Forsaken - A Novel of Art, Evil, and Insanity

by Andrew van Wey

  He wiped away a tear and turned to the final page in her notebook. The picture was simple, more so than any of the others she had made. It was a crayon drawing of the old wooden clock, half finished. She had drawn the form, the face, even a few of the numbers starting at twelve. It wasn’t the picture that held his attention for those quiet moments, but what sat underneath the picture.

  Jessica’s phonics workbook lay beneath the sketchbook, open to an activity page. A child’s cryptogram was filled in, boxes of numbers representing letters that formed a simple sentence:

  T h e F a t C a t A t e t h e R a t.

  Dan felt the glass hum to life. “There is, at some level, a narrative happening,” he had told Dean Robert as they stood before the painting half a lifetime ago. “As if the artist is challenging the viewer to--”

  Solve it, said the glass.

  He opened his wallet, fishing out that piece paper he’d found on Old Mabel’s body. It read:

  XII:4I:1II:9III:18

  IV:14VI:5VII:8VIII:20

  V is the key to the door.

  He turned back to Jessica’s phonics book, to that cryptogram, easy enough for a child to solve. The numbers each sat next to a letter, beginning with A:1, B:2, C:3, and on and on, 26 in all.

  Was it really that easy? he thought.

  Easier, said Mr. Glass. Always has been.

  He began at the top of the clock, finding Twelve o’clock and the number next to it: 4. He counted in is head. A, B, C...

  He wrote D next to twelve. The fourth letter of the alphabet.

  1, that was easy. It was the first letter, A.

  “G, H, I,” he said, counting the ninth letter and filling in I at 2 o’clock.

  R went in at three o’clock. N, the fourteenth letter filled in four o’clock. Five o’clock troubled him because it was the missing letter, the key to the door as the note said. He skipped it and went to six o’clock, a five, E.

  Seven o’clock, H, the eighth letter.

  Eight o’clock, Q, R, S...

  T, he thought. Twenty.

  It’s a start, whispered Mr. Glass.

  He looked at what he’d written around the clock, starting from twelve and moving clockwise. D, A, I, R, N, where it skipped the five and began at six, E, H, T, finishing at nine o’clock.

  D-A-I-R-N-E-H-T.

  It made no sense. There was no such word, or if there was it existed in a language he didn’t know. Frustration washed over him at this endeavor, this insane idea he had followed into another dead end.

  Easy enough for a child to solve, Mr. Glass laughed.

  “Not now,” Dan mumbled, staring at that jumble of letters. There was something in them, just as there had been on the card that came with the painting. Yes, the letters were right, it was their order that was wrong.

  Bingo, whispered the glass as Dan rearranged the letters on the paper.

  R-I-N-E-H-E-A-R-T.

  His name. Rineheart.

  He had used the E twice, but it felt right. After all, clocks didn’t have one hand, they had two. Both of these hands could use the same numbers, just as he could use the same letters again. If he used the N and the A twice, he could even spell his name.

  D-A-N.

  “Dan Rineheart,” he said.

  No, your real name, Mr. Glass said.

  “I hate that name,” Dan answered.

  You’re scared of it, Mr. Glass corrected.

  “I’m not scared of it,” he answered.

  You’ve always been scared of it, the glass whispered. You’ve always been chicken.

  “Never,” Dan said, eyeing that empty spot between four and six o’clock. V is the key to the door, the note had said.

  Your real name, Mr. Glass asked again.

  Dan’s finger scribbled a single letter in over that roman numeral at five o’clock. A single L.

  D-A-N-I-E-L.

  “Daniel Rineheart,” he answered, counting up the letters. There were fifteen of them. Fifteen letters in his name.

  “Three times five,” he said to Mr. Glass.

  Those two hands on the clock, the minute and the hour hand that pointed at five fifty-five, had, after all, been right all along.

  “Not quite,” said a voice he hadn’t heard in thirty years.

  Break Glass In Case of Emergency

  THE MIGRAINE WAS instant and engulfing, a sea of light. Within it, there was a distinct snap, a tangible noise, the feeling of an ultrasonic pulse. As the auras receded, the lines of his daughters drawing, of that clock, of the motel room, and by extension even the world around him, all vibrated like strings on a violin playing a single sharp note. And in that sharp note, a feeling grew, a small spacial distortion, a brief moment of tumbling, and a distant voice saying: “What have you done?”

  Then it was gone. And perhaps, he thought, it had never happened.

  The noise had been a knock at the door. They were coming home and his time to run, the dream of the new life and the new name would have to wait until morning. He stood up and walked to the door as laughter beyond it echoed out and the knocking resumed.

  “Did you kids have fun?” he asked as he opened the door.

  But there was no one there. Instead, a giggle of laughter answered him, and a glimpse of a yellow dress, flapping around the corner and into the stairwell. At the foot of the door sat a dull object, no larger than two fingers.

  It was a rusty railroad spike.

  At the end of the empty hallway, past the amber track lighting and the exit sign where the yellow dress had vanished into, the lights began flickering.

  A sliver of light grew in a vertical line, up from the floor as the elevator rose. Then, the light within flickered and faded and the elevator doors opened with a pleasant ding. Inside, lay darkness. And something stirring. A small, moist form spilled out into the hallway. A tentacle of skin stretched behind it, connected to an old wooden trunk.

  The track lighting flickered and dimmed. Creaking wood and rattling metal followed behind the shuffling, shambling form of that wretched boy. A cackle from the shadow as the shape took another step toward the light, brown overalls wet and glistening.

  “One... two... three,” he whispered in a voice that seemed to penetrate into Dan’s skull and rattle the glass inside it. His pinhole eyes glimmered in the darkness.

  Closer to Dan, another patch of track lighting buzzed, flickered, and dimmed. Then, the shape collapsed into the ground and reemerged from the new shadow, connected by the darkness. The wood and metal rumbled and clattered as the chest was pulled up through the darkness and clattered onto the rug behind it.

  “Four... five... six,” cackled the distorted shape, rattling the glass like an approaching train. Inside the darkness, the boy, that evil fucking kid, was looking at him through dark eyes. His own little army of the dead, coming for him step by step. Like that game of hide and seek long ago, he knew the only way out, was in.

  He slammed the door shut and slid the latch across it but he knew if would do no good. The thing in the hallway, that wretched child that spoke with that old voice, it could span shadows like a snake in a hole, and if the room was dark enough, it would enter.

  More clattering came from the window. The billboard outside flickered and dimmed, darkening the room save for the bedside lamps. Bone rubbed against glass. That blue jay, wingless bones and dirty beak, thrashed about on the sill, smearing brown filth and decay across the glass. Cicada’s hummed from within the walls, and fireflies lit up the air like motes of dust.

  Tick-tock tick-tock went the digital alarm clock, and from far away a dog yelped in pain.

  “Seven... eight... nine,” laughed that boy’s voice. On the other side of the door the light flickered and died. A bedside lamp buzzed and grew dim. The shadow reached beneath the door.

  No way out, he thought. Only further in. The bathroom: the final hiding spot.

  The lamp died as he raced towards the bathroom door, casting a final, panicked look back at the madness in that
room. The walls dissolved like wet paint. The fibers of the rug bent and swayed like a dry field. That blue bird slammed itself against the window and squawked. A rattling child-shape rose from beneath the sheets on the bed, metal clattering behind it.

  Gasping, he threw himself into the bathroom and slammed the door. The fan hummed as light filled the small, tiled room. Four white walls, a mirror, and a shower with a vinyl curtain. This would be his final stand. There would be no south, no new life with no new name. There would be only this crummy bathroom, the migraine splitting the glass in two, and the madness banging at the door.

  His mind raced and his eyes caught something. A black bag and a zipper. Linda’s emergency kit. It had sat in their downstairs bathroom, refilled every six months or so with ointments and Band-Aids and.... his Imitrex. Those migraine pills. Break glass in case of emergency, he had always told himself, and tonight was the mother of all emergencies.

  He tore into the medicine bag, Bactine and gauze and scissors all clattering to the floor, and then there it was, a little pink triangle, his Imitrex. She had brought it. A single wrapped pill sat next to eleven empty holes in the glimmering foil and plastic. His heart leapt as he fumbled for that final pill, pushing it through the foil.

  The door rattled, the mirror shimmered, and his fingers, fat and clumsy and filled with fear, slipped on the foil. He pushed too hard. The pink triangle, his little piece of pizza, slid across the counter, clattered twice in the sink, then disappeared into the drain.

  “No no no no no oh please no!” he screamed as his fingers dug into the drain stopper, ripping it free. He scoured the muck and hair, but there was nothing, no pink pill caught in the stopper. It was gone, dissolving somewhere in the belly of the plumbing.

  He cried out, turning the empty plastic and foil over in his hands, searching for something, a piece of a pill, dusty, crumbs, anything to make the door stop shaking and the glass stop breaking deep in his brain.

  Then, the foil wrapper shimmered. The black lettering glistened in the dim light. The words bled in and out of focus, and for a brief second he felt that same ultrasonic pop he’d heard earlier before the boy arrived. A feeling, far away and remembered, that something small had shifted and changed.

  No, not changed, Mr. Glass said. Never been.

  “What... the fuck?” Dan mumbled.

  The back of the pill packet read: RISPERIDONE 4mg.

  It was wrong. The missing pill holes were egg shaped indentations, a few coated with green dusting. His pills, they were never green, and never oval shaped. The Imitrex, they were pink triangles, his little pizza slices that came in a dosage of 25mg. Those pills were not his. And yet, they were familiar, as if he had seen them once in a dream.

  Water, cold and sobering. He slapped water on his face, staring at his own reflection in the mirror. That face of his, distant and distorted, unfamiliar.

  “What do you want?!” he screamed to the mirror as the lights flickered and a shadow grew outside the door.

  “What do you want?!” he screamed again, but this time his reflection did not scream back. As he stood there, staring slack jawed, he saw that there was no reflection, there was no Dan staring back from the other side of the glass.

  There was only the shadow.

  What I’ve always wanted, answered Mr. Glass through a lipless mouth. To hear you suffer. To hear you scream.

  Another snap as the world tilted sideways. Hours ago, had Dan thought he would be talking to his own void, begging it, he would have called himself mad. But now, in that cold room, the shadow of the dark child looming outside the door, and his own reflection wiped out and replaced by darkness, he did the only thing he could think of.

  He screamed and thrust his fist into the mirror.

  The first blow shook the entire mirror from top to bottom. His knuckles bent inward as a sheering pain shot up his arm. A crack, a small spiderweb spotted with blood, grew from where his fist connected. Dan clutched his hand, and the shadow that spoke in Mr. Glass’ voice clutched its own. As he winced he knew, deep within that dark reflection, it was laughing, mocking his own pain.

  What beautiful things our lies have made, the glass laughed.

  The reflected world beyond the shadow shimmered and melted away, and in it lay a sunset landscape. A small hill, a single tree, and the twilight sun of a vast sky.

  Dan screamed again at that taunting image, his fist connecting with the mirror a second time. Cracks shot out like fireworks across the glass. Blood blossomed from his knuckles. And behind the searing pain the shadow’s hand lowered, fingers wrapped in bandages.

  But it was no longer a shadow reflected beyond the glass, but himself, his small scrawny form from three decades ago, hands swollen and red, eyes filled with contempt. That reflected child, that distorted memory, mocked his suffering with a cackle, its own movements mirroring his. There then there was no shadow, no distant landscape behind it, but only a boy of ten named Daniel Rineheart.

  And at this image the glass behind his eyes burned white hot, a supernova, a tick-tocking clock waiting decades to chime. His fists balled in tight stones of rage, and as he raised them that boy he once was raised his own bandaged hands.

  “Ready or not,” Mr. Glass said.

  “Here I come,” Dan answered.

  Their fists swung through the air and connected in the mirror. A sudden crack echoed out in Dan’s ears as white hot pain shot up his entire arm, and his balled fist bent in on itself. Blood spattered like twisted clock hands along the mirror and cracks shot out to every corner.

  Then the shards fell, piece by piece, cracking like a thousand icicles in a sudden thaw, taking the image with it, and leaving only the dented wood backing. A single, final shard of mirror clung to the frame like a reflective tooth, loose and ready to fall out. In that reflection sat a boy of thirteen in an infinite white room.

  The pain in his hand was, for a brief second, distant and far and irrelevant. Then it came, crashing like a bomb into his nervous system, and he fell backwards, away from that shattered mirror and that tainted memory and felt a slick blanket envelope him.

  The light over the sink gave a final blink and all grew dark.

  Darkest Before Dawn

  HE AWOKE WITH a spasm, his chest heavy, skin dotted with sweat that left a salty taste in the cool breeze of the autumn air. The last words of his nightmare hung in the darkness of his bedroom. They had been screams for a boy forgotten long ago, echoing backward through time, unanswered for decades. But now, in the cool air, they echoed no more.

  He rubbed his forehead, feeling that piece of glass. The wounds of that day had faded in time, but the glass remained, warm and sharp to the touch. That souvenir from the shadow, still whispering and heralding the fog of a migraine after all these years. His old visitor, Mr. Glass. But tonight, it seemed Mr. Glass was drifting back to sleep, and that was a good thing.

  Dan looked around the bedroom. In his dream he had been locked in a room, trapped by ghosts and mocked by memories. Chased by twisted children and resurrected birds. Haunted by an image of paint and canvas. And in that room he had called out for a help but no one had answered.

  “Mmm... bad dream?”

  The voice came from his left side, beneath the slick sheets of the cold bed. It was kind and loving, and it anchored him back to reality, filling in the corners of the darkness and sending the sharp edges of the dream curling back like rotted wallpaper.

  It was the voice of his wife, Linda. Her warm hand found his among the shadows of the sheets.

  “Yeah, bad dream...” he answered with a soft chuckle.

  As he studied the darkness he remembered: this was real. The room, the woman at his side, the late September breeze through the open window, all of it: real.

  This was his life. He was thirty-nine years old, married, and he was home.

  “Want to talk about it?" she mumbled.

  “Huh?”

  “Your dream. You were shouting.”

  “Was I?” />
  “Mmm-hmm. Kept saying your brother’s name.”

  “No, I...” Dan thought about it, then: “I dreamt I cheated on you.”

  A small laugh from her side of the bed. “Sounds like a nightmare.”

  “It was,” he answered, and he found himself laughing at the thought. “With a grad student. It was awful. She went missing, and there was...”

  “There was what?”

  “A painting,” he said, trying to remember what had been in it. Something old and forgotten. Something that moved through the house at night. “It was... following me.”

  “Come here,” she said, rolling over and running her fingers down his chest. Those warm fingers, soft, always soft to the touch. Always calming. “You’re safe now.”

  He felt those fingers trace down his chest, felt her smile in the darkness. Ten years of marriage and he knew these things, knew the sounds her body made, even in the shadows. Her body pressed up to his, her fingers sliding further beneath the sheets.

  “Babe... what are you doing?” he asked.

  “Shh...” she said, her lips finding his in a kiss, and he felt her smile.

  “It’s early...” he said.

  “It’s never too early,” she replied, kissing him deeper, feeling her dry lips against his as her fingers slid down the curve of his hip as her body pushed against his.

  There, in his wife’s arms, all felt safe and wonderful. Her tenderness washed away the vestiges of that fear that had awoken him. Her lips and fingers soothed his skin. She pulled him close, her hands on his hips, feet wrapping around his. Her lips kissed his neck and from the corners of his eyes he saw a shape in the doorway as the clock downstairs chimed five times.

  “Tommy?” Dan called to the shadow as the two adults paused, frozen against each other in the darkness.

  “That you buddy?” he asked, and the boy’s shape scratched its head in the doorway. In an instant the adults decoupled. Dan reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on.