl was gone but the photograph was on the pillow beside him.

* * *

“Simpatico Museum.”

James heard her tongue bar tapping against her teeth.

He sat in the corner of his living room, among ruin, dressed only in underpants and a raggedy beard. Five weeks and three days since he’d bought
Typing the Canvas.
He knew this because he’d kept the receipt and could still count. That part of his brain hadn’t yet leaked away. He couldn’t remember when he’d last showered, though, or brushed his teeth. Judging from the dirt in the creases of his arms and neck, and the thickness of his tongue, it had probably been weeks. Not that it mattered. Time moved differently now. He’d broken all the clocks in his house. Night and day meant nothing. But the man on the radio said that the date was August the 15th, which meant that exactly five weeks and three days had passed since he’d bought that ungodly painting.

“Simpatico Museum.”

Again with the tapping.

“James,” he said. “Cloak.”

“Mr. Cloak,” she said, allowing a moment to place the name. “Yes. How are you?”

And he replied, “The painting is cursed.”

Not that it had taken him five weeks and three days to realize this. And it wasn’t so much the blinding headache (he was used to the pain now—couldn’t imagine what his head would feel like without it, in fact) or the vivid nightmares. He could still—though barely—ascribe these anomalies to the power of persuasion. But the painting itself, the way it pulled him in and possessed him, went beyond explanation.

It was powerful, and it was destroying him.

Angelique Mayer tapped the backs of her teeth as she considered her reply. James imagined grabbing that silver piercing, yanking her tongue from her mouth, and snipping the tip of it off with a pair of sharp scissors.

“Are you,” she began hesitantly, “experiencing some…?”

“
Everything,
” he growled. “Headaches, nightmares, hallucinations. I’m losing my mind.”

“With respect, Mr. Cloak, this is—”

“You can have it back,” he said. “No charge. Just take it away. Get it out of my house—my
life.
”

After a pause, she said. “Thank you, Mr. Cloak, but the Simpatico Museum has no interest in that piece.”

He remembered the barcode tattooed on the back of her neck, and wondered—if he scanned it—what her value would be. Was she an August work of art, to be exhibited at the world’s premier museums? Or a throwaway piece—all style and no substance—that nobody would miss?

“Just take it away,” he said. “I don’t care what you do with it.”

“You might try another museum.” Angelique’s voice trembled. “Or you could simply destroy it.”

“Simply,” James said. He laughed, and the sound was just one degree from maniacal, perhaps two from a scream. “It
can’t
be destroyed, Ms. Mayer. It can only be deciphered—an endeavor that is quite beyond me.”

He had thought to destroy the painting on many occasions. A knife would surely do it. Several broad slashes across the canvas, until it was in ribbons. Or he could bury it, deface it, burn it. Throw it on the railway tracks or off the Romney Bridge. But first he needed to get close
to the painting, and therein lay the problem. Every time he got to within a step or two, it curled red hands around his throat and dragged him in. It howled and screamed in multiple voices, and he rode the lines and tried—oh, how he
tried
—to untangle them.

He could burn his entire house to the ground. He wouldn’t need to get close to the painting then. Not being able to leave, though, meant he’d go up in flames, too. A laudable sacrifice, perhaps…but losing his mind was marginally better than burning to death.

“I can’t help you, Mr. Cloak,” Angelique said.

“You
have
to.”

“I gave you full disclosure.”

“Please.”

“I’m a curator, not a doctor.”

Tap-tap went her piercing and again he imagined cutting off the tip of her tongue and perhaps eating it, feeling the little bar click and clack against his own teeth. Then he could drive the scissors into her eye and work them inside her skull, cutting little triangles—
snip-snip
—out of her brain.

“Do you have value?” he asked. His voice was full of broken pieces.

“What do you mean?”

“Will you be missed?”

She hung up. The sound of nothing was inexplicably loud in his mind. A great, tumbling emptiness that reminded him just how alone he was.

* * *

Stuart’s voice on the radio.

“
Daddy…Daddy…
”

He found it in a sea of static, scrolling across the dial, trying to find a news or weather report—some shot of reality from beyond these walls.

“Stuart?” he gasped. Tears welled in his eyes. “Baby, is that you?”

“
Daddy…
”

The tears spilled down his face. He touched the radio with a trembling hand.

“Daddy’s here…it’s okay, baby.”

“
Can you see them?
”

“Them?”

Static, like a sudden burst of rain hitting his window. He tweaked the dial and leaned closer to the speaker. From the midst of the white noise, he heard his son’s voice.

“
They’re dead like me,
” he said. “
And they want you.
”

* * *

Where was the line between nightmare and reality? Had everything he’d known, and all the things he feared, toppled into the same indistinct space, for him to pick among the farrago and decide what he could trust?

Early evening. Falling sunlight struck his living room window and painted a broad orange flag on the west-facing wall. James sat in a piss-stained armchair with the radio in his lap. Nothing but static. He hadn’t heard from Stuart in days.

The sun dropped slowly. The flag turned from orange to violet.

He heard footsteps on the stairs.

Not real.

Thud and creak. Someone heavy, or hurting. More footsteps—these lighter—from directly overhead. Someone else in his bedroom.

James placed the radio on the floor and stood up. His eyes tracked from the ceiling to the open hallway door. He moved toward it, hearing Stuart’s voice in his mind:
They’re dead like me …And they want you.
Two steps into the hallway, until he could see up the stairs. And there, at the top, a stooped figure. He caught just a glimpse before it lurched out of sight. Black rag clothes and pale hands. A face smeared with blood and dirt.

He retreated into the living room, walking backward. More footsteps overhead. His heart slammed bitterly in his chest.

“Not real,” he said, but his voice cracked with uncertainty. He stumbled over the radio, almost fell, then cranked the volume so that the static drowned all other sound. He crawled past the window and saw his shadow on the wall. A cowering thing, with a crown of wild hair and spidery limbs.

James covered his eyes and waited. He listened to the static and tried to fall into that nothing sound, that nowhere place, away from this cruel tangle of obscurity. When he looked again the light had faded, sweet pink now, like something from a romance novel.

There was a woman at the other end of the room. Her shape was crooked…broken. Her long hair swayed and she moved toward him—strange, gimp steps—until they were close enough to kiss. James saw the bruises on her ribcage and the puncture wounds in her stomach. There was a boot print on her chest. The left side of her face had been smashed open.

She brushed her fingers over his lips.

He fell.

And there was depth.

* * *

His fascination with art stemmed from a propensity for interpretation, to uncover by layers a truth within the frame. All art is story, and all story is life. To look beyond device and form, and to find the place where art breathes, was as close to divine as he would get this side of heaven.

He read the visitants in the same way. They came to him—man, woman, and child—silently, formed of layers, and he uncovered.