“I’m so sorry,” he said as tears rolled down his cheek. The face was the same face he had seen, years ago, in that cold empty trunk, staring back, and he knew it had been waiting for him, all these years, watching with that one open eye.
He pulled the rest of Daniel’s small body from the wet canvas, that broken frame that was his doing, his creation, a result of a stupid prank and a lifetime of denial. He saw it all now, no longer dulled by the glass. Even that painted clock held his true name. It was not a roman numeral that stood at five o’clock but a V.
A ‘V’ for David.
The letters had not spelled his brother’s name, but rather his own. It was his signature. He was, after all, the artist. He had always been.
He felt movement in the study, behind him, and when he turned he saw them.
The boy from the painting, his brother’s rage made flesh, lugged that wooden chest with its leathery arm.
Yet David felt no fear.
“I just wanted to scare you,” he said to his brother’s frail body.
And the girl, his brother’s sorrow, no longer crying, but simply walking beside the boy with the hint of a smile on her warped face.
“I just wanted to scare you,” he said again to his brother.
And he turned around to face the two children.
They looked up at him. The boy’s arm distended from its elbow and the leathery tentacle separated from the old wooden trunk like an umbilical cord. Fingers formed from the protrusion as he turned to the girl and nodded.
The two children reached down, taking opposite corners of the old trunk. Beyond them, Ginger emerged from the hallway, her fur golden and lush, every bit as radiant as it had ever looked. She carried the rusty railroad spike between her teeth, wagging her tail the same way she had done when she had first learned to fetch the newspaper. She ran up to him, pushing between his legs in a figure eight, her old snail dance.
“I just wanted to scare him,” he said to himself.
The two children opened the trunk and a hiss of air escaped, as if it’d waited thirty years, hungering for this moment.
Inside lay darkness eternal. And just enough room for two.
David placed his brother’s body into the cold trunk where it settled into place, the final piece of puzzle lost for too long. Then he reached into his pocket and removed the lighter, staring at it. That lighter, it had cost Linda’s father his life, but it still had more work to do.
“Okay,” he said. Then, he kicked over the jug of gasoline and flicked the lighter.
The flame ignited, racing across the room in a crescent before zig-zagging out and into the hallway. The wallpaper, the couch, the desk and the bookshelf, danced beneath the orange and yellow flames, and he felt warmth all around him like the final rays of a summer sun.
Ginger brought the railroad spike to the boy and he bent down and took it from her and gave her a gentle pat on her head.
The two kids stared at David expectantly.
He bent over his brother’s body inside the trunk, touched its forehead and closed that single, sad open eye.
“I just wanted to scare you,” he said a final time to that frail, weak body of Daniel’s.
The eyes opened.
And within them there was no warmth. Cold hands grasped David’s wrist as a wicked smile spread across his brother’s face from within that small trunk.
“My turn,” said Daniel.
David felt himself pulled fiercely, a single tug that lifted him off his feet and spun the world sideways. He felt his brother’s embrace, a cold hug around him in the tightness and damp wood of the chest. He felt those dry lips against his ears, whispering: “Welcome home.”
And David screamed.
He screamed as the lid of the old trunk slammed closed.
Screamed as the boy drove the railroad spike through the latch that locked the trunk.
Screamed as the boy and girl dragged the trunk forward, across the floor, into the empty white canvas.
The painting shifted and rippled as they passed into it, and their colors spread out, merging back into their two dimensional places, that five foot by six foot prison. The images bled back into view: the clock, the bookshelf, the children, only they were no longer frowning. The girl was petting a dog, and the boy smiled as he held a bluejay in his hand. Between them, beneath that window and that open field, in that empty space that had once seemed unbalanced, now sat the old trunk, forever locked and quiet.
Fire licked at the edges of the painting, but the children made no motion, no protest, as the canvas began to curl and burn and the oils bubbled and cracked.
And should someone have been there to see that painting, they might have remarked it was rather peaceful. It was rather serene.
In an old room, two children framed an old trunk closed tight by a rail road spike, beneath an open window looking out upon a verdant field where a lush tree sat atop a distant hill, soft clouds above, backlit by an amaranthine glow.
The fire warped the images, and in that moment before it swallowed the painting, should someone have peered close enough, peered through that painted window, across those green fields lit by fireflies, should they have peered all the way out to that distant hill with its solitary tree in bloom beneath a twilight sky, had they peered close enough, they would have seen two figures, two silhouettes, two boys running hand in hand before the warmth of a summer sunset.
And had they seen those two boys running hand in hand they might have remarked that they felt, for a fleeting second, before the fire consumed the image, a sense of peace.
That all within that painting was balanced and right.
THE END
About the Author
ANDREW VAN WEY was born in Palo Alto, California, spent part of his childhood in New England, and currently lives abroad where he doubts his sanity on a daily basis.
When he’s not writing he’s probably hiking, playing video games, or sleeping with the light on. He considers gelato and pizza to be a perfectly acceptable meal, and shorts to be business-casual if paired with a scarf. He prefers his scotch with ice cubes.
He keeps a blog at andrewvanwey.com, and can also be bothered on Facebook or Twitter, but he probably should be writing.
Table of Contents
Title Page
FORSAKEN
Copyright Notice
PROLOGUE
My Brother’s Keeper
PART ONE
Mr. Glass
Back to School
Necromancy
The Reluctant Gardener
Anonymous
All American Supper
Incandescence
Two Funerals
Seed
Home Work
Wednesday
Almost Dawn
Child Care
Complications
Entente
Holes
Inversion
The Twelfth Student
Father & Son
Someplace Special
Plan B
Aftermath
After the Storm
PART TWO
Ghost in the Machine
Special Needs
Gates of Hell
A Small Delay
Creative Types
Monterey
Echoes
Mr. Bun
The Lost Coast
The Cat Lady
The Protege
Bleed-Through
Scrying the Nether
Hard Evidence
Tick Tock
Off Site
Melt Down
Season’s End
Denial
Public Spectacle
Interrogation
Legal Advice
The Key
Break Glass In Case of Emergency
Darkest Before Dawn
Confession
Last Call
PART THREE
Homecoming
Old Boy
The Open Door
Negative Space
My Brother’s Keeper
Here in Art, Denial
The Nether
Balance
About the Author
Forsaken - A Novel of Art, Evil, and Insanity Page 34