“Take me with you!” he whispered eagerly.
“No, not now,” she answered him. “Go to sleep. Dream of me.”
Yes, he thought. Dream of her. That would be best.
So sleep overtook the boy and opened his mind to dreamland. He dreamed of angels; he dreamed of love; he dreamed of blood.
—
Even when the snowplows reached the village, the snow continued to fall and fill in the roads leading in and out. It was becoming claustrophobic, maddening, even miserable. The boys and girls at the academy were running out of games, of chatter, of joy, and the adults were at wit’s end. And no place showed the strain of the hellish winter more than Nicholas’s apartment. He spent as much time between classes as he could in front of an easel at the back of his classroom, trying to rediscover what had driven him to pick up a brush in the first place. Despite the years of teaching, his own skills had rusted shut; the confidence of his brushstrokes had gone into hiding, and the work he attempted now was dreary and lifeless, as fallow as he felt himself. Still-lifes were too still, portraits too stuffy and bland, faces without lives. He had never achieved stature as a true artist; and now he wouldn’t even qualify as an illustrator. The excitement he’d felt painting in his youth had shriveled up. He had become a teacher—worse, a teacher of children. He looked forward to the remains of his life surrounded by moppets and cartoon characters and video games. Gone were the galleries and the thrill of discovering a talent with a new way of seeing and showing, gone was the high brought on by a fresh palette dabbed with blooms of paint and the open window of a newly stretched canvas.
But still, it was better than sitting in front of the television with Rose at the far end of the couch, yawning through Coronation Street because the alternative was to confront the withering of their marriage by conversation. Silence beat confrontation.
So here he sat, daubing mauve oil paint to yet another series of stylized tombstones, last stop on the great ride of life, melancholy covering him like a funeral shroud. He was alone with his thoughts, which was a dangerous place to be.
The painting, like the last half-dozen he had begun and abandoned, was a failure, self-conscious and dreary. He surveyed his work in disgust, then turned his brush around and stabbed the canvas through its heart, then ripped through it until it turned to wet, sloppy tatters. His heart pounded, and he made a decision. It was time to clear the air about his single dalliance with Gemma Featherstone. He would go to Rose, tell her the truth, and hope for her forgiveness. If she could forgive him, they could go on, rebuild their union, and perhaps even reignite the joy he got from her, from life, from art. It would be a fresh new beginning. Rocky at first, of course. But they would get past it, as they had gotten past so many hardships. Isn’t that what “for better and for worse” was all about?
He boxed up his paints and sent the destroyed canvas flying onto a heap of its brethren. The janitor would take it to the trash in the morning. In a new mood of resolve, Nicholas cleared out his personal space to make way for tomorrow’s classes.
As he stowed his easel in the cabinet, he paused. Behind the constant grind and click of the classroom clock over his desk, there was another sound coming from outside the door: footsteps. Little, cautious steps that tried not to echo through the hallway. Singular steps were a rarity in this building at this time of night. He latched the easel in its closet, then made his way through the rows of desks and opened the classroom door to the corridor beyond.
A boy came to a stop in the middle of the hallway, startled by Nicholas’s sudden presence. He had seen this boy before, staring at him from the snowy fleece of the schoolyard through his apartment window.
David Sutcliffe’s heart pounded wildly against his rib cage. He had come merely to get a closer look at the American teacher, but now, as the tall, rawboned instructor walked up to him, he wanted to be anywhere else. He could not move, planted into place as Nicholas’s shadow approached him and wrapped him up.
“You lost, son?” Nicholas asked the child quivering in the hallway. The boy looked up at him with such terror that it made Nicholas take a step back. After a long silence, David just slowly shook his head.
“Were you looking for somebody?” he asked, trying to calm the child with encouragement.
Snow pattered softly against the hall windows, its shadows peppering the walls. David took a deep breath, staring past Nicholas into the night. The boy’s heart slowed and his breathing relaxed a bit. With snow shadows fluttering across his eyes, David turned again to Nicholas, and his green eyes glowed with a golden ring around the irises.
After a long silence, the boy answered in a soft little voice, sounding surprisingly sophisticated with its perfect British diction. “Actually, I was looking for you.”
“For me?” Nicholas responded. Suddenly he recognized the boy: This was the piano prodigy he had heard so much about, this year’s Beethoven. The boy had generated quite a bit of conversation in the teachers’ lounge. He had seen the child perform his new polonaise at the Fall Recital. A gifted boy, but…strange.
“Yes, sir,” the boy said.
David looked up at Nicholas, craning his neck. He’s not so handsome, the boy thought, looking closely at the art teacher’s pale face. His eyes are different sizes, and his nose is far too big. Why, he looks like a cartoon.
“What can I do for you?” The boy would not be intimidated by Nicholas’s size, and stared right into the teacher’s eyes without fear.
“You smell like paint,” David said, and Nicholas smiled. David did not return the smile.
“That’s because I’ve been painting.”
“What have you been painting?” David asked.
“Nothing much,” Nicholas answered. “A landscape.”
“May I see it?”
Nicholas wondered why this boy, this stranger, was interested.
“Not tonight. It didn’t turn out very well.”
“Still, I’d like to see.”
“It’s late. Hadn’t you ought to be in your room?”
The boy looked out the windows over Nicholas’s shoulder, and Nicholas turned to see what he was looking at. All he saw was snow blowing across the moon.
“Let me see your painting and I’ll go to my room.”
Nicholas knelt to look David in the eye. “Are you bargaining with me?”
David looked him right back: “I suppose I am.”
“I thought your interests were in music.”
“I have many interests,” the boy said. “Don’t you?”
Nicholas cocked his head; why did that sound sinister?
David walked to the door of Nicholas’s classroom, then, without asking permission, entered. Thrown off guard for the moment, Nicholas just watched him, then hurried into the classroom behind him. By the time he entered the room, David had already made his way to the pile of art carcasses and lifted the slashed canvas up to lean against the wall.
“Excuse me, but I didn’t give you permission to…”
David looked up at him. “Is this the one you were working on?”
The landscape, what you could see of it between the tatters, was still wet and depicted rows of snow-covered gravestones, with one simple marker in the very middle, a sad, lonely monument without a name.
“Is that Miss Featherstone’s grave?” David asked.
Nicholas was taken aback. Who was this child? Why was he here?
“Okay, young man, you’ve had your peek. Time for you to get to your room now.”
David looked up at him, then back at the picture, studying it. As Nicholas stood over him, blanketing him with his shadow, the boy turned back and looked up at him. “It isn’t very good, is it?”
“That’s enough. Get on to your room now.” Nicholas was getting a bit unnerved by this little oddball.
David nodded, then turned and made his way to the door as Nicholas watched him. When the boy reached the door, he turned back to Nicholas.
“Did you love her?” David
asked.
Nicholas’s heart started to pound. But before he could say anything, as if anything needed to be said, David turned and disappeared into the darkened corridor outside the doorway. Nicholas and his beating heart stood alone in the dark classroom.
—
David was fast asleep in his room, oblivious to Simon’s asthmatic snores. A beatific smile lay atop his face as he dreamed not of sugarplums but of melodies and dark brown eyes.
On the nightstand next to him, a little brass sculpture of a nude woman bathed in blue moonlight.
—
The snow continued to fall, even a week after Miss Featherstone’s untimely demise. Snowplows had made their way to Twombley-on-Ravensbrooke, allowing shipments in and out of the little township, but within another day or two, the roads were impassible again. Cabin fever was rife and tempers were frayed. But still, life at the academy had to continue; young minds had to be nourished and life had to go on, even in the chill of the region’s cruelest winter.
A new day bloomed as a feathery snowfall continued to embrace the region. The sun, barely a bright spot in the sky of even gray clouds, cast its glow halfheartedly.
It had been another night of spotty sleep for Nicholas, whose activated mind would not allow him the luxury of slumber. The lids over his eyes grew heavy, and the whites were pinked with tiny red veins. His brain throbbed with ache as he resigned himself to another day. He sat up, the lack of rest putting him in an ill humor. He looked over his shoulder to see that Rose was still sleeping soundly, and resented her for it. He ran his hand through his matted hair and tried to shake himself out of his doldrums. He got up and made his way into the bathroom and turned on the shower, letting the chilly room fill with clouds of steam.
His stomach was curdled and protested with a long, gurgling growl as he relieved his bladder. He flushed and entered the shower, the stinging needles of hot water jolting him further into consciousness. He wondered if today was the day he would tell Rose about his night with Gemma Featherstone. No. Not when he was feeling like this. Not today. He wondered now if that day would ever come. He lathered his face and body, but his heart pounded throbs of leaden pain through his head. The headache was making him nauseated. He closed his eyes and let the water rinse him, hoping the pain would follow the lather down the drain. As he rinsed, he felt the caress of a cold hand run down his back and around his bottom. It startled him and gave him goose bumps. When he lurched in surprise, the hand pulled quickly away. He opened his eyes, the bathroom now a steam room, billowing with clouds.
Nicholas was confused. Had his wife actually lifted the shroud of solitude enough to touch him, to caress him gently in the shower? Was she opening the door a crack?
“Rose?”
He turned off the shower and stepped out onto the cold tile, grabbing a towel and roughly rubbing himself dry before stepping into the doorway.
Rose still lay on the far side of the bed, facing away from him.
“Sweetheart?”
She pulled the blankets up over her head, giving Nicholas all the reply that he needed. He shaved, got dressed, and headed off to his first class of the morning. He’d be early, but he didn’t mind that.
Nicholas crossed the quad, which was barely waking up. Edmund, the elderly groundskeeper, nodded hello as he battled vainly to groom endlessly mounting snow from the pathway with a noisy blower. Nicholas waved, then ran his hand through his hair, which had frozen in ice the moment he stepped out of the building. Even the kids had not yet ventured out; he couldn’t blame them for wanting to wait until the last minute in this weather.
So, once again a solitary man, he made his way to the Arts Building, which was still empty and locked when he arrived. He took out his key, unlocked the door, and flicked the wall switches on to illuminate the building, but for some reason the lights did not go on. He flipped them down and up and down and up again but to no avail. That was the curse of such aged buildings; they were beautiful, but were subject to persistent failure when it came to such modern luxuries as electricity and good plumbing. Oh, well, he’d let somebody else worry about it.
He found the stairway in the dim winter light and made his way up to his classroom domain. Waiting for him at the top of the flight, barely a silhouette in the dark at the top of the stairs, was a familiar figure: Young David Sutcliffe sat, elbows on knees, chin in hands, watching him ascend.
It startled Nicholas, who was not expecting company this early in the morning.
“What are you doing here?” he asked the boy.
The boy no longer seemed the shy, diffident child he had first encountered. He stood right up as Nicholas reached the top of the stairs. David didn’t bother to answer Nicholas’s question. He just looked at him.
“Shouldn’t you be in the Music and Drama Building?” he asked David.
“It’s early,” David answered.
They stood looking at each other for a moment before Nicholas turned and continued down the corridor toward his classroom. He was not surprised when he heard little footsteps following him down the hallway, but still, it made the hairs at the back of his neck prickle. He suddenly turned, hoping to scare and intimidate the boy, but David stopped, stood calmly as Nicholas faced him.
“What do you want?” Nicholas tried not to seethe.
“Nothing,” David said.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
The darkness was not letting go. The sun was not coming out of hiding anytime soon, and the hall was filled with shadow.
Nicholas turned from the boy and toward his classroom, doing his best to ignore him. He unlocked to door and entered, reaching for the lights and flipping them on. But they did not illuminate. The room remained dim, and the walls filled with the animation of drifting snow shadows.
He went to his desk and draped his overcoat and scarf over the back of his chair. He looked to the back of the room to see that the janitor had not cleared away the junked canvasses that he’d left stacked there the night before. With a sigh, he walked to the back of the room and put the canvasses up on end, stacking them neatly against the wall, his head still throbbing, his heart made of lead.
When he turned to go back to his desk, he saw that David was standing in the doorway, his cherubic face an expressionless mask. Nicholas struggled to fight off the anger growing in the pit of his stomach.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
David would not be intimidated. His eyes didn’t leave Nicholas’s face. It seemed that he didn’t even blink.
“Did you love her?” the boy asked him.
“Who?” Nicholas said, his irritation growing. “Did I love who?”
“You know who,” David answered. And then the boy entered the room, walking along the far wall to approach the cupboards filled with art supplies. He ran his fingers across the rows of charcoals, of curdled tubes of oil paint, over the camelhair bristles of paintbrushes.
“I love her,” David said, sounding not like a little boy, but like a gentleman challenging another to a duel. Nicholas felt gooseflesh creeping up his back.
“I think you’d better go on to your classroom,” Nicholas said.
David’s hand settled on a palette knife, still crusted with a residue of blue paint.
“You hurt her,” David said, wrapping his little fingers around its wooden hilt.
This had to stop. Nicholas went up to the boy, doing his best to tower over him, which was not difficult. “Go on, son, get to class.”
David turned to face him, gripping the blunt-ended palette knife tight in his white little hand.
Nicholas opened his hand. “Come on, give that to me.”
David did, but not in the way Nicholas anticipated. The boy slashed it down with all his might, slicing a new lifeline across Nicholas’s palm. Nicholas stared in horror at the new mouth in his hand as it gushed blood that spattered on the floor. David continued to slash away at Nicholas, but the flat blade of the knife mostly just ben
t and bounced off him. Even with the power of both of his hands, David was, after all, a nine-year-old boy, and a nine-year-old boy’s strength was no match for an adult male’s, even an adult male art teacher. Recovering from the shock of the sudden attack, Nicholas grabbed the boy’s wrist, but not before he brought the edge of the blade against Nicholas’s cheek, slashing through it and slamming against his upper teeth with a metallic clack.
Enraged, Nicholas lost his control and grabbed the boy in both hands and threw him to the floor, where he rolled and crashed against the wall. David screamed and tears began to flow as he crashed against his double-elbowed arm, breaking it anew. Guilt and rage battled within Nicholas’s pounding skull, blood leaking from his face and hand with each pulse.
He looked at the boy, now huddled in the corner, crying and holding on to his fractured arm. The anger evaporated. This was a child, and Nicholas, an adult who should know better, had hurt him. Holding bleeding palm against bleeding cheek, Nicholas approached the boy, who, seeing him coming, scuttled furiously away like a beetle on its back, pushing his little feet wildly against the linoleum floor, covering it in a flurry of black shoe scuffs.
“Stop it,” Nicholas said, reaching for the boy. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You already did!” David screamed back at him, a little boy again. A wounded, frightened little boy. “And you hurt her!”
“Just settle down, you hear me?”
David would not just settle down. He scrambled to his feet and ran across the room, holding his shattered arm against his chest. Nicholas took off after him, stumbling over a desk and falling to the floor, giving David the moment he needed to escape.
The boy ran out of the room and into the hallway as Nicholas got up from the floor and took off after him.
“Stop it, son,” Nicholas called after the boy. “I’m not going to hurt you!”
He ran out into the corridor in time to see David running down the stairs in tears, frantic, scrabbling furiously away. Nicholas was as confused as he was angry, as confounded as he was frightened. He ran out of the classroom after the boy, grabbing for the post at the top of the stairs, his hand slick with blood. It slipped from his hand and his heel skidded in his own blood, causing him to tumble painfully down the steps, slamming against them, bashing and gashing his forehead just as the lights decided to flutter on.
Dark Screams, Volume 7 Page 17
