The Glass Flame

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I remembered the packet of pictures in my lap and opened it, taking out the prints. The one I’d shot of the house where David had died made me shiver. There was Lori, looking out over a fallen beam across what had once been a door, her expression a grimace. A camera could catch an instant that otherwise passed so swiftly it was hardly noted. I didn’t remember that she had looked like that while she was tormenting me about the house.

  Then there was the other view of her when she had posed looking in a window of the octagonal house. She had objected to my not photographing her face, and in the instant before the shutter clicked she had looked around, her expression startled. That had been when Commodore moved inside, surprising her.

  The other pictures were mostly routine. The one I’d done of Trevor’s house from the island, using my telescopic lens, was quite good, as were the closer shots I’d taken from the rock. Maggie and Giff were caught in various poses around the crumbling dressing rooms. And of course there was Chris. Chris climbing the rocky steps above the fishpond and looking down at me angrily. Chris in the rowboat. And, last of all, the empty view of Cecily’s theater, shallow steps grass-grown, mounting the amphitheater curve as seen from the stage. The legs of one lighting tower visible—the one from which Cecily had jumped. And still higher the roofed section at the top, where folding seats had been stacked. Above the roof, treetops burgeoned on the hill behind the theater.

  Something odd in the picture caught my eye. A light-colored spot showed above a row of stacked seats, and seemed out of place—something small and round. Perhaps a face? If only I’d used the telescopic lens here. I studied the spot intently and could believe that it was nothing else but a face, a head, possibly topped with light hair. At home I might have made an enlargement, but here I must trust my eyes and my instinct.

  It was quite possible that someone had stood up there at the back of the theater and watched as we walked upon the stage. Not Lori, who had driven off the island in her car. Not Trevor, who had been with us until he’d left the theater. Someone else. Someone interested enough to follow our movements from his hiding place. I began to wonder if what I had caught was indeed Joe Bruen himself, watching us from the top of the theater.

  Not that it really mattered. Even if the picture was enlarged, a spot so tiny would turn to rough grain and tell us nothing.

  As I sat with the snapshot in my hand, staring blankly out toward Belle Isle and the high mountains beyond, a slight movement far to my right caught my attention. When I turned my head I could see the big boulder that thrust out from the hillside—that rock where I had climbed to view the house on my first morning here. Chris was standing on its crest looking toward me. I waved to him and went to the railing that protected the deck from the steep drop below.

  “Chris!” I called. “I’ve got the pictures I took. Wait there and I’ll bring them to you.”

  He didn’t respond one way or the other—as though he might already have withdrawn from that moment of near confidence with me. I called to him again and then hurried through the house and out the door. By the time I reached the woods leading in the direction of Maggie’s house, I was running. In only a few moments I came out on the hillside near the rock. Chris still sat here, cross-legged on the stone, waiting for me.

  Quickly I climbed to the top and sat down beside him. His manner, less friendly than before, was far more cautious—as though he had indeed retreated from any wish to talk to me.

  “Here you are,” I said. “I promised you the pictures I snapped of you.”

  He accepted the envelope and took out the prints. “They’re only black and white,” he said scornfully.

  “Sometimes I like that better for my purpose. There’s good contrast and shadow quality. Color film can be tricky. You can get orange shadows in the late afternoon, and a bluish tinge in early morning.”

  Chris sorted through the pictures. The one with Lori in the burned-out house he put aside quickly. Those I had taken of Chris himself seemed to interest him more.

  “I didn’t know I looked like that.” He held up the one where he was climbing the rock steps behind the house.

  “That’s what a picture can do—catch a second in time the way it really was. Of course these weren’t carefully taken. Part of the time I was just using up film so I could get yours printed quickly and give them to you. But sometimes a quick shot can show more than we knew was there in a scene. Like the expression on faces, and like that one of the theater.”

  He looked again at the theater picture, puzzled by my words. When he put it down I knew he had seen what must be a face.

  I nodded. “Yes. I think that’s the man you were talking about, Chris. We never knew he was there, but the camera saw him.”

  “Will you show this to Dad?” he asked. “So he’ll know I was telling the truth.”

  “Of course. And I’ll show it to Maggie and Giff too.”

  His mouth tightened as though he was making some inner effort. Then he blurted out the words. “Karen—will you go over there with me?”

  “To the island, you mean?” His words had startled me.

  “Yes. I want to show you something. Something nobody else knows about.”

  I tried to stall for time because his request alarmed me. “When do you want to go?”

  “Not till after the funeral. Maybe the morning before you go away.”

  So that I wouldn’t have time to talk to anyone after he’d shown me whatever it was?

  “I’m not sure we should go there alone,” I said doubtfully.

  “Okay.” He sounded almost relieved as he picked out the snapshots I had taken of him and handed the rest back to me. When he stood up I knew I had failed him, and I knew it was important not to.

  “Wait, Chris. I haven’t said I wouldn’t go. I just wondered if you ought to tell your father whatever it is—perhaps show him?”

  His expression went blank. “I don’t want to do that. I just thought you—you might be the one I could talk to. You’re outside my family, but you’re still connected. With Uncle David, I mean.”

  “What has this to do with Uncle David?”

  There was a hint of remembered shock in his eyes. “That’s what I want to show you. Karen, I’ve got to show somebody. But not Dad. Not any of the others.”

  I made up my mind. “I’ll go with you, of course, Chris.”

  He reacted cautiously, verbalizing plans. “Then we’ll go early in the morning day after tomorrow. But don’t tell anyone, Karen. If you tell anyone, it’s all off.”

  I nodded, but I gave him no promise, because I knew it was not one I could keep. Whatever was troubling Chris had to be brought into the open. Yet at the same time I didn’t for a moment intend that the two of us should go wandering about the island alone. No matter how Chris felt, I would have to talk to Trevor.

  Once more he flashed me his bright smile. “You’re okay, Karen. So I’ll meet you in your car around nine that morning.”

  “Fine,” I said, and he started down from the rock. Near the bottom he turned to look up at me. “Before you go away, will you show me some more about taking pictures?”

  “Of course,” I promised, and watched unhappily as he ran off to the woods.

  Before you go away, he had said. And time was racing all too fast. Of course I could cancel my flight at the last minute if it seemed wise. Right now I didn’t know whether I would be on that plane or not. It might depend on what news Trevor brought back from his visit to the sheriff’s office. And on whatever it was on the island that Chris wanted to show me.

  I had a sense of tension building in me, of a new and frightening dread. David had been involved in something far more grim and desperate than I’d ever guessed. I had less doubt than before that his death had been deliberately caused, but could I bear to face the truth about him when it really came out? I’d had few illusions about my husband, but I had believed in the integrity of his work.

  I climbed down from the rock and wandered idly along the path
and across the driveway that led to Maggie’s house. She must have seen me from a window because she came running outside through a lower door.

  “Karen, wait!”

  I had no wish to spend more time with Maggie Caton. Or with any of them, I thought. Not even with Nona, who had promised to give me some help that had so far not been forthcoming. Nevertheless, Maggie was beside me in her usual disarray, with her mottled red hair blowing and a green smudge on her nose, and I couldn’t turn away.

  “Come talk to me,” she said. “I’ll go batty if I sit around alone much longer. I don’t know what’s happening, but something is. That awful fire again last night, and that block of wood dropped through your skylight!”

  “Who told you about that?”

  “Why—I think it was Giff. He was talking to Trevor about the fire this morning, and Trevor told him. Now he and Eric have gone in to Eric’s office in the Greencastle in Gatlinburg. That’s the hotel Vinnie built. And I don’t feel like staying alone. If you’ll come up to the house I’ll fix a salad for our lunch. Besides, you haven’t seen my studio yet. And you can’t leave without viewing that spectacle.”

  I wasn’t sure I could take any more of Maggie’s artistic efforts, but neither could I refuse without hurting her feelings, so I followed her up to the house. This time she led me into a glass-enclosed lower room—an enormous room that had obviously been built as her studio.

  It was not as tidy as her kitchen, since various works in progress were standing about, with brushes in peanut butter glasses, and jars of assorted acrylic colors. Several large canvases stood about on easels, and there was an unmistakable odor of turpentine and paint.

  Here and there, blocking the way, chunks of stone had been piled—stone that she must have collected for her crude animal creations. She kicked one of these with her toe.

  “Eric says I should buy some proper stone to work with. The sort of stuff that I dig out of the mountain has weathered and it’s tough to work on. Sometimes it cracks in the wrong places, and it’s grown a protective skin. But I like odd shapes that hint at what’s inside, and I’m not doing anything in great detail when it comes to chopping out my animals. It’s a change from the plants and flowers when they get too poisonous.”

  More of her monstrous vegetation stood on easels, or was stacked against a wall. Always they were handsome and meticulously done, but always they suggested inner horror. I didn’t want to look at any of them too carefully, for fear of what I’d find.

  “Don’t you ever paint figures?” I asked. “I mean human figures?”

  She stared at me brightly, as though I had said something surprising. “As a matter of fact, I’m doing that right now. I’m painting something I haven’t shown anyone yet. I suppose I might as well show you. Especially since you’ll be going away soon.”

  Her words were puzzling, but I was curious now, and I followed as she beckoned me across the room. A large painting on an easel had been placed with its face hidden and she turned it so I could see the picture.

  “It’s nearly finished,” she said. “Believe me, I’ve worked on this one. All those leaves!”

  What she had painted was kudzu. The vine ran rampant all over the huge canvas, its big leaves making patterns of sunlight and shadow, with only a touch of clouds and blue sky in one corner to indicate that an outside world existed. At first glance the painting seemed cheerful and open and free of Maggie’s usual distortion of nature. Indeed, it was rather beautiful, if you could overlook the destructive power of the vine.

  “It would make a nice wallpaper pattern,” I said. “But there aren’t any human figures. I thought you said—”

  “No?” The one word challenged me and I looked closer.

  Now I saw what was there. In the center of the canvas, almost lost in vines that had crawled over him, stood a man. Or at least the shape of a man. He stood like a scarecrow in the sea of green, his body straight, his arms held out at shoulder height with tendrils of kudzu dripping from them. Creeping over almost every inch of this human figure were the vines, enveloping, smothering his humanity, denying him life. Only his eyes were still free of the devouring blight, still unbidden as they stared wide and terror-filled from the foliage that covered his face and head as well as his body. White showed around the iris as the eyes had widened in shock, and even their color had taken on a tinge of green.

  Maggie was waiting and I sensed anxiety in her, as though whatever I said about this painting mattered in some way that I didn’t understand.

  “It—it’s quite awful,” was all I could manage.

  Behind the leaf-covered figure, defining him, the vines slipped into deep shadow, sometimes gray-green, often fading into black. Indeed, the painting of shadow was as important as the creation of the leaves, giving definition to the whole. The man figure stood out in brightest sunlight, and the foliage that covered him seemed to tremble with a life of its own.

  I added to my verdict. “The vines seem almost alive.”

  Maggie stood close to me. “Yes. It’s both those things, isn’t it? Awful and alive. Sometimes I’m almost afraid of it. As though by painting it I gave the vine its own life right here in this room. As though it might move off the canvas and reach out for me at any moment. The way it did for him.”

  She stepped past me to turn the easel about and I was prompted to ask a question.

  “Who is he, Maggie—the man in your painting?”

  She turned back to me slowly. “Don’t you know? Can’t you guess?”

  “You don’t mean—David?”

  “You named him—I didn’t.”

  “But David died by fire.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Of course he did. Forget it. I wasn’t painting David.”

  But I had the feeling that my guess had been right, and that for some reason she had been thinking of David all the while as she painted smothering, man-eating leaves over the scarecrow figure.

  All I wanted now was to escape her company, to get out of this house and into the reality of mountains and clear sunlight.

  “I’ll fix us some lunch now,” Maggie said.

  I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’d really better get back. I’ve some things to do. I’m taking a plane for New York day after tomorrow.”

  “Oh, dear. I’ve spoiled your appetite, haven’t I? I’m sorry, Karen.” She walked with me to the door and I turned-back for a moment.

  “What made you paint it? Tell me why!”

  Her look shifted away from me and she twisted at a strand of her harlequin hair. “I don’t know. It all comes out of something inside me. It just happens. Eric says my motivations are beyond anyone’s figuring out. Maybe I’d better destroy that picture before they decide to put me away.”

  “Don’t make jokes,” I said. “I think you know perfectly well why you painted it.”

  “Maybe I do,” she said after a moment. “Maybe I painted it because I was scared. Catharsis, I suppose. The way Nona says? I had to come to grips with something so it would stop frightening me.”

  “And has it?”

  “Only while I was painting. Don’t ask any more questions, Karen. Just go away and forget about all of this. Go back to New York and forget about Trevor and Lori—and all of us. If you stay, you’ll be caught in the trap too. The trap of your own fears, the way I am.”

  She began pushing me toward the door, almost roughly, though I was willing enough to hurry.

  “I’ll see you at the funeral, and at dinner tomorrow night,” she said as I went out on the lower terrace.

  I paused. “I’m not in the mood for a dinner party. I plan to stay in my room.”

  As I turned away she caught my arm in one strong hand and held me there. “No, Karen. You mustn’t stay away. I won’t be able to stand that dinner if you aren’t there. We can be—allies, in a way. So please come. Help me, Karen. I’m so frightened I could die. But you’re from outside. You’re healthy and young and David never corrupted you, as he did poor Lori. Just be there,
Karen.”

  Her entreaty had a wild note to it, and I tried to humor her. “I’ll come if you want me there, Maggie,” I promised. Gently I drew my arm from her grasp, and this time she let me go. I didn’t look back as I walked down the driveway and plunged into the woods.

  Only once did I stop on that hurried trip back to Trevor’s and that was because of something I saw at the base of a maple tree. Something with large green leaves had begun to grow up the trunk of the tree. When I bent close, however, I saw with relief that it was only some other, less voracious wild vine, and not kudzu.

  All the way back to the house the words from Dickey’s poem haunted me: “Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts.” If I dreamed tonight it would be Maggie’s painting that would haunt me.

  But what had kudzu to do with David Hallam?

  Nine

  David’s funeral had been kept as simple and private as possible, by my wish and Trevor’s. There was no eulogy. It would have been inappropriate and false under such circumstances. Nona persuaded Lori not to come, and it was better that way. Whatever Lori might feel, it was best not displayed in public. As Nona said, there was no telling what she might do when the pressure was on, and Trevor had been submitted to enough. Nona came, of course, and Chris was there, standing close beside her wheelchair, never looking at his father. He showed no grief for his uncle’s death, but stared out at the world with his own fierce air of defiance.

  As I stood beside the open grave my emotion was one of a deep, enveloping sorrow, mingled with a terror that I was still trying to suppress. What I felt in sadness had to do with the past, not the present. The man I mourned was the man David Hallam might have been—and perhaps the woman I might have been. I mourned too my own inability to have changed him or changed myself.