He hurried to one of his work tables, placed the gun on it, and flung open a wide drawer. Inside were his hammers and chisels. Quickly, before he could change his mind, he snatched up one of each and turned back to the granite.
It stood there, a great monolith of pale stone. Waiting for him.
He took a step forward, then stopped, and turned back to the work table. Among the tools and jars, he spotted a half-full pint of bourbon that he had left there recently. He put his tools down, picked up the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took several long, sloppy gulps, nearly emptying it before placing it back onto the table.
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and approached the block of stone, putting both tools in his left hand. When he reached out this time, he did not pull back. Instead, he softly placed his right palm against the rock. Immediately, he felt a surge of warm energy rush from the stone into his hand and throughout the rest of his body, a tingling that traveled through his arms, down his torso, and into his genitals. As his penis swelled, his mind was hit by a raging storm of ideas and emotions that swirled and coalesced, then moved with an inaudible hum downward through his arms and into his hands, where it burned for release. Something else in him swelled, as well, something at his very center. The part of him that was truly Alex experienced something familiar, something that happened often when he was working and being creative: the growing awareness of something bigger than himself that was coming from himself.
His hand slowly caressed the granite, as if the rough, hard surface were the velvety skin of a forbidden lover. He closed his eyes and felt the stone throughout his entire body, with all of his nerves.
The room began to spin, slowly at first, then faster. When he opened his eyes, it was still spinning. Everything in the room — the row of windows, the overhead lights, the tables — melted together into a swirling, kaleidoscopic blur around him. Only his hand and the stone remained stationary before him.
Run! Now! Before it’s too late!
He switched the hammer to his right hand, placed the tip of the chisel against the granite, and did not move for a while. Then he brought the hammer down and a jagged chunk dropped to the floor with a thud. He struck again and another piece of stone fell away.
Soon, he was hammering at a feverish pace, only vaguely aware of his blurry surroundings as they spun around him, as if in a trance, locked away in some deep part of his mind with nothing more than a narrow tunnel of vision focused on the stone and chisel. As the tunnel gradually narrowed and everything darkened, it occurred to him that it was just like the old days, back when he worked tirelessly, creating intensely. But that was not true. It was not like the old days. It was better. It had never been so easy.
****
Alex woke on the floor in his underwear, shivering in the cold, gray, morning light shining through the one window with raised blinds. He lay amid powdery dust and chunks of chipped stone, head pounding, feeling like he had a knife buried to the hilt in his neck.
He groaned as he lifted himself groggily off the floor onto his hands and knees. He turned his head and squinted at the digital clock on one of the tables. It was 1:11 in the afternoon. That meant he had been lying on the studio floor for — he did not know when he had fallen asleep, only that it had been dark. He could not remember falling asleep or what he was doing at the time. Or anything else, for that matter.
He groaned and muttered curses as he struggled to his feet, punished by his aching muscles for every movement. As he pushed himself to his feet, a sharp, stabbing in his right hand almost made him fall to the floor again. Once standing, he examined his hand and found that the end of his thumb was purple and swollen and had blood caked around the nail. In the meaty pad of his thumb there was a small, red pinprick.
Alex tried to remember injuring his thumb, but as before, he could remember nothing about what he had been doing before going to sleep. Looking down at his thumb, he saw the rubble of sculpting all around his feet. Tossed beyond it was his robe in a pile on the floor.
Then he remembered.
He turned around and faced the granite, looked at what he had done, and staggered backward, muttering, “Jesus Christ.” He stepped back further, gawking at his work with a slack jaw and wide eyes.
I couldn’t have done this. Not this much detail. Not with just a hammer and chisel. Not in one night.
“Impossible,” he whispered.
But there was no other explanation. He looked around on the floor and spotted the hammer and chisel lying among ash-colored dust and chunks of stone. He found his flip-flops nearby and slipped his feet into them, then turned to the granite again.
Although he had no memory of it, Alex somehow had carved the lower portion of the slab. Two thick, powerful legs had been chiseled out of the granite from just below the waist to the ankles. He had finished neither the body from the waist up nor the feet, nor the gap between the legs. Hanging on each side of the legs was the lower half of a muscular arm. But the limbs were not those of a human being.
The arms and legs were covered with tiny scales that appeared to come to sharp points. Each scale had been carefully chiseled out of the stone. The scales gave way to a smoother texture around the wrist and on the hands — if they could be called hands. They more closely resembled claws, with seven long, slender fingers from which curved deadly talons.
Alex spotted a crimson smear on one of the pale talons and leaned close to inspect it. That’s what I cut myself on last night, he thought, looking down at his injured thumb.
He crouched to look at the legs. They were like tree trunks, with smaller scales than the arms. They stopped at the ankles and ended in the base of the block of granite.
Standing unsteadily, he rubbed the back of his aching neck and surveyed his work. While he was glad that the muse had returned to him last night, something about it did not sit right with him. He still did not know where the granite had come from.
As he turned, he spotted the pint of bourbon on the table. Aha, he thought as he headed for the shower. That stuff really kicked my ass last night.
****
After a long, hot shower, some coffee, a hard-boiled egg, and half of an English muffin, Alex returned to the studio feeling refreshed by the cleansing and invigorated by last night’s accomplishment. He turned on some Prokofiev and settled into his work environment, looking forward to experiencing the same fervor that obviously had driven him last night.
But when he picked up his hammer and chisel, they felt foreign in his hands, useless objects with which he had no connection. He placed the chisel against the stone and poised his hammer to fall, but he felt nothing. The urge to strike with the hammer, penetrate the stone, and cut and shape it into something it was not before, was simply not there. It felt like trying to eat when he was not hungry. The need was absent, and it was not, he had found, something that he could summon on command. Not anymore.
His hands fell to his sides, loosely clutching the useless tools. Head slumped forward, he looked down at his work from the previous night and yearned to do more. But he knew it was not going to happen now.
He left the studio, put on his coat, and went walking. He strolled along the canal, through the park, bought a bag of bread crusts to feed the ducks. As he left the park a short time later, he glanced across the street at the old hotel that housed the Black Diamond, his favorite little bar, where Marcus poured the drinks and now a woman made pleasant music on the piano. Passing the hotel as he proceeded down the street, he found himself in the crosswalk at the end of the block, and then he walked back the other way on the opposite side of the street.
He decided he would try to work again that night. When it was dark. Maybe that would help. And maybe a few drinks would help, too. They certainly had not slowed him down last night. He still couldn’t believe what he had accomplished in one night.
He passed the entrance to the Sherman Hotel and we
nt directly through the door to the Black Diamond and headed for the bar.
“Alex,” Marcus nodded as he approached. “The usual?”
“The usual.” He perched himself on a stool, took a handful of beer nuts from the bowl on the bar. “No music?”
“She comes in around five. Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Marcus poured. “You don’t mind my saying, you look like hell.”
“Oh, yeah. That.”
“Hung over from last night?”
“Partly that, partly exhaustion. I was up until…well, all night long, I guess. Working.”
“Hey, congrats, man, you’re getting some work done.”
“More than that. The work is…I don’t know, I woke up in the studio and—”
“You slept in your studio?”
“Well, I don’t know if I curled up on the floor or just passed out, but that’s where I woke up. And when I saw what I’d done…how much I’d done…in just one night…”
“What was it?”
Frowning down at the glass of amber, he shrugged. “I…I’m not sure. It’s not done yet.” He took a swallow of his drink.
Marcus stared at him for a moment, then asked, “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Why’d you ask again?”
“Because you look kind of, I don’t know…lost. Like some abandoned kid, or something, I don’t know.”
Alex nodded slowly. “Funny you should say that. That’s exactly how I feel when I can’t work.”
****
He stopped at a few bars on the walk home, the same bars he had visited the previous night before returning to his studio and becoming an artist again. Maybe he could recapture it, whatever it was, and make some progress on that…thing.
Throughout his walk, while talking to Marcus, and drinking in bars, his mind kept returning to what he had created, to those sharp scales and enormous, seven-fingered hands with their menacing talons. It had not been derived from any of the images that had been occupying his mind as possible projects. It did not look like anything that had emerged from his imagination. People who knew his work probably would guess that it was not his at all.
And yet, he had sculpted it.
Alex walked home slowly because a part of him did not want to see the unfinished sculpture again.
It’s not too late! Don’t go back! Go to a hotel, somewhere, anywhere. But don’t go back home.
And yet, his hands were twitching to get back to work.
****
The blinds on the window at the far end of the row were still up and the rectangle in the studio wall framed a segment of the night. The studio was silent until Alex, who lay on his side with his body curled in a childlike posture around the base of the granite, awoke with a scream and scrambled to his feet. He stumbled around for a moment before he realized where he was. He went to the window and stared out at the darkness, thinking, at first, that it was still night. But a narrow strip of murky light began to glow in the eastern sky. Dawn was coming. He turned around and looked at his work, walked slowly toward it, and stopped a few feet in front of it, head tilted back. What he saw twisted something inside his gut.
The creature had been fully revealed and towered over Alex. His ladder leaned against one side of it. He had no memory of moving the ladder or climbing it, but obviously he had because there it was, and obviously he had been busy because there the creature stood, not quite complete yet — for one thing, its feet remained trapped inside the uncarved base of the stone — but exposed.
Two thick horns, like the horns of a great ram, curled from the sides of its head, and a short, squat horn sprouted from each of its broad, muscular shoulders. The creature seemed to be pulling its shoulders back, elbows bent at its sides, enormous, claw-like hands open as if ready to reach out. Its head was tilted downward so that the eyes, which seemed to be smiling, looked directly at Alex. Its nose was flat and stubby, with exposed nostrils above its most terrifying feature — an impossibly wide, lipless mouth open just enough to reveal the many jagged, protuberant fangs inside, and curled enough to form a subtle, cold smirk.
It was the best work he had ever done, and might very well turn out to be the finest work of his lifetime. But he had no memory of doing it, only aching muscles in his arms, back, and legs. The thing chilled his blood.
Alex turned and headed for the door to get something to drink and perhaps wash his face to clear his head, when he heard a sound that made him stop and listen.
Grinding. The gritty sound of stones grinding together.
He turned and made a whimpering sound when he saw that the statue’s head had turned toward him. It was still watching him. A deep moan worked its way out of him.
The creature cocked its head as it stared at him and the movement left shimmering trails, lingering images of the head that blurred together as it moved. It reminded Alex of the time he had tried acid in college, but there was no comfort in that because he knew he was not on acid now, just as he knew that he had created that thing with his own hands.
The grinding sound continued as the creature moved its jaw back and forth, trying it out, experimenting, as the large, reptilian eyes blinked, as the scoop-like hands flexed their long fingers. Then it turned to him again and began moving its mouth as if speaking, the lipless rims touching briefly, the black tongue making quick movements of articulation.
Alex made a hoarse sound of protest because he did not want to see what he was seeing, and he certainly did not want the thing to speak.
He heard nothing. But he felt things. He had thoughts that were not his own and felt the need to get Sophie. It was, quite suddenly, the most important thing in the world to him, finding Sophie, holding her to him.
The statue was forgotten instantly as he turned and hurried out of the studio and down the hall, calling the cat’s name and making kissing sounds with his lips. He ducked into the bathroom, but the cat was not there. Nor was she in the kitchen, where her food and water bowls were kept. He found her curled up on his bed asleep.
“There you are, Sophie,” he said as he scooped her up in his arms and held her close. She lifted her head and blinked her sleepy eyes as he carried her back down the hall. He felt immensely relieved to have found her as he carried her into the studio, stroking her as he spoke quiet nonsense until she was plucked away from him so quickly that she did not have a chance to make a sound.
Alex cried out in shock and lifted his head to see the creature bite down on the Siamese cat. He felt warm blood spatter his face.
He turned away, sickened, and as he began to walk in a frantic, confused circle in the studio, he found he could not stop screaming.
****
The following day, Alex found himself walking briskly and with purpose along the canal, the diamond patterns in the chain-link fence along the waterway flying by him in a blur. It was a gray, chilly day and it felt like rain. There was someplace he needed to be. He had no idea where, only that it was important that he get there. As he walked, he took his phone from his pocket and checked the time. Eight minutes before three.
He suddenly cut to the right, leaving the sidewalk to cross Canal Street, then he started down Chester Street, which joined Canal at a T intersection. On the first block, he passed a convenience store, a strip mall, and an apartment complex, and on the next he passed a few small homes with front lawns and driveways. The moment he saw the school up ahead, he knew it was his destination.
The Chester Street School was a red brick building with a narrow strip of lawn along the sidewalk in front and an American flag on a pole at the entrance to the path that led to front steps. As he approached, he saw no children in front of the school and knew he would have to wait a few minutes, and with that knowledge came the startling shock of realization: It had sent him to get a child.
Yesterday, it had made
him scour the neighborhood for cats and small dogs. The creature had enjoyed Sophie and wanted more of the same. But after a day of those treats, it wanted something bigger. Something better.
Ever since it had awakened, it had been telling Alex to finish it. The words were not spoken aloud. The creature’s abominable mouth moved in that blurry, acid-trip way and the words formed inside Alex’s head in his own voice.
“Finish me, Alex. Finish me now.”
There was plenty of detail work left to do, enough to keep him busy on the creature between feedings. Enough to keep it silent. But the feet remained unfinished, still locked in the solid, flat base of granite block. When it told him to finish, Alex knew it was referring to its feet. It wanted to walk. To be free.
What have I done? Alex thought as he stood staring at the school across the street. What have I created?
There was a fenced-in playground beside the school, empty now, the monkey bars and jungle gym and sliding board standing like the skeletal remains of exotic creatures in the gray light.
He checked his phone again. The school bell would ring in four minutes. A moment later, the double doors in front would open and swarms of children would spill down the steps and over the front path.
Alex stepped off the sidewalk to cross the street, thinking, I can’t do this, I can’t, there’s no way. But he moved forward, unable to stop himself. No, afraid to stop himself. If he tried to walk away, would the creature know? Did it have some kind of connection with him even five blocks away? And, if so, what would it do if he tried to resist? He was afraid to find out.
On the sidewalk, he strolled along the fence in front of the school trying to appear no different than any other pedestrian. But inside he felt increasingly sick now that he understood why he was there.
Was this now his life? Fetching food for that thing? Keeping busy with touch-ups to avoid giving it feet so it couldn’t walk free? Acting on its every whim?
The Long Way Home Page 27