Dark Things IV

by Stacey Longo

  Hunched over his desk with pencil in hand, Charles drew and drew, until the sun ceased to shine through the window anymore because the moon bumped it aside to begin shift.

  ***

  Sunday morning. Out of nowhere, when he was nearly done with his route, it had come to him: construe, imbue, I color you.

  Not “ollur” or “other.”

  He knew what it meant too, and that scared him because now he had no reason to doubt. It was no longer interesting, and he was no longer curious in an innocent way.

  Charles stood on the edge of the cul-de-sac, with one paper in hand, his duffel bag against his hip. The feeling he’d had the previous time he’d been inside the house began to squirm in his belly like worms.

  There were no crows upon the skeleton branches of the maple trees or on the thickly covered branches of the evergreens. As he thought about it, he realized he couldn’t hear the slightest sound of birdsong at all, let alone any evidence that a single bird was present.

  The silence felt like a warning, and although its pressure increased as he neared the house, he denied its touch and walked on, because what was inside of the house had become a cut off scream for help. He cannot deny he heard it; attribute it to a screech of wind or some creature in the forest. No, he heard it, felt it, and that made him obligated because if not him, then who else.

  Between his grip, the newspaper wrinkled and flexed as the knocker echoed. The worms squirmed with fear, but could burrow no further in his guts than they already were. The feeling that all was not right, but most definitely bad, was quickly losing its feeling and becoming a truth. He glanced back, sure he would see a lawn, a grove; hell, a whole world full of crows staring at him with beady eyes of cold anticipation.

  Just the same sights, however. He realized the intensity of his grip with a burning sensation in his forearms, and so uncurled his hands and took several deep breaths. He’d donned his mother’s bracelet today on impulse, and now reached under the long sleeve of his shirt and gripped it with his right hand, his eyes closed. He seldom wore it, fearing he might accidentally break or ruin it in some way. Or worse, lose it. But on some occasions—a school play, applying for the paper route, and kissing Andrea at a school dance—he wore it because, well, he felt closer to his mom, who always gave him strength. He opened his eyes and pulled his sleeve back over the bracelet, feeling better.

  Lewis opened the door, dressed as he’d always been on Charles’s visits. “More cookies, perhaps?” he said and swung back with the door.

  In the kitchen, Lewis plunged a hand into the deep cookie jar on his counter and, one by one, brought out and placed a dozen cookies on a sparkling white plate. Charles began to eat and, also, try and conjure the insight that had appeared only to cloak itself just as quickly last night. He stopped before he could attempt to recount too far into the mystery because he was a good boy, and a good boy always listened to his mother. It sure was frustrating, though, he thought, and shoved a cookie—the whole thing—into his mouth.

  The escaped insight was not the only thing nagging at his mind. As he sat across from Lewis, he kept his mouth as full as possible so as to prevent a question or statement requiring a response, which a polite person would not ask when one’s mouth was full. He thought it a wise strategy because while he felt Lewis was not right, possibly, more likely—probably—bad, he believed Lewis to be a man who followed polite conduct.

  Too much time couldn’t be spent stuffing his mouth, he knew—there were only twelve cookies to begin with, now nine, and it would seem fishy after too long because he’d never before failed to ask questions, and lots of them. He only wanted enough time to calm the worms that writhed in his belly, so that when he spoke he wouldn’t betray any indication that he knew. He got the idea that Lewis was the type of man who, while having a secret and fully complacent as long as it remained thus, would become an evil person should his secret be discovered. It was like staring the devil in the eye, knowing the devil had inhabited a human’s body, and having to act as if he didn’t know, because if he did let the devil know that he knew, then he would be killed.

  And a dead boy couldn’t help the screamer.

  He was on his sixth cookie when he felt he’d reached the point where his mouth wouldn’t betray his mind. With half of them left, he swallowed and said, “How long have you lived in Ridgeview, Mr. Mortimer?”

  “Quite ravenous, are we?”

  Ravenous? What the hell was that? Charles was blank for a moment, thinking he’d underestimated the man, berating himself for thinking that he, not yet a teenager, could have fooled this man, thinking that ravenous must mean shit for brains.

  “Uh…”

  Lewis chuckled. “Hungry, you’re very hungry today, yes?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “These—” he picked up another cookie and took a bite “—are really good. Is this your own recipe?”

  “Why yes,” he said; a thin smile creased his face.

  Charles continued to chew, wondering if his first question might have been a mistake.

  “I’ve lived here most of my life,” Lewis said. “Why do you ask?”

  Think, think, think, his mind whispered, and for several seconds, which were granted as necessity by the chewing of the cookie and not seen as hesitation to think up a lie, he could come up with only: uh…uhh…uhhh. Then just as he was swallowing and fearing nothing would surface, it came.

  “Just curious, you know, because I was wondering if you were here when the house was built. It’s kind of a strange house, don’t you think? There’s, like, hardly any windows and only a few hallways and no open rooms or anything, like a living room.”

  Lewis nodded. “A strange construction, indeed. But no, I haven’t been here that long. Wasn’t even born far back enough for that to have been possible. Strange indeed, though.” His head tilted so that a pensive look emerged on his pale, sunken face. “I purchased the house sixteen years ago, but have made some changes since.”

  “The angel, did you have that built?”

  He looked past Charles, in the direction of the stained-glass window, as though he could see through the walls and gaze upon it. “Yes, I did.” He emitted the look of a daydreamer, but briefly, lasting no longer than an uncharacteristic urge to strike a loved one in a heated argument. “It is quite beautiful, is it not?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Did you remember to bring some drawings of yours? I’ve anticipated seeing your work.”

  That blank look again.

  “It’s quite alright. I remember my youth, too. Often very scatterbrained, it’s hard to remember so much with all the adolescent things going on. When you do remember, I’d be happy to see them.” A pained expression contorted his face. “Nature calls,” he said and placed a hand to his stomach. “Excuse me a moment, will you?”

  “Sure,” Charles said, and Lewis scooted his chair back soundlessly. A crumb fell from Charles’s lip and landed in his lap. He lowered his head and plucked up the crumb, glad that it hadn’t fallen on the floor. He didn’t think Lewis would’ve been mad, but he didn’t want to risk it.

  When he raised his head, Lewis was gone. His brow furrowed, and he wondered why he hadn’t seen him leave because the kitchen had only one doorway, a fact he just noticed. He looked at the doorway that they’d used to enter the kitchen and was sure Lewis hadn’t used it to leave. He recalled the faint steps of the man’s feet as he’d left, which he’d certainly done because he was no longer in the room, but knew he hadn’t departed through the doorway. To his right was a bare wall, the separate boards of wood uncovered, naked with the absence of wallpaper, pictures, or anything else. He peered at that wall, willing a doorway to show itself, but none did. One was there, though; he knew it, just as he knew that Lewis was bad, possibly very bad. Charles assumed the fact of the single visible door had skipped Lewis’s mind with his urgency to get to the bathroom; lucky that Charles hadn’t actually seen him leave that way.

  What could he do, though?
Nothing now. He suspected plenty, but he needed to know more. All things in time. It was a bit scary, all this waiting, but he trusted the voice of his mother, so he returned his attention to the plate before him.

  Eating another cookie (there were three remaining), Charles began to feel this weird tingling in the depths of his stomach, but it was very different from the worms. It was a light vibration through his limbs and even seemed to contain a low hum, but he figured it was in his head. The sensation, however, was there, and very substantial. As before, when he had created his first real drawing—or drawn his first real creation—he was filled with a compulsion, erotic in its intensity. The urge—the need—to draw—right then and there—gripped him and wouldn’t let go.

  His heartbeat picked up and his arms and legs began to shake. Able to clench his teeth, he was nevertheless unable to keep his lips shut, and the hum that he thought to be only in his mind waved through his mouth with sibilant flow.

  Lewis had not yet come back through the invisible, but existing door in the wall on the right, and Charles realized that he wouldn’t come back through that door, anyway. He would come through the visible archway, of course. He shook his head at his own idiocy and unclenched his teeth just a bit, maybe a millimeter or two at most. Enough anyway, so that he felt as though his hand had fumbled in the process of turning up his stereo at night, causing a second of noise akin to the shot of a gun, alerting his mom to the fact that he was awake. He shut his mouth, cutting off the hum so that it continued to vibrate through his jaw and up to his temples.

  Mr. Mortimer was coming.

  Down the stairs. He was halfway down the stairs.

  Teeth sunk deeply into his being; it pulled at him, tried to rip him from his determination to resist.

  Oh God. He shut his eyes. It was like sitting in class when all of a sudden a throbbing boner expanded in his pants. Only an insane boy would start stroking in front of God and everybody, but at that moment, when all he could feel was the overwhelming hunger for release, such behavior seemed almost proper, almost acceptable. God, oh God. A voice would whisper in his mind, telling him to do it; just do it and it will go away, to just have at it—

  Charles bit down on his tongue. The taste of blood spread in his mouth. The urge to draw, to pull out his pencils and tablet from his duffel bag and have at it, faded away. He was left with an exhausted relief. He cleared his throat and sat up straighter in the chair and began to breathe slowly and deeply because Lewis was stepping off the last stair, was in the hallway.

  He looked to his right—no, stupid!—then looked to the left as he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to know the doorway existed.

  The soft clap of approaching steps. Lewis was in the kitchen. He smiled at Charles, apparently finding nothing odd about his appearance. He took his seat again and reached for a cookie; his hands smelled pleasantly of soap.

  “Can you stomach the last two?”

  Charles regarded the cookies for a moment, feeling the cut on his tongue. “I better not,” as though he were full.

  “We’ll save them for next time, then.” Lewis returned them to the jar. He sighed and beamed at Charles. “If you would like, I have something very special to show you.” He rubbed his palms together, and Charles noticed how common a gesture it was to express anticipation or joy, but was sickened to see it coming from this man.

  The second-floor room he was led to was white—the walls were; the few pieces of furniture were; the carpet was; the bed, and all that covered it, was; the small chandelier in the ceiling’s center was. It was the White Room, and Charles, having taken off his shoes and stepped in, blinked back at first sight because of its starkness. Finding his vision, his eyes were drawn to the only thing not white in the room: a painting, of course.

  It hung to the right of the bed. The frame was white, but included the same small holes that were in the perimeters of all the other paintings.

  For a moment he couldn’t catch his breath; he actually thought he might suffocate, but couldn’t voice a plea, and didn’t think it would help even if he could.

  Lewis breathed from over his shoulder. “It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” The mint smell caused his stomach to churn.

  His voice seemed to come through a tunnel to Charles.

  “It is my favorite. Such emotion. So real…so final.”

  Charles couldn’t unshackle his eyes, but his breath was coming back to him in barely audible wheezes. He moved forward with a weak-anchored detachment, as though his own shadow, each step seeming to be an effort through water.

  The small vibration began in his belly again, low and full.

  Behind him, Lewis continued, “It is my favorite because, while not the first of my special paintings that I created, it is my most personal, my first…conclusion, one could say.”

  The hum sounded in Charles’s belly and fanned in his being like the vibrations, both growing.

  “Once, I was a different person. Once I loved her, but then, well, she didn’t understand my talent. My gift. She left me, a decision I raised no objection to. But then, she came back some years later, ‘to give me one last chance.’ She didn’t like knowing. It made her feel complicit, you see.”

  Charles remembered the paintings of the dog, in one picture alive and well, in the next, sick and dying; the painting of the man in the alley, looking over his shoulder; the man grasping his throat, eyes bulging to the point of bursting; the man lying still, sharing a tub with a blowdryer.

  “…She threatened me, said she’d call the police.”

  Vibrations coursed through Charles’s body like fiery veins and the hum sounded low in his throat and crawled over his tongue like a spider from black depths. He reached the painting.

  “Naturally,” Lewis said from the same spot; he had not moved forward. “I was hurt, but had little to worry. So, so ignorant.” He chuckled, but Charles hardly registered this.

  He stood before the painting, and then raised his left arm; the sleeve slid back as his fingertips met the canvas.

  Mr. Mortimer stopped chuckling; a hiss escaped him.

  The painting was of a lady sitting at a desk, lit by a small reading lamp. Her forearm rested on the desk, and her head on her forearm, near which was an overturned bottle that pills had spilled from. The deep brown locks of her hair obscured her face, but Charles knew who the lady was.

  He knew because on her wrist was a bracelet made from segmented wood pieces of filigreed carvings held together by a baby blue string of yarn.

  With his fingertips he traced lightly, ever so lightly, the face of his mother. A tear ran from one eye and streaked over his cheek, to his chin.

  His wrist was suddenly enclosed in a pincer grip and he was whirled around to face Lewis’s sallow face and the inky dots from which madness pulsed like heat.

  “Where did you get this?” he said, feeling at the bracelet.

  Charles tried to pull away but couldn’t. Looking into the man’s eyes, which were dark brown and speckled with gray, he suddenly knew why his were the same color, and the realization caused putrid sickness to curdle in his stomach.

  “Where, I say!”

  “My mother!”

  Lewis threw his wrist, causing Charles to stumble back into the painting. He glared at Charles behind strings of snaky hair, and with his taught blue lips he said quietly, “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

  Without looking back at the painting, he walked past Lewis with his head down. He spit on the carpet on his way out and didn’t stop to slip into his shoes. His muscles were tensed; he feared that the touch of those long, pale, freakishly clean hands would grasp him again. He was down the stairs and halfway down the front hall when he realized he hadn’t been followed.

  Pausing in the hallway, by the archway of the kitchen, he heard a door close upstairs, coming from, he thought by the sound of it, the room whose one wall was of the stained-glass angel.

  Lewis wasn’t going to make sure he left; he was sure of it. He knew what
Lewis would begin.

  In the kitchen, Charles grabbed his drawing tablet and a pencil, then slid the duffel bag onto the floor and out of his way. He rubbed his mother’s bracelet and then brushed his finger’s over the top sheet of paper.

  He began to draw.

  ***

  Lewis wedged the chair under the doorknob. He grabbed his head with both hands and uttered frantic shrieks. After a minute, he stopped. The easel stood in the middle of the room, a stack of canvases on its right.

  He knew what must be done.

  When “nature” had called, he’d gone to the bathroom, but not because he’d needed to use it for anything but a time out, a time out from the itch that the boy had posed since day one. Over the weekend, that itch had grown into a sharp pain in his belly that had reached a level at which he’d dearly wanted to dig it out by plunging his fingers into his flesh.

  He’d rested with his hands on the side of the sink, looking into the mirror on the medicine cabinet. The itch dug into him and he cringed and twisted at the sink, holding in the hot groans that bubbled in him.

  And then, it had come to him—what he must do. He didn’t understand why or how it would relieve his pain, but he trusted his intuition because it had accosted him like a blast of rotting meat, so pungent and undeniable that heeding its call was irresistible. And so he’d shown the boy the painting.

  The boy—oh the boy; he knew too much, just as she had. Lewis looked at his glass angel that owned the east side of the room. Her eyes assured him that yes, he should have realized it much sooner, but that the journey was negligible compared to the end that circumstance had woven because, naturally, the present was of greatest concern, as it had been with her. At the sight of the bracelet, there was no doubt.

  Lewis strode to the stack of canvases and set one on the easel. He picked up his palette and brush from a chest behind the easel. In front of the canvas, the palette held with his left, the brush held with his right, he paused as doubt tickled his mind. He remembered the night when she confronted him.