Collectives of any kind always grow a brain after a while; all it takes is time and human nature. “We take drugs and make art,” she says it matter-of-factly, as if it’s the most normal
thing in the world. But then, normal is such a relative word, and the world I live in now has different rules in comparison to the other Real.
“Sounds cool.” Escape; I live in one world to get away from the problems in another.
Why not take another step and go somewhere else for a while?
The idea of being lost in my own head is appealing and also terrifying. Minds are scary places, and the further down into your own you go, the greater the risk you won’t come back.
Either you come out more whole, or you take something back with you and it’s with you every day afterwards.
The last time I tripped, my parents committed me because of the things I started seeing. If I fall this time, there’s nothing and no one to catch me.
“It is, wanna come?”
Jack looks at me like a kid, his eyes saying what he’s too shy to give voice to. Really, though, it sounds like fun in its own way — and I want to see what’s so fucking hot that these two have funny looks in their eyes.
“Sure.”
From behind, I think it’s Billy, despite the impossibility of it. When he turns, I see I’m wrong, but he has the same build and even the same way of standing. But when I blink and look again, he’s different. Not like a moment ago.
“You okay?”
My arm twitched at Laura’s touch. “Sorry, yeah...no,” I muttered, hand on my forehead to play it up. “Think I’ve got a headache coming on.”
She looked around. “I’ll find you some water.” “Thanks, I just need to sit for a bit.”
She wandered off, and I parked myself on one of the benches arranged in groups of three around the big room. I should’ve brought something to take, but the vision’s fading now. The man I see is just a man — taller than Billy ever was, in fact. Being here and the chance of seeing Lucia probably triggering fuck knows what in my head.
She won’t remember me, I think, almost willing her not to. She’s blind now, so there’s that advantage at least. If Laura tries to get me to talk to her, what then?
Say no, obviously. Beg off, the “headache” will provide reason enough. She cares about you enough to swallow it.
There’s always been a coldly rational part of my mind; it’s seldom active, I only notice it in times of stress. It was a mechanism I developed whenever to cope with whatever came my way.
I can’t remember when I first heard it, not exactly, but I think I was no more than four or five.
One of the times my dad tried to hit me, I just knew the best way to get out from under.
Laura returned with a paper cup filled with cool water. She sat and smiled at me as I sipped.
I was right, she’d leave with me if I asked her to. God knows I wanted that then. Going there was a mistake. A lot of stuff was starting to crowd my head; things pushing against the dams I built so I wouldn’t have to think about them.
There was also the curiosity.
Lucia was a good artist before. Now people said she was great. That word was bandied about too much these days, but hearing it here actually seemed to make sense. As though the word still had most of its meaning; stripped of the cheapness it has today, describing any pretentious wanker with time on his hands.
I wanted to see what she’d created.
I could imagine it, because I’d seen the place it came from. I understood her process back then, and I wanted to see if it was different.
I really hoped it was.
The squat is a small house; three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the remains of a living room and kitchen. It’s hard to say how long it’s been empty or how long it’s been inhabited.
Empty of Other people, I mean; inhabited by shadows.
I’m not a shadow, like Jake and Lucia. I’m only a tourist here. I have a place I can go back to — people in the Real who I can call. They don’t. There will always be that division between us.
Billy is shorter than I expected. I’m not sure why I thought he would be big. I suppose one imagines leaders to be larger than average.
He has curly black hair and a round face. The look in his eyes is similar to the one in Lucia’s, only more fragile somehow. Brittle, in fact, as though he’s on the cusp of letting something go.
“You brought friends, good,” he says, and he beams and shakes my hand with both of his. “Where is everyone?” Lucia asks.
“Errands. You know how it is?”
This last is put to me. Billy searches my face before he speaks again. “You’re between things, aren’t you?”
Jake looks at me, hands coming up defensively. “I never mentioned you.” “It’s something he does,” Lucia explains. “He’s a reader, you could say.” “It’s not hard, when you know how,” he says.
He tries to reassure with his smile, but it has the opposite effect. Lucia sees I’m nervous; maybe something on my face was giving it away.
“It’s alright, really.”
“Would you like to see where she paints?” Billy asks, gesturing through a portal with no door.
“It’s a blast,” she adds, moving to stand next to him.
“Today we are going further. Lucia would like to finish a piece that has been giving her trouble.”
“Really goin’ down the rabbit hole, eh?” Jake almost waves it away, but I can see he’s
excited.
People take their release where they can find it; he’s no different. I don’t want to be left out and despite my reservations, I really do want to see her work. Watching the creative process is fascinating, and I’ve seen few fascinating things up to this point.
“As long as we won’t be in your way?” “No, not at all.”
The doors opened and a steady trickle of people began to enter. It soon became a stream, though the paintings were not yet unveiled.
Waiters moved through the crowd with trays of champagne flutes. I lifted one, deciding I needed something for my hands to fiddle with. The alcohol is secondary, but it will help too.
Laura nudged me gently in the side. Following her gaze, I saw Gregg looking over at us. He offered a wave, which I returned slightly less enthusiastically than Laura did.
I pinched her arm. “Stop it.”
“He likes you,” she told me unnecessarily. Her smile is so disarming. It’s hard to stay mad at her, but I’ve tried never to trust a smile.
“I’m taken.”
“Yeah, I heard something about that.”
It was my turn to smile, which came easily, to my surprise. One of the things that drew me to her was the way she could bring things out in people. I think it came with her job; an ease of manner so people would talk about their art. Art is, of course, the most personal part of themselves.
“How do you feel?”
“Better,” I said, waggling the flute. “This seems to be helping.” “Maybe just nerves, or the crowd.”
She knew I didn’t do so well with crowds anymore. I couldn’t tell her the real reason why.
My head feels overfull, crowded out by things that are still happening somewhere in time behind me. They will always be happening. It’s where all pain and memory come from.
Believe me, I know.
I’m surprised at the neatness of the space in the basement. Unlike the rest of the house — strewn with empty cans, bags, and wrappers — this place is pristine. Several large squares lean against the walls, four that I can see. They’re covered with stained sheets, what look like old curtains almost.
“My other paintings,” Lucia explains. “Also unfinished.” “You work on a few at once?”
“I like it that way.”
Drugs would make it hard to focus on each one for the time it took to finish it, I assumed.
What seems interesting during one high would not always be the next time.
Billy moves ahead and t
ugs the sheet from one board, or rather, canvas. The style is hard to define. Contemporary, but expressive and figurative. The shapes in front of me lacked hard lines, the colors bleeding into each other as they were painted or smeared on.
It’s a woman. She’s thin — too thin. Her arms are more like sticks than flesh and blood.
Her skin is pallid, a washed-out grey, which is why her shape was hard to pick out.
She’s standing in a grey pool of water, partially illuminated in what must be moonlight.
Her hair falls to her shoulders. It has the same look of the reeds rising from the water around her; only, her face is empty. Lucia hasn’t painted it yet.
The water she’s standing in fills most of the canvas. Overhanging skeletal trees and stands of reeds describe its shape, but the far shore is only a thin line. “A lake,” Billy points out. “It has an old name.”
“Hali,” Lucia says, lifting a palette of colors and a fine brush from a small table. “She’s going to be baptized in it.”
Nothing about the scene suggests anything holy. More the opposite, but I don’t give voice to the idea.
Billy walks to each of us in turn and presses a tiny triangular pill into our hands. It’s red; the color of calf’s blood. Lucia swallows her own first and steps to the painting. Then Jake, then me, and finally Billy himself takes one.
Whatever it is, it acts fast. I feel it rising from the pit of my stomach, where it nudges and kicks into the back of my head. I sway, but steady myself and take a seat on a rickety stool. Jake slides down to the floor against one wall, but I only half notice.
The light from the room’s only bulb begins to fuzz, smearing over everything like the paint on the unfinished work in front of Lucia. The buzz from the filament grows louder, filling up the room; a drone of flies to drown out other sound.
The water. The water in the painting moves, runs, ripples around the woman’s body and the reeds.
I can see it.
It’s not that the paint is wet where it wasn’t before, because it’s not paint anymore. It’s not a painting anymore either — more like a window where there shouldn’t be one. The drone changes in pitch, growing softer and more rhythmic. It’s like a wind rustling through trees before long.
“Hali is a door,” Billy mumbles, as if his tongue is fighting against him. “A b-bridge between. He sees and she does too.”
Jake puts his head between his legs. Is this what happened before?
Lucia raises the brush and the woman in the painting turns, really turns towards us. Her face isn’t a face, because Lucia hasn’t painted it yet. The way she stands makes her seem impatient, as if she’s waiting for the gap to be filled.
Something tightens around my pelvis and between my thighs, screwing its way up under my stomach. If I scream, I’ll vomit. I don’t want to vomit, but the more I think about not doing it, the more I’m sure it will happen.
My head is hot and cold. Sweat runs into my eyes, and then Billy is in front of me, holding my hands. His eyes are clear, focused, but there is something else moving behind them. Something not him; something that is only wearing him for the moment, but something he finds familiar — otherwise, he wouldn’t let it in, would he?
He doesn’t say anything when Lucia starts to scream.
One by one, they uncover the paintings, beginning in one room and moving to another so the crowd is funneled in one direction. The first dozen or so are simple enough — landscapes — but while they are different in content to the paintings I remember Lucia making, I can see all the hallmarks from before.
They have the same blurring of lines, the same figurative elements that lend each the quality of something Other. Something elemental and ethereal, which I realize is what she’s always captured. The pictures speak to people. They make them think of places we can never go, but which could be all too real.
Laura seems impressed, though later she won’t be able to say why exactly and her write-up will be filled with abstracts. Only suggestions of feelings and ideas, but little in the way of in-depth analysis; even the ideas will be difficult to capture. It will be enough to entice people, which I think is the point.
Draining my second glass of champagne gives me the legs to carry on.
The landscapes give way to portraits. Her style hasn’t changed; I can see it in their faces, and the memories come back. Whatever dam is there breaks and the trickle becomes a flood. Even the champagne can’t hold it back.
I can’t see past Billy; his grip on my hands is too tight.
Lucia screams and screams, but what I can see of her over Billy’s shoulder suggests she’s still painting. The woman in the picture leans in closer, as if she’s having make-up applied.
“Notyetnotyetnotyetnotyet,” Billy’s mouth almost trips over the words, they run together so fast.
Colored smoke drifts in the sclera of his eyes, burning at the edges like something corrosive. Lucia stops screaming. Not gradually, more like her voice is switched off. Billy lets go of my hands and steps back.
The light in the room dims, though the bulb burns with the same brightness as before. In the painting, the woman is as she was. Only where her face was blank, now it’s there.
Black eyes and mouth; a theatre mask half turned so the audience can’t tell if it’s a mask of tragedy or comedy.
On the floor, Lucia flops and writhes; a fish tossed onto land. She finally sits up, her arms limp at her sides and looks at me, though she can’t see anymore. I know because of the way she stares, unblinking and unseeing, even though she’s looking right at me.
A theatre mask half turned. Comedy or tragedy, but more like a scream frozen at the moment before it breaks from the woman’s throat.
I’m not drunk by the end, but tipsier than I should have been. If Laura noticed – and she must - then she said nothing about it. The headache from earlier had subsided to a tiny throb in the base of my skull.
We were with the crowd in the main room of the gallery. All the paintings were uncovered.
The faces looked out at me as if trying to remember where they saw me last. I think each of them knew who I was, but couldn’t place me exactly.
When they didn’t move, I was almost disappointed, but more grateful than anything else.
Being carried away screaming wouldn’t be the best way to end the night — though at this point, I’m not sure what would be.
Finally, Lucia arrived. She was just suddenly in the crowd where she wasn’t before, moving in from the edges. She used a cane to guide her, and its gentle tapping was the first sign that she’s here. The crowd parted and a small wave of applause built, most likely kept low so as not to startle her. Her white hair suited her now. Her face was aged, as though it had caught up to the grey curtains framing it.
Laura pressed forward, tugging me along. I was just tipsy enough that I couldn’t muster the strength to fight.
Making a space at the edge of the channel formed by the crowd, Lucia passed close enough to touch. She turned as her cane tapped my foot.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, smiling.
Only her eyes were the same as I remembered from the last time I saw them. They had the quality of shattered glass, and something else seemed to tug at the smile, like her lips were being slowly pulled wider by hooks only she could feel.
She no longer needed eyes to see, and the Other thing drifted behind her dead pupils. It saw me.
“It’s okay.”
If she/it recognized my voice or my face, it did nothing. Only nodded and carried on,
directing Lucia to where it needed her to go.
We’re coming down hard. I’ve already vomited twice and Jake is curled up against the wall, trying very hard not to throw up.
Billy has Lucia in his arms. He wipes her face and I see the tips of his fingers come away red, but I’m not sure about that. So much of what I saw I’m not sure about; I never will be.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Billy nods at the painting behind him. His skin is
pale and waxy, slicked with drug sweat and sickness.
“If you say so.” I swallow, tasting something acidy that slips back down my throat. “She’s not the only one. They can all see; everyone by the lake. They saw you; look for
them because they’ll look for you.”
“What the fuck?” Hawking, I gob onto the floor.
“Don’t be afraid of them,” he says, then turns Lucia’s face towards me. She’s smiling as if she’d never screamed a few moments ago.
Then it’s my turn to scream. Despite the lack of blood, her face is disfigured. It’s not her own.
Where Gods Hunt
Mora was known throughout the four villages, and some said even beyond. In that time, no one spoke of the fifth village; that would come later.
At seventeen, she had secured both her reputation and the honor of her village by standing between Noran and Bakal, two headmen who almost brought the river delta to war. The elders agreed this was an act worthy of the founder of their village, who was said to have braved the fury of the spirits — lying exposed between the howling madness of these beings for a day and a night.
That was many years ago, perhaps ten or more, and her fame had only grown since then.
Still, she was a woman. Despite her achievements, her sex would and did always count against her in all matters.
Men wanted her, and though she refused many times, eventually she took Ligmon as her husband. He was Noran’s son, and it was agreed this was a good match. It would hold the peace of the delta, perhaps forever — the chance of which became more likely if they had children, which they did.
Three sons and two daughters were given to them by the spirits, and for a time, all was well in the delta.
Still in those times, no one spoke of the fifth village, but the very absence of its mention did not mean it was not always present in the minds of the people. Stories were often told, and Mora herself recited them to her children on nights when they would not go to bed.
No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) Page 10
