Draw the Dark

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “What is it, what’s the matter?” Stephanie was shouting. She actually took a step back. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Her frantic thoughts bulleted out: Call security better call security hell if I’ll take the blame . . .

  “My... head ...” I gritted my teeth, doubling over with the pain. My vision sheeted red and then white, like a lightning bolt had jagged across my eyes. All of a sudden, something hot and wet spurted over my lips, and I backhanded bright red blood as more gushed from my nose. The pain was so intense, I thought my eyes were bleeding. “It . . . hurts....”

  “Let’s get you out of here,” said Stephanie and plucked at my arm. “Come on, you need to go sit down.”

  “N-no,” I said. Another burst of pain in my head, blistering and fiery as napalm

  oh I’ve lost myself hurts my eyes . . .

  and all of a sudden, I thought: This is what it’s like to die . . .

  Another jumble of images flickered: a train, white gauze, a lace parasol....

  “Oh God, it’s Lucy.” I took one lurching step for the door, swayed, and grappled for a handhold. I hung onto the wall, my bloody hands smearing rust over cream paint. Not me, it’s her, it’s . . . “Quick, you have to get help! Something’s happening . . . something’s happening to Lucy.”

  But Stephanie was already moving fast.

  lock him in he’s nuts he’s crazy

  trying to get out and lock me in.

  “N-n-no.” I grabbed for her, but she shied away. A sickly gray fog was steaming over my vision, and the fluorescents had dimmed, and the objects in the room, Stephanie’s face, they were becoming fuzzy and indistinct, grainy the way the world seems to dissolve at twilight.

  Then I saw something new: the potato-shape of a head, but not with pellet black eyes this time. This time, the eyes were wide and startled, the face twisted in a grimace, the slash of mouth bleeding black because the hand holding the charcoal was failing, falling, the world spinning away....

  That got me moving.

  “No! Stop! You don’t understand!” I stumbled for the door, grabbed the edge before Stephanie could slam it in my face and yanked. Stephanie fell back with a sharp cry; the door bammed against the wall hard enough that the painting of the woman in silk crashed to the floor.

  “Get out of the way, get out of my way!” Then I was pushing past, into the hall, still shouting, roaring: “Call Dr. Rainier, call the doctor, it’s Lucy, it’s Lucy!”

  I took off for the exit at a dead run.

  no, don’t, help me, help me, help me, don’t leave, don’t

  XV

  At the commotion, a few of the nurses had come into the hall, but they moved aside fast, breaking up like startled ducks as I tore out of Mr. Witek’s room. I must’ve looked like a maniac: blood slicking my chin, staining my shirt, my hands rustcolored, my eyes

  all that blood must have killed Stephanie got to get out of here

  wild, but then I was blasting past, screaming something about Lucy again and calling Dr. Rainier, and I saw one nurse grab a handset and start punching numbers into her phone

  security

  and then I hit the exit doors at a dead run, banging through. A second later, an alarm shrieked from the intercom, spiking my ears and then words, but not the ones I’d expected: Code blue, Lakeview Common Room; code blue, Lakeview . . .

  Oh God, I was too late! I galloped down the breezeway, swiped the key card, and banged into Lakeview in seconds. Images slammed against my mind, breaking like waves. The halls were crowded with old people, all talking and thinking excitedly, and I bullied my way past, squirting through, people moving aside once they got a good look at me. There was another crowd outside the common room—the one where they held the art class—and now I could hear a gabble of voices.

  “Excuse me.... I have to get through,” I gasped, shoving my way to the front. “I have to get through, let me through, let me ... !”

  I stopped, dead.

  Lucy’s friend, the woman with the orange hair, was huddled to one side, an aide hugging her as she wept. There were upended easels and paper and brushes on the floor, multicolored footprints from where people had stepped in spilled paint as they scattered.

  Lucy’s easel had overturned when she toppled out of her wheelchair, but I could see the charcoal portrait—that lump of a head—very clearly, and it was exactly as I’d seen it in my mind. There were backs huddled around, but I could see Lucy, spreadeagled, her dress speckled with tiny blue flowers bunched up around her hips, her thighs fish-belly white. Lucy’s eyes were jammed wide, her mouth open, a look of surprise and agony on her twisted, withered features—and that’s when I realized: she’d drawn the moment of her death.

  No. No. She’d drawn herself to death.

  Oh God. It felt like my brain was leaking out of my ears. Oh God, it’s like Miss Stefancyzk . . . it’s like what I did to Aunt Jean....

  Dr. Rainier was doing CPR: “Get me a tube, get me an ET tube right now, and I want some access . . .” Then she saw me. “Christian? Christian, what—?”

  But I couldn’t stay there a minute longer, not one more second. Instead, I turned and ran.

  XVI

  No one tried to stop me. I slammed out of the home, jumped on my bike, and took off as fast as I could pedal. It was near dark, the light going fast, and the sky a brilliant wash of orange and peach to the west but cobalt blue directly overhead. Maybe three minutes out from the home, an ambulance screamed in the opposite direction, light bar and headlights flashing.

  For one brief second, as the headlights tacked me against the graying twilight, I thought: Hit me. Please hit me, just hit me, hit me, and this will all be over.... Maybe I thought about swerving into the ambulance’s path, maybe not. It’s such a jumble now, I don’t know. Of course, the ambulance didn’t hit me but blew past in a blast of exhaust and a swirl of grit.

  I kept on. I guess you’d say I was losing it. I was beyond freaked out. My thoughts tumbled. The wrong person had died. What good had I ever done anyone? First, my dad and then my mom and then Aunt Jean and . . . Everything I touched turned bad. I thought about not going home. I wasn’t sure where I could run or what I might do for money or anything. Maybe go north to Canada, sneak across the border, live off the land or get a job in some tiny, little town and hunker down and never touch another piece of chalk or charcoal or pencil or brush....

  Brushes. The brushes. They were still in my pocket. Why had I taken them? Because they’d been on Mr. Witek’s nightstand like some kind of sign? Great, that was something a crazy person did. And touching them, taking them had touched off something, started a ball rolling, and now it was picking up speed, and it was all, all my fault....

  My face was wet with a mix of blood and my tears, my mouth full of the taste of salt and rust. My heart felt like it was going to burst wide open, and I was crying and pedaling and weaving all over the stupid road. My headlight gave out two miles from home, and even though I kept hoping for it, no one hit me either.

  I don’t know when I realized that the muttering in my head was gone. Had it faded even before? Maybe my brain had automatically kicked in some kind of override switch, like in a movie when the engines are going critical and the whole ship’s gonna blow if the override doesn’t get its act together. I don’t know.

  I half-expected Uncle Hank’s truck to be in the driveway, but it wasn’t. Probably no one had told him what his crazy nephew had done now—not yet anyway. But I knew that he’d be home soon, and by then, I had to think about what I was going to do because Krauss would kick me out for sure, and then the court would ...

  I just couldn’t think about it anymore. I dumped my bike, banged in through the kitchen, and pounded upstairs. The blood on my face was tacky, my shirt stiff with it. I peeled out of my clothes and underwear, and then I cranked on the shower and ducked under the water while it was still icy. Stupid, maybe, but I remembered reading about some old monk or saint or something and how he’d stand in an ic
e-cold pool for hours to get rid of all the bad feelings he had pent up inside. For him, I think it was sex. For me, it was . . . I don’t know. Murder? Knowing that I’d touched death? Knowing I’d killed someone again?

  The shock of the water stole my breath, and I grunted, my mouth tightening into a grimace as I turned my face into water that was so cold the spray felt like needles. Good, good, pain was good because I was bad, I was no good, I deserved whatever I got....

  The blood on my face swirled, pale red, down the drain. By then, I was panting, my heart booming in my chest, my skin getting numb. I started to shake and couldn’t stop, just the way they say when you go into shock. My teeth clacked together, and I bit my tongue, tasted fresh brackish blood—and I wasn’t dead; I was still alive and I thought: Okay, you want to die? You do it like Miss Stefancyzk, or you ride your bike off a bridge, or you find a car and wrap it around a tree; you do it with a gun or a rope or fire or. . .

  And then I was weeping again, all of a sudden, and so wobbly my knees buckled and I curled up on the stall floor, letting the icy water rain on my back. I was so cold; I was in agony. I kept waiting for my heart to seize up, but it didn’t—and then I remembered that Uncle Hank would be here soon, and if I wanted to die, it would have to be somewhere else because I couldn’t bear the thought of him finding me. There’d be no way he wouldn’t blame himself, and that was wrong; that was evil.

  Swaying up on my knees, I reached up, groped, turned the water to hot—felt it turn from icy to tepid to steaming to boiling. It took a while for the steely cold in my gut to loosen, and then my skin got so hot, it felt like it was going to peel off, so I dialed the temperature to something I could stand. Gritting my teeth, I soaped up; I lathered every inch, and still I didn’t feel clean. At the end, I started crying again, sagging against the tile as water pounded my neck and shoulders. But I wouldn’t let myself fall.

  I didn’t hear Uncle Hank over the rush of water until he pounded on the bathroom door. “Christian! Christian, you all right?”

  I thought about pretending that I couldn’t hear but considering that Uncle Hank had broken down locked doors to get at people, I figured that would only delay the inevitable.

  “I’m okay.” I twisted off the water. “I’ll be out in a couple minutes.”

  Silence on the other side of the door. Then: “Dr. Rainier called just as soon as she could. She’s on her way over. She was pretty worried about you.” A pause. “Me, too.”

  “I’m okay. She doesn’t need to come.”

  Uncle Hank chose not to get into it. “I’ll be waiting downstairs. There’s a fresh change of clothes just outside the door.”

  I was so stunned, I forgot to thank him, and by the time I remembered, he was already gone.

  They were waiting for me in the kitchen, mugs of fresh coffee steaming on the table. Uncle Hank looked tired and sad and worried. Dr. Rainier just looked concerned, and they both kept throwing looks at each other in that way adults have when they’re trying to figure out the best way to talk to the crazy kid. They waited while I poured coffee, sloshed in milk, and dumped in a couple tablespoons of sugar before Dr. Rainier said, “It wasn’t your fault.”

  I concentrated on stirring. I didn’t turn around. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try us,” said Uncle Hank. “Help me understand why you ran out of there. You scared Dr. Rainier half to death. She said there was blood all over your face.”

  I turned around then. “I had a nosebleed.” I sipped my coffee. It was too hot, and I burned the roof of my mouth.

  “Stephanie said you were acting”—Dr. Rainier chose her words carefully—“very erratically.”

  I actually gave a bleak laugh. “I’ll bet those weren’t the words she used.”

  Uncle Hank said, not too heatedly, “Watch that.”

  “It’s okay.” Dr. Rainier actually smiled. “She said you were acting, and I quote, nuts. Is that accurate?”

  Yeah, that pretty much covered it; hadn’t she even thought those exact words? “From her point of view, I guess.” Heck, even from my point of view.

  Dr. Rainier pulled out a chair at the table and nodded me toward it. She waited until I dragged over and then said, “What happened, exactly?”

  I debated. What could I really tell them? Lemme see, well, I went into a room I shouldn’t have been in the first place; there’s a painting on the old guy’s wall that’s exactly the same as the one I drew in my sleep the same night I spray-painted swastikas and eyes on Eisenmann’s barn. Oh, and I stole the old guy’s brushes; then I got a flash of Lucy as I’d drawn her—or maybe as she’d drawn herself, only it was like this cosmic Ouija board and so she couldn’t have done it if there wasn’t some kind of power I was tapping into. Then I saw/felt her draw out her death, and I freaked out; I got this headache, I smeared blood all over the place, bolted from the room and tore into the next building—and I could read people’s thoughts, if only briefly.

  Oh, and that poor little baby someone walled up in your hearth, Doc? I think that’s tied in somehow too.

  Right. There was no way I could tell the whole truth and no lie I could figure out that would cover everything that had happened. So I said, “Do you believe in ESP?”

  Uncle Hank frowned. To her credit, Dr. Rainier didn’t even blink. “Well, I could be psychiatric about it and answer a question with a question, like what do you believe, but . . . I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I could read my patients’ minds. The most gifted therapists I know have cultivated empathy to a fine art. And it’s a fact that couples with solid, long-term marriages pretty much know what the other person is thinking. Identical twins report finishing each other’s sentences.” She paused for a second to look at me. “I think that can look like ESP, but it’s more likely that they—and those gifted therapists—are picking up on subtle nonverbal cues. It’s how experts in kinesics—body language—do what looks like mind reading but is really close scrutiny of clusters of behaviors.”

  “So . . . you don’t believe in it.”

  “Reading minds? Throwing thoughts around? No, I don’t. I’d like to. I studied the stuff in college, even did a research paper on it. But that probably says more about me than anything else.” She cocked her head. “Are you saying that you think you can read other people’s thoughts?”

  “All I know is that I felt like I had to go into Mr. Witek’s room, like it was . . .”

  drawing

  “... calling me,” I said. “Maybe it’s all those pictures, I don’t know.”

  “You mean, the fact that you enjoy painting and drawing.”

  I nodded. “But when I got in there and saw them, I . . .” I snuck a glance at Uncle Hank and then said to Dr. Rainier, “I realized that I had drawn a picture almost exactly the same as one of Mr. Witek’s paintings.”

  Uncle Hank sat up a little straighter. Dr. Rainier didn’t notice. “Then you must’ve seen the painting before,” she said, reasonably.

  “No. I hadn’t even met Mr. Witek then. I drew this picture the same night that I . . . that I guess I spray-painted Mr. Eisenmann’s barn. I can show you.” I slid off my chair. “Just a second.”

  I don’t know what they talked about while I was gone, but I heard the low growl of Uncle Hank’s voice—“It’s the first I’ve heard of it”—and then they both stopped talking as I came into the room. I opened my pad and then turned the drawing around so they could both see.

  “That’s what I drew,” I said. “If you go look at Mr. Witek’s painting, everything’s the same, even the direction of the smoke from the foundry.”

  Dr. Rainier and Uncle Hank stared at the drawing for a good minute; then Dr. Rainier tapped the onion dome. “What is this? Do you have a building like that in town?”

  Uncle Hank shook his head. “Haven’t got a clue.”

  “It looks Russian or Eastern European.”

  “It’s called the White Lady.” When they looked at me, I continued, “Well, at least, that’s the name I’v
e heard.”

  “From whom?” asked Dr. Rainier.

  “I’m not all the way sure, but I think I got it from Mr. Witek the same way I got that drawing of Lucy with that parasol.”

  Uncle Hank said, “What? What drawing?”

  Dr. Rainier said slowly, “Lucy drew the picture, Christian. You calmed her enough so she could reach down and pull out the image she wanted.”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s what you think. It felt more like . . . When I took her hand, it was like a Ouija board.”

  Her eyebrows tented. “What?”

  “Ouija board?” Uncle Hank demanded. “What drawing?”

  Dr. Rainier explained and then said, “But there was nothing magical about it, and it certainly has nothing to do with what hap—” Her voice cut out abruptly, and her eyes slitted. “What is it, Hank?”

  Uncle Hank passed his hand in front of his mouth, like maybe if he could stop himself from saying it, whatever came out of his mouth wouldn’t be real. His eyes clicked to me and then back to Dr. Rainier. “You’ve read Christian’s files, right? So you know about Betty Stefancyzk.”

  “Of course, I know, but . . .” Now Dr. Rainier was looking at both of us the way you do some kind of weird bugs. “You can’t be serious. You believe what she said? Hank, she was mentally ill. She’d stopped taking her medications. She was delusionally fixated on Christian.”

  “Maybe,” said Uncle Hank, slowly, “but don’t you find it kind of weird that she and this Lucy at the home . . . that both, ah, incidents involved Christian’s drawing something? With Stefancyzk, it was a picture of a house Christian drew in class, only her note said Christian drew it out of her, as in stole it. With this Lucy, it was her.”

  Dr. Rainier opened her mouth and then closed it. She and Uncle Hank just looked at each other, and then Uncle Hank’s head moved in a tiny nod. “Got to be more than just coincidence,” he said, so low I could barely hear him. Then his gaze crawled to me. “Christian, why did you ask about ESP?”