Draw the Dark

by Ilsa J. Bick

  She said, “I guess it’s easier to talk about how everyone hates you and is scared of you, right? I mean, that’s a part of you, like your name.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Is that what you want me to put in my notes?”

  “Look, I had a bad dream. I sleepwalked. That’s all.”

  “But why there? And why swastikas?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think it has something to do with Hellsing?” At my frown, she said, “The Nazis. They’re all over Hellsing, right? And you like manga, so . . . maybe that’s where the swastikas came from.”

  I didn’t think so. “I don’t think so.”

  “So what’s your theory?”

  “I don’t have one.” I pulled on my lip, then blurted, “Did you know that someone was murdered there?”

  Her eyebrows arched. “Really? No, I didn’t. Tell me.”

  I told what little I did know and then said, “I keep meaning to look it up, but I’ve been kind of busy.”

  “Okay. And you think this means . . . what?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not the doctor.”

  She chuckled. “Touché. Well, I think that maybe you heard about this at one point in your life and it surfaced now.”

  I was shaking my head before she finished. “You heard Mrs. Krauss. This is a little, tiny town, and there are things people don’t talk about. This is one of them. I’ve never heard about this, never.”

  “You had to have known, Christian.”

  “I don’t see how. It’s not something Uncle Hank would talk about. Heck, he barely knows anything himself, it’s been so long, and other than the fact that it happened in 1945, that doesn’t explain the swastikas. I mean, Nazis? In Winter?” I shook my head. “Never happen.”

  After that, the hour—well, fifty minutes—was up. Leaving, I asked, “How do you know my uncle?”

  “Ah. Well, you know that case your uncle’s working? The baby in the hearth?”

  “That’s your house?”

  “The very one.” She held the door open. “See you Friday.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Uncle Hank chewed a mouthful of stew very carefully. He swallowed and said, “Well, it really wasn’t any of my business now, was it?”

  “What are you talking about? You’re investigating a body in her house, and she’s my shrink!”

  “Would it have changed anything? . . . No? Then,” he spooned up another mouthful of beef and carrots, “no harm done.”

  I frowned. Stirred my stew a few times. My appetite was still terrible. “What do you think of her?”

  “Dr. Rainier?” He gave this careful thought. “She’s an interesting woman. A lot of other people, men and women, they’d have been long gone out of that house, completely spooked. She’s very . . . analytical about it. To her, they’re just bones. She’s an interesting person.”

  “Yeah, you said that.” Was there color in his cheeks? “How often are you going out there?”

  Uncle Hank was, suddenly, very busy salting his stew. “As often as I need to.”

  “Uh-huh. So how often is that?”

  “Depends. There are logistical matters. Updates.” Then he eyed me in a way that said no more questions. “Eat your stew before it gets cold.”

  I did what he said. But I thought: Hunh.

  XIII

  So things kind of settled down for about two weeks, which, all things considered, was weird. Now, in hindsight, I realize that it was because it was the beginning of the end.

  At school, the other kids stopped poking each other every time I went by and settled back into treating me like a bad smell. Dekker was waiting for me one day after school but then got all buddy when Jason rolled past in his cruiser. After that, Dekker just told me I could do the paint job on his bike in another week and then we’d be cool. Uh-huh.

  I saw Dr. Rainier every Tuesday and Friday. She was okay. Mainly, we were kind of feeling each other out. I didn’t tell her anything, really. I mean, shrinks aren’t mind readers. Thank God.

  I did the home on Mondays and Thursdays, with the possibility of the occasional Sunday. Things at the home got routine pretty fast, though Peggy kept me away from Lakeview House most of the time. The few times we did go on the unit together, she kept checking to make sure I stayed right with her. On the other hand, she loosened up enough that she said I could come extra days if I wanted to speed things up and get all my community service hours in. So I said, sure, I’d try to come by on Wednesdays. . . . I mean, might as well fill up the afternoons, right?

  So yeah—the week was full. I did homework and took tests and stuff. And I kind of calmed down enough inside so that I could actually feel hungry again, and Uncle Hank said he thought it was because of all the extra work I was doing at the home. I let him think that.

  The muttering just kind of . . . died. I tried not to think about it because I didn’t want to jinx anything.

  My dreams didn’t change, though, and that was bad. They came in snatches, always the same thing: a dark space, the smell of hay and blood, the horses screaming and men shouting, but everything was garbled. I always had the weird feeling that I watched through eyes that weren’t mine, though I didn’t know whose. That boy’s? David? Had to be.

  It rained the next weekend, so I wasn’t able to go to the barn, which didn’t exactly slay me. Staying away helped too, a little. Sometimes I’d snap awake like a rubber band, and I almost felt as if the answer, whatever that was, was on the tip of my tongue. I’d try drawing what I dreamt, but they weren’t, well, right. Just . . . images and sometimes not even that. More like hints of sensations: Something bright, that rust smell. The screams of horses and men.

  Definitely the barn, I thought. No way in hell I wanted to find out more. I was good with that.

  Oh, and one other thing: the door on my wall didn’t reappear. I was good with that too.

  On Wednesday the following week, in history, big groans all around the room. One kid said, “A paper on local history? Nothing ever happens here.”

  “Oh no,” said Sarah. “People find bodies in their walls all the time.”

  “Except that,” said the kid. “And you’ve already got dibs, so what does that leave?”

  “Listen, not every paper has to be on something as sensational as what Sarah’s doing,” said the teacher. “You’ve got the history of the foundry, for one, and the Eisenmanns after World War I. There’s the union unrest of the ’30s and ’40s, the big fire of ’45, the town’s contributions to the war effort, and so on. There are plenty of areas that tie us into the state and national level, and world events after World War I. I’ll get a list of general topics together, and then I’d encourage you to use your imagination.”

  After class, Sarah paused by my desk. “So . . . I’ve interviewed Dr. Rainier.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh-huh. She’s pretty nice.” Sarah was studying me.

  I gathered up my books. “That’s good.”

  “You going to come out when the anthropologist gets here?”

  “Maybe . . . look, I got class.”

  “So what are you going to work on?” she asked as we moved into the hall. I saw people look at us and then each other and do the elbow-nudging routine. Sarah either was ignoring them or didn’t care—and I had to wonder about that.

  “Well, I was kind of thinking about a murder myself.”

  She looked interested. “Yeah? Which one?”

  “Hey, Sarah!” It was one of her girlfriends, and I saw Sarah frown and then nibble on her lower lip.

  Sarah turned back. “Look, I—”

  “Yeah. See ya,” I said and walked away.

  So, yeah, I was thinking about the barn when I got to Aspen Lake that Wednesday afternoon. As I pedaled past the grove of white pines, it seemed to me that they exhaled air that was much colder than usual. Farther back, the shadows seemed almost solid. I got this urge to veer off, plunge into that darkness—but I peda
led on past. No more ghosts.

  Then, on the approach road to the home, I saw a quartet of crows lift from the remains of a squashed rabbit, and I had this funny, really weird feeling like: What are you guys doing out here? Like they were the same crows from the barn, right? Dumb. But I twisted around in my saddle as they swarmed back down over that roadkill. One crow tugged a rope of intestine, and I looked away.

  Peggy was off. The woman in her place—Stephanie—was tiny and brown, like a house wren. She had eyes like a bird too: quick and bright, darting all over the place, always sliding off my face until I finally figured out that she was freaked out to be working with me. She kept shooing me away from the trays: “Oh now, I can do that” or “No, no, you go help out in the dining room, why don’t you?”

  But they didn’t need me in the dining room. So after I’d settled Lucy and some other people in wheelchairs at their spots, I wandered out....

  And thought: I got a key card. Why the heck not?

  The nurses in Lakeview didn’t pay me much mind. If Dr. Rainier was around, I didn’t see her. So I walked straight to Mr. Witek’s room. Stood in the doorway. Listened to the monitors go bip-bip-bip. Propped up on his bed, Mr. Witek looked pretty much the same as the week or two before, only this time his eyes were closed and his mouth sagged open and I could hear his breath every time he inhaled. He looked asleep or in a coma.

  My heart was banging against my ribs, and I was breathing kind of fast. Calm down. I smoothed moist palms over my jeans. I don’t know what I was expecting—well, that’s a lie. I did. I was hoping for that little thrum again but nothing happened. I knocked softly on the doorjamb. “Mr. Witek?” Then again and a little louder: “Mr. Witek, it’s me, Christian.”

  Of course, he didn’t answer. Duh.

  But something changed. I felt it in the air, a subtle plucking at my brain, like fingers at the strings of a harp.

  My eyes crept to the decorated brass tube on the doorjamb. Now that I was close enough, I saw that there was also some kind of symbol, also fashioned out of brass, near the top. It kind of looked like some kind of letter, like a W—and for a brief second, that tip-of-my-tongue feeling, the one that grabbed me every time I woke up from one of those weird dreams, surged through me: I know what this is....

  Pulling the door shut behind me, I stepped across the threshold.

  For a second, I just stood there. My knees trembled, and my hands were still wet. Besides the monitor, I caught the faint ticking of the IV pump. The room smelled sour, like the old man needed a bath or to have his sheets changed.

  The paintings stared out from the walls: a few landscapes and what looked like a family portrait of mother, father, daughter, and son. The closest, to my right, was a woman reclining on a couch. Her skin was like alabaster, and her arms were thrown back over her head and sank into the lush tangle of her hair that cascaded like molten gold over the deep forest green pillows. She wore only a shimmering cream-colored silk robe with black trim and bloodred chrysanthemums, and the robe sagged around her neck, and the faintest crescent of pink nipple was visible along her left breast. She looked directly out of the frame, completely unself-conscious, more than a hint of invitation in her dark eyes. Her lips, full and blush red, were parted to reveal small, even, white teeth.

  The woman was posed against a long picture window with a stained-glass transom. The stained glass reminded me of Tiffany, a style called French Nouveau: stylized tulips, water lilies, and pond grasses. The picture window looked out on a garden. To the right, I saw a brass fountain: a woman in Grecian costume pouring water from an urn. To the left were an enormous willow and those kinds of wrought-iron benches that completely encircle the trunk.

  I looked for the artist’s signature and found nothing but an odd symbol: a six-sided star and two letters in the center, MW. Two numbers above and below the star at twelve and six o’clock: 4 and 5.

  That thought, again: I know this....

  Then my eyes clicked to the oil to the right of the portrait—and a forest of hackles prickled along my neck.

  There was no mistake. There were the same rolling hills, the tracts of deep green woods, and the thin ribbon of lake along the eastern horizon. The square brick clock tower and the foundry alongside. Even the curls of smoke rising above the buildings were the same—and there was the azure blue of that onion dome: the White Lady.

  It was the oil of the sketch I’d drawn the night of my first nightmare. And then I’d seen it again, in the barn, as David.

  “Oh my God.” My whisper was like a shout in my head. Goose bumps rose along my arms, and I felt a cramp in my groin, like I had to pee. I thought I heard something coming from the old guy, and my head whipped around, my mouth open, ready to scream....

  He was lying there just as he’d been: the bellows of his chest moving with every breath, his jaw unhinged and his mouth all caved in on account of his having no teeth. Beneath his halfclosed lids, I saw the slivers of white and his eyes jerked from side to side. Dreaming . . .

  My hands came alive at once, with a ferocious sting of electricity. The fingers actually spazzed and twitched, and I thought: a pencil, a pen, anything . . .

  Then I saw a slim packet on the bed stand to Mr. Witek’s right. Had it been there before? I didn’t recall. The packet was a khaki canvas roll and lay atop an artist’s sketchbook. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d picked up the roll. Instantly, the pain in my hands eased. Not all the way but a bit. I tugged at the ribbon and unrolled the packet and caught just the faintest whisper of turpentine.

  They were brushes, each slotted into a separate canvas holder. They were the kind you used for oil painting. Some were stiff hog hair for thick paints, but there were also softer, sable-hair brushes, and all types—flats, rounds, a few filberts, daggers, and scripts—for very fine work. The brushes were in excellent condition. Their toes were absolutely perfect, the lacquered dark wood of the handles unblemished with the size of each brush in tiny gold numbers, and a name done in an ornate script: Dynasty.

  I knew these belonged to the artist who’d done all these paintings—to MW. Obviously, the W must mean “Witek.”

  I looked at the old man, licked my lips, and then said: “Mr. Witek, sir, do you want me to have these? Is that why they’re here?”

  Of course, he didn’t answer. His breathing didn’t even change. It was like having a conversation with a corpse. Still . . . I looked at the packet of brushes in my hands and then at the old man. Then I tucked the canvas roll into my hip pocket and pulled my shirt out so no one could see. I felt like a complete thief—but that didn’t stop me from scooping up that sketchbook either.

  The sketchbook was old, the pages yellowed and spotted with age. There was no information on the first page, only a date, written in black ink: 07–08–45.

  The second page was a pencil sketch, a head-and-shoulders portrait of a young man in three-quarters profile, his left side toward the viewer. The man looked to be in his early twenties; his face was lean, a little hungry-looking, with a fringe of bangs over a high forehead. The man’s lips were very thin and uneven, with a scar bisecting his upper lip just below his nose, and there was another half-moon scar puckering his left cheekbone. The eyes were a little too close together over the bridge of a narrow nose, and there was something off about them, a look that reminded me of a flounder. A lazy eye? Maybe. I could just see the curved frame of spectacles jutting from the man’s left breast pocket. His shirt was open at the throat, and there was something in white—a letter?—just visible below the hump of the left shoulder. There was a name penciled below, followed by some kind of code: Daecher, L.K. 31G-5293.

  A hum of recognition when I saw the name. Daecher? No one in town with that name, but . . . I quickly leafed through a few more pages and saw that they were all pencil portraits, all men, all with codes next to their names.

  Puzzled, I looked down at the old man again. “Sir . . . Mr. Witek . . . I don’t know what this is all about or if you can hear me, bu
t maybe you can.... I mean, can you blink or some—”

  “What are you doing?”

  I nearly let loose with a yell. As it was, I jumped back from Mr. Witek’s bed, turning so fast that I almost smacked Stephanie in the face. She glared, her beady bird’s eyes narrowing as she saw the sketchbook. “I said, what are you doing in here?”

  “I . . . ” I swallowed and then did the absolutely wrong thing by hastily replacing the sketchbook on the nightstand, just like a guilty guy caught with his hand in the register. “Nothing ... I was just talking to Mr. Witek.... ”

  “Talking?” Stephanie bustled toward the bed. “How could you be talking to—” She broke off and a hand flew to her lips. “Oh my God.”

  Mr. Witek’s eyes were open.

  And the very next second, my head exploded.

  The sensation was huge and immediate and physical, like being clobbered from behind, this huge KEBANG, a blinding flash that was also physical, a ripping open of some fissure and the muttering—gone for so long—jostled in and

  you

  you

  YOU

  YOUYOUYOUYOU

  XIV

  Mr. Witek’s eyes didn’t waver—he didn’t blink—but he was seeing me, really seeing me for the first time, and the words in my mind were screams, and then there were so many voices

  he’s crazy I hate peas little bitch’s not wearing panties I’m three weeks late little bitch she thinks that because I’m old I can’t get it up better call security if I could just find myself that’s right come closer let’s see those little titties oh I’m so lost

  all overlapping in a blurry cacophony, like water gushing out a burst dam. I screamed, my hands clapping to my temples as I stumbled back from the bed. My legs got tangled, and I flailed, knocking over an IV pump with a huge crash.