There was no shortage of dreams, either. I afforded myself much time for rest, often stretching out in thick, well-shaded copses of wild grass and assorted bramble. My first dream upon the road delivered me into an endless pumpkin patch, the sun nearly as plump and orange as any of the surrounding gourds, but half-submerged into the hazy soil of the horizon. I clearly remembered Jack Lantern standing atop the steepled roof of a crumbling hay barn, his silhouette a stationary gust of soft orange smoke, autumnal winds dancing around him like children. I knew that his proffered smile, though well-shaded from view, was sincere—a friendly greeting, as well as a sign for our mutual understanding that we should leave each other to their own dreams. I stepped backwards into the enfolding shadows of my father’s gallery, surrounded by a lifetime of art, offering up my own smile, perhaps more recessed in darkness than his own, though equally noticed and understood. We nodded to one another just before piloting our respective visions beyond the shared space of the Red Dream. Due to our standing as finalists in the Shepherd’s Game, our awareness of the other was unbothered by competing dreams—no more Wolves to interfere with the clarity of our shared wavelength. We were in no need of a dream to prepare for one another. We were plain as two sunny days, histories like well-read books, opened to the sun and recorded in plainest print. We knew who we were dealing with. We would be ready.
While I am no pessimist, this fact did not stop me from trying to wring as much wonder as possible from my surroundings and the dreams they inspired, as one never knows when they will be asked to leave the world—or ushered out of it by persons wearing Halloween masks. I had no plans to depart any time soon, but it never hurt to have a bag packed, just in case. So, I spared no sight my fascination, and no fascination its fuller realization within dreams. The Deadworld never seemed rifer with hidden wonder than the day I let fall those lists. My fascination came to a head on my fourth day on the road, when the black path veered close to a strange cemetery.
It was a forgotten place, likely due to its proximity to nearby Obscuruum, of which there were many. It wasn’t a particularly large plot, but more grandiose than one would expect abandoned to the wilds. Something was amiss with the place, something altogether enthralling. The mystery that wafted from beyond, or perhaps beneath the tombstones was nearly palpable, and would need to be to derail me from my intended destination. Stepping from the road seemed to awaken in me a lateral curiosity, an off-plumb bit of wonder—about life after Jack Lantern, after the Shepherd, after my mother. Surely, the prospect of a disappointing climax to the game had entered my mind, that the contest was merely the pretext for something less than the sustained wonder of an eternal child. But the sharp disconnect from purpose, the crowd of stones holding down the dead, allowed me to focus on another, altogether different specter of the unknown. The moment felt like a temptation, to do something else, to wander away from the game. I knew Jack wouldn’t mind. His Halloween was forever, and forgiving of any act of defiance, so long as it flouted the machine of it all.
My mother was dead—I’d killed her myself, as I had the rest of my family. We were already free. As free as death and the Deadworld would allow. I could go anywhere. I could spare Jack the death I’d given every Wolf I’d encountered since I’d set foot in the game. I might be forgiven for such a thing, for allowing a wonder like Jack to continue, unabated. I should point out that such thoughts were not rationalizations, excuses for avoiding the death Jack might very well serve me. I was prepared to die, if not terribly pleased by the prospect—not of dying, but the possibility of failing, failing us all. It was ultimately that fear that would put me back on the path of Wolves. Fear generally has its way with us, one way or another.
Something about this new presence was growing familiar, but it was no Wolf. This was something else. And the impulse to pursue it was also something else, beyond mere curiosity. I’d felt it before, when I destroyed the white son of the Dead Mother—when the Shepherd intervened for the proper continuance of its Game. I wondered at how many other Wolves had been summoned for such reasons, to defend our game. I was also forced to wonder at how much my free will was engaged in my decisions, having now reached the bottom of my list. Was I just a murderer in thrall to the Murder God? Just another lateral curiosity, that.
I felt a bit like a fool, thinking as I had that this diversion might be a crack in fate, allowing me the option of abandoning the Game. This was just another calling from the Shepherd to put something right. Even as I realized all of this, I continued, almost mindlessly. There was a degree of shame in that, given who I was, what I sought to accomplish. It was the first cogent argument I’d been given in support of Jack’s “Machine Hypothesis.”
I realized quickly that the cemetery was more rambling than I’d assumed, unfolding deep into thick woods, almost entirely joined with the forest, where grave-dust was reborn as loam, old bones reached out of the soil as saplings—the cycle of a corpse. At some point, across the hidden burying grounds, old blood painted the woods, and scars of a battle split trees and sundered headstones—a war between Wolves. I retraced the carnage as one pursues a scar across flesh, to where the blade first enters the skin. It wasn’t long before I came across the loser of the conflict, remains scattered, scraps of a kill list like yellow fungus curled up beneath the overhang of a wilting weed, tips blackened by the kiss of fire. Sadness gripped me. I’d left so many Wolves behind like this one, all to waste. The aftermath of my sins were laid out before me. I think I might have leaned into the mindlessness of my purpose at that point, to dull the edge of what I’d done—would do, one final time.
The footprints of the winner were slight, lithe—a female Wolf. Her tracks were echoes of a dancer recorded in the earth, replaying ever-slighter with each passing rain. There was a lightness to her tread, free and wonderful. She would have been a pleasure to know in life, I was sure. But she was not alive. My standing in the contest cemented the fact. But it was not a Wolf, I now knew, who stole her from the game.
The footpath was sporadic, like she had stopped to gather as much wonder as possible along her way. But ultimately her tracks, and presumably her life, ended within a stark, white mystery. Across the side of a cliff was blazoned what appeared to be a kind of white powder, only that it could not be removed, even with effort. Within the irregular bloom of bleached stone was framed the blackest shadow of a killing woman caught off her guard. But by who?
Interestingly, I found another set of tracks, of both a person and what I took to be a tripod. That’s when I remembered—the strange photographer from the train to Lastrygone. But perhaps what I did not realize was of even greater importance—the lack of the Wolf’s body. What I presumed was the photographer’s tread was no greater or lesser wherever I encountered it, except where the camera had been set out. Thus, I was forced to conclude that the body was not carried out. Also, the shadow upon the stone was not carbon scoring, but merely what seemed, perhaps strangest of all, a natural discoloration of the stone. So, the Wolf was also not reduced to ashes. This made for a pleasant mystery, indeed.
The photographer’s steps were not difficult to follow, for no effort was made to conceal them. Unlike the Wolf, the tracks were not light, lithe, or exceptional in any way. They were cold and unwavering, businesslike. I found the disposition totally inconsistent with an artist, even though I must confess that photography was not well known to me. Not that I found the practice beneath me, quite the contrary, really. I found it to be, when properly accomplished, the purest sort of art—pre-art. To capture the very spirit of a subject, the shadow and the caster all at once, was a purely otherworldly composition. Of course, the beauty wasn’t completely teased out, only hinted at—an exquisite beginning.
Beginnings were often, although not always, more beautiful than conclusions. So much was contained within the beginning, likely too much. Most artists, ironically, started at the end of things—sunsets, bones of the body, the moon, the harvest. They started t
here because the end was an explicit affair, while beginnings were almost entirely implicit—easy to miss, harder to capture, requiring a seasoned artist with an eye for the hidden. In fact, the only thing more difficult to render, in its approximate completeness, was a dream, which was both causeless and endless, yet it begins and ends—paradox incarnate. This should do well to explain why I was not a photographer—one cannot photograph a dream.
When the sun was all but dead, I came upon the remains of a house, destroyed almost entirely. Its placement within the densest crowd of trees the woods had to offer—at the foot of a meandering boneyard, no less—intrigued me. The solemn photographer had entered the structure, and so did I. Its rooms were thoroughly destroyed by the weapons and workers of the woods—vines, weeds, burrowing and nesting things. Rooms little more than bones of an ancient industry sheltered various night-things, creatures preferring the darkness of natural enclosures, the corpses of forgotten dead, and the inattention of sun-loving prey. One after the next, crumbling rooms appeared and vanished from my focus, the tracks casually picking through the various debris.
Suddenly, and without suitable preface for such a bizarre thing, a room darker than it had occasion to be appeared. Daylight still lingered the various entrances to the place, a lilting glow that, while diminished, should have had its way with the thickest natural darkness. But the black hung like a curtain across the threshold, nearly tangible, decrying any and all illumination. Gently disturbed by a cautious breeze, the sable curtain even reacted as if a material thing, however slightly. I reached out to touch it—cobwebs and cold. I pushed through it, and a membrane of outer darkness admitted me. The space within was completely free of light, not a speck staining the air. The cold and dark were a unified force here, molded from purpose, surely. My eyes, stunned for the absence of obedient shadow, struggled for signposts. My sisters took to my hands, their smiles burning obedience into the reserved bleakness, retraining its loyalties.
The objects of the room slowly came into focus, gossamer structures melting out from the wincing, lightless cold. Developer fluids, scissors, stop bath and fixer, strings and clothespins, rubber gloves—a darkroom. My respect for photography exploded when my fingers closed over a picture clasped to a thin wire. The image within was . . . alive. The object—or was it a subject? —moved beneath my fingertips, pulsing, emitting life more vital than could be conveyed through simple skin, but only by the soul itself. The image overflowed me, rising beyond me, invading the freezing blackness. Its horror was profound, painful. The thing’s resulting scream invaded me. I could feel my family flinching at the sound as it transferred itself into the bones of their spirits, moving like a surge of electricity across one conductor after the next. The sound leapt from my fingers, racing across the hundreds of other photos hanging from wires, each new print joining its scream with the next. The chain of shrieks became a fire of blazing sound, burning across everything, threatening to obliterate the world.
It happened before I could stop him. My father became my hands, raising himself high, his voice an explosion. “Enough!” He descended with searing desperation. The air went white-hot. Thunder and scream rose into the air, circling one another, hawks facing off. Then came silence, the offspring of mutual annihilation. Next came oblivion.
Jack was waiting for me on the other side. “Hello, Vincent! I was curious if I’d find you here. That awful Shepherd has been attempting to dislodge me from my work to recover some lost bauble or another, of all things. Naturally, with my refusal to budge, I assumed he’d be calling upon you.” I gleaned a few important points from his words. I was not the Shepherd’s first choice for the effort, which might speak to his confidence in my abilities. And I should have been ashamed for succumbing to the Shepherd’s will so easily. Ultimately, I wished to tear out the eyes of this Shepherd for revealing things about myself I may have been much better not knowing. Mysteries should be let alone, for all our sakes.
Jack was speaking to me from the shadows of the September Woods, sunken to near invisibility within the crowding thickets and flowing gullies of twilight. I was prone, upon the floor of my own dream—of the ring of lunatics I’d left behind in Willard, a manifestation of my alternative to all the Shepherd’s foolishness. The image was not lost upon Jack, who immediately fixed his orange gaze upon the madness of skin and dream. “Well, isn’t that a wonder? One of your pieces, I presume?” Jack’s curiosity was aflame. Our dream allowed his eyes to take on the appearance of shivering candle flames.
“In a way, perhaps,” was all I said, my mind still anchored to matters outside the dream.
“Poor, poor Mister Hide. He could have been such a wonderful ally to the New Halloween, that eternal holiday of hiding and tricking. No friend to the machines, that one.” Jack was shaking his head in genuine grief.
While I was not sure what a New Halloween was, though I had a decent idea, Mister Hide would indeed be sorely missed. “He was, to the last, one of the greatest dreamers I’ve ever encountered,” I said, nodding in agreement. But as I continued to look upon the last work of the great skin-switcher, I saw the mad angel rise from beneath the aggregate skins of the death-frozen, un-fleshed White Wigs. Deleriael wrapped the sewn skins around himself as if a shawl, his mismatched wings thrust out, dripping flame and insects, both scuttling and creeping across the floor in turns of titter and hiss. Jack seemed not to notice. A dream, or perhaps a hallucination, inside a shared dream—by the gods, this Game!
Deleriael bowed low, to demonstrate the fit of his form-flattering article of insanity. “A perfect fit,” said the deranged angel, winking his reference to some of Hide’s final words to me. “Ask him, Vincent. I know he’d join us. He’d love to!” I couldn’t tell if the angel was real or dream or the product of my desire to quit the game—my impotent desire to quit the game. I wiped the image of the angel from my mind, and Deleriael vanished. Jack was now staring fully into me, eyes like burning, laughing children.
“Something on your mind, Family Man?” He said, assuming something wonderful. I was caught completely off guard—my next words would decide my soul. He wanted me to ask him to leave the Game. There was no doubt. He would go with me, I had only to ask. Two children, running through endless woods, playing games in the eternal twilight, grinning angels in tow.
I almost wept when I said, “It’s a photographer of sorts, the one you were to hunt down. Though I’ve found him already, for the most part. His work is remarkable. You might have even enjoyed the reprieve for such spectacle.” I could feel my spirits sink beneath my words, the question abandoned.
Jack seemed similarly shrunken, his eyes just wet lights behind a dull orange mask. “I see,” was all the Carver of Souls said. With a downturned face, Jack walked away from me, disappearing into the dim lights of the September Woods. Just before I awoke, I thought I heard him say, “Pity.”
I stood up within the further-ruined ruins of the forest-forgotten house, my father still clutched in my burned hands. The Darkroom was obliterated, but the trapdoor hidden within its floor was revealed. I threw my mind behind the pursuit of the magnificent photographer, putting missed opportunities behind me. With my father returned to sleep, I pried the door open and sank into a now-familiar lightless cold.
The space was ampler than expected, partaking of a vast cavern just below the house. The ground was littered with more photography paraphernalia, albeit of the discarded and broken variety. The uneven, earthen walls were nearly covered in framed portraits of precisely nothing—empty overstuffed chairs, abandoned dinner tables, forgotten birthday parties. And at the end of the vacant, underground gallery, a cargo elevator that only went down. Pressing a single, glowing button affixed to the elevator, I proceeded deeper into the earth. The equipment screeched for its efforts to deliver me further into darkness, and yet I didn’t have the sense of moving in any conventional sense. I might have been back in a dream but for the definitive sense of solidity.
> The next level consisted of a train of empty—or emptied—rooms, all of them spanning ages of various architectural attitudes, and all of them sporting the same white blossom of frozen light that framed the shadow of the Wolf. The solidified illumination was positioned anywhere a person might have stood or sat or posed. I continued more quickly now, eager for the end of the place. As might have been expected, another elevator appeared.
Down again. The space of interlocking rooms continued, but with ever-diminishing earthliness. The white-spotted spaces were slowly partaking of a darker aesthetic, altogether exterior to conventional styles. Black-stoned flooring, each tile inlaid with strange symbols, wallpapers made from skins and scalps, masts of bone and compressed, smoking ash, balustrades worked from spinal columns. And yet for all the organic trimmings, none of it formed even the slightest connection to any creature I was remotely aware of. The fad of emptied photos continued too, but having evolved into unpeopled frescos and mosaics brimming with absent subjects. Faceless statuary greeted me from every widening, smoking threshold. In addition to the empty sitting rooms, I began to encounter the large meandering spaces for other kinds of art and artist. I found myself, at one point, stumbling across an elaborate studio of high ceiling and dusty shelving, packed tightly with taught, vellum canvases. And as was now custom, each painting was missing its focus, only a lingering, vague background was visible, backdrops to lost foregrounds, alone and featureless. My pace quickened, the curios of a void racing by, growing more and more ferociously vacant as I went. And then, footsteps, measured and plain, walking somewhere ahead of me—the photographer.
The Red Son Page 36
