by Matt Cardin
“I told you not to stare,” Bernard said, smirking. “He really should do something about those crazy eyes. He certainly has enough money to fix the problem.”
“So who is he?” Thornton asked. “He looks like a male model with the brain of a village idiot.”
“That, friend Erik, is Tony Anthony, and he is a legend.”
Thornton lowered his glass, looked furtively at the stranger, and then back at Powers. “A legend? This guy looks about, what, twenty-five? Too young for a legend. You have to actually live and do things to earn that title.”
“My friend,” said Powers, “Tony Anthony is forty-seven years old. He’s what people mean when they say ‘well-preserved.’ Those who know him say he must have formaldehyde in his veins. He’s old money, too. Timber money, I believe. His family owns land in half a dozen states. And as for his legendary status—” Powers moved closer and touched the back of Thornton’s arm in a motion that effectively drew the two of them into a private conference right there in the midst of the crowd. “He’s a legend because he’s a collector who grabs works by hot new artists just before they become hot. Some say he makes them hot. I think he used to be an artist himself. Can’t remember what he did, though.”
Thornton looked once more at the stranger. A cold shock, adrenaline mixed with nausea, washed up from his stomach. “Jesus, he’s actually staring at me. Or at least I think he is. Hard to tell with those eyes. What the hell kind of name is ‘Tony Anthony,’ anyway?”
“‘Tony’ is short for ‘Anthony,’“ Powers explained with a smile.
“Are you telling me the man’s name is Anthony Anthony? What kind of sadistic parents—? Oh, God. He’s coming this way.” Thornton stiffened and looked around for an escape route. “What should I do?”
“Just be nice. Or since this is you we’re talking about, just be as nice as you can. At the very least, please don’t mention his eyes.”
There wasn’t a waiter in sight, so Thornton had to hold his now-empty glass as Tony Anthony approached. The man’s preternatural handsomeness vied for dominance with his crooked gaze as he exchanged perfunctory pleasantries with Powers. His nearness felt almost literally magnetic as he and the gallery director made small talk. Then Powers raised his arm and made a sweeping gesture of introduction. “Mr. Anthony, may I introduce Erik Thornton, the man of the hour!”
Thornton plastered on his best mask of polite indifference, a kind of blank pout worthy of a brooding artist, as he extended his hand. Up close and head-on, Tony Anthony’s combination of stunning good looks and comic idiocy was even more unnerving. But it was outmatched by the touch of his hand, which felt oddly cool and flabby as Thornton shook it. Anthony’s glowing flesh had a distasteful sponginess about it, as if the muscles beneath the skin were borrowed from some plump, chilly reptile. When the two released their mutual grip, Thornton fought down the urge to wipe his hand on his pants.
“Mr. Anthony,” the artist said, “this is a real pleasure. I’m flattered you’ve come to view my work.”
“I assure you,” said Anthony, “I’m here to do more than just look.” Almost predictably, Thornton thought, the man’s voice was equally off-putting. It was both nasal and strangely muted, putting Thornton in mind—ridiculously, he realized, but the impression suggested itself and would not let go—of Peter Lorre speaking through a mouthful of oatmeal.
Powers, for his part, was instantly aroused by Anthony’s words. “Do you mean that you plan to buy?”
“Oh, I most certainly do.” Anthony nodded toward the wall across the room where The Hatchlings resided at the center of an array of five paintings, surrounded by Dark End of the Spectrum, Four Figures Lost in the Inferno, The Illusionist’s Noose, and Time Enough for a Scream. “I plan to buy that entire wall. You’ve got a real treasure on your hands here, Mr. Powers.” He put his own hands on his slim, tuxedoed hips as he sized Thornton up, raking his curious eyes up and down the artist from head to toe. “Erik Thornton is onto something. Something big.” His smile widened and his voice lost some of its comical quality to become softer and deeper. “I wonder if he is not aware of just how big it might turn out to be.”
The statement, delivered in that strangely altered tone, struck Thornton as containing some sort of veiled threat. Or perhaps it was a sexual come-on. Despite himself, he opened his mouth to respond with unplanned sharp words when faithful Powers butted in to save the moment.
“Ah!” he said. “Are you thinking, then, of launching the career of yet another budding young artist?”
“I think we all know,” said Anthony, “including Mr. Thornton himself, that he is well past the budding stage. I think our young artist is quite ready to bloom.” He looked directly into Thornton’s eyes, and at once the room grew darker and quieter. Anthony’s pupils and irises somehow righted themselves and swiveled into perfect alignment. They seemed to resemble gleaming crystals, with ebony pools of darkness embedded inside. Thornton heard the whisper of wind blowing through tall marsh grass. A hooded head rose from the depths of an oily pool, and twin points of yellow starfire flared into being. . . .
Then, as quick as a stroke of lightning, the yellow stars were replaced by the pupils of Tony Anthony’s crossed eyes. Thornton shook his head to clear away his momentary flash into dreamspace. The gallery crowd murmured and chattered all around.
A waiter glided by with more champagne, so Thornton snatched a fresh flute. Powers remained alert, eager and obsequious.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Anthony was saying. “With your paintings, I mean. Did you deliberately paint those five pieces as a series? Or did they just come out that way?”
“I never ask my muse for too much explanation,” Thornton said. “She and I have a working agreement. She provides the fire, and I provide the booze.”
Powers, standing next to the two men, barked out a too-loud laugh. Anthony continued to stare at Thornton, as if awaiting more explanation. Thornton hefted his glass in a kind of salute. “No, I didn’t paint them as a series. But they seemed to go together, so I had them displayed as a group.”
“Yes,” said Anthony. “Yes, they do go together. Your sense of your own work is well developed.” He turned to regard the paintings again, and for a moment the three of them fell silent as they examined the wall. Male and female guests draped in expensive clothing, bearing fat pocketbooks, continued to mill about the Mondrago Gallery.
“I’m definitely buying all five works,” Anthony announced. “And I would love for you to come see me at my house, Mr. Thornton.”
Thornton blinked. Powers’s eyes momentarily bulged, but he recovered immediately. “Oh, Mr. Anthony, I’m sure Erik would love that! Wouldn’t you, Erik? I mean, Mr. Anthony doesn’t invite just anyone out to see him.”
“Yes, of course,” Thornton said. “I’m thrilled.”
“My card,” Anthony said, holding out a cream-colored rectangle.
Thornton reached out and took it, carefully avoiding contact with the man’s clammy flesh. He then handed Anthony one of his own cards.
“My personal secretary will call you,” Anthony said. “He will set up a day and time. I’m dying to commission a new work from you.”
With that, Anthony turned and walked toward the exit, not acknowledging any of the people who randomly blocked his path. As if by magic, like a miraculously parting sea of flesh, they stepped aside automatically to let him pass.
Powers clapping Thornton on the back and congratulated him for his amazing good fortune. The gallery owner laughed so hard that tears spilled from the corners of his eyes. Thornton, for his part, stood unmoving, staring after the departing Anthony, maintaining a deliberate inner stillness as the man stepped through the exit door. Once he was gone, Thornton turned his eyes in search of neutral space, seeking a place to look at nothing and reflect on what had just transpired.
He found his gaze coming to rest on his beloved Hatchlings, mounted on the far wall. It caused him no small amount of consternation, mi
ngled with a curious dismay, to find that their horrified expressions now appeared to have gained an added nuance of pitiful, frightened bewilderment.
3. The Secret Gallery
On any other morning, the misty forested vista of the mountainside would have inspired Thornton’s imagination with pleasurable intimations of new artworks to come. But today, as he motored steadily up the steep asphalt road in his old Ford Escort, on his way to Tony Anthony’s mansion, he found himself preoccupied with forebodings about what he might find, and what he might be expected to do, when he reached his destination.
The previous night, as he’d slept in his attic cell, strange hunches and suspicions had suggested themselves in unnerving profusion. Now, a scant fifteen hours after having met Tony Anthony, he was headed for the man’s house while listening to the sinister voices of his subconscious . . . lurid voices that whispered of wealthy lunatics whose money enabled them to enjoy secret lifestyles filled with sex parties and serial killing, either separately or in combination.
The call had come early that morning, at the unhallowed hour of seven o’clock. His phone had awakened him from another dream of the dark pool and the hooded head with the golden eyes. He’d nearly fallen off the edge of the mattress in his rush to answer it. Then, before he was really conscious, he had heard a coolly cultured male voice, strangely ageless and colored with an indefinable Eastern European accent, that inquired whether he was “the painter Thornton?”
Upon receiving Erik’s sleep-blurred affirmation, the voice had informed him that Mr. Anthony would be able to receive him at eleven o’clock that very morning. Thornton had mumbled his acceptance of the invitation, or rather the summons.
Later, he found himself wondering if the cultured voice on the phone had in fact been Anthony himself. He’d heard before that rich eccentrics, as well as performers and politicians, did things like that. A curt phone presence helped to cut down on time-consuming small-talk.
Anthony’s mansion was situated on a spacious shelf of land, located halfway up a pine-forested mountain north of the city. In fact, townspeople referred to that land-formation simply and uniformly as The Mountain. The capital T and M were always audible in the pronunciation. This striking geological singularity had been the first thing seen by Thornton during his initial drive into the city when he moved there three years ago. He had never bothered to learn its formal name, but in town he’d heard people talk from time to time about The Mountain with an odd undertone of reverence in their voices. The irony was not lost on him now, as he found himself summoned to ascend said Mountain on a mysterious pilgrimage to the lofty home of a distasteful god-figure.
On that particular morning, the city had been positively infuriating with its noise and traffic and fumes. When he’d finally broken free of its clamor, he had been seized with a sense of freedom that lasted until he began the long drive up The Mountain and found himself enclosed in a forest of ancient pines laden with milky mist. Instead of seeming cool and refreshing, the forest felt oppressive, and his sense of suffocation was augmented by the inner chatter of those worrisome suspicions about Anthony’s intentions.
The drive soon began to feel like a dream. In the gloomy primal womb of the trees and fog, he could almost believe he had never really awakened, but was merely driving farther into a dream that had begun when the phone first rang. It was a disorienting feeling, and also, he feared, a decidedly unsafe one, in light of his recent encounters with involuntary waking dream-states.
Eventually the entrance to the mansion emerged from among the trees. The house itself was located half a mile inside the perimeter of a vast wrought-iron fence. Getting to it required passing through a similarly massive iron gate, which brooded over a misty gray lawn and a blacktopped driveway. The gate stood open, as if waiting for him. He braked to a halt and took a breath. He thought he saw a deer in his peripheral vision, but when he turned to look, he saw nothing but a swirl of mist. He pressed the accelerator and drove slowly through the gate, noting well his feeling of crossing more than just a manmade threshold.
When he reached the driveway’s end, he stopped the car, switched off the engine, and spent a moment taking in the sight of the muted architectural wonder that was Tony Anthony’s mansion. It consisted of multiple angles and planes, spires and finials, turrets and towers, lancet windows, pointed gables, and more, all fused together in a crazy cluster that was somehow Gothic and modern—chic modern, sleek modern, even in its disorienting randomness—in a way that Thornton could not pinpoint. Greenish-gray ivy was draped over most outer walls. Clearly, nothing was simple here.
He stepped out of the car to find himself enveloped in utter stillness. No bird sang; no breeze blew. The clammy mist hung motionless in the air. He searched the windows of the house for some sign of movement. As he made his way toward the massive front door, the silence and chill made him feel like a sleepwalker, lost somewhere between dreamland and reality. Up here the city seemed impossibly remote, tucked back down at the bottom of The Mountain in a dark, dank well that he called his life.
The front door opened before he touched it, swinging inward without a sound, and he stepped into the mansion without a moment’s hesitation. Dreamlike trances could be useful, he reflected, for masking fears and inhibitions.
Inside, he discovered a large, richly decorated foyer with gleaming wood floors and walls. Rooms and corridors branched off all around him, but he had no time to investigate, for Tony Anthony was descending a curved, carpeted staircase to greet him.
“Mr. Thornton!” Anthony’s voice conveyed real pleasure, reminding the artist—and again, a ridiculous thought presented itself with inconvenient timing and unshakable tenacity—of Peter Lorre speaking through a mouthful of sugary oatmeal on Christmas morning.
Anthony was dressed in a dark sweater and loose-fitting pants. At the foot of the stairs, he spread his arms flamboyantly like the wings of a raven, or perhaps a pterodactyl. “Thank you for coming! We have so much to talk about.” Thornton offered his own thanks and waited for Anthony to make the next move. There was a subtle alteration in the man that he could not place. Anthony looked somehow different from the night before.
The difference became obvious as the millionaire stepped closer: his eyes were no longer crossed. Or at least, not as much as they had been at the gallery. The left one still looked a bit lazy and unfocused, but other than that, his facial appearance was normal. Or actually better than normal, for now he truly looked the part of a Greek god. The effect was literally breathtaking.
“Please,” Anthony said, “come with me. I’ve put your paintings in the studio. I arranged for them to be delivered last night.” He turned and walked toward the interior of the mansion, obviously expecting Thornton to follow him. Which, of course, he did. As he left the foyer, Thornton noticed the front door whispering shut behind him with no visible aid. Probably under the control of a mechanical device with an electronic eye.
The “studio” turned out to be located deep within the labyrinth of the house. Thornton followed his host through halls and kitchens and parlors so numerous and convoluted, he soon lost all sense of direction. Each room, hallway, alcove was decorated to a level of almost absurd opulence, with many striking works of art installed throughout. Eventually, they descended a long flight of stairs and emerged into the natural-light glow of a long, low-ceilinged, unfinished basement with a row of narrow windows set high in the far wall. Thornton breathed a sigh of relief and looked longingly at the glass panes, which seemed at this point like a welcome escape route. The house had begun to feel like a vast and terrible maw around him, cavernous and carnivorous. Then he noticed the tableau spread out before him, foregrounding the far wall and the windows, and thoughts of escape were eclipsed by something like wonder.
Spread out in a fantastic array across the length and breadth of the basement was a collection of mysterious figures draped in sheets of white linen. The figures were obviously human or humanlike statues. The telltale outlines of heads
and arms were enough to make this plain. His astonishment was magnified when he looked at the gypsum walls on the right and left and saw that they, too, were hung with sheets, and that these sheets concealed what could only be paintings. A hundred or more of them lined the walls on either side. The whole space seemed to be held under a hush, like a church sanctuary.
“In here,” Anthony said, shutting the stairwell door behind them, “I keep my most treasured collection. It is a room that I have devoted entirely to the power of art in all its forms. I believe art has the power to transform the world, to give us all a sense of widened perception and heightened consciousness. Don’t you agree, Mr. Thornton?” His voice echoed with a dull reverberation against the cold concrete of the walls and floor. Without waiting for an answer, he led Thornton through the graveyard of shrouded forms. “I have hung your works in the back, where I put all my most recent purchases. Would you like to see?”
Thornton followed closely behind him. He was careful not to touch anything, for fear that he would disturb some deliberate arrangement whose logic he could not perceive. Pale shapes loomed on either side like mute guardians of some obscure secret. He fancied he could feel the pressure of restrained visionary power billowing outward from beneath the sheets, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he and his host left the shapes behind and came to the far wall.
Anthony turned to the right and pointed, and Thornton saw that they were facing an alcove in the corner where his paintings, the ones from last night’s gallery encounter, had been hung. Unlike the others in the room, they were uncovered, and the familiar sight of his own work sparked a welcome sense of security. Their arrangement, however, was unusual, for Anthony had hung them next to each other in semi-interlocking fashion like the pieces of a puzzle, resulting in a kind of horizontal arc that resembled a letter “C.”
Anthony waited a moment and then spoke. “I think you see what I’m needing, don’t you?” He pointed to the empty space within the arc. “One piece is lacking. When it is finished and placed with the others, the series will be complete.” He slipped his hands into his pockets and offered Thornton another of those lopsided grins. Thornton noticed that his voice was losing its mealy sound. Down here, surrounded by his secret, sheeted gallery, Anthony had begun to speak in an increasingly commanding baritone, rich and resonant.
