Black Horse and Other Strange Stories

by Wyckoff, Jason A.

  Vince scoffed at the idea. He just needed to be more careful. Doubtless the effect of the work would be celebrated by all who saw it for many years to come, however disturbing the experience might be. But this was not the time for that, thought Vince; I must be mindful of my perception so that I don’t lose my detachment.

  The next sequence of images, which might have inspired little reaction in anyone else beyond appreciation for their execution, was startling to Vince. Several previous works were replicated within the framework of the mural, all from the artist’s latter period. The work bench was presented, with its rusting tools and camouflaged assistants, birds in their pet store cages squawked and fluttered away from the sly mimic peaking out from her feather coat, and one of Vince’s favourites, the piquantly titled Solitaire, showed again the young woman on vacation passing time by playing the game on her hotel bed, far from alone. Vince couldn’t guess the reason behind the recreations within the mural, but he did notice subtle contrast in their character from the originals. The craft demonstrated deliberation less exacting than Schloesser otherwise reliably provided, the main subjects were presented as slightly more mundane, and the odd little interlopers crept through the quotidian with greater contempt and malice—there was little ‘play’ about these pucks.

  Then Vince came upon the single most ridiculous bit of painting that his friend had ever committed to canvas: A macabre perversion of Norman Rockwell’s Triple Self-Portrait mashed up with M.C. Escher’s Drawing Hands. The artist sits at his easel with his brush to the canvas, but what reflects in his mirror is a doppelgänger, an imperfect imposter with features distorted as if hurriedly put in place, whose mismatched eyes stare not back at his creator, but out at Vince. On the canvas the artist paints a severed hand held in place by a throng of the little creatures, their images painted on by a company of their own ilk, hanging from the edges of the frame and digging sharp fingers into the weave of the canvas. The severed hand coils back towards the artist’s arm and uncaringly dabs black mottles on his wrist from a brush fastened to the forefinger with tiny rope. The artist sits not in a studio, but out in a fallow field; off in the distance stands a circular black building—the studio. The hidden symbols of the small folk painted in black on the black planks of the walls glow dull blue and purple in the pallid moonlight. The door is open and a man stands on the platform looking at the panorama while the scaffolding for the lights overhead trembles with the bustle of the malignant sprites as they strike with protest at the offending filaments—

  kish!

  A bulb burst above Vince, spitting sparks. He turned and crouched, shaking and sweating, breathing hard. He shaded his eyes and tried to look into the lattice-work hanging from the ceiling. He couldn’t see beyond the blazing lights, but, just for an instant, he thought he saw a quick motion like the flip of a tail across the dying filament of the shattered bulb. He gulped hard and held his breath. The silence of the night was oppressive.

  Then he heard a skittering like mice behind him, on the wall. Vince spun back again. He saw on the canvas red eyes peeking out from the lazy reaching tendrils of a willow tree and the unkempt bunches of shrubbery. And the shrubbery flows and changes to a screen of brambles through which is seen a field and, off in the distance, the back of a roadside billboard. As the hill slopes down towards the billboard, a field of lilies is revealed, bursting pistils reaching skyward from a cascade of petals white, yellow, and—

  Wait a minute, Vince thought. He checked his position. He had gone all the way around the panorama and had come back where he started, at the landing of the stairs. Vince shifted his gaze vertically and saw that the boy kicking leaves through a tunnel of tree limbs was still there, just as before. He then looked again at the field of lilies and followed along with the gossiping butterflies, bouncing, stopping for nectar, ultimately stuck with pins and displayed under glass, over a child’s bed adorned with an old quilt stitched with blossoms like fleur-de-lys, fading in the sun. Amazing, thought Vince. Schloesser managed to control the movement of the eye around the panorama such that the viewer could follow one sequence of images in ignorance of another. Vince again shook his head in disbelieving appreciation. There was no option for him but to follow the second series and go around the mural again.

  In contrast to how personal and ultimately horrible the first sequence of images was, the second, despite being represented realistically, used lyrical symbols abstractly and with detachment. A steady flow of people travelled anonymously through the series, but the eye declined them, recognising without inspection that they were not the focus, that they were only pedestrians, background; instead the infusion of meaning was given to seemingly nondescript objects: a rusted bicycle frame without wheels or seat leaning against a stop sign, a stack of dog-eared hymnals on a card table next to a souvenir replica of Big Ben, the programme for a musical folded in half and left on a velvet rope, a café scene of a pair of wrought-iron chairs and a small, round table inexplicably set with a bushel of apples. (Vince here marvelled at the level of detail in an impressionistic mural on the wall behind the empty table—Geoff had actually represented the brushstrokes of the imagined artist.) Vince followed as the nondescript crowd passes a darkened bookstore and the overbright fluorescence of a butcher’s shop, up the stairs in a train station to a balcony looking down on the patrons at a gallery opening. Keri is there, in her plum dress, obscured slightly by other patrons in such a way that Vince believed he might see her clearly if he moved just a little more to the right—

  Vince kicked something metallic and a second clunk immediately followed; the dull tone bounced a strange wowwow and died. Vince looked down and saw two gas cans on the platform. He didn’t remember them being there before; he couldn’t imagine having missed them the first time around. Vince looked around the room and saw that he was once again at the halfway point around the panorama. He understood now the abstruse sequence preceding the gallery opening: they were symbols of reflected love, abstract understandings of romance, nostalgic representations of women dropped among the swells of people, caught in the course of yearning that drove Geoff forward. But when Keri appeared, she appeared as herself. Geoff could only think of her as her. A deep ache gripped at Vince as the need to see Keri again took hold. He hadn’t realised how much her absence from his life had affected him. He whirled about to see her there, in the gallery, and sighed with contentment that she had not disappeared. The gas cans on the platform, however, were gone. Vince noted their absence with little interest as he became re-absorbed in the art.

  Portrait after portrait of Keri followed. Vince couldn’t believe he’d missed these images the first time around in deference to the frightful meanderings of the small folk. Here was a celebration of beauty unrivalled in art: Keri was no dancer, but on the wall her form spun through every angle, the aspect of her mien becoming more angelic and fey through each receding rotation until she is but a light on the hill, a firefly shyly approaching the black mass of the studio. And in the studio, on the walkway, Keri looks into the black shape on the panorama. Vince looked past her, following her gaze; before him was a flat black oval framed by the symbols of the small folk, crafted with eldritch machinations by their long-nailed, slender fingers. Vince stepped forward and saw that the oval was not featureless; as he looked from an angle he saw, reflected within, Keri, seated, posing, caught by the artist’s brush as though imbued with life itself. Keri’s eyes flash at Vince, pleading, as though she is paralysed and unable to speak. The easel is bare, the artist absent; the wicked things wait just outside a pool of light, inching forward towards the empty chair and inviting Vince with terrible intent—

  ‘No!’ Vince called out and turned away, ducking his face behind his forearm. Feeling again the leaning pull forward into the canvas, he tore himself away before some other blurring of realities could intrude back into the studio. But the rhythmic hiss of his laboured breathing in the expanse of the silent studio only made him feel more alone and vulnerable.

&nbs
p; ‘Get a grip,’ he admonished himself, though already certain insinuations he’d prefer to disbelieve had fatally infected his thoughts: if the effect of the mural was more than psychological, if real magic could be learned (from actual magic creatures: and Vince could still only allow that fact for argument’s sake) and effects from magic visited upon reality, then the panorama must serve a purpose.

  Vince glanced back towards the black mirror and shuddered. Vince was sure there was something else to learn in this dim, forgotten closet crouched along a country road, isolated from the world by more than simple geography. He steeled himself to the task and turned again to the mural. Careful not to look into the mirror’s void, he focused on the frame, where the dark sprites adorned with pointed hoods denoting elevated status scratch the accursed glyphs into the wood with thorn and flint; apprentices watch their masters and send the lowest and most gnarled of their host out to retrieve fresh tools; they crouch double and scurry like beetles among a screen of brambles through which can be seen the shadow of a hawk rippling over the undulations of a grassy field; her hungry brood squawk greedy maws skyward from their nest in the granulated glow of television pixels—

  ‘Ah.’ Vince announced the discovery that he’d come again around to the top of the stairs. ‘Ah!’ The second exclamation was one of amazed appreciation. Vince looked around the run of the panorama and, just as he had with the intimated symbols of the small folk blended in large scale into the mural, saw with sudden understanding the vague braid of three eyelines woven through the course of the tapestry. Again, he could but shake his head in disbelief at the accomplishment. This time, however, disbelief was coloured by melancholy that such achievement should be realised in so profane a work. Vince knew there was a sort of doom here, for the artist or the subjects or the viewer or for all together. He could only hope some ultimate glory, some immortal pathos would yet emerge to complement the formal triumph.

  Past the desperate chicks in their nest on the nature show, a large picture window looks out onto a neighbourhood street fair. Dusk is encroaching, but the celebration is yet to begin: booths and tables are being erected and wares set out for display; no customers or sight-seers pace the wide asphalt aisle between the vendors. The small folk creep through the shadows and peek out from folds of fabric, or they press against a clapboard wall, perched on a nail not quite driven flush. Their expressions are different from before, not intoxicated with trivial wickedness, but sober and serious, studying the participants in the scene with hidden design. They watch with suspicion as a puppeteer reties a string to the control rod while the head of his marionette lolls stupidly in hopeless resignation; they catalogue the inventory of antique guns the rotund, moustachioed man sets out, each with hammer cocked; they follow as a second table is hastily erected to continue the sprawling curls of a domino chain or at the builders who couldn’t seem to agree upon the path it should take; they judge dispassionately the pig tied to a truck bumper and left to snuffle at a sewer mouth; even the young amongst them take note of an industrious carp in the shallow brackish water of the park pond kissing the trigger of an unsprung bear trap. And they crawl through the manicured grass towards the stretched canvases leaning against the empty easel and the artist considering two sketches—Keri and the studio—and an indistinct third thumbnail. These malevolent sentinels shift and move as one at some silent signal. The sun dies and the mellow glow of the clockface in the town square tower blackens beneath their fungal spread even as the minute hand stands vertically and the bells ring out with

  huuoooo

  The mournful howl of a distant train whistle wafted in through the studio door and bounced softly around the wall before retreating back into the night. Vince stepped back from the mural and nearly fell down the stairs. Vince clutched at the handrail, surprised; he didn’t think he’d come around full circle a third time. Looking across to the other side of the studio, he saw that he was right: the stairs he had ascended to mount the platform were still there as before; this was a new set of stairs, directly over the studio door. Another illusion, Vince thought. Rather than turn away or allow himself to be distracted as he had each time before, Vince concentrated at the new development, holding fast to the handrail and staring down the stairs. He waited for the effect to diffuse, but nothing happened. The stairs remained. Vince briefly considered that the stairs had always been there and that the trick had been to make him believe they were not there until now, but he rejected it immediately; he would have seen them as soon as he’d opened the door and would have had to walk around them to enter the studio, before any hypnotic suggestion could be impressed.

  His rational defences sufficiently weakened, Vince felt compelled to accept the reality he’d attempted to dismiss: the panorama was constructed to create and control a magic spell—and it worked. Vince shivered with revulsion at the implication that followed: the creatures were real, too. He tried ineffectually to console himself: Relax—they’re in there, you’re out here.

  Vince realised who else was in there, captured and bound in the paint, preserved by force.

  ‘How could you? How could you!?’

  Were the small folk always with Schloesser? Had he seen them in his youth just as he said? And after he ‘decided’ not to see them any more, had they stayed with him anyway, watching him and guiding him as he developed his craft, imbuing his work with some damnable essence beyond his human talent? Had the true power of his wonderful art lain dormant until the proper muse entered the artist’s life? Vince did not doubt it: The reason Keri grew sickly, the reason her life-force faded as she sat for Geoff, was because her very spirit was being drawn away from her and trapped in the art. Geoff hadn’t known; how could he? Such a preposterous idea would never have occurred to him. Perhaps the victim suspected, though. Keri loved Geoff, loved his art, they never quarrelled; yet she knew she must separate from him, even if he would never understand the reason. And for Geoff, to have such a love taken from his life, to lose so much and not to be given any reason why it should be—how did he react? If the worst thing he could imagine ever happening to him had already happened, what else in the universe was there for him to fear? With all hope razed and the ramparts of achievement abandoned as empty consolation, what might he find in the desolation of his existence, hiding in the shadows and biding their time? What cursed accord was struck at the nadir of his despair?

  Vince wondered if the small folk had intimated to Geoff what he could accomplish by learning their magic or if he’d worked it out for himself. The ultimate goal was clear and there would be no attraction to communing with these perverse beings beyond its achievement. Had it really only taken four months to learn their symbols and master their hexes? Perhaps every stroke Geoff ever committed to canvas was practice and the promotion from naïve adept to manipulative master was accomplished as easily as flicking on a light-switch. And then the work itself: Yes, Vince thought, in a manic state, Geoff could do it, with or without . . . help. The most difficult detail would be the last: to get Keri to come out to the studio. With some time gone by between them, her health restored, Vince imagined there was no way for Keri to refuse his desperate plea. Besides, if he were only showing her a piece and not asking her to sit for him, what danger was there for her beyond the re-opening of emotional wounds? She would have no idea that all he needed was for her to look into that black mirror . . .

  Vince sniffed and punched a tear from his eye. ‘How could you?’ he hissed.

  A kind of shifting started behind Vince and all around the circumference of the room. He repeated his earlier thought: They’re in there and you’re out here. They’re in there. And they’re getting impatient. The knowledge came over Vince in a tremulous wave, like the blunt immersion of a massive bass tone: They’re in there because Geoff trapped them in there and they’re waiting for you to make a decision. The first part made perfect sense, though Vince could only guess at the chronology of events: Had Geoff suffered a fit of conscience after entrapping Keri—if so, why
hadn’t he simply freed her again? More likely Geoff knew all along that the small folk had designs far past the fulfilment of his desires. Maybe they set his doom in the mural with their bacchanal and gallows sacrifice, or they guided him to paint his trap for them, never suspecting that their intended victim would be so duplicitous as to plan elaborate betrayal himself. Vince felt a black nausea turn inside him: He was glad Geoff had outwitted the vile things, but hated to think his friend had the capacity to excel their own dark arts. Vince looked down the primitive steps to the dirt floor below, feeling the anxious eyes of the things in the mural upon him.

  This option, he thought, is to leave. Descend, go out, don’t look back. Leave behind a work of unparalleled genius too dangerous to be seen. Or I could put my head through the noose, throw myself from the walkway, and stay forever with Keri. But that’s what they want. Because to be with Keri is to put myself at their untender mercies for as long as their spiteful, torturous hate sustains them—and each minute might be an eternity. Or I can pour out the gas cans and burn the damn thing down. What happens to Keri then? She’ll be free, maybe. Gone forever, unquestionably. What did Geoff do? Obviously, he couldn’t bring himself to destroy his creation and lose Keri forever. And, though he might have outwitted the small folk, by escaping their trap he’d given them their revenge, for he could never be with her unless he was with them. So he must have painted himself an ‘out’. But, if Geoff escaped, why hadn’t he contacted Vince? Vince saw that the third ‘strand’ of the braid continued on past the stairs. The answer has got to be there, he thought. Vince couldn’t leave until he knew what happened to Geoff. He turned back to the mural. A meek breeze sighed through the studio and the stairs disappeared behind him.

  The night of the gallery opening was once again on display. The view was different from before: Vince recognised that the perspective was reversed; he looked through the crowd and up to the balcony above. Everything was as he remembered it, but where he should have stood—between the nervous young couple trying to elude social discomfort by hiding in each other’s conversation and the disconcertingly stoic Caribbean man with enormous dreadlocks, right next to the tiresome investment broker—there was an empty space. Past the crowd and back through a darkened door Vince saw a figure he thought might be him, but looking closer he saw that the scale was wrong. Instead, it is a crude, late-night joke of a sculpture, made out of beer bottles, paper towel tubes and Chinese carryout cartons, set on a table on the veranda outside Geoff’s loft. On the street below, in a tidy tailor’s shop, a joyously blank-eyed mannequin stands patiently in his suit while a set of clothes with an invisible inhabitant swipes chalk marks on the hem. The metal placard above the shop door is unreadable, saturated by the orange shine of the setting sun on its descent into the ocean. The man in the hotel room next door ignores the worshipful lovers promenading along the palm-lined beach as he stares into the blank, black television screen. There is no extra angle for him now, no hidden depth: Vince looks flat at the surface of the black mirror and Geoff looks back at him. If I hadn’t met him, I would have had to invent him, he thought, I am supposed to be creating, after all.