The Keeper

by T F Allen

  Donnie reached for a switch on the wall. The overhead lights faded, leaving us all in near darkness.

  “The news of your stunt in Chicago took me by surprise. I never expected you’d go off the rails like that. At first I wanted to kill you. But then I changed my mind. Because no real harm was done.” He moved again in the darkness, and slowly the mirror on the far wall lit up from within. It acted as a window to a lighted niche behind it. A lone spotlight shone there, its target a familiar but haunting image any art lover would recognize.

  Michael’s painting was still intact, as impossible as it seemed. Jolene’s unforgettable image, obscured beneath his dark, desperate brushstrokes, still existed just like he’d painted it years ago. And now it served as the focal point of this specially designed cell.

  One glance and Michael knew it was the original. He couldn’t bear to look at it directly, didn’t want to know how it could possibly be here.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about how it got here. Donnie must have stolen Jolene from the Art Institute of Chicago—or had it stolen—and replaced it with a forgery that fooled everyone, even Michael.

  “As great as it is, I know you can do better,” Donnie said. “We start tomorrow.”

  The light behind the mirror stayed on. The painting and the memory it held pressed into Michael’s thoughts no matter how hard he struggled to keep it out.

  “Enjoy your night-light, Delacroix. See you in the morning.” Donnie locked the gate and disappeared. We heard footsteps, then a loud creak. Finally, the sound of a heavy door slamming. We were alone again.

  Michael shifted to the other side of his bed and turned his back on the room, pulling the covers over his head. His mind felt numb, the drug still coursing through his veins. He couldn’t make sense of anything he’d seen or heard, so he closed his eyes to make it go away. But it wouldn’t. He could feel Jolene’s stare boring into his back, her accusatory profile. She was right. After the injustice of the past few years, the time had come for him to pay. And what a fitting punishment it was, to be forced to sleep under the gaze of the image that had caused it all.

  He tightened his grip on the covers. “Please stay with me.”

  I lay down and wrapped my arms around his chest, trying my best to shield him from the painting’s glare. Don’t worry, I’m here.

  His throat burned inside and out. His mind and spirit reeled from Donnie’s visit. The only thing comforting him now was the feeling that he wasn’t alone in this cell. Knowing his protector had seen the cruelty he endured, that someone else also witnessed this madness, seemed to help. But Michael needed much more from me if he hoped to survive.

  “Please stay with me tonight. I need you to stay.”

  Of course I will.

  Together we journeyed through a thousand different thoughts while his mind jumped and ran to avoid thinking about the painting and everything Donnie had said. Gradually the remaining drug in his system took over and quieted his mind. I took an image from my memory and flashed it into his vision—a view of the night sky over Golden Gate Park. His imagination took the image and ran with it. Soon he was resting on his back against the soft grassy lawn. No walls surrounded him, and a million stars blanketed him from above. He breathed deeper and deeper, taking in the imagined scent of the outdoors—a smell I knew he longed for. In this memory Michael found his rest and drifted off to sleep. And as soon as I was sure he was out, I left him.

  I had a lot of work to do.

  CHAPTER 5

  From my earliest memories, I’d watched over Michael, hearing his thoughts, seeing the world through the eyes of a future artist. I rarely left his side, but when I did it was usually to help him. Tonight, as I lay with him in his bed, I chose to lie when he asked me to stay. As much as he needed the comfort of knowing I was near, he needed to be rescued even more.

  One problem—I barely knew what I was doing. I didn’t even know who I was. What little I knew about myself I’d learned by accident. For some reason fate had thrown me and Michael together and bid us both good luck. I didn’t know about my abilities until he was five. Until then, I thought Michael and I were two people living in the same body. I saw with his eyes and heard with his ears. We shared the same experiences, the same thoughts, the same memories, the same dreams. But deep inside I knew I wasn’t the one in control. Michael made all the decisions. I was just along for the ride.

  It wasn’t easy learning the life I thought was at least partially mine belonged to someone else. It was more jarring than someone finding out, as most people do, that they aren’t the center of the universe. I’d lived inside Michael’s mind for years thinking I was part of the boy who was found in a dumpster and raised in foster care. But once I realized I could travel anywhere I wanted no matter where Michael was, a whole new world of possibilities opened up.

  I didn’t need food or sleep. I could soar through clouds without getting wet. I could visit any place I noticed in a magazine or on a television show just to satisfy my curiosity. And I could tour the mind of anyone I wanted, seeing the world through their eyes. After a few weeks, I began to see everything and everyone—including Michael—from a new perspective. I stayed close to him, but my experiences were changing me, differentiating me. Though I still didn’t know exactly who or what I was, I knew I was me, different from Michael but still connected.

  Each time Sister Mary Elizabeth visited us, she repeated her promise that an unseen protector watched over Michael. Her optimism and faith grew contagious, and after a few visits, I realized she was talking about me. Finally I had an identity, and later a nickname, which was more than I expected.

  So like everyone else, I was a product of my experiences. I had no parents, no name, and no memory of how I got here. But at least I had a purpose, and it involved the person I loved more than anything. Whether or not I knew what I was doing, I needed to get busy.

  I passed through the bars effortlessly. While helpful, my ability was a double-edged sword. I could escape any prison but couldn’t turn a key to unlock a door. I’d never be able to free Michael from this room by myself, so I needed to find someone who could.

  The hallway was completely dark, but I could still find my way. I didn’t see any other doors, just a short hallway and a flight of steps leading up to a heavy wooden trapdoor. I climbed the steps and soared upward, through the trapdoor—and into the night air. Michael’s cell wasn’t part of another building. It was hidden underground in a far corner of a hundred-acre vineyard. Row after row of grapevines ran over contoured hills nearly as far as I could see. In the distance, maybe a quarter mile away, a large house stood on a hill, surrounded by more rows of trellised vines. Farther away, other buildings and warehouses marked the operations area of a winery. Donnie had hidden Michael in his own backyard.

  A cool night breeze swept over the vineyard and passed through me. I took in the scene and thought about how peaceful it all looked. No one would ever think to look for Michael here. No one would ever stumble upon this trapdoor in the corner of a private family vineyard.

  I didn’t want to leave Michael alone any longer than I needed to. So I rushed across the vineyard toward the large house, passing over the rows of vines in a straight line. I didn’t think of it as flying or hovering. It was the only way I knew how to run.

  Up close the house looked more like a mansion. It rose to three stories and featured dozens of tall, skinny windows that reminded me of a Victorian design. Lush grass and flower beds surrounded it on all sides, a buffer from the grapevines planted just beyond the lawn. The entire house appeared dark except for a strange light streaming from a third-story window—a dirty-yellow glow that didn’t match the brilliant-white exterior. Every few seconds a brighter light streaked through the window, like the flash of a camera but lasting a little longer.

  I rushed through the window and into the room. What I saw should have surprised me, but it didn’t. This wasn’t a bedroom, or any kind of room you’d expect to find in a mansion. The walls and ceil
ing were painted midnight black. Spotlights shone from long rails of track lighting onto several pieces of artwork that hung on the walls. A canvas drop cloth covered most of the ebony-stained oak floor. In one corner sat a workbench holding saws, hammers, a vise, pliers, and a dozen other tools. Nearby, an artist’s cabinet filled with tubes of oil paint, brushes, rags, palettes, and jars of turpentine. But it was the artwork on the walls that made the room look creepy: a crosscut section of a sequoia tree with a scene from Dante’s Inferno burned across it, a ceramic plate with two cartoonlike lizards eating each other’s tails glazed into its surface, an abstract painting stamped with ancient-looking symbols, none of which I recognized. The goldenrod curtains were more shocking than the art and the reason for the strange light I saw from outside.

  In the center of the room, Donnie knelt over a metal sculpture, with a dark shield covering his face. He drew a thin wire closer to his target and ignited an explosion of light. Behind him, a welding machine hummed as it sucked power from a special wall outlet.

  The sculpture was a life-sized model of a prehistoric jungle cat. A pile of tiny sheet metal pieces lay at his side. He grabbed another piece and placed it over the exoskeleton of wires and cut bars. It looked like stainless steel taxidermy. Its head held eyes made of glass or some type of shiny plastic. They looked as real as Donnie’s. The animal seemed poised to generate a terrifying, openmouthed roar. Its oversized teeth gleamed in the light, each as sharp as the tip of a knife. I’d seen enough. Time to climb inside Donnie’s head.

  Looking into someone else’s mind wasn’t fun or easy. I avoided doing it because I never knew what I’d find. Each person’s brain presented an obstacle course filled with dangers and curiosities. Some were hot, most were dirty, and many hid the types of thoughts that kept you awake for weeks. Then there were the blind spots—memories and secrets tucked into dark corners so tightly I couldn’t see them. When I rode along in a person’s mind, I heard each thought they created and saw the memories that helped form them. But my ability didn’t make me omnipotent. Often I’d leave a person’s head more confused than when I jumped in.

  When Michael was younger he’d ask me to help him on test days during school. Once I identified the smart kids in class, his grades shot through the roof. But even those journeys left me unsettled and taught me to be selective with my ability. With Michael I knew what I was getting, but I could never predict what waited inside the next person’s head.

  Donnie’s mind felt more crowded than any I’d ever visited. A thousand thoughts battled for control, and he paid attention to two or three at a time: memories of a coyote attack that left him hobbled and bleeding as a child, images of pain and torture taken from internet videos he’d watched. They didn’t scare him like they would have scared Michael. Instead he channeled them into an anger as white hot as the tip of the wire at the end of his welding gun. And he focused it all on the jungle cat, fusing the pieces of sheet metal onto its skin and hoping it hurt.

  “There,” he said, shouting through his welding mask. As the wire worked its magic, he tried to sear into the sculpture the rage that coursed through his veins. “Take it in. Take it all in.”

  As I swam through his mind, I couldn’t shake the suffocating heat around me. Maybe it was the friction of so many thoughts swirling around at once. Maybe it was the intense emotion each of them held, but I’d never felt anything like it before. I focused on as many thoughts as I could while they zoomed past, hoping I might find something I could use.

  It didn’t take long for Michael to surface in his mind. When he positioned the next piece, he started to doubt the results he saw. The room next door was filled with experiments gone wrong. This was the third jungle cat he’d created in a year. It looked much scarier than the others, and he’d done his best to pump up his intensity as he welded each piece into place. The eyes he’d made looked perfect—that wasn’t the problem. He knew something was still missing. No matter how many times he tried, something would always be missing.

  Delacroix seemed to do it so effortlessly. It enraged Donnie to see so many people flock to the artist’s gallery openings, the ever-glowing reviews, the universal praise the critics showered on Delacroix. But he understood why. Jolene never failed to make his heart race with excitement. That painting was a drug that never faded—the one work of art in this world he wished he’d painted first.

  Even more infuriating, Delacroix seemed to have peaked after he created Jolene. He’d probably grown lazy and disinterested, content to produce as few as one lifeless painting per month. It was a pathetic waste of talent. Delacroix needed this just as badly as Donnie. And he’d get it, starting first thing in the morning.

  Delacroix’s famous brushstrokes came as a result of a wave of emotions so intense they nearly killed him—at least that’s what all the papers had said. He needed to push Delacroix into that state of mind again. He’d stop at nothing to get there. Showing him Jolene was just the beginning. By this time tomorrow, Delacroix would either be hard at work on a new masterpiece or busy pulling out his own fingernails.

  Not if I can help it, I said to myself. I had to say something to break this train of thought, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.

  Donnie flipped his face shield up and over his head. His headgear bounced across the floor. He looked at the ceiling, then into each corner of the room. He jumped up and ran to the welding machine, shutting it off. He listened to the silence. Ten seconds. Twenty.

  “Who’s here?”

  I froze, stayed perfectly still inside his mind. Maybe he was confused. Maybe he’d heard another voice from inside the house. His thoughts whirled around me like confetti in a windstorm. No way could I catch up to each one. His reaction must have been a coincidence. Only Michael had ever heard my voice. To make sure, I tried again.

  You’d better not hurt him.

  Donnie dropped the welding gun, shook off his gloves, and pulled out his knife. He stalked around the room, feeling for something his eyes couldn’t see. “Where are you? Show yourself.” His heart raced, and his eyes drew open as wide as they could. He definitely heard me that time, but he was anything but scared.

  “Tell me where you’re hiding. Come on, speak up.”

  I wasn’t ready for this. I’d never dreamed anyone other than Michael could ever hear me. All this time watching the world in silence. And now I was lost for words.

  Donnie swung his knife through the air, slicing at imaginary ghosts. His mind felt like it was on fire. My voice had excited him more than any welding project ever could. “Say something again. I dare you.”

  I sent him the only words that came to me, the only thing on my mind: You’d better not hurt Michael.

  “Or what?” He twirled the knife in his hand and stuck the tip of the blade into the wall. He walked along the edge of the room, his stare locked on the ceiling. The blade made a grating sound as it scraped a serpentine trail across the drywall. “What are you going to do?” He pulled the knife away from the wall and flipped it from one hand to the other. “And why do you think you can give me orders?”

  His entire body pulsed with excitement, generating a heat too intense for me to stay. I leaped out of his mind and soared through the ceiling, out of the mansion, and into the night sky. I didn’t stop until I was far away from Donnie.

  Everything just became more complicated.

  CHAPTER 6

  Let me be clear: I didn’t run away. No matter how it looked, I’d never back down from anyone when it came to protecting Michael. I just needed time to regroup, to digest what had happened. To get away from Donnie’s hot, chaotic mind and see things from a different perspective. A thousand feet into the night sky worked for me.

  The earth looked so much simpler from above, taking on a smoothness and beauty similar to a painting by Monet. A field of rusty and dented cargo containers looked like the multicolored surface of an artist’s palette. Highway interchanges became thin gray ribbons that tied the land together. Abandoned open-p
it mines didn’t show their ugly scars, only the iridescent shine from their deep, mineral-rich pools. From my new vantage point, the Harkrider Vineyard no longer looked intimidating and dangerous. The strange yellow light in the mansion window now resembled a beacon from a lighthouse, and the rows of vines created a soothing corduroy sea that covered the hills of the estate. After a moment, I was able to think.

  My visit with Donnie didn’t uncover anything that would help. His mind was a complete mess that might take weeks to sort through. And if that wasn’t enough, he’d heard me when I spoke. At the worst possible moment, I’d found a new ability.

  I’d tried talking to other people before, but they never heard me. I could walk beside Michael through a crowd and say whatever I wanted. I’d done it thousands of times, and no one ever raised an eyebrow. But I’d never tried to speak while inside someone else’s mind. It never occurred to me to try—at least not until now.

  In the far corner of the vineyard, the wooden trapdoor was still closed. It kept out all the things Michael longed for: open spaces, fresh air, the freedom to do anything he wanted or nothing at all. I dove through the door and rushed down the hallway, back into his cell.

  He was still in bed, still hiding from the glow of the painting, still struggling through a fitful sleep. I kissed his forehead and turned toward the far wall, confronting Jolene. There she stood in all her shocking beauty. Two nights ago Michael had sliced her image to ribbons with his knife. But somehow she still sat in judgment over him, saved by the actions of a man I couldn’t begin to understand. However she got here, it proved we were dealing with someone who had enough money to get whatever he wanted.