The shack, like the rest of the world, had been visited by the secret dream of the human condition—expressed for exactly one year and then wiped clean from memory, if not matter. For all I knew, the room could have been the product of my very own Darkness-fueled hijinks. Though, to be honest, while the theme and its respective execution were fine enough, it was hardly the caliber of my own works—those created outside of the Darkness.
The chamber beyond the archway was an improvement, however. It sported a throne made from tumbledown tombstones, and it was crowded with dozens of modeled skeletons. Every one of them stood frozen in various postures, but all pleaded with a visibly aloof Funeral King—a skeleton attired in purple robes made from dyed rags, crowned with a bone circlet joined by gold and silver-flecked teeth, seated upon a throne of cemetery stones.
It was not an entirely uncommon tableau, as Post-Darkness images of the Funeral King were found across much of the Northern states, as well as scattered around parts of rural Great Britain. Even so, it was an impressive piece.
The Funeral King, it turned out, was not the most rewarding find within the cabin. Heaped in a corner was a stack of newspaper clippings. The very first article I perused concerned none other than me. “The Family Man killer turns artist into living canvas.” I believe it was the first time I’d been called by the name—the Family Man. I had once let slip to the artist mentioned in the clipping a small particle of my history. He was a kinetic bit of art—still breathing, in awe of what he had become—and supplied my admirers with insights I’d shared with him about myself. As he was an artist, I chose to share a bit more than was my custom. Thus, my new name was born. Clearly, I am more than the mere sum of my family’s bones, but I do rather enjoy the name.
The next article I selected concerned a church built in the city of Suttercraft, three years ago, by the given date. One of the carpenters who contributed to the effort was also named in the piece—Hayden Trill. I generally don’t do things in any kind of order, but it was nice to see that his was the very first name on my list.
CHAPTER TWO
When the town of Suttercraft came into view, I could see that it was in the process of being fed upon. Trees rose like stalks of towering fungus erupting from its spoiling flesh, and green waves of hungry woods had eaten away most of its roads and parking lots. Houses and businesses were hollow and broken. This place was merely a rotting trunk, and the people inhabiting it were no more than tomb-worms. I quickly determined that the place would pose little threat to me—it was already dead.
The city was not at all unknown to me. I’d heard of its penchant for producing strange black coffins from the churned earth of its planting fields, basements, and other deep places. I was also aware of the dreadful bodies that were removed from those coffins, looking much larger and fiercer in death than they ever had in life. However, beneath all the chatter about caskets and corpses, there lurked an even more fantastic tale—according to certain dreamers, the souls of the deceased citizens of Suttercraft were systematically reborn into those inhuman husks, and once returned to life, they rose to take their place within some vast and wicked enterprise beneath the earth. Such stories, if at all true, give me hope that one day, dreams won’t be forced to hide behind sleep, but might find their way upon the earth to do the good work of abolishing this Deadworld.
I made my way through crooked streets, pinch-tight alleyways and sluggish fog, all of which lent the city an odd appearance of being either scribbled out or partially erased from the paper of time and space. I stopped momentarily, listening to church bells sound out the hour. They cushioned my thoughts with their overstuffed notes, lifting my mind from the sonic monotony of an ordinary day.
As I voyaged through the corpse-town, my fascination with Hayden Trill began to swell. What weird and wonderful things might result from killing him? I wouldn’t normally work on a subject lest the outcome was—in that spectacular but fleeting moment—the embodiment of a forgotten dream, but my feeling was that I’d been invited to work on a much grander piece, in which Mr. Trill was merely a single, masterful brushstroke.
Pausing within the rippling shadows of a weeping willow, I reexamined the mystery of Suttercraft. Suddenly, I was quite curious as to the number of times I might be required to put down this mysterious Mr. Trill—and whether I should acquire a shovel to expedite the process.
I found Mr. Trill’s residence easily enough, as it was listed in a phone book I found in an empty library. The subject of my next piece lived in an apartment building strangled by thick ivies, which no doubt conducted the last of its metropolitan juices through its hungry green tubers. The overall result was nothing less than a house half-eaten. A wide, cracked balcony sat high within the concrete crown of the dwelling, waving its massive arms above it, a living canopy of shifting green. A single lantern dangled from an overhanging branch, whispering amber light at the pooling shadows. I knew the balcony coupled to the room of my quarry—why else would it be there?
I kept well out of sight, moving behind the town’s beautiful curtain of decay, allowing the germinating emptiness to erase all traces of my passage. The shadows barely reckoned my presence until I was well past the building’s foyer. A warm breeze wandered the overlarge room, gently disturbing the billowing curtains that fell like filthy fabric waterfalls from the tops of the tall windows, splashing in ragged waves across the unclean floor. The spacious lobby held a singular note of choking desolation, playing to the void that frolicked its hollows. I moved to the stairwell, drifting upward like a whispered prayer, silent and secret. There were persons, after a fashion, ambling through the dim hallways, living and moving for reasons no one cared to know. The dust in the air was thick, playing like clouds of lethargic gnats idling between the fading bars of light projecting across the floor from soiled windows. I felt like a ghost, haunting the spaces of a tumbledown house, just a forgotten echo of the living, eternally condemned to chase the dust through endless halls of stumbling shadows.
I entered the room neighboring the apartment that connected to the balcony. The place was like a photograph after a flood, colorless and faint. An old man slept within, dried and crumbling beneath the bitter weight of too much time. He was perfectly pointless—hardly suitable for my purposes. Still, I was feeling charitable. Finally, I allowed him to express the power the flesh of his washed-out existence might have enclosed, had only it been fashioned by the songs of fallen angels, or the bright nightmares of lost children. In his last moments, the man seemed to appreciate what he was becoming, after I had thrown off the tomb of his flesh, allowing him to gaze at the dream beneath. There was so little of the man remaining I was not long at my work. I cleaned myself off in the tiny cove of a bathroom and proceeded out the window onto the thick tendrils of ivy.
I gained the balcony above in but a few moments, inching around the flickering sheet of light from its lantern. Unlocking its door barely broke my stride as I secreted myself inside. The room was drab, sparsely decorated, and hadn’t been cleaned for some time. Everywhere was sprinkled the simple, stupid details that spoke to nothing save an occupant of the least imaginative variety. After a thorough investigation, all I discovered was that for some reason, a power beyond the bid of nature desired the death of a man who, for all intents and purposes, was only alive in the most basic of definitions. Doubting this conclusion enough to inspect the room a second time, I searched through its every detail, interrogating each pore of pointlessness. Mercifully, something stood out during my second look. It wasn’t a detail I found, but a generality—the room was too eager to convince. It was all wrong, betraying a confidence born of skill. The furniture, the decorations, everything. Like a smiling corpse, the room was an expression without emotion. The interior appeared exactly as it should, but there was a precision and restraint to it all—a deliberate calculus of dullness. The room was a mask.
I searched with new eyes, looking for the edges of the disguise, wishing to pu
ll it back. Of course, I felt like a fool when I realized what distinguished the apartment from all the other wan spaces of the fading building. It was the balcony—or more accurately, its view. The lofty vantage delivered a fine look at a small church leaning into the woods, where saprophytic legions searched its cracked skin, seeking nourishment.
No sooner had I turned to make for the church than I detected something strange, the implications of which were entirely fascinating. Through some means I assumed directly linked to the ominous Red Dream and the list that supplied it, I somehow perceived an echo of someone else’s dream. The fading vision haunted the spaces of the balcony, faintly traced by the silence of lantern light and coiling shadows of ivy. I could see it as plainly as the moon looking down upon me. It maintained an etherealness, declaring its connection to the other side. The fragment was only slightly alive, like smoldering ashes after a fire. I could barely make out the dim shape of a singular purpose, timeless and thankless in its pursuit. That, and a prominence of sorrow nearly hardened to complete hatred. Before I could contemplate the wayward dream any longer, it died into a commanding silence, as though by the authority of dead kings.
The now vanished dream undoubtedly belonged to Mister Trill, of that I was largely certain. It was simply logical to assume the supernaturalism surrounding the list and the persons named within it were connected. But that was only logic, just mindless, meandering connections. There was also an unscientific connection, thankfully, one that I could feel in my bones, granting me knowledge through mystery rather than matter. This deeper intimation scored the name of the dreamer into the dream, and I was now wiser for it.
I went back inside, deciding to sleep in the residence hosting my most recent work, before heading to the church. I hoped to chase down my quarry’s dream before it disappeared too deeply into sleep. Settling on the small bed, I proudly looked upon the congealing piece I’d created earlier—out of a man who lived only to supply misery its living equivalents. But now, wonder—as much as I could coax from so sorry a subject—reclaimed the spaces once filled by so much loitering debris. Had the glistening piece still possessed them, I’m confident its eyes would have shined with an abundance of gratitude. With that vision in mind, I drifted into slumber.
***
Unfortunately, I wasn’t brought any closer to the desired dream, but I did manage to glimpse something sleeping beneath Suttercraft. I saw strange coffins nestled in deep earth, waiting like monsters under a child’s bed. Far deeper into the black soil, within a stratum of earth so old it was little more than liquid darkness, I spied a casket the size of the entire city. The dream conducted me beyond the petrified wood of its construction, allowing me to peer at the thing within. Rotting and waiting within that damp, titanic box was an entity as ancient to the world as it was utterly alien to it. The sound of the creature’s patience was bottomless and beckoning. I could only guess at the quality—or quantity—of death required to transmit life to something so far beyond all this blowing dust. I immediately understood why the White Gaia had pressed the thing so closely to her bosom, for if life were to reach such a thing . . . .
As I drifted away from the timeless sleeper, a familiar gaze burned into my dream, looking at me with equally bottomless and beckoning impatience. I could feel the scorching red hunger of countless wolves wash across me like searing wind. My dream was melting from the mounting heat, gazes and hungers collapsing into a single surging stare. The dream was no longer my own. The new dreamer crushed me into the shape of a wolf, and a cosmic starvation overfilled my guts. I couldn’t contain the emptiness.
***
I sprang awake in a slick of sweat, my stomach gusting red and bottomless. The dream still lingered the room, fogging windows and mirrors with its hot breath. My mind turned instantly to killing Mister Trill—not dressing him in finest dream. I was lost to a vision that was little more than a gaping maw. Instinctively, I collected my family—they were aglow, nearly blinding, with the same blazing hunger. They were particularly suspectable to such cravings, as even in life they were never subtle creatures, always too eager and willing when blood needed spilling.
The Red Dream was no longer new to me, but now it had escaped from sleep, taking refuge within us all. My family’s collective frenzy nearly threw me from the window and down upon the twisting ivies that searched all sides of the undead house. Once down the walls and across the courtyards of unkept vegetation, I found my feet placed firmly upon the path to the church. It seemed my quarry would not be allowed to survive the night.
I forced myself to slacken my pace and absorb the sights. From the moon-frosted meadows, I could clearly see the corpse of the town splayed out across the encroaching forest. Suttercraft looked like some dead-brown and drying serpent’s husk, its crooked gambrel spines occasionally breeching the tops of the trees, revealing the places where it had fallen so long ago. I tried to focus on Mr. Trill—and the fresh changes his death might furnish the world—but my father would tolerate no more delays, and I quickly found myself thrust into the shadows surrounding the church. Instantly, and almost by my family’s will alone, my hunter’s silence spread out all around me, and my thoughts disappeared into my sisters’ famished smiles.
The church was deserted—long since abandoned by the Lord and his flock. I entered through the front door and beheld the silence. It was old and unbroken, blossoming from the desert of dust that lay across the altar and pews. I moved to the rear of the church, leaving the silence as I’d found it. The rooms in the back contained nothing of interest save for the pleasant comfort of forgotten places, having slipped quietly the boundaries of memory, tumbling into oblivion. I moved to the cellar door, the cold of the underground lapping at my feet. Strangely, it was nailed shut from the opposite side. I wondered if Mister Trill had some idea of my coming, having been warned from something that walked the other side of the world—an opposing force to that which had invited me to transform him. However, if nailed-up doors were all he could offer in defense . . .
I returned to the exterior of the church, looking for a way into the cellar. It took me some time to discover the entrance, cleverly concealed beneath the ruins of an old shed. Opening the door, a new silence overtook me. The sound of waiting—the sound of a hunter—permeated everything. The darkness and silence belonged to someone who had cultivated it, trained it, cared for it.
I had carelessly allowed a white blade of moonlight to slice past me when I opened the door. The cold light cut into the subterranean depths, stabbing deep into the cellar. Quickly and quietly, I closed the door, repairing the dark, but the master of those deep places would now be alerted to my intrusion. I pressed on.
It was clear what I stalked was no mere human, but a man-of-prey. Whether he was a true artist, however, remained to be seen. I joined my silence with the hunter’s, and I moved through the gloom to the bottom of the stairs. Deep in the underground, a weak light flickered—candlelight. This was either a distraction or a signpost. The smell of burning wax hung thick. The candles had been lit long before my arrival. I moved closer to the dancing radiance, wary of surprise. Somewhere, wrapped in obedient shadows, was the other. He would be waiting for me to make a mistake. I would make none. The darkness was not my own, but it would serve me nonetheless.
I slipped behind the flitting shadows of the candlelit room, touring as much as stalking. Even in such circumstances, I would spare nothing my wonder. The next chamber I entered was large and crowded with the forgotten ornaments of faith, and as I rounded a stack of boxes, barely touched by the trembling light, I was confronted by the bodies of over a dozen crucified men. They were arranged in no discernible order, most little more than crumpled paper dolls. All of them rotting upon crosses beneath the dimmest light, arms wide—welcoming the flies that wreathed them. Hayden Trill was indeed an artist.
Death had frozen horrified and pleading expressions to their faces, save one. The most recent victim, a corpse less th
an a week old, wore a death mask of an entirely different disposition—rage and indignation. This man was fierce even in death, his sunken eyes still holding echoes of a terrible and interrupted purpose—my hidden host had killed one of his own.
The crucifixions looked like giant crumbling flowers emerging from the lightless earthen floor, and the dusky basement seemed the perfect greenhouse to foster them. The slain hunter—its darkest flower by far—loomed above me, a cutting stare for thorns, bearing a heady fragrance of withered rage and broken purpose. As its shadow fell across me, I could feel the void of its dream, still and sterile.
The garden was pruned and pampered, carefully arranged and maintained with the diligence of a doting mother. I wondered what manner of thing should want me to destroy such an artist. The moment contained a hint of whispered purpose, suggesting perhaps that the beauty of the man’s work required my intervention, to allow it to spread and take root.
Books and journals lay scattered across a nearby table. A slave to my overdeveloped curiosity, I began to read from them, remorseful for my rudeness. The books were all so very pious, bordering on pretentious. His journals, however, were not difficult to tolerate. They were the reflections of a man who lived inside a cold obligation, a mechanical penance that unfolded with small emphasis upon its material effects. The reward for his labors was intangible and withheld, merely the hope of reward. His deathly garden was not an end, but a pleasantly necessary side effect of his means. He was an unconscious artist—perhaps the most powerful kind—one who forgets themselves entirely within their work.
The Red Son Page 2
