Vince swung the visor on its pivot to block the sun as it moved off to his left. He reached over to the passenger’s seat and knocked a disposable coffee cup to the floorboard to get to his cell phone. ‘Hell,’ he said, and put the phone down again. There’s no point in calling again now. Vince growled; he knew he was trying to distract himself, trying to keep from thinking too much about Geoff—and about Keri.
Keri had been the perfect subject to complement both Schloesser’s artistic style as well as the environment his visuals depicted (‘Both oeuvre and milieu,’ Vince chuckled). Her features matched textbook classical proportions, except around the eyes, where the lower lid drooped to reveal a crescent of white underneath the pupil, and the brows arched high in diminishing brushstrokes that never completed their curve. Her skin tone and hair suggested a subtle mix of exoticism. Keri would laugh when asked about her ancestry, ‘It’s actually so terribly normal that I prefer to keep it a mystery,’ and follow it with a smile that proved her right. The overall effect was one of formal aesthetic agreement enhanced with attributes subtly alien and otherworldly. ‘If I hadn’t met her, I would have had to invent her,’ was one of Geoff’s unwieldy compliments that Keri endured. Geoff painted Keri exhaustively. The very good paintings netted him the highest sales of his career; the very best paintings he kept for himself. A showing at Helio Gallery featuring a series of eleven ‘Keri’ paintings drew rave reviews; even his harshest critic admitted it was a success, even if the works were ‘in a style some sixty years past relevance’.
Unfortunately, Geoff’s muse had been too inspirational for her own good, and the constant sittings began to tax Keri. Her time became subsumed entirely by Schloesser’s augmented creative drive. Physically, she began to suffer as well, though the artist failed to notice, probably due to his subject becoming more beautiful as her vitality waned and she took on an aspect popularised in the art depicting ‘consumptives’ of the nineteenth century. Vince noticed the change and broached the subject with his client. Geoff rebuked him, mistaking the energy the artist commanded in the presence of his model as emanating in limitless supply from the model herself.
A frustratingly inconclusive business endeavour on the west coast had kept Vince occupied for two weeks following their confrontation; when he returned, he was genuinely alarmed at Keri’s ethereal and wan appearance. But even then, her beauty was intensified by the small spark of defiance and independence that always radiated from within, the spark that gave her the strength to leave Geoff despite his dismayed entreaties for her to stay. The auspicious timing of his return from California induced Vince to help Keri move out from the loft and back to her old apartment. As he stood poised to leave her doorstep, he impotently offered, ‘I love you.’ Keri touched his cheek and replied, ‘I know. But we can’t see each other anymore.’
Vince had left Geoff alone for a few days before returning to the artist’s studio. He discovered evidence of a hasty departure in the empty loft. A note explained Geoff’s absence: he had gone to the summer studio. Vince was not surprised that Geoff had reacted differently to the dissolution of his relationship with Keri than all his other break-ups, but he had to admit to himself that he wouldn’t have guessed Geoff would elect solitude during any time of emotional crisis; the comforting bleat of the social scene had always before been his refuge. Vince found himself deflecting constant inquiries about the artist and his well-being. It was an especially unenviable task because Vince had so little information to offer by way of reply.
Geoff had answered most of Vince’s calls at the beginning of his self-imposed banishment, but he brushed aside any condolences or encouragement and cut conversations short so he could get ‘back to work’. As Geoff always sounded more distracted than drunk or distraught (indeed, Vince more than once thought he detected excitement smouldering beneath Geoff’s often monosyllabic replies), Vince felt satisfied with his general emotional state and assented to the artist’s wishes that he not make the drive out to the studio. When asked about the nature of the work that appeared to consume his time, Geoff became evasive, speaking only in ambiguous adjectives; the work was ‘vast’, ‘intense’, ‘complicated’, and, curiously, ‘terrifying’. As time went on, Geoff answered fewer and fewer of Vince’s calls, but the tone remained consistent. It dawned on Vince that the only reason Geoff was answering any of his calls was to placate him sufficiently to keep him from coming out. When Vince pressed to be allowed to visit the studio, Geoff would become short and insist, ‘It wouldn’t mean anything to you. It isn’t for you.’ Another trip to California abruptly took Vince away; during the entire trip, Geoff failed to answer any of his calls. The limited involvement of the police had prompted Vince’s accelerated return east.
Vince cursed softly to himself and shook his head as he arrived at an all-too-familiar intersection. To his left was a shabby diner, on the opposite corners, a gas station and a church, and to his right, a muddy ditch fronting a field of what he could only assume were soybeans. His arrival here meant that, just as he had every other time he’d driven out this way, he’d gone right past Geoff’s country studio without realising it. Despite his worry for his friend and client, Vince decided to pull into the gas station/mini-mart to get a cup of coffee. He was tired and thirsty, and he suspected that whatever he might find at the studio, Geoff would probably not be able to offer anything in the way of creature comforts. Vince left the mini-mart in a foul mood; the slack-jawed twenty-year old behind the counter and the girl clearly not working with him hushed up hurriedly when Vince entered and followed him with bug-eyed stares through every motion he made. Conversation proved impossible: ‘Hi’. Nothing. ‘How much?’ No reply. Vince considered ‘Boo!’, but chose instead to leave a buck-fifty on the counter and depart.
Vince drove back the way he’d come nearly a mile before turning off onto the gravel driveway partially obscured by an uneven row of shoots masquerading as shrubbery and a diminutive willow tree. Vince got out of the car and listened to only the susurrus of the breeze. The boy Geoff employed to mow the lawn obviously hadn’t been around recently. Vince wondered if Geoff might have chased him off. The windows of the nondescript two-storey stared out dumbly at the approach of dusk. Gravel crunched underfoot as Vince approached the broad wooden porch. He retrieved the key from his pocket and, ignoring the doorbell, unlocked the door and entered.
The interior was much as Vince remembered with a modulation towards neglectful squalor. The house had always been sparsely furnished. The living room held a couch that Geoff had apparently been sleeping on instead of the queen boxsprings and mattress that Vince knew lay upstairs. The couch faced a television set on an old wire stand and aided by a rabbit ears antenna; Vince noticed the television wasn’t plugged in. There was a short, stout bookshelf holding the same books in their same positions from the previous year. Geoff’s clothes littered the floor, stinking of sweat and chemicals. The rest of the downstairs was much the same: the fold-up card table in the dining room was strewn with used paper towels and cigarette butts and beer bottles and Styrofoam coffee cups from the mini-mart. Vince was unsure whether he should be happy there weren’t rotting food-covered dishes, as the evidence seemed to imply Geoff might not be eating at all. The flies buzzing around the kitchen sink were some sort of cold comfort to him.
‘Geoff?’ Vince called out. He considered going back to the foot of the stairs and calling up to the second floor, but decided not to waste the effort. Going out to the country was never really about the house. Vince went out the back door and down towards the studio.
Hidden by the house and the hill that rose towards the road, the ‘studio’ was a circular building about fifty feet in diameter, completely windowless, made up of foot-wide planks set vertically and painted black. A squat, conical roof sat atop the structure sixteen feet from the ground at the circumference, and rising to over twenty-five feet at its centre point. There was a single entrance, a wide metal door at the end of the bald, dirt path. Schloesser had installe
d electricity, including an extensive lighting array, and attached a cooling unit. Despite the utter lack of natural light, the artist had always enjoyed spending time in that odd building. ‘It’s like a sensory deprivation chamber,’ he had told Vince. ‘Creating there allows me direct access to the wilds of my subconscious, but in an environment of complete control.’ Geoff had never discovered the original purpose of the building; even the few locals he conversed with couldn’t say, and no visitor there had ever ventured a satisfactory explanation. He had become happier not to know, as the shrouded origin of the place fit perfectly with the sense of wonder and displacement Geoff tried to emulate in his work.
Vince was perplexed by two things as he approached the studio: firstly, there appeared to be a new coat of black paint on the exterior of the building. He didn’t think Geoff would bother with anything so utilitarian in his state. Secondly, there was a disordered stack of lumber not far from the entrance; a pile of scrap was strewn carelessly on and around unused two-by-fours nearly lost in the overlong grass. Vince didn’t have a key for the studio. Vince knocked on the door. He reached down and tried the latch. Finding it unlocked, he swung the door towards him to let the dying light of the day cautiously reach inside.
Vince crossed the threshold and found himself not in the open space he expected, but instead surrounded by a wooden structure. Crossbeams and supports to his left and right supported a platform overhead. Past the structure, the dirt floor lay bare—not crowded with canvases on easels as had always been the case in the past. Vince raised his left arm and found the box with the master switch for the lights. He hesitated and called, ‘Hello?’ He wasn’t sure why. When no answer came, he flicked the switch and closed the circuit, causing the studio to erupt in light.
The function of the structure became apparent: it was an elevated walkway, extending around the entire interior circumference of the studio. Opposite the entrance on the far side of the studio a set of stairs led up to the platform. Vince was so astounded by his friend’s construction effort that he initially missed the purpose of its existence. When he did see it, Vince staggered and fell to his knees in the middle of the dirt floor.
On the top nine feet of the circular wall was painted a vast panorama. Vince had trouble fathoming the effort involved in its creation, knowing as he did the limited time frame involved. Even from his vantage point, more than twenty feet and one level removed from any surface, he could see that Geoff hadn’t compromised the intricate, brushstroke-less flatness of the style. Vince felt tears stream down his cheek. Here was a masterwork of profound scope and intricacy destined for immortality and he was the first to see it. Vince rose to his feet wobbling like a newborn faun. He rotated his body and view, shuffling his feet in minute steps. He understood the reason why the work was raised from the floor: so that it would form a complete circle, uninterrupted by the door. Vince stepped forward softly, as if unwilling to disrupt the sacred hush of the studio, and reverently ascended the stairs.
Vince was struck first by the ingenuity of the work’s physical existence. Somehow, Geoff had evened the seams between the boards and attached sanded canvas so evenly that the entire surface looked to be a single, continuous sheet of paper. Vince recognised that feat alone as nearly impossible. Certainly a man suffering in the throes of depression should not have been able to muster the concentration and skill necessary for so disciplined an accomplishment. Vince was unaware of any plaster or substance that would secure the canvas to the painted wooden wall without eventually crumbling, but he knew instinctively that it would endure for ages. How did he do it? Vince wondered, but the thought fell forgotten from his mind as he focused on the subject matter presented in the art itself.
Vince looked at a view of a field through a frame of brambles. The field slopes upward gently, apparently hiding a road; the back of a billboard is visible in the distance. It’s a transition, thought Vince. Geoff wouldn’t create a ‘starting place’, even if the stairs led to a single point in the physical support structure—he wouldn’t provide context or basis; instead he’d propel the viewer around and cause him to move his feet (just as Vince was doing now) before he even began to compose relations in the images. The brambles arch away, taking with them a flash of red eyes and the seeming scurrying of small, spindly figures, their long-fingered hands picking through the vine-choked shoots with alacrity, tracing the movement of the viewer as if stealthily stalking him. Through the shadow of the arch—now the reaching limbs of trees lining a road and sloughing their leaves—a coatless boy hugging his schoolbooks kicks through the loose, autumnal carpet. Vince was struck by the sentimentality of the image: it espoused innocence before regret. Vince thought the theme predictable for someone dealing with a break-up; one imagines the artist attempting to speak to himself as a youth, warning or correcting him. In fact, a man leans against a fencepost, facing towards the approaching boy, nonchalantly sniffing at the spice of the season. Wary, the boy sees the man but doesn’t raise his head. He continues kicking nonchalantly at the leaves even as he cautiously slows his pace. The man has to address the boy directly.
‘Hey,’ Vince said, and the boy turned his head—
No—
Vince’s head snapped back as if bobbing out from the onset of sleep. He blinked repeatedly, and looked back at the painting.
Ah. A neat trick, Vince thought. The boy’s eyes stared out straight, giving the illusion of following the viewer. When I was behind the man on the road, it seemed the boy was looking at him, but when I move further to the right, no foreground elements come between the boy and me. Vince shook his head in appreciation of his friend’s craft, and chuckled at his alarmed reaction to the ruse. Despite his self-deprecating dismissal of the illusion, Vince chose to step to the side again before re-focusing.
The boy sits at a kitchen nook table, his face lit by the cathode tubes of a television. Behind him the sliding glass door swims with channels of rain. The black downpour beyond obscures everything past the wooden deck except the sloped outline of what must be a mammoth tree slouching against the tempest. Unheeded by the boy—or unheard against the roar of the storm—are the protests of a wire-hair terrier barking at a cave-mouth curling up along the edge of the carpet. Down beneath the carpet the small people in the floor creep over electrical wires to the walls and down the burrows carved in the sagging insulation. In the dirt on the cellar floor they carve symbols and smear upon them the blood of mice and the milk of worms split lengthwise, still struggling. A flash of lightning through the glass block casts their baleful faces in relief in such a way that Vince jumped at the familiarity of the creatures, at the terrible knowledge that these things were depicted contrarily to any mythical indulgence, but are rather shown here in their correct attributes. Up through the ground and out into red moonlight their number roil in jubilee, a legion of malformed imps no two alike, forgotten sons of the earth, striking together the legs of crickets or squeezing the burps from frog-sacks as their column pitches drunkenly through its course. Tick! and crack! the revellers beat out arrhythmic syncopations, stick and stone on animal skull as they climb the hill to a flat rock balanced on a pyramidal base, each adorned with the occult symbols sacred to this howling congregation. An obsidian cane is stuck in the earth and set upright; three hideous nymphs grab strands of gut or skin and dance about the stick in a perversion of a maypole procession, ending not with a wrapped pole, but a braided strand of rope. Two wrap the end around the neck of the third while they all cackle. A shape on the flat rock emerges from the wrap of the night, a gnarled arm protrudes to snatch the stick up from the ground while the hung nymph opens her mouth to emit a
creak.
The sound, unmistakable, came from directly behind Vince. He whirled about to see the body of a man swinging languidly from the arm of a scaffold built out from the walkway. The body rotated and the crescent of a blackened face appeared beneath the lolling head. Vince cried out and fell back against the mural, crossing his arms in front of his face.
/>
‘No,’ he whimpered, ‘What did you do to yourself?’
He wiped tears on his sleeve and let his arms fall away.
There was no scaffold, no noose, no body.
Vince stood up and looked back across the studio. He was directly opposite the stairs leading to the platform; the door waited beneath him, under the walkway. He had come halfway around the panorama without realising it. Vince noticed a peculiar generality about the panorama as he gazed across the room. Blurring his eyes, he saw familiar shapes presented around the course of the work, unrecognisable from close range. Vince overcame the strong aversion not to look back at that horrid night celebration and matched the symbols on the stone altar (and on the cellar floor) with the larger shapes blended in with, or built up from the smaller subjects featured in the mural.
Vince didn’t understand; was their presence in the larger framework a ploy to demonstrate the efficacy of these . . . magic symbols? It’s just psychology, Vince assured himself. But the symbols have no intrinsic meaning—they should provoke no reaction in and of themselves. Then was their presence there to show the machinations of Schloesser’s psychological ploy—effectively, to make them work by convincing the viewer that they could? Or was the effect not meant to be noticed, designed instead to appeal directly to the subconscious, to hypnotise the viewer? That would explain the ‘immersion’ I’m experiencing, Vince thought. It’s almost . . . diabolical. Vince’s flailing mental gymnastics failed to console him. He didn’t believe in magic, but . . . if—if magic was possible then that meant Geoff had mastered the use of the symbols, and the knowledge necessary for that mastery could have come only from—
Black Horse and Other Strange Stories Page 3