by Ilsa J. Bick
My eyes fixed on a small detail at the bottom right of the picture. Zooming in, I was able to magnify that portion of the painting—and there it was, that same six-sided star with the letters MW in the center and two numbers, one above and one below: 3 and 9.
Now, I understood: a Star of David and Mordecai Witek’s initials. For the artist, his Jewish identity had been something he’d taken pride in.
It was then that I realized something else.
I’d seen this woman before in another portrait, in Mr. Witek’s room, hanging to the right of the door.
Katarina was the woman in the silk kimono with the red chrysanthemums.
XVIII
My e-mail chimed: Sarah. I checked my watch; it was a few minutes before eleven.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: re: research
Christian, you don’t write or talk to me for over two years and now already we’re like pen pals or something? LOL just pulling your chain.
Yeah, sure, you can come with me to the Historical Society. I’m going tomorrow right after school because I have to do something with the family on Friday
Hey, do you have IM? If you have IM, we can do that instead of e-mail because it’s faster. I’m sarah13. IM me.
Sarah
I did have IM, only I hadn’t used it for years. I’d never had any buddies, so it seemed a waste. But I logged on and then typed:
ccage: Hey, Sarah, it’s me. Christian.
I wasn’t expecting a reply, thinking that maybe she’d already gone to bed, but she came right back:
sarah13: So what happened?
ccage: Nothing.
sarah13: That’s not what I heard.
ccage: What did you hear?
sarah13: That you helped her make a drawing and now she’s dead. People are saying it’s like Miss S.
I was about to type No, it wasn’t like Miss S at all, but I didn’t. Not that this wasn’t partially true. With Miss Stefancyzk, I had been furious, as volcanically angry as a seven-year-old can be. I remembered the feeling well: this deluge of emotions and thoughts that were alien to me, ones that involved knives and faces that morphed into monsters’ masks, and then I drew that house out of her, the one she kept locked away in a steel vault in her mind, but I found it, oh yes, I did....
But now I wondered: What if the images and emotions I’d had then weren’t mine? What if, like Stephanie and the other people at the home, a door had cracked open in my mind and Miss Stefancyzk’s deepest, darkest thoughts had leaked in? Hadn’t Dr. Rainier said that Miss Stefancyzk was manic-depressive and probably hadn’t been taking her meds? So what if she was tipping over the edge all along and then . . . ?
And then I came along, with some kind of weird ESP-ish power to channel all that rage and have it come out my fingers, the same way I tapped into Lucy’s images of herself as a younger woman and the awful instant when she had the heart attack that killed her. But I hadn’t been angry with Lucy. I liked her. So what was I drawing? Nightmares? Destiny?
And the way I visualized my mother and saw the sideways place where I was too frightened to go—what was it, really? Heaven? Hell? Purgatory?
And then there was Aunt Jean. What had I seen there? I couldn’t imagine my Aunt Jean—sunny, ready with a smile, always good to me—with such a pit of blackness in her soul. No, I’d killed her all right. She made me angry, and my mind had lashed out, and then I’d drawn that wretched picture. She’d taken one look, and it was like all the blood drained from her veins, and the horror in her eyes, like she’d confronted the thing that scared her most....
I shied away from that particular memory. I typed:
ccage: I was in an old guy’s room when it happened. I had a premonition and then my nose started to bleed, and I freaked out.
sarah13: Wow. Are you okay?
ccage: Yeah.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I waited. It hit me suddenly that I was having a conversation that you’d almost call friendly. Not entirely truthful—I wasn’t that crazy—but comfortable enough. I thought back to the times when Sarah and I had played on swings and climbed trees and I wondered how it was that you went from playing games to actually talking.
Sarah typed:
sarah13: Hey, I’m having a Halloween party at my house. You want to come?
I was so stunned I just sat there and read the message again. Finally, I wrote:
ccage: Yeah?
sarah13: < eye roll > Duh. Of course, yeah. I was thinking that you’re so good with painting and all, maybe you could make some kind of mural. You know, something creepy, like a graveyard or haunted house or something.
I should have known. This wasn’t about me. I typed:
ccage: Maybe. I might be busy.
As soon as I hit Enter, I wished I hadn’t. I wanted to type something about being an asshole, but I didn’t.
A long pause. Then:
sarah13: I’m trying to be nice to you! Do you know how many people don’t like you? Do you know how many people think you’re flat-out weird?
ccage: Everybody. We’ve already had this conversation.
sarah13: God, you make it so hard for anyone to be nice to you.
ccage: Yeah? So where’ve you been for the last two years, Miss Popular?
Now I was being an asshole and I knew it. I wrote:
ccage: Sorry. I’m being an asshole.
sarah13: You’re just now figuring that out? I’m done. It’s almost midnight. I’m going to bed now.
ccage: Good night.
Sarah typed SCREW YOU and logged off.
I got in bed, but I didn’t fall asleep right away. My thoughts pin-balled around my skull, and my eyes kept snapping open. The moon was waning, perhaps three-quarters, and so my room wasn’t completely dark. Silver light leaked in around the edges of my drawn shades, and the paintings on my walls seemed to glow.
To move.
Subtly. Stealthily. As if aware that anything more than the most minute of movements would make me run screaming from the room.
I held myself very still and thought: Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the night the drawings come to life and just take over, draw me in....
Wasn’t this what I’d been waiting for? A way of slipping into the sideways place and finding my parents? It had been days...no, a couple of weeks since I worked on that charcoal of my mother, and that made me freeze up inside. I couldn’t do that, could I? If I stopped looking for her, wouldn’t she stop looking for me? Her face would just evaporate like steam or something, and all that would be left would be pictures. . . . So I should go. I should let this happen.
Right. If I really wanted that, why had I freaked and whited out the door? Maybe because I really didn’t have the guts at all. It was my bike ride home all over again when I’d thought about suicide. I was too scared to be in this world and too frightened to leave it.
I yawned. I would never fall asleep, never . . .
The ghosts still mutter, but there is another somebody, different from the rest. I see him, he sees me, my mouth is still gone, but my mind begins to burn, to itch and I think nothing, Papa’s son is nothing; Papa’s son did nothing but watch and now there are ghosts and wolves and my mouth is gone....
Papa says that he and the other men will meet at the White Lady after shul to talk about the wolves. The wolves will break the union. Mr. Eisenmann wants to break the union. Papa says Mr. Eisenmann’s using the wolves for Miss Catherine’s house....
Katarina at sunset, Katarina’s white skin and her breasts, her body. . .
I have to be quiet, can’t move, mustn’t let them see that I am there. Papa has sent me away; he thinks that I’ve gone, and Miss Catherine has given all the servants the day off, told them to leave and not return until later. There is only the bu
tler who stands guard at the front door, and he’s easy to get around. I’ve often come by to visit Marta, and I’m nobody and small for my age, and so I creep down the back steps. I know all the ins and outs of this house because of Marta, and so long as I am quiet, which isn’t hard when Marta and I talk . . .
The air smells green from ferns and huge potted plants. Water bubbles and splashes in a tumble of stones because there’s a real brook that gurgles through the day room. Light spills through the long picture window, and jewels of color sparkle on the pale stone floor from the transom’s stained glass. Miss Catherine lies on a satin divan, and she is so beautiful; it hurts to look, and the sun fires her fine kimono from behind so you can see the shadow of her breasts and the curve of her hips. I know Papa sees her because he’s painting; his back is to me, and I’m crouched behind a trio of pots, peering through a fringe of palms. Papa tells her to move first this way and then another and his brushstrokes are so thin she glows like the alabaster lamps of the White Lady.
Neither sees me. My face burns with shame for spying. I know I shouldn’t have disobeyed Papa, but there is something I don’t like about what is happening here.
If I had only seen it sooner—if I had seen—I could’ve stopped the darkness and blood and the slash of the pitchfork.
Papa and Miss Catherine think they are alone. Miss Catherine has lips like ripe peaches, and there is color in her cheeks, and when Papa tells her to adjust her arms and to turn more to the right, she laughs and pouts and makes Papa come and move her arms for her....
No, Papa. I am screaming this in my mind as he throws down his brush in disgust. I see that she’s playing a game, like a queen, and what I can’t understand is why Papa doesn’t see it too—unless, maybe, he doesn’t want to understand. Maybe he wants there to be something he can claim is an accident. But I scream, silently: No, Papa, don’t, stay away, don’t!
Her gown falls open, and she guides his hand. “I know what you want,” she says, and now I know for certain that it is a game for the two of them. Papa’s hand is on her breast, and Miss Catherine is pulling him down, and he’s fallen on top of her, and her hands are in his hair, and now she is naked and her hands are under his shirt, and now they are both moaning....
I am not aware that I have screamed—out loud and for real—until they both jerk their heads around and stare. Papa’s hair is mussed, and his pants are sagging around his hips, and his eyes are shocked. Miss Catherine screams, and her hands fly to cover her breasts.
No! No, Papa, no! I turn and I am running out of the room, flying through the doors that open with a loud BANG! The butler’s been dozing in his chair, and he startles at the sound; he is all elbows and knees, and he’s struggling out of the chair, but I’m running down the long hall for the front of the house, and there are tears in my eyes. . . .
“David!” It is Papa. He is chasing after, but I keep running. I burst out of that grand house and into the blinding day, past all the wolves who are working on the grounds and turn to stare with their yellow slit eyes, but then I’m sprinting down the hill, away from the wolves climbing all over the house, away from all of them. Papa’s cries are fainter and then they fall away, and the only sounds are my sobs and the seagulls wheeling in the blue sky over the lake, and they are screaming too, just as the horses scream and the men . . .
And now there’s blood. There’s blood on Papa’s hands, there’s blood everywhere, and the horses are screaming.... Catherine and Marta and the wolf . . . no Papa no, help me, somebody, please so scared, i want to stop seeing this, i’m so scared somebody please somebody help me help me help me
XIX
So, of course, I spazzed awake about three seconds before my alarm went off. My head was full of confused images and mut-ters, and I knew I’d been somewhere else—back in time, with the boy, as the boy—but there was nothing clear, just a jum-ble. I grabbed a pad and pencil from the nightstand the way Sarah said she had when they had to write down their dreams in psych—and just about fell out of bed when I saw what was already there.
Two scrawled words:
HELP ME
I didn’t throw the paper away.
Maybe I should have.
Oh, the things you know in retrospect.
I got my second shock when I looked at my wall. Maybe the muttering in my head—oh yes, it was there again—should’ve tipped me off.
Because the door was back.
Cold sweat popped out all over my face and chest.
The door had no knob. But there it was, in precisely the same place, the edges crisp and clean, only this time I had used Mordecai Witek’s brushes because the pouch was unrolled, a long-handled bright smelling of fresh turpentine. (Even in my sleep, I took care of my brushes. How strange was that?)
So my brain had decided to take over in my sleep and force my hand . . . so to speak. Whatever lived in the sideways place was just behind that door, pressed breathlessly against the skin separating it from this world. (Apparently, even my subconscious had limits, which was kind of hilarious when you got right down to it. Sure, make me bike a gazillion miles and dangle from a rope to spray-paint a barn, but whoa, watch that doorknob.)
Another thought occurred to me, though. What if that final step, drawing the knob and then turning it . . . what if that had to be my choice? Something I did consciously, understanding what might happen? I know. It sounded crazy to me too, and I was becoming an expert on crazy.
But you know what it reminded me of? Revelation 3:20: Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.
Now, I’m not a whacked-out Christian-type. But everyone knows that quote from Revelation. Sarah’s dad said in confirmation class that the reason God didn’t barge in was that you had to bring your head to God along with your heart; the two couldn’t be separate, and it had to be your choice. Another thing Reverend Schoenberg had said was that whenever you saw a reference to a door in the Bible, it also represented the way in which heaven and truth, angels and God, communicated with people.
So . . . was the sideways place really heaven? Some kind of truth?
Then I thought of something else: Mr. Witek’s door, the weird tube on the jamb. How I’d stood there and knocked and felt the pull, like I was being invited in . . . only our roles were reversed then, weren’t they? I hadn’t brought any kind of truth with me. No, the truth had been in Mr. Witek’s room; the truth lived in those pictures and whatever was locked in Mr. Witek’s memory.
The truth flowed from my fingertips.
I closed my eyes. Thought about counting to ten and made it to four.
The door was still there.
“Go to school, you jerk,” I said. “You’ve still got work to do.”
But I left the door where it was. I wrote down what I could tease out of the tangle in my brain: a garden room, a stream, stained glass—and then I thought: Idiot, you’re just remembering the painting. You’re incorporating the painting into your dreams, and you think it means something.
Well, maybe it did. Damned if I knew what.
School crawled by. Sarah didn’t look at me the whole day, and I figured I was on my own. At lunch, I didn’t go to the cafeteria, but I also stayed away from the art studio. Instead, I went out to the playground and sat on a swing while the little kids ran around and played kickball. Watching them brought a lump to my throat, and I wanted to cry. Those kids were so lucky. They didn’t have to worry about anything getting out of control; all they had to worry about was making it to the base before they got tagged. The little kids were laughing and horsing around, and there were so many of them, they were like ants boiling over the playground. But it was nice seeing how happy they were. Made me wish I was little again.
Although, of course, little kids are pretty vicious too. I should know. I’ve certainly been on the receiving end all my life. You try being the one a pack of kids will cut out from the group, make sure you’re r
eal far away from the school so no one will see, and then beat the crap out of you. That was one thing Marjorie was wrong about. You didn’t need to live in a city to experience people being the animals they really were deep down inside.
I was scuffing out to the bike rack after school when I heard Sarah behind me: “Wait up!”
“I thought you were mad at me,” I said as she trotted up.
“I am mad at you.” She was wearing jean capris, and her hair was up in a ponytail, like Betty in those Archie comics. Not that I’ve ever read them. Since I was eight, anyway. Sarah looked kind of cute. She said, “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.” We pushed out to the breezeway and hung a left, heading for the bike rack at the side of the school. I saw her glance at a knot of other girls in the parking lot, all of them pretending not to stare, and then away. I asked, “You know, if you don’t want to do this . . .”
“Can we talk about something else other than your insanity, please?”
“Uh . . . okay.” I wracked my brain for something to say. “How’s the research going?”
“Pretty good, thanks. I called the sheriff’s office today, and Marjorie said the anthropologist was probably coming up tomorrow or Saturday.”
“Hey, that’s cool. Would you . . . uh . . .”
She stopped, planted her hands on her hips, and said, “No, I don’t mind if you come. I said I didn’t mind before. What do you need, Christian, an engraved invitation?”