“Are you sure it was dead?”
“Positive,” Linda whispered as her voice took on that somnolent drawl that blurred the consonants. “Now get some sleep, it’s almost dawn.”
Child Care
THE SCREAMING STARTED at exactly seven thirty-five in the morning. Dan knew this because he had just put the coffee pot back beneath the digital clock and thought to himself he needed to hurry. The fire had thrown his lesson plans for a loop and he needed to revise the remainder of the semester’s lessons. Then his daughter’s screams had erupted from upstairs, startling him into spilling his coffee on the newspaper.
He didn’t bother to clean up the coffee, as the screams were not the usual playful shrieks that had become like white noise to him. Instead they were piercing, loud and long, the kind parents reacted to out of instinct and he was halfway up the stairs by the time her lungs gave out. By the time he threw open the door to the kids’ bedroom the screams had resumed.
Jessica sat atop her bunk bed, still in her pajamas, mouth wide open and eyes clamped shut. Tommy stood half dressed, his Nintendo on the floor, covering his ears and shouting: “Shut up! Shut up!”
“Jessica, honey what is it!?” Dan shouted, running his hands over his daughter’s face, searching for signs of pain that could prompt such screams.
“Mister Bun! It’s Mister Bun! He hurt Mister Bun!”
“What?!” Dan shouted as Jessica pointed to the bottom of her bed where that old stuffed rabbit sat. The damage was immediately apparent. Two holes had replaced its button eyes. White stuffing hung in threads like loose optic cords.
“He hurt Mr. Bun,” she screamed again. “He took his eyes!”
“Honey, it’s okay, we’ll find them,” Dan answered and turned his attention to Tommy. “He hurt Mister Bun,” she had said and Dan knew what had happened.
“Thomas, did you do this?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head as his eyes darted up to his sister.
“Thomas, tell the truth.”
“Dad, I didn’t do it, I promise!” he whined, pointing to Jessica. “Maybe she did!”
Dan studied his son’s eyes. They were the eyes of a liar. Dan knew them well because they were his own eyes. How many times had he lied to Linda, to her face, to his children? All the seminars, the weekends away, late night dinners and scratches on his back. And now those same eyes stared back from a nine year old boy, reflecting his own lies like two little mirrors.
“I’m very disappointed in you Thomas.”
“I swear to God!”
“Give me your Nintendo.”
“Why?” he whined.
Dan put Mr. Bun back on his daughter’s bed, walked over, and reached for the Nintendo on the table. Seeing this, Tommy lunged for it, but Dan was quicker. He held it up while Tommy looked on with a mix of curiosity and horror.
“You can’t break your sister’s toys Thomas, you know that.”
And he snapped the Nintendo in half.
The glass behind his eyes vibrated white hot. The two halves of the Nintendo buckled and bent until the plastic gave way in a resonating pop and the system folded the wrong way. Just like the bird, only a little harder and not as messy. He dropped the two halves back on the table, eyes never leaving Tommy, whose mouth hung open in shock and betrayal.
“You... always blame me,” Tommy gasped, eyes welling up with liquid. “I hate you!”
“You’ll get over it.”
Tommy turned and ran to the bathroom, slamming the door shut so hard that a picture of his second grade soccer team fell off the shelf and shattered. Like father like son, Dan thought. Even down to the flair for destruction.
Tommy didn’t come down for breakfast and Linda spent twenty minutes just talking him into going to his soccer game. To Dan she had seemed less concerned with his lie than she had been with Dan’s handling of the matter, a fact she had told him after learning he had broken Tommy’s Christmas present.
“You could have just taken it away,” she had said. “Did that occur to you?”
It hadn’t, and in hindsight he regretted his actions, feeling as if they had belonged to someone else, someone less controlled. Nonetheless, he knew that if Linda had been there the worst that would have happened would have been a stern warning followed by a hug. Then, when she had left, Tommy would have provoked Jessica again for tattling. That had become the pattern these days. Provoke, apologize, wait, and repeat. Always pushing that line in the sand forward, testing the boundaries. All Dan had done was reset the line, but it wouldn’t be long before Tommy tried to move it again.
But he wasn’t thinking about that any more.
By noon he had put the fight out of his mind and was focused on the painting that sat at the end of the study. He had a few hours before he needed to pick up the prints at the university and he was determined to come up with some answers. Jessica was upstairs having a ‘tea party,’ which meant that he could focus on the painting which had been clawing into his thoughts since he woke up this morning, mocking him.
He ran his fingers along the back of the painting, feeling the edge of the frame and the canvas. Strange, he thought. The colors and composition of the image itself continued as if it had been painted on a flat surface and then affixed over the stretcher bars. The paint, as far as he could tell to the touch, was unvarnished. The layers felt thin and fresh beneath his fingers. He began to suspect that the painting was a recent creation, and if so, that eliminated any possibility of the artist being deceased, and with it any chance to claim a long lost discovery.
And the canvas itself, something felt odd about it. He had touched thousands of paintings, could have lost his job a dozen times over if museums had known his fingers had caressed their collections. It was an impulse he couldn’t ignore, no different than a chef tasting his own creation. Every time he touched the same paint that had been laid down by the artists he felt an instant connection, a bond, as if he were the reflection in a mirror and the artists were his true image.
He didn’t feel that with this painting.
Instead, the canvas and paint upon it was cold and empty; there was a void where there should have been a mirror and from that darkness no artist stared back. Yet everything felt familiar; an unreachable itch; a word on the tip of his tongue that retreated down his throat and sat uneasy in his gut, gnawing like a parasite. After years of study, countless paintings identified by mere smudges of oil and ink and obscure detail alone, this simple, anonymous painting mocked him. “Its got your name written on it,” Miguel had said and Dean Robert had laughed because he had been right, or at least, he would’ve been until tonight. And this, more than anything, embarrassed him: that something that should have taken mere hours to identify still sat incomplete after two days.
There was no signature, nothing hidden along the brown edges and rear frames, no secrets behind it. He felt like a student again. He gave up, stepping back, and when he turned his head away from that frustrating canvas, a shape attacked him. Two buttons floated, inches from his face, held on by thread to an inanimate form.
“Oh my,” he said, smiling.
“Did I scare you dad?” Jessica asked, lowering Mr. Bun, who had two buttons sewn to his face, one of which Dan recognized from an old blazer of his.
“No sweetie, you didn’t.”
“Mister Bun says I did. He says I scared you good.”
“Mister Bun has new eyes I see.”
She nodded, chewing on a finger, then reached out to touch the painting.
“Honey, dirty hands.”
She stopped, sniffled, and studied the painting.
“Whatchya doing?”
“Well,” he said. “I’m trying to find out who made this. See, paintings usually have a bit of space on the side or back where there’s no paint, right?”
“Why?”
“Because the canvas was pulled over the stretcher frame and the artist doesn’t usually paint all the sides and these folds and stuff.”
“Oh. Why not?” she asked.
“Because no one would see those parts of the painting.”
He reached and touched the seam on the side of her spotted sundress. “Like this,” he added.
“Oh,” she nodded and her finger returned to her mouth.
“What’s unusual is this one was painted everywhere. Front, back, all those little folds down here, see?” Dan tapped on a loose piece of canvas in the lower left corner that was painted and stapled.
“See?” he asked again, tapping it with the pencil.
Jessica didn’t see. She stood before the painting, that same expression of confusion locked on her face as she chewed her finger. A trickle of blood ran down from the corner of her mouth and onto the floor.
“Jessica?!” he gasped.
She stood there, eyes staring off at something a thousand miles away. Dan could hear scraping, and as the blood began to trickle down her chin he realized that sound was tooth on bone. He grabbed her, pulled her hand out of her mouth. She blinked several times.
“Oh. Why not?” she asked, smiling with crimson teeth.
The crying had begun, as it often did with children, not at the injury itself but the discovery that the injury had drawn blood. The screams came in waves. First, at the sight of the blood, then as cold water rinsed the wound, and again when Dan disinfected it. The screams subsided while they waited in the pediatrics unit of the medical clinic, placated by the lollipop Dan had gotten from the reception desk. The crying returned when Dr. Lee produced to a needle anesthetize the wound and persisted after the final stitch, up until Linda arrived and scooped her up in her arms.
“She did a number on her finger,” Dr. Lee said. “Had she pressed any harder, she might’ve caused nerve damage.”
Doctors, Dan thought, they always spoke so optimistically around parents. One look at Linda, who appeared on the verge of hysteria herself, and he understood this false confidence wasn’t for him, but for her. He wondered how Dr. Lee delivered news to terminal children, and if he did it with a smile.
“What concerns me isn’t necessarily the injury. It’ll heal and, most likely, won’t scar.”
“I don’t understand why she did that?” Linda asked, and Dan realized she was looking not at the doctor but at him for the answer. Or perhaps, for the cause.
“That’s what concerns me. Children learn tactile sensation early. Babies grab fingers, toddlers push themselves off the ground, fall over, we’ve all seen it. Now some children develop an under-sensitivity to physical contact. They fall over and skin their knee but they don’t realize the warning signs or the injuries. Hence, child proof scissors. They might be overly physical, too rough with something fragile. Their muscles are still calibrating. Some kids even hurt themselves, accidentally of course. Has she displayed such prior behavior?”
Linda shook her head. “No, no she’s been a normal child in every--”
“Actually,” Dan cut her off. “There was an incident today. Earlier.”
Linda looked at him, first with confusion, then epiphany. “Mister Bun,” she said.
“Her doll,” Dan cut her off again. “Its eyes were pulled out. I discovered it this morning. She said our son did it, I thought he did, but now I’m not so sure.”
The doctor clicked his pen several times and studied Jessica as she swung her feet from the chair and whispered to her princess doll. Dan felt a small spike grow from the back of his head and push his eyes forward. He rubbed his temple.
“Could she have done that as well?” Linda asked, head turning between Dan and the doctor as if refereeing a tennis game.
“It’s possible,” said the doctor as he clicked his pen again. “Maybe she’s externalizing some stress she feels, a change perhaps. You said she just started school?”
“On Monday,” Linda said. “It hasn’t gone as smooth as we’d hoped. Should we be worried?”
You’re already worried, or were you asking permission to continue? Dan thought as the pressure grew inside his head. His words were becoming sharp, his patience short. The headache was going to be a whopper, he thought.
“Jessica, honey?” Linda asked in a soft tone. “Did you hurt Mister Bun?”
Jessica kept her gaze on her swinging feet. The question hung in the air, unanswered.
“Jessica,” Dan barked. “Your mother’s asking you a question.”
Her feet stopped swinging. “I don’t remember,” she said in a whispered voice laced with shame. Then, her feet resumed their pendulum arc. Back and forth.
“Well, I wouldn’t be too concerned,” said the doctor as his pen went clickity-clack again and Dan felt another bolt behind his eyes. That pen, he realized, that sound brought on the discomfort circling behind his sinuses like a low pressure storm. A whopper of a headache indeed. He thought of the Imitrex, those pink little pizza slices inside the medicine cabinet.
Break glass in case of emergency, Mr. Glass mumbled.
“The important thing,” the doctor continued, “is to keep an eye out for any unusual behavior or signs. If they occur, we can run some tests, but I don’t think it’ll come to that.”
He flipped to another page in the chart. “How’re you doing Dan? How’s the old noggin’ these days?”
“I’m fine,” Dan said, as an aura blossomed around the doctor like a gilded halo, and he wanted to leave, soon, or risk losing his lunch.
“Any problems with the medication?”
Dan forced out a smile. “It does the trick.”
“Good,” the doctor said and closed the chart. “If it’s doing the job then I’m doing mine.”
He clicked his pen a final time then put it down. Dan felt the headache, and the aura that came with it, slither back into silence somewhere behind his eyes.
Complications
COLD LIGHT FLICKERED off Sajid’s glasses, coming from the computer screen as he scrolled through the library of photos on Dan’s memory card. He shook his head a second time, coming to the end of the thumbnails. Dan saw it now, this ‘problem’ Sajid had emailed him about.
“What time did you say these were taken professor?”
“Around seven,” Dan said. “Maybe later.”
Sajid cycled to another digital photo of the anonymous painting. There it was again. Another blur, same as the others, this time blooming out from the edge of the painting like a glowing spiderweb. Each and every photo displayed a similar result, all 37 of them.
“Can you remove it?” Dan asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Like use a filter or something?”
Sajid laughed. “This isn’t CSI. I can’t hit ‘enhance’ and fix it. Besides, there’s too much light, washes out the details. See that?” He stopped on one photo. The glow took up the half the painting, casting a shadow across it.
“What is that?” Dan asked.
“Glare from the sun maybe? Reflection from the flash? A smudge? Heck, could be the CCD in your camera going out. Who knows?”
“That’s impossible, it’s only a few months old. Besides, I didn’t use the flash.”
“Well, something washed out the image, like a sun shaft or something.”
“These were taken at night,” Dan said slowly, as if to a child.
“That’s funny,” Sajid said, zooming in a washed out close up of the painted field.
“What is?”
“Well, I was just thinking that you’re taking a picture of a painted sunset, but it’s like you’re taking a picture into the sun.” Sajid scrolled back to the thumbnails, every one displaying that same defect. Useless, all of them. “Do you still want print outs?”
“No,” Dan said. “I’ll reshoot.”
“You can check out some of our cameras. We’ve got lights too, those’ll help. Some of the photos had focus problems. Like this one,” Sajid said, clicking another thumbnail. It was a close up that little girl in the yellow dress. “See, her face is blurred, but her hand isn’t.”
Dan studied the picture. Sajid was
right. The girl’s face was out of focus, like some high speed object caught mid motion, but her body and arm were rendered in perfect clarity.
“Did you use a tripod?” Sajid asked.
“No,” Dan answered with a spike of frustration, knowing that Sajid would blame the focus issues on an unsteady hand. He sighed and reached for an equipment requisition form.
His smartphone vibrated for the eighth time in thirty minutes. He didn’t need to check the message to know who it was. The first two had come five minutes apart and read: ‘we need 2 talk’ which was followed by: ‘R u there???’
He hated text messages in general and hated hers even more, how she reduced three letter words to simple letters, as if spelling the word ‘are’ took Herculean effort. As the messages had grown more frequent he simply stopped checking them altogether, switching his phone to vibrate for fear of irritating that glass that chewed on the grey matter behind his eyes.
He made the mistake of turning on his computer to look up a phone number of an artist he was trying to contact, a possible lead, and his instant messenger automatically loaded. Before he could close the application a new message bounced on his screen with a cheerful pling, reading: u @ the office? He ignored her message, knowing that he could say the janitor had turned his computer on. He didn’t keep office hours on Thursday.
He began by querying contact information for the artist R.L. Emerson, whose gothic surrealism bore a passing resemblance to the unknown painting sitting at home. He had completed half his query when the instant messenger popped up again and read: heLLo?
The thing about computers Dan hated the most were the constant surprises. Sure, they made sending messages and shopping easier, and it was nice to know there was a whole subculture of fetishists out there far kinkier than he’d ever dared to be. But these things weren’t important. What was important was that technology worked for him, not against him. And today, it seemed determined to do the latter.
Forsaken - A Novel of Art, Evil, and Insanity Page 9