Fearful Symmetries

by Thomas F Monteleone

  …until we cannot recognize ourselves. The supreme irony is the subtle manner in which all the perversity has been engineered and presented to us. The corruption and the evil that has lurked behind the mask of humanitarianism and the lofty ideals of the political left have never been glimpsed by any of us. And who could ever suspect something so pernicious, so conceived in darkness.

  “Operation DumbDown.”

  That’s what the super-elite call the century-long program that is fast-taking us into a new dark age…where our graduates cannot point out continents on a globe, cannot read their own names, cannot make change from a dollar bill. The mysteries of the world await, ready to devour them like mindless plankton in the sea.

  Of all the evil in the world, this is the worst I can imagine. A plot so vile that it thinks to poison our future to protect the greed of its present.

  Unthinkable.

  …but isn’t that the point?

  The Baltimore Sun (AP) Police are baffled by the violent nature of the attack in the Roland Park home of Private Investigator Claudius Cheever. “It’s possible it was a gangland ‘hit’,” said a spokesperson from the Baltimore City Medical Examiner’s Office. Information was later disclosed confirming the death of Mr. Cheever by electrocution, but only after sustaining many hours of torture normally associated with very intense interrogation. “When you consider the victim’s business, there’s no way to tell what he may have been involved in,” said an officer who wished to remain nameless. “I have a feeling we’re being kept in the dark on this one…”

  The first time I saw the art of Alan Clark, I knew I was looking at the work of a very special imagination. I can’t remember at which convention I met Alan, but hey, it’s been more than ten years, I know that; and I liked him as much as his paintings immediately. His work is distinctive because of his use of color, his incredibly precise control of the brush, and most importantly, his personal, paranoid, and surreal view of the world. Elizabeth and I own many of his signed prints, and would have at least one of his originals (but his wife, Melanie, reminded him he’d already sold the one we “purchased” to someone else.)1

  Alan favorably impressed editors and publishers as well and has gone on to create a wonderful career for himself doing covers and interiors for hundreds of books and magazines. When he asked me if I would be interested in participating in a book project with him, I jumped at the chance. It was called Imagination, Fully Dilated, and it was an anthology project which paid homage to the grand old pulpzine tradition of editors handing out drawings and paintings2 to their stable of regular contributors to “come up with a story to go with this!” The book would contain color plates of Alan Clark paintings to accompany each story inspired by them. A great concept. I couldn’t wait to get started—especially since I had many “favorite” pieces for which by Alan I would love to do stories. All I had to do was pick one.

  Only Alan had us all do it with a Nineties verve—all the writers had to go to his website and select a painting from a huge display of maybe 40 or 50. In a classic bit of miscommunication, Alan and I had gotten the dates wrong for when the website would be up and running, and consequently when writers could begin picking the paintings. Upshot of the whole thing was I was very late, and every one of the Clark pieces that had intrigued me were gone.

  Not that the remaining pieces were bad, or anything close to that end of the esthetic spectrum; it was just that, I wasn’t as jazzed about any of them the way I’d been for some of the other stuff. You know the feeling—you drive ten miles to your favorite ice cream place to get the Pistachio or the Triple Fudge Chocolate Explosion…and they’re sold out of both of them.

  I can’t lie; I was disappointed. But I would make the best of it, and selected a painting, which I will try to reproduce here, but if that doesn’t work, I’ll give you the description as well. A brick or masonry wall of some sort that suggests a castle, a crypt, or a gothic construction of some sort. The wall has been breached, blown open, penetrated—there is a ragged hole in the stone work, and peering through the hole is an eye. A big, red eye, surrounded by scales, which suggested something reptilian, saurian, and of course malevolent. It is an effective painting which stirred up images from my childhood when I spent hours every Saturday cringing in my movie seat as Double Features of giant, radiation-mutated monsters capered and gibbered across the black and white screen. I was certain I’d be able to come up with a cool story to go with it.

  But I didn’t.

  Try as I might, false start after false start, the story just wasn’t happening. I’d tossed several concepts on the scrap heap and was running hard against the deadline. I was starting to worry and the assignment was becoming a monkey on my back3, and I was wondering if the Old Master was losing his touch. I guess it was bothering me more than I realized because one night, I suddenly woke up from a deep sleep, and the first thought in mind was the painting and the story I needed to write. The second thought was I had a solution to the whole thing, that the story had worked itself out, down in the engine room of our minds they call the Subconscious. Easing out of bed to not wake up Elizabeth, I went to the kitchen, found a pencil and wrote a few lines on an envelope waiting for me on the counter-top.

  The next morning, I had trouble reading my handwriting (what else is new?), but I decrypted enough of it to see where the story could go. As it turned out, I kind of cheated on the assignment, but the story was one of those that told itself as it went along, and I had no idea, how everything would fit together until I reached the last line.

  1 The painting was called “Towing Jehovah”

  2 by such artists as Virgil Finlay, Hannes Bok, Frank R. Paul, Fredrick Blakeslee and Margaret Brundage.

  3 Actually, it was more like a giant, blue-assed, mandrill.

  The more minimal the art, the more maximum is the explanation.

  —Hilton Kramer

  “What is it?” said Theresa.

  She stood cautiously next to the trap-door stairs leading down from the attic. She was always the cautious one.

  “Just an old painting,” said her sister, Frannie, as she pulled an unframed canvas from beneath a dropcloth of oddments. “My God, there’s a lot of junk in here.”

  “Be careful back there,” said Theresa, pushing a strand of blonde hair from her cheek. It was hot up here, especially for early Fall, she thought. It was like all the heat of the summer had been kept prisoner up in the attic—just like all the junk Frannie had insisted on checking out.

  “It’s just a lot of old stuff, Tess. Come on, there might be something worth some real money up here.” Frannie chuckled to herself and kept sorting through the stuff. “Don’t you remember that guy in Massachusetts? He found an original draft of the Declaration of Independence—in his attic! Probably an attic just like this one.”

  Theresa nodded but said nothing. She watched as her sister continued to explore the contents of the room. Sunlight beamed in through a semi-circular window up near the roof’s peak, sculpting Frannie in soft, amber light, accented by swirling storms of fool’s gold motes of dust. Frannie’s dark brown hair shimmered in the warm window-glow, and for an instant, Theresa thought the entire scene looked too perfect—like one of those sappy photo-greeting cards you can get at the mall stores.

  But the tableau did fill her with a wonderful sense of security and love. All because of Frannie. She was the strong one, the smart one. Frannie could always be relied upon to make things okay. After all, wasn’t it Frannie who’d decided they should use the money they’d inherited from Aunt Vanessa to buy this fabulous old house? And then invest the rest?

  And they’d done just that; and just the interest was providing them with a good monthly income, plus enough left over to help with the start-up costs for their bakery business. Smart. That was Frannie, all right.

  Theresa drew a long, calming breath, then exhaled even more slowly. There was a kind of luxuriant, almost sensual feeling whenever she did that. It was one of those things she did
whenever she felt herself getting too…concerned. That was her own word for excited.

  “Oh, wow…this is weird!” said Frannie, her words cutting through Theresa’s thoughts like a cold blade.

  “What?” Panic stirred in her. “What is it?”

  Pulling the canvas out from between two small end tables, Frannie held it up in the afternoon light. “Look!”

  And Theresa did indeed look—at one of the strangest paintings she’d ever seen.

  “See what I mean? Is that ever weird or what?”

  Taking a step closer, away from the comfort of the steps leading back down to the regular, normal part of the house, Theresa tilted her head as she felt herself being drawn into the center of the picture. It was like staring into the ever-deepening center of a whirlpool, a dark maelstrom of color and light.

  At first, the image refused to resolve itself, then finally assumed its true form—the eye of some creature peering through a cracked and ruptured membrane.

  “Oh God, Fran, that’s awful! What is it?”

  “I don’t know…” her sister’s voice was hardly a whisper. “It’s really strange, isn’t it?”

  “What’s it supposed to be?” said Theresa. “It looks like a monster.”

  “Yeah, doesn’t it?” Frannie stared at the painting for a long time before speaking again. Time seemed to go on hold up in the attic, and Theresa felt everything slowing down, as if she were losing her sometimes tenuous hold on the way things should be.

  “But, you know what…? I kind of like it, Tess. You see how it almost makes you want to look at it? That’s pretty neat.”

  “I don’t like,” said Theresa, grasping onto the sound of her sister’s voice like an anchor, using their conversation to pull herself back to the real world.

  “You don’t have to like it,” said Frannie, pulling the canvas all the way free of the other stuff which held it edgewise in the pile of unused stuff. “I’ll hang it in my bedroom.”

  “All right, Frannie…” said Theresa, backing away from the now fully exposed painting. She didn’t really want to look at it, but she could feel it—almost a compulsion to steal one last look into the depths of that strange and terrible eye. And she hated herself for agreeing with her sister so much! She didn’t really like the idea of that picture being in her bedroom, for more than one reason, but she went on and acquiesced, as usual.

  “Okay, let’s go,” said Frannie, obviously unaware of the tension within her sister. “I want to go clean this up and find a nice frame for it.”

  Obediently, Theresa eased herself down the narrow staircase.

  Later on that evening, after dinner, wherein they’d followed the usual ritual of Frannie cooking one of her gourmet specials, and Theresa washing up the mess, the two of them drifted off to their own parts of the house. It was part of the unspoken, unplanned evolution of their relationship that neither ever questioned. Although, sometimes Theresa took pause enough to step back and actually look at what they were doing and how they were measuring out their lives to the metronome of routine.

  They’d been together almost always, even though they were almost two years apart. Theresa’s earliest memories were of playing with Frannie, who had always assumed the role of her protector and mentor, and who’d always liked doing it. Theresa had no memory of their parents, who’d been killed by a carjacker’s bullets in Boston when the sisters were only two and four years old. For all practical purposes, their Aunt Vanessa had been their mother; a situation that worked out well for everyone. Aunt Vanessa’s wealthy banker husband had been unable to father children, and so they’d readily adopted the two little girls. Auntie Van had provided them with culture and education, but she and Uncle Edwin had been short on affection and compassion. Their spacious townhome in Cambridge operated with all the rigidity and punctiliousness of Edwin’s State Street bank.

  But Tess and Frannie had learned to compensate by taking care of each other’s emotional needs. Other than the hours in separate grades of schools, they were inseparable, always at the other’s side for the love and support otherwise missing from their lives. They flourished in the proper Bostonian atmosphere of learning and etiquette, and grew up to be educated, attractive young women.

  As they eased out of their early twenties, so too did Aunt Vanessa slip out of their lives with a quiet illness that took her with grace and dignity. Nothing like the heart attack which had hammered Uncle Edwin to the pavement in Harvard Square while they were both in college. It had been a shock, but the effects were nowhere near as profound as that of their Aunt’s serene, bedside passing.

  In the months that followed, both Theresa and Frannie discovered they couldn’t continue to live in the staid and stately townhouse, with its baronial clutter and old-world insensibility. Too many memories, Frannie had said. Too many ghosts.

  And she’d been right, Theresa knew that now. For almost a year after their Aunt had died, they found themselves both walking about the old house like strangers. As if they’d never belonged there, and most certainly no longer did. The atmosphere of the place and their situation had served to seal them off from the rest of the world. Neither of them had men in their lives, and since neither worked in the city, neither had a circle of fellow employees from which to cull any friends.

  But they did continue to have each other.

  The thought had given Theresa great comfort, and if pressed, she would gladly admit that Frannie was all the companionship she would ever need.

  And so on the evening after she’d found the painting, they tried to continue on as usual. Frannie had gone off to the study, where she worked at her computer, doing whatever she did to keep the business side of their little bakery on Main Street reconciled. Every evening, the same thing. Do the accounting, the purchasing, the bill paying, then a few hours reading one of her history books before bed. During those hours, Theresa felt a bit aimless, like a sailing ship in the doldrums, but she’d learned to fill the solitary hours with cable-TV and the occasional video. Not that she preferred it, but it was a passive activity requiring little of her, and seemed to fit the parameters of her personality well enough.

  This night was no different than all the rest. At least, that’s what she imagined as she sat in the den, only half-listening to the news from the Manchester channel. Someone had been murdered in Nashua. The weather was going to be warmer tomorrow, a typical New Hampshire early Autumn. Indian Summer, the granite-staters called it. Theresa remoted off the TV, and went upstairs to her room. Frannie was still downstairs, which was part of the routine. She wouldn’t be up for another half-hour or so. Passing the open door to her sister’s bedroom, Theresa paused to peer inside.

  She couldn’t help it; she’d noticed that awful picture.

  Incredibly, Frannie had already found a frame and the time to hang the painting. Over her dresser. And even from the distance, standing out in the hall, if you looked into the room, you could not avoid staring into the center of that malevolent red eye. And you could not avoid the eye looking back at you.

  As Theresa stood there, transfixed, she knew that last notion wasn’t quite right. The eye wasn’t really looking back at you. More like looking into you…

  With conscious effort, she turned away from the threshold, continued down the hall to her own room. Shedding her cotton blouse and long skirt, she moved to the mirror to look at herself. Having always avoided the sun, her complexion remained clear and pale, complimenting her blue eyes and cornsilk hair. She looked every bit the New England girl, that’s what Frannie always said, and she liked being thought like that. But the warm and pleasant thought would not stay with her. Replaced instead by the recurring image of the painting, the eye that seemed to look at you with a lasciviousness, a leering penetration.

  She could not stop thinking about it. And the sensation of disequilibrium, of disorientation when she’d first seen it, returned. No. I won’t let it happen, she told herself, and forced herself to take a step towards her dressing table, to push th
e feelings away.

  She pulled on a long T-shirt depicting the gardens at Saint-Gauden, stepped out of her panties, and climbed into bed.

  Lying on her back, under the soft glow of a small night-table lamp, Theresa waited for her sister to come to bed.

  The next day unfolded like a late summer flower, everything Theresa expected. She and Frannie had an early breakfast before going into Warner to open the bakery. After the lunchtime crowd of dessert and coffee seekers had dissipated, Frannie looked up from the cash register, and spoke to her.

  “I need to know more about it.”

  And Theresa knew exactly to what the “it” referred.

  “I don’t like it,” she told Frannie.

  “I know, I know. You’ve told me a thousand times.”

  “It’s ugly. It bothers me…I think there’s something wrong with it.” Theresa told her about standing outside the bedroom and feeling like that painting was watching her. And she admitted not being able to stop thinking about the image, the eye.

  “I know what you mean,” said Frannie. “I’ve felt it too.”

  “You have?!”

  “Sure,” said Frannie with a casual shrug. “Why else would I want to know more about it?”

  Theresa stared at her sister for a moment, deeply surprised by her lack of anxiety or fear. But she understood Frannie’s growing compulsion with the painting. She felt it herself, but was expressing it differently, as usual. Frannie—always forthright, direct, facing every challenge life tossed her way. Theresa had always been the retiring type; shy and reactive, some would even say passive; unable to assume control of who she was or what she should do.

  And every time she’d passed by the open door to her sister’s room, she couldn’t resist pausing to peer inside, to gaze upon the painting. There was something about the colors, the pigments that seemed to almost glow, as if powered by some unknown source of power.