Opus Wall

by Brian S. Wheeler

  Chapter 5 - Summoning Back the Soul

  Water District proved as dilapidated as Max had imagined. Several narrow, two and three story buildings lining the street had toppled into ruined piles of bricks still waiting to be cleared from that block of charcoal and dust. Max distrusted the integrity of the mortar struggling to hold the remainder of the buildings upright, and he suspected little could stand had it not been for the multitude of peeling posters and porcelain signs marketing store shops many decades lost that supplemented those structures’ bones. Gypsum board shuttered every ground floor window. Max peeked upward and failed to find any window frame on the higher stories still holding a complete pane of glass. The falling sun dropped behind jagged rooftops, and as Max considered the shadow, he sensed he gazed upon a giant’s severed and broken lower jawbone.

  He saw not a single face amid those tombstone buildings, though he often sensed eyes looking upon him as he tread between puddles festering in the street. Max thought someone, surely, must still regard that district as home. He could not convince himself a district so large could be devoid of life. Hadn’t that strange painting delivered to his gallery proven that someone breathed among those aged bricks and stones? Yet after an hour of aimless wandering, Max saw only a chained pit bull, who casually regarded the interloping Max before returning his attention to nibbling upon it flee-ridden patches of fur.

  A lonely violin’s melody tumbled into Max’s ears just as he considered backtracking out of the district and returning to the gallery no wiser to the identity of that strange painting’s artist. The song echoing through the tight alleyways confused Max. He thought he entered into the middle of that wobbling string of notes. He had not heard the start to that melody, no matter that the district surrounding him had been so silent. Had his thoughts only been elsewhere, so that he simply failed to recognize the true beginning of that song? Had he fallen so deeply into introspection that he had been so numb to his surroundings? Max didn’t like that thought, for the Water District was no place to lose oneself in daydream. Max suspected that peril hid somewhere in all that shadow and ruin, regardless if Max’s eyes possessed the skill to peer through trouble’s disguise.

  Max pointed himself in direction of that melody and stepped into a narrow alley. The path’s meandering length surprised Max, who had expected to very quickly step onto a parallel side street. Instead, Max felt himself move deeper and deeper into the shadow. The block itself seemed to grow more immense the further Max progressed through the alleyways’ turns. He stood still on the occasions when he felt most lost, taking comfort to realize the notes grew louder. No matter how weird his inner compass regarded the geography, Max refused to look behind, pushing himself forward towards the source of that wobbling song.

  A final turn in the alleyway deposited Max upon a small, cobblestone courtyard hidden at the heart of the brick buildings. A gray, one-eyed cat teetering upon a broken pipe of a rusted railing hissed at the sight of the Max, but the tall and slender man whose long arms drew a bow across a violin betrayed no indication of noticing the stranger’s presence. The cat glared at Max a moment before leaping onto the cobblestones and darting into another narrow and dark alleyway. Max slowly entered the center of the courtyard and timidly smiled towards the musician. The player’s wardrobe - though its vest appeared frayed at the corners, though the trousers looked stained at the hems, though its derby hat seemed a little dented - still conveyed a little grandeur. The player’s long arm rose and fell as it pushed and pulled the bow, summoning strong and elegant notes that floated throughout the courtyard. But the melody was pure only in starts and fits, for bouts of uncontrolled coughing often wracked that violinist’s frame, shaking the arm that held the bow and the hand that held the violin so that the notes turned discordant and cumbersome. But the violinist played through such interruptions, and Max recognized the breath had returned to that musician’s lungs when the melody regained its purity.

  “Excuse me!” Max regretted the need to shout, but he was unsure if that violinist would ever cease drawing that bow across the strings. “Can you help me find someone?”

  The melody collapsed as the violinist parted his arms, and Max imagined those notes falling onto a pile, not so much unlike that district’s prevalent heaps of bricks, at the player’s feet. The man’s hands limply fell to his sides, and Max noticed the uncanny length of the violinist’s fingers. Max thought such large hands might give the player an advantage with his instrument until he noticed the swollen knuckles indicative of advanced arthritis.

  “I’m looking for a painter.”

  The musician removed his derby and dropped it upon the damp cobblestones before kicking the hat across the courtyard to Max.

  “Compensate me for that song, and I’ll think about helping you.”

  Max fumbled into his wallet, unsure of how much he should place into the hat. He hoped his offering was not cheap. He hoped what he kicked back would not give that violinist offense.

  The musician’s eyes peered at the derby, and he nodded. “So what is it you need to know?”

  Max took a breath. He suspected it would be very important how he phrased his question.

  “I’m looking for a man, but I don’t know his name.”

  “Afraid there’s not much here,” the musician shook his head, “but you put plenty enough in my hat to ask me some more if you can find the words for it.”

  “All I know is he’s an artist.”

  The musician chuckled. “You’ve come to right ruins if you’re looking for that. I’d bet everything in my hat that you’re searching for Clive Turner.”

  “That was quick. Are you sure?”

  The musician winked. “There’s plenty of folks in this rubble calling themselves one kind of artist or another. But as far as I’m concerned, there’s only one who can pull people in from the outside, and that’s sack-headed Clive Turner. You’ll find him and his women shacked up in the old ski factory warehouse. Not much left of that place since the fire and all the water, but there’s enough of the old billboard remaining to let you know when you’ve found it. Just go through that alleyway on the other end of the courtyard and take a left at the next street. Keep going and you’ll find that warehouse.”

  The musician returned to his instrument, and the violin’s melody pushed at Max’s back to encourage him through the narrow alleyway. Back in the street, Max realized he was treading back over his steps when he caught another glance at that chained dog. A couple of streetlights flickered to power to provide at least the semblance of light as dark descended, enough illumination for Max to recognize the peeling paint of the abandoned ski warehouse’s billboard. Circling the building a few times, Max decided his best hopes of meeting any occupants rested in knocking upon the only door not barred by crossed, wooden boards. Max cringed as he drew his hand back before letting it fall to rap upon that doorway. He was a little afraid that the warehouse might morph into a new pile of brick and rubble should he knock too hard.

  “Door’s unlocked,” a cracking voice shrilled. “No need to stand out there in the empty, love. Just follow the hall.”

  No one waited for Max on the other side of the door. Max wondered if the owner of the responding voice might have retreated behind one of the doors on either side of the hall that faced him, but thick chains and heavy padlocks barred entry through any of those passageways. So Max saved his curiosity for another time as he followed the disembodied words’ advice and moved down the hall, towards a dingy light seeping through a hazy, clouded window set in the center of another door directly ahead of him.

  “That’s the way, love. Me and Clive don’t often get company. Not in these forgotten parts.”

  Chains rattled. A deadbolt clicked. The door at the end of the hall creaked open to reveal a large warehouse space. Starlight filtered through the gaping holes in the building’s corrugated roof, and suspended candles did what they could to chase away the dark in those areas where enough roofing remained to hold down sha
dow. Stacks of cloth, large rolls of paper, spools of fabric occupied much of that space, and Max hated to think how quickly flame would devour what remained of that warehouse if a spark ever found such feast of dry and aged kindling for its appetite.

  “Up here, love. Don’t be afraid to kick some of those cardboard boxes out of your way.”

  Max gasped as he looked up into the aged face of an elderly woman who looked down upon him from a second story railing. The woman’s last strands of gray hair knotted to her shoulders. Age spots splotched the woman’s hands as she directed Max towards a staircase climbing to her level. A black eye patch covered the woman’s left eye, and a cataract clouded the remaining right orb that greeted Max as he ascended the final step. He feared that the violinist might have mistakenly given him the wrong directions. He couldn’t imagine any artist capable of painting that canvas stored in his gallery’s basement with such impeded vision.

  “I hope I haven’t knocked on the wrong door. I’m looking for an artist.”

  The woman grinned a smile filled with broken teeth. “I know what you’ve come for, love. I was the one who mailed that painting to you.”

  “So you painted that canvas?”

  “Goodness no,” the woman snorted. “Clive painted that picture. I had to send it somewhere because our warehouse is running out of space.”

  “There’s more then?”

  The woman lifted a finger to her lips. “Not so loud, love. We don’t want Belinda to hear us. She doesn’t want to send any of Clive’s paintings away. But pretty soon, our warehouse is going to run out of dry places to store them. Be a shame if we let the rain running through our roof ruin a canvas. And I don’t think it’s right that we keep all of Clive’s work to just ourselves.”

  Max followed the woman through a maze of boxes and crates and climbed another metal staircase leading onto a third story loft. Max inhaled a sharp breath as the dancing light of swaying kerosene lanterns illuminated a long wall crowed with paintings not unlike that canvas delivered to his gallery. Such works were not composed simply of oils. There were sketchbook pages crowded with charcoal shading. Black pen strokes decorated squares of fabric. The shadows of pencil illustrations swayed in the light. Watercolor landscapes filled the wall with dimension. Whatever artist was responsible for such a gallery was a master of many mediums. Max found it nearly impossible to concentrate upon any single work mounted upon that wall, and his sight ached as he squinted to discern details in the dim lighting.

  “I see you’ve gone ahead and opened the door without asking Judy. I tried telling you nothing good would come from it. But it’s too late to turn him back now. He’s already seen too much of my opus wall.”

  The artist stood before a canvas bathed in the light of kerosene lanterns and candles with his back facing Max. The artist’s proportions seemed strange to Max. It seemed that the divine Maker, who assembled that mortal man’s clay, had disregarded the laws of perspective and symmetry when molding that artist. The artist’s legs looked far too thin, and far too long. The man’s wide shoulders hunched forward until it seemed that the artist would topple onto the ground with such terrible balance. Max peered beyond the artist’s shoulder at a pair of club hands working at the canvas. One hand clutched a brush, while the artist smeared dark pigment directly onto his work with several crooked fingers of the other hand. The hands were not the delicate tools the layman so often assumed the grand artists possessed. Those hands were swollen with the growth of ugly bulbs and knots. Max noticed that an extra finger crowded each them. All the fingertips were scabbed. All the nails were haggard, and Max wondered if the artist had scraped and clawed at his work, a strange technique to be employed in the creation of such delicate pieces assembled upon that wall.

  “I have to tell you that your painting sure attracted attention,” Max spoke during a break in the movement of the artist’s hands. “Our gallery attracted more people than it has for years. I’ve come out here with your share of the exhibition revenue.”

  The artist’s shoulders appeared to slump. “All that coin is cursed if my work attracted it. You’ve come all this way with more than just gold, Mr. Sievers. There’s something that you want.”

  Max had never seen a face as ugly as that of the artist, who turned to look upon his guest. The flesh was misshapen, as if the skin had been tossed onto the skull and never properly fit upon the underlying contours. The two sides of the face possessed little symmetry, sheering the eyes out of level, dropping an eye while raising the other, cutting deep furrows into the brow, etching a crooked line for the nose. As on the back of his hands, lumps and cysts swelled the skin, nearly pinching an eye closed. Max stammered at the sight of that face, and he failed to recover his composure until the artist grabbed a rough seed bag and pulled it over his features, two sagging holes revealing the artist’s eyes.

  “I’m afraid my kin have never been graced with good lucks, Mr. Sievers. Ours is a strange and tragic blood pumping through our hearts.”

  Judy unpinned several sketches from Clive Turner’s opus wall. “What paintings do you think you’ll want to take back to your gallery?”

  Max found it difficult to know. He considered any of those works an improvement compared to the template kits that had dominated the gallery for too long. None of Clive Turner’s works followed any outlines of paint-by-number instructions. There were no rainbow unicorns or seaside lighthouses. The canvasses on Clive Turner’s opus wall spilled with inspiration, and they reminded Max why he had so long ago been enchanted by paint and pencil.

  Max’s eyes scanned the wall and struggled to process the style and content. A young girl sat amid a field of blazing sunflowers, while the sky over her head darkened in a swarm of buzzing insects. A handsome, young couple shared a parasol’s shade upon a beach of sparkling sands; while in the background, the sea rose into the sky to form a wall of turquoise water that rushed towards the man and woman’s destruction. A watercolor creation focused upon a delicate, feminine hand that gripped a black and decayed rose. Thorns cut into the fingers, and the crimson blood spilled to collect into a stream that meandered into the bottom boundaries of the watercolor’s dimensions. In a large study done in oil, sunlight filtered through a green, forest canopy, in which Clive Turner masterfully captured the way sunbeams reflected off of hiding, predatory eyes otherwise disguised amid shadow. The templates never included the unpleasant in any of their outlines, but on that opus wall, Clive Turner refused to allow the beautiful to escape the ugly. There was much grace conveyed throughout that work, but there were as well plagues and fires, decay and ruin. At first glance, each painting gifted new life. But if Max stared too long at any frame, he sensed the inevitable fall into the grave. Max would judge no painting as lovely, and yet he could also not regard any painting as hideous, and such indecision thrilled the curator who for too long had been forced to regard the templates’ simple outlines.

  “I would find room in my gallery for all of them,” Max answered, “and I would see that the board properly compensates you for your work.”

  Clive Turner hesitated to respond. “Judy shouldn’t have tempted you by mailing that painting to you.”

  Judy shook her head. “But it’s not right, Clive. Not right that you toil through the hours in this warehouse on those pictures and never showing them to anybody. What’s the point of painting them if you’re not showing them to anyone?”

  “You know well enough why I don’t show them,” Clive snarled. “Belinda knows why I don’t show them.”

  Max came to Judy’s defense. “Please, Mr. Turner, at least consider letting me display those works in my gallery. Believe me, the world needs your paintings. There have only been the templates for too long. Those templates are lovely, but they’re too calculated. There’s no life in them. Your paintings might bring some breath back to the creative world.”

  Clive Turner rubbed paint from his long, bulbous fingers. “Can you promise me that nothing strange, nothing terrible, has happened sinc
e you received that painting Judy shipped to you?”

  Max hesitated. He felt Clive Turner’s eyes burn into him as the artist waited for the curator’s answer. Max thought of how the flames had devoured June Dixon. Yet Max also thought of all the reasons why he had devoted himself to his artistic study, of all the motivations that led him to become a gallery curator. It was too much of a leap to believe that a sinister connection existed that linked that painting to Mrs. Dixon’s suicide. Though he had draped a cloth over the canvas and hid the painting Judy had delivered to him in the gallery’s basement, Max believed more in inspiration than he did in superstition, and he could not accept that such creative power could hold a darker face.

  “There’s been nothing strange, but the amount of people interested in your work is extraordinary.”

  “And you wouldn’t say that’s terrible?”

  “Of course not, Mr. Turner.”

  Clive Turner turned to Judy. “We still have to hear what Belinda has to say. Not right of us to make this decision without her.”

  Judy’s uncovered, right eye twitched. Her shaking left hand rose to her eye patch, and a choking noise escaped her throat as Judy moved that cloth to the other eye. Another cataract-filled orb rested in the left socket. That left eye blinked, and a sneer replaced the kinder smile that had rested upon Judy’s face.

  “Damn all of it to hell,” the woman’s words hissed with contempt. “Judy’s foolishness has gone too far. That painting’s gotten too much attention, and they’ve sent this stick of an old man out to take more from us.”

  “Give a second to consider it, Belinda,” Clive Turner replied. “This warehouse is as crowded as Judy claims. We should think about the offer. We could use the revenue.”

  “You forget it’s cursed money,” Belinda spat towards Max’s shoes. “Don’t I always provide you with paint and brushes? Don’t I always find a way to get you all the canvases you need? And think about all those eyes staring at your pictures, Clive. The greedy little hands attached to all those eyes are going to want to touch all your swirls and shadows.”

  “I never meant to imply that you’ve ever let me go without my supplies,” sighed Clive Turner, “but maybe that man is right. Maybe it’s time for me to give them to the world. Maybe my work can give the world some new life.”

  Belinda’s body shook in disdainful, cackling laughter. “Oh, that’s the boneshaker talking in you. That’s your foul, family blood. Can’t resist any notion of breathing life into a dead thing. You know your power, Clive, and would you still be so arrogant as to decide whether or not the world was ready to gaze upon your work?”

  “I’m consulting with you, Belinda.”

  Belinda snorted. “As if it was any more my place than yours to decide. I think you’ve already decided, even though you have a good enough idea what will happen if you let that man leave this warehouse in possession of any of those pictures on your opus wall. You can’t deny the power pulsating in your blood, Clive Turner.”

  “He said nothing happened when he showed that painting.”

  Belinda’s eyes burned into Max. “He’s lying, Clive.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “Why would he be honest with you? Your work grips him as much as anyone else, Clive,” Belinda countered, “and if nothing’s happened yet, it’s just a matter of time.”

  Max hardly knew how to argue his stance. How did one convince both faces of a woman’s splintered personality? Was there anything he might say to summon the Judy personality back to his cause? Maybe if he bravely reached out to that eye patch and quickly moved it back upon the woman’s left eye.

  “I beg you, Mr. Turner,” Max started, “let me bring your works back to my gallery. The world’s stared at those kit templates for too long. All the art has lost its heart. It’s turned cold and vapid. It no longer has a soul.”

  Belinda’s exposed eye momentarily closed. “You know how your kind raises the dead, Clive. You know the power that swirls from your touch. Give the man your work if you must, but don’t fool yourself into forgetting the consequences.”

  The woman’s right hand trembled and positioned the eye patch once more over the left eye. The right eye blinked. The woman shuddered, and Judy’s smile returned to her face.

  “So it’s decided?” asked Judy’s softer voice.

  Clive Turner nodded. “We’ll let him show whatever he wants in his gallery. Mr. Sievers, just let Judy know what you want her to ship to you.”

  Max promised to compensate Mr. Turner very generously. He couldn’t wait to see the exhibition rooms fill with visitors, couldn’t wait to view the expressions of those who visited the gallery when they looked upon works as free and creative as Mr. Turner’s. For the first time in decades, Max’s heart felt thrilled. Clive Turner’s exhibit would shake the art world. Finally, the templates crowding the gift shop would be replaced with originality and inspiration. The time of paint-by-numbers approached its end. For the first time in so many years, Max Sievers looked forward to his tomorrows.

  Max pushed whatever qualms he might have first felt regarding Clive Turner’s work following Mrs. Dixon’s death to the back of his mind. Witnessing such an event had been traumatic, Max reminded himself. Though excusable, his fear of that first painting delivered to his gallery was foolish. He would bring that painting back from the basement, and he would remove its shroud before once again mounting that first work upon his gallery’s walls. Max would serve as curator to the gallery at the heart of the new artistic world.

  Yet his dreams that night upon returning from that district took such a sinister turn.

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