Dark Ride

by Michael Laimo

  My hands explored the texture of the clothing against my skin, smooth and quite tangible. I then became conscious of my breath, as labored as it was. Alertly I took in my surroundings, which remained physically identical to that within my mesmeric state, yet carried no ghostly threat. No high-pitched voices.

  For an indeterminate amount of time I stared at the mannequin-like figures, and only upon collecting my wits did I notice a great deal of time having passed, and that the gallery's doors had been closed for the evening. I crawled to the landing, then quietly ascended the stairs in a crawling position, placing my hands into the dusty footprints I left upon coming down.

  Upon reaching the top of the stairway I felt the residue of my hypnotic slumber obscuring my senses. I did my damnedness to cast it aside while standing in the threshold, gazing at the serenity of the lifeless gallery, of course avoiding at all costs even the slightest glance towards another's creative struggle. I paused for a moment, staring above and beyond the erected display boards, through the filmy window and out towards the shapeless forms in the quiet street. An amber traffic light at the corner blinked its pale rhythm into the gallery, offering me intermittent vision in the dour-blackness I was about to traverse. It was at this moment that I realized my feet were bare, the cracked linoleum and exposed cement foundation nibbling at my heels. Keeping my sights to the floor, I paced in the direction of my display, at one juncture accidentally banging my shoulder against a support beam, which caused a tiny shower of plaster chips to rain down upon my head. I turned to the left and focused on the crumbling archway at the forefront of the narrow vestibule holding my depictions. When I passed beneath it, an odd brewing of perceptions immediately engulfed me, a feeling I could only describe in empathetic terms: a distant and dreary desolation.

  It was an ambivalent sensation, since my work, although drowned in oddness and obscurity, customarily brings me to a lofty level of dark pleasure. But here I am, adversely submerged into pure devastation, not for the true nature that is my work, but for the strange supplement left behind to complement one of my depictions. Before I describe it, let me discuss the art to which it was intended.

  The painting itself is entitled Hallow's Moon. It is, as well imagined, a moonscape comprised of a black sky, winking stars, and a meadow sprinkled with dandelions. The lunar phase is in its early stages, first quarter, that of a concaving crescent caught in the sun's hidden emission, the slightly visible dark side spherically prominent. The ruralscape, seemingly asleep and simplistic in its nature, is alive with all that is dark and evil, and if one with a creative mind looks very closely, he may glimpse one or more of a hundred gremlins hidden in the whorls of paint that make up the insinuated innocence of grass and flowers; the moonlight provides sufficient illumination to make this effort possible. To the right, halfway across the meadow sits a tree, one rather large with no definitive classification other than it bears a red-brown fruit of some ilk (I painted these here as an afterthought, thinking that my hidden gremlins would need to ingest something when there were no do-gooders nearby to ravage). A small treehouse rests in its lower branches, a not so necessarily safe-haven for all those who reach its walls.

  Now, the supplement. An envelope, large, yellow, and clasped, taped to the easel beside Hallow's Moon, but not anywhere near the depiction; the instigator had been careful not to damage any portion of the scene. If my actions could ever have been described as poetic, then the slow deliberate method I used to open the envelope and remove its contents could have taken a pageful of fear-filled stanzas. When the contents finally lay nestled in the palm of my hand, I could only shudder at the remarkable progression used in this supplement to Hallow's Moon, the mad genius it took to create them, plus the fear these items evoked upon me.

  There were ten photographs of the instamatic kind, the type bought in a cartridge at the local drugstore then used primarily by lust-filled couples to record their plotted events of drink and drugs while romping between the sheets. They showed a series of scenes, all eventuating before the serene backdrop of the fictitious landscape I designated Hallow's Moon. The first photograph was that of the meadow, an exact duplicate of every detail of scenery that I'd painted, from the tree and its tiny dwelling, to the dandelions and the wisps of witch-grass blowing in the gentle wind. I searched for the hidden gremlin-faces but could not locate them, for the definition within the photograph was lost to poor clarity. And then I went to sheer lengths to wonder, how is it that the photographer was capable of photographing this landscape which was created solely through the workings of my creativity? The level of unreality surrounding this strange revelation was impressive to me, and I could only attempt to answer my question by viewing the remaining photographs. The second was nearly exact to the first, excepting a thin line of shadow obscuring the left tenth of the meadow, concealing the grass and dandelions there, as if the picture-taker's finger had accidentally slipped out in front of the lens at the moment of exposure. The third showed the dark shadow as more prevalent, it still being in the forefront, but having moved across nearly a third of the viewable area. The fourth photograph appeared to have been taken a minute or more later than the one previous. Here the curious shadow became an outline of a person, this individual now standing at a distant point in the meadow so that their being took up perhaps a quarter of the entire scene, but was central and solitary so that the sky, grass, and even the tree framed the person equally on all sides. The fifth picture offered a vague identity of the person, and I say vague because although I could readily identify the subject as a person, there was no further familiarity in them enabling me to specify any motive for the taking of these pictures, nor given the presumed reality of the fictitious Hallow's Moon, as to the possibility of their existence. The person (I continue to refer to the androgynous figure as a 'person' because I feel it nearly impossible to pin a sexual gender upon him/her; if I had to guess for the intents of my plight, I would say she) had turned to face the camera, and was in full make-up, black lips and eye-shadow, white face glowing beneath the moon's beams, short hair slicked back as if deeply oiled, bushy eyebrows thick like worms. She wore a dress in monastery-black which ran flush against her waistline and bellied out near the pelvic area. A boustierre pressed in below her bustline and ran straight up to her neck where a metal chain was tied in a noose-like knot. The chain hung slackly from her neck and dangled into a high pocket of grass. In the sixth picture, all evil intentions of the photographer became apparent. The chain was suddenly taut, the black-clad individual now leaning over (rather, was being pulled over), both hands gripping the links as if in a tug-of-war with an unseen entity burrowing in the grass. Her face was no longer solemn, but presently a mask of terror, eyes bulging and lost amidst the wild growth in search for her tormentors. She needn't have to search very far, for in the seventh picture my gremlins made themselves known, the hundred or more that I'd masterfully hidden amidst the scenery in Hallow's Moon uprooting themselves from their hiding places, the grass, the bark of the tree, the tree-dwelling, the dandelions, little men no taller than twelve inches, their faces dark brown and repulsively wrinkled, red eyes beading like single drops of blood. Their bodies were ensconced in similar gear, leather outfits covered with open slits that looked like scars. Photo eight showed the gremlins taking control of the girl, many carrying whips which they used to fetter her limbs, others covering her torso and head like aphids on a rose stem. The ninth picture told an alarming story: she'd been dragged through the meadow to a point under the tree, an irregular swath matted down in the field indicating that she'd put up quite a struggle in effort to escape (in the distance, her clothing and face supported this obvious theory, having been torn and marred in a multitude of places). Lastly, picture ten, the protagonist of the instamatic pictures swings from the chain, her head twisted to the side at a near-impossible angle, forced there from the noosed chain at her neck that had been strung over the lowest branch of the tree. The only color present in this depiction, which had miracu
lously been stripped of its crescent moon, was that of the red bloated tongue bursting from her mouth.

  I took my gift from the God of Art, these photographs, and went back into the basement of the gallery where I slept on the floor beneath the amber glow of the filtering streetlight, curled amidst the heads and the torsos of the sculpt-artist castaways.

  Sometime later I was awakened by a voice, high-pitched and child-like, calling my name. Brion Heloise, Brion Heloise, over and over again. When I opened my eyes the small window at the top of the wall greeted my slumberous gaze and I saw at this sharp angle a sliver of moon high above the buildings in the street; the blackness in the Nyxian sky from which it hung indicated that I'd slept either one or twenty-one hours—for which, I could not be certain. The silence in the building indicated that again I was alone in the gallery

  (or was I?)

  and that another supplement may await me in the vestibule housing my depictions. I stood on shaky legs and tackled the field of bodies, arms, legs, and torsos tossed at odd angles. I peeked over at the line of gremlin heads on the shelf, some of them seemingly rearranged to contemplate me, their red eyes reflecting the moonlight that somehow found its way to them. The one that had spoken to me...

  ...one great art form deserves another, Brion...

  in that child-like voice was silent at the moment, and I wondered if it had been this particular head that had just called my name in a successful push to stir me from my slumber.

  I carried myself up the flight of wooden steps, out into the darkened gallery that was devoid of people, and retraced my steps from the previous amble I took, all the way to my own personal area of display. I found myself staring at the abstract magnetism of the second complete piece, that which was titled Raingods Dancing. This selection is a mixture of oil and water in which I endeavored to arouse the ferocity of an unanticipated storm. But here, I might add, nature holds no responsibility to the tempest at hand—on the contrary, it is a plague of ghosts that rain down upon the poor souls residing in a quaint bungalow on a dark countryside, a mother, father, and baby peering out from their windows (although only the glow of their eyes and a faint outline of nighttime garb is evident, it provides the admirer with just enough detail to assume their presence), their actions still and tentative, other than the possibility that they've tolerantly resigned themselves to certain death. Above, the clouds have blackened before a blue sky, only faint traces of sunlight breaking through the smothering formation. And again, if one looks closely into the black monster above, amidst the bruise-like abstractions and scintillating cumulus patterns, the faces and hands of ghosts suddenly appear, specter-like gremlins riping to swoop down from their places in the sky in a race to possess the bodies of the three living souls trapped behind the four walls of their quaint bungalow. In addition to the bungalow, there is a wooden stockade fence whose unfettered gate is caught in the muscling gale, two trees set off on the left side whose leaves are being stripped away like the clothes of a victim about to be raped.

  After spending an indeterminate amount of time reveling in the creativity of Raingods Dancing, I peered down below the easel which held my work and saw not an envelope this time, but an old-type cassette player-recorder, one of those rectangular-shaped devices most notably used years ago by elementary school librarians and teachers. I kneeled down before it and pressed the button labeled play, watching as the tiny gear-like cartridge wheels within began their revolutions towards the continuation of this enigma of supplement.

  No voices came from the player. Rather a hiss-ladened chorus of sounds emanated: that of a creaking gate slamming against its cradle, a cowbell tinkling madly in a whistling wind (taking my sights from the rotating cartridge wheels for a second, I peered at the work entitled Raingods Dancing in which this supplement in the form of a soundtrack was intended, and noticed without remembering for the life of me that I'd painted a tiny cowbell beside the door of the bungalow in which the family of three awaited their fate), and the static-like sway of leaves gripped in the fury of the coming storm. These sound-characteristics on the tape carried on for a period of perhaps fifteen minutes, in which the volume of the intemperate wind increased at a moderate pace until the wooden gate began to slam violently at close-to-even intervals of three seconds. Then the band of sounds grew very intense, apparently becoming infected with the plague of ghosts I'd imagined raining down from the skies. At this moment I felt as if I were falling into a trance, and my recollection of actually painting this depiction became spotty and vague. And then, as I sat on the floor listening to this tape as the bellows of the ghosts roared above the shrilling winds, I found myself merging with the soundtrack, so that not only was I hearing the events occurring in Raingods Dancing, but I was feeling them, to a point where my skin rippled at the wet air that seemed to bleed from the depiction above me. My apprehension grew like fire, as thinking back to the photographs supplementing Hallow's Moon made me consider the dreadful probability as to how this would end, and before I gave myself a chance to draw a conclusion as to what might occur, three individual screams ejaculated from the tape player, the first one of a grown man, then that a woman's, and then, most alarmingly, that of a baby's, and I say this with such dread for in my mind's eye I'd made it clear—and in the depiction quite apparent—that the third family member was not merely a child of six or eight or ten, but rather a baby of an age measured in months rather than years. Undoubtedly, the third voice I heard was the innocent end-cry of an infant.

  I stood up quickly, fully startled, dread coating my body as if in the form of an army of skittering ants, and I kicked at the player until it terminated the ghostly wail of wind with an abrupt click. Once bathed in raging silence, I backpedaled away from my display, knocking into that of another's before escaping the threat of the gallery and finding sanctuary amongst the sculpt-artist castaways in the amber-coated basement.

  Unaware that I had swooned, I fell awake much like I had earlier: at the summon of an evil-sweet voice calling my name. I peered suspiciously about the basement, taking in everything while those heads, those shining eyes, pondered my presence. Again the calculation of time seemed impossible, and I sought the moon beyond the measly rectangle of a window at the top of the wall, ineffectively I might add, due to a ceiling of roiling storm clouds; either night still reigned, or daylight continued to avoid me.

  Unaffected by fatigue, I traipsed back upstairs, despite the pleas of the whispering heads to return. I found my way back to the display area, directing my attention to the third complete depiction on exhibition.

  My recognition of the piece was instantaneous to my recalling of the scene that inspired it, my perspective even now no different as it was back when I first bore witness to The Archer House. Here, standing in front of such a masterpiece makes me feel as if I am not peering at the house itself, but rather standing inside the domicile, thus looking at the painting is much like observing the dark room as if trapped within its obscure walls: I can sense its dusty floors, I can smell the stale aroma, I shiver from the frigid climate within. Peering cautiously about, the room appears to be empty, perhaps abandoned. It is stripped of furniture and fixtures, its barren, grotto-like foyer visible only in the sickly light that glimmers through stained, curtainless windows. A staircase climbs from the center of the room like a crooked spine and meets a landing that runs the entire length of the room. Up here are two more windows centering the rear wall, each housing sharp broken panes and snagged pigeon feathers. This strange place is truly awe inspiring! Whether it be the naked bookshelves along either sides of the staircase, or the wooden floors that creak despite the absence of footsteps, I can sense the bitter atmosphere upon my skin. It is thick with gloom and anxiety—the perpetual residuals of some subversive adversity, an act I've committed with the freely probing strokes of a paintbrush. And although my metaphysical presence and purpose here is precisely undefined, I am staunch in my search of the The Archer House for something extraordinary, something so maddening t
hat I must question my sanity for doing just this; the horror I painted within the walls of this forsaken residence has my too-free imagination tempting the fragile bounds of lunacy.

  The pallid light here provides enough illumination to allow me a free climb of the steps, and when I reach the landing I find a high-back chair draped with a hide unlike anything I've ever seen; upon closer inspection I discover that it is human skin, still damp from the underlying viscera it had been flayed from. Below the chair a straight-razor lays, cast away not unlike any one of the plaster limbs in the basement of the gallery, its blade smeared with still-moist blood. And then, I behold the body from which the skin came. It is lying lengthwise across the floor so that the tender head and upper torso is bathed below the broken beams of light sifting through the shattered panes in the two windows, one crimson-glistening foot dangling from a protracted leg over the edge of the second-floor landing. From the perspective of an admirer who abstains from this metaphysically-induced analysis within the walls of The Archer House—who maintains themselves as the common peruser in simple sight of the painting itself—they would absorb the murderous scene as if standing in the vestibule upon first entering the dwelling: the glint of a razor's edge, the tiny glisten of a peeled sole, and the gentle flap of indefinable skin in the breeze—all of this witnessed from their uni-dimensional standpoint.