Then the door slammed shut behind Henry and he was left standing alone in the hallway. Only he wasn’t alone. The coldness in his bones told him so.
THE PRESENT (9)
Preparing to Battle the Beast
H
enry is standing in the snow at the bottom of the rose trellis, wrapping his bleeding hands and feet with pieces of his shredded t-shirt when he hears the phone ringing in the kitchen. The sound is far away, but he recognizes the shrill noise in the gusting winter wind. He and Sarah have wanted to replace the antique phone since the first time it rang in their presence, the harsh buzzing scaring them both. Like a lot of things, they just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Henry peers through the kitchen window. There’s no monster to be seen, but the table is smashed and the phone is on the floor, nearly ripped from the wall. Cabinets are open, pots and pans are strewn about, and plates and glasses are broken into jagged shards.
Henry wants to ignore the phone, but there’s only one person who might be calling and he needs to speak with her if he’s going to die today, a possibility he’s coming to accept now that he’s bleeding and shivering and the cold is moving up his spine into his brain.
He hurries to the back door, which is locked, and he smashes a panel of frost-coated glass with his elbow. The pain is faster and sharper than he expected. He reaches through the broken glass and unlocks the deadbolt, pushes the door open with a shove.
He carefully crosses the kitchen, watching for any sign of whatever made this mess. The house is quiet, with the exception of the phone. He tries to avoid the broken glass and shards of china—the remains of a wedding gift from his in-laws—on the linoleum and he grimaces in pain as each unavoidable piece becomes lodged into his foot.
Henry lifts the receiver and answers with a quick: “Hello? Hello?”
“Henry?” the crackling voice on the line replies. “Henry, I can barely hear you!”
“Sarah?”
“Henry, if you can hear me, we’re at the end of the driveway. You didn’t answer the phone, I’ve been calling since last night, so I tried to make it home…”
The line goes to static, then clears.
“…we’re stuck and the battery died about an hour ago. We’re going to try for the house…”
The line goes to static.
“…build a nice warm fire, okay? Henry? Can you hear me, Henry? I love you, okay? I want you to….”
And then the line dies.
“Sarah, no!” Henry yells. He slams the phone and tries to dial, but there’s no dial tone.
Henry fully understands what he heard: his wife and his little boy are a mile away, trapped out in the storm, and they’re going to try to travel on foot to the house. That’s insane! It’s freezing, but is it too cold to spend the night in the van? Henry doesn’t know, but Sarah must think so or she wouldn’t endanger Dillon.
Henry has to help his wife and son, he has to find a way…but then he hears another wet thump from the cellar…and then there’s a deep, bitter laugh, too, as if the monster senses more food is coming.
Henry understands this truth in his gut. He drops the phone and runs back into the snowy night, focused on his original destination: the garage. Now he has a different reason for going there. If he can accept that monsters are real, all he has to do is ask himself one question: how do you destroy a monster? The answer is simple and he feels almost giddy. The answer is obvious now that he’s thought of it.
Again the ice and snow is soothing on Henry’s battered and bruised and bloody feet. The chill crawling through his bones is numbing him to the pain, but he isn’t sure that’s a good thing. Once he arrives at the garage door, Henry breaks yet another window. His keys are on the hook by the kitchen door, but he never thought of them and he has no time to waste.
Inside the garage, the walls offer him shelter from the weather, although the air is brisk. His little Honda sits by the garage door, alone in the middle of the empty space. There’s no clutter here, unlike the cellar. In the far corner is the riding lawnmower and the rakes and the red gas can. There are also old cans of house paint and rough paintbrushes and a bag full of torn rags.
Henry grabs the cleanest rag he can find and he gently brushes the glass and broken china off his feet. Next he removes the rose thorns hidden under the blood on his flesh, but some are pushed so deep it’ll take tweezers to get them. He doesn’t have that kind of time.
Henry wraps his feet with the paint rags and he hobbles to his riding lawnmower. There, in the corner, are his work boots, which he had kicked off here the previous fall so he wouldn’t track mud into the house. He slips the boots on and ties the laces tight, grunting as the thorns he missed are pushed deeper into his foot.
Next Henry grabs a deck mop from the rack next to the lawn mower. He snaps open the lid on the red container of gasoline and pours the liquid over the mop’s strands of thick yarn.
And then Henry is back out the door and into the storm.
THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST (10)
T
he bloody rabbit tracks covered the school’s lime colored linoleum floor, from one wall to the other. Henry took a few tentative steps further into the hallway where the eerie emptiness greeted him with each step. The sound of his boots echoed between the metal lockers. The rows of lights high above his head hummed.
Henry was shivering, but he had forgotten the cold; curiosity pushed him to follow the tracks. He moved slowly at first, still expecting to be caught by a teacher or maybe even the principal, but he increased his pace when it became clear he was alone. The classrooms were empty and those dozens and dozens of empty desks, along with the previous day’s lessons on the chalkboards, were vaguely unsettling, as if everyone had vanished in the middle of class and would never return.
The rabbit tracks led Henry past the dark cafeteria and into the band hallway until they disappeared again at a closed metal door marked MAINTENANCE ONLY. Henry knew this door. His father had brought him here once. This door was how you got to the basement and all of the boilers with their girl names: Hillary, Matilda, Gertrude, Amelia. This was where his father drained the fat bears.
Henry pushed on the door and it swung open. The tracks continued down the concrete steps, but the space was narrow and the tracks smudged together into a river of blood, dripping from step to step. Henry stood at the top of the stairs, gazing into the dim room below. Then came the sound:
Thump-thump-thump.
Henry heard this call of the boilers, crisp and clear at first—but then the noise was miles away and his vision was spinning. The stairs twisted and turned, the dim light bulbs flickered and flashed, and he heard the crackle of running water off in the distance.
Thump-thump-thump.
Henry stood at the top of the stairs, one hand clutching the slim metal railing, the other hand cold against the wall, and he closed his eyes. The tremendous darkness behind his eyelids began to rotate and he could see colors, the same kind of colors that sometimes came to him when he was playing games in the backyard. Bright white stars burst to life. His fingers tightened on the railing, but he didn’t step backwards, he didn’t sit. He couldn’t do anything but stand there.
Four words appeared in the darkness, followed by his name, which glowed bright red within the star-spotted void. The stars spun clockwise and the words twisted and rotated and changed places until they settled into their final positions.
The words were: Henry paints against the darkness.
When Henry opened his eyes, the stairs had returned to normal. The walls were no longer damp and the light in the room below was steady. Yet the sound of the running water hadn’t gone away. In fact, it was louder, somehow clearer, although he couldn’t see it.
There was another change, too. The bloody rabbit tracks had vanished. Henry looked around, confused, but there was no sign the rabbits had ever been in the school.
The sound of the water grew louder, and Henry made his way to the bottom of the steps. This was the break ro
om for the maintenance employees. There were seven metal lockers, two wooden benches, a duct-taped couch, a yellowed refrigerator, and an old television tuned to a golf tournament. There were no windows and the floor looked grimy in the buzzing light.
On the far side of the room was a door labeled DANGER: BOILERS. That was where Henry’s father drained the fat bears.
Henry approached the door. The sound of the running water was even louder now.
“Stupid fat bear, c’mon, you bitch!” his father cried from behind the door.
Henry stopped. He had never heard his father speak like this, with this much anger. Henry pulled the door open a crack and he was even more shocked by what he saw.
One of the boilers had sprung a leak. Water was spraying like a fire hose against the concrete walls, which were old and dark like a dungeon.
Henry’s father was fighting with the emergency shutoff value, twisting a gigantic wrench with all his might. His arms were bulging and a vein was popping out of his forehead. His overalls and work boots were soaked in the dirty water, which was slowly filling the room. The large drain in the middle of the floor couldn’t maintain the pace. The water churned around his father, who was fighting desperately to stop the flow.
Then Henry saw the monsters for the first time, lurking in the shadows. They rose from the water, their scaly hunchbacks ascending like a shark’s fin. Their scarred faces came next, followed by twisted arms and curled hands with razor-sharp claws. The monsters scowled at Henry as they edged closer to his father…but he couldn’t believe they were real. This had to be another one of his imaginary worlds, another one of his games, just like he plays in the backyard or like the skeleton in the tree house and the rabbits with the red eyes—but his imaginary games never terrified him like this.
“Daddy?” Henry said, nervously.
His father looked up in surprise at the sound of his son’s voice and in that moment one of the monsters grabbed the giant wrench, twisting it with an inhuman force, snapping the emergency shutoff value in half.
The boiler hissed and released its pentup pressure directly onto Henry’s father, shredding his shirt and instantly scalding him like he had been dropped into a fryer. His skin peeled off in layers, bloody and horrible. He dropped to his knees, his face melting.
“Daddy!” Henry screamed.
The stream of boiling hot water slowed to a trickle and the ear-piercing hiss ended. There was a deathly silence unlike any Henry had ever experienced in his life. Then the monsters pounced on his father, digging into his exposed flesh with their fangs, sending a wave of blood across the room. The chewing sound was horrible—and within seconds the cooked flesh was ripped from his father’s bones.
As the monsters fed, Henry’s father fell forward into the water, a pool of blood spreading from his body.
Henry gazed at the red eyes of the monsters as they devoured the thick strands of meat— and then he ran from the basement screaming and he didn’t stop running or screaming until he found his way home where he would hide under his bed until the darkness came.
THE PRESENT (10)
Against the Darkness
H
enry pushes the door open, and again there is no sign of whatever has trashed the house. He steps into the kitchen. This time the broken glass and china crunch under his work boots. He stops at the sink and opens the cabinets one more time, retrieving the matches Sarah purchased to light their Christmas candles.
When Henry arrives at the bottom of the cellar stairs, he lights one of the matches and tosses it at the end of the mop. The strands of cloth explode into flames. The sight is impressive.
Henry uses the flaming mop to cut a fiery path through the darkness. The monster—whatever it might be—may not have been afraid to knock the flashlight out of his hands, but Henry is betting fire will be a different story. Fire has always defeated monsters in fairy tales.
There are now three graves in the dirt floor, two large, one small. Beyond them is the boiler and the mutilated remains of the rats… but the boiler no longer appears to be made entirely of metal and asbestos. Although the middle is still firmly attached to the floor, the twisting pipes have transformed into scaly arms—dozens of them, reaching and twisting and pulling. The boiler’s metal door on the fat belly grins at Henry, showing a frightening hint of the raging fire inside.
The monster says: “Hello, Henry.” Henry gasps as the memories come pouring back: the woods that snowy day when he was five, the tree house, the river, his father’s apparent death, and most importantly, his father’s return that evening, alive and well with not a mark on him. Henry had locked these memories into the furthest corner of his mind, behind a wall of stone he didn’t realize was there.
In this moment, as Henry faces another monster, he understands those events were all true—not necessarily real, but true. Everything may not have happened exactly the way he thought it was happening—his imagination was a wild place—but there was an underlying truth to what he saw. Which means…
“None of this is real,” Henry whispers.
“Silly little boy. You accepted me as real when you were still wetting the bed. You can’t back out now.”
Henry considers this and says: “I don’t want this to be real.”
“Henry, I didn’t call myself into this world. That beautifully twisted mind of yours did. You called me, you keep me. That’s the way life works.”
“Then go away. I’ll make you go away.”
One of the monster’s scaly arms rises and points at the flaming mop, which looks much less impressive in the light of the boiler’s flaming belly. The monster says: “You think a little fire will stop me from eating your family? I’m a fat bear with my own fire in my belly, you silly little boy.”
The boiler shivers as the asbestos continues the transformation into sharp scales. The top of the boiler bulges into a meaty hunchback, the flesh writhing and twitching. The metal door grins at Henry, showing off newlygrown fangs.
Henry realizes the mistake he has made. Fire isn’t going to do anything to stop this creature. It loves fire and heat. It lives for the fire.
Henry takes a step backwards, throws the flaming mop in desperation, and then he sprints up the stairs again. The boiler swallows the mop in one big gulp.
“You can run from me, Henry,” the monster calls, “but I’ll always find you. I’ll always be with you, no matter how far or how fast you run! You called me, remember?”
Henry hears this but he doesn’t really hear it. He’s bounding up the steps two at a time and through the first floor, not even seeing the smashed furniture and broken plaster and all the damage the boiler inflicted upon the house with those dreadful arms.
Once in the attic, Henry slams the door and falls to his knees. His heart is pounding and tears are dotting his face. He holds his head with his hands, pulling at his hair, and he studies what remains of his studio.
Paintings are shredded—including the Princess in the Dungeon series he never liked anyway—and paint is spilled everywhere. There are splashes of red on the walls, white on the ceiling, blue on the floor, green on the window.
A single blank canvas remains untouched in the middle of the room.
Just start at the beginning, Henry’s father whispers in his mind, and the rest will take care of itself.
“The beginning? What does that mean?”
Just start at the beginning.
“This afternoon when I couldn’t paint?”
Further back.
Henry closes his eyes. “The Princess in the Dungeon?”
Further.
Henry pulls his hair. The pain is sharp and his mind flashes on an image of a tree house and the coldness of the snow and the ice on the river and….
“The day when I was five?”
Yes! is the thunderous reply.
And finally Henry understands. The answer was there in his father’s advice all along. He grabs a blank canvas and his paint palette and he shoves a brush into hi
s pocket. He runs downstairs toward the cellar, again taking the steps two at a time, almost tripping on his own feet in his hurry.
He doesn’t slow, he doesn’t let himself think. Thinking gets in the way; thinking will create doubts, build walls. He had the right idea the first time—he just took the wrong weapon with him.
I paint against the darkness, Henry thinks as he navigates his way through the trashed first floor to the kitchen and the cellar steps.
He slips on the broken glass in the kitchen, slams into the wall next to the cellar door. His leg twists awkwardly, but he stays on his feet. He hobbles down the narrow wooden steps and then he trips and falls onto the dirt cellar floor. The canvas flies from his hands.
The cellar is dark and damp, except for the light from the fire in the boiler’s belly whenever the monster speaks.
“Decided to give yourself to me?” the boiler asks, showing its new metal fangs again.
Henry ignores the question, getting to his feet. He retrieves the canvas and leans it against the mound of dirt next to the three graves. He pulls the paintbrush from his pocket and jabs it through the paint on his palette without even looking.
“What are you doing?” the monster demands.
I paint against the darkness, Henry thinks, but he doesn’t answer. He closes his eyes and applies the paint to the canvas just like when he works in the dark in the middle of the night. He doesn’t need to see what he’s doing. The image in his mind is larger than life.
The Princess appears, holding her sword, putting herself between the monster and the little boy in the dungeon. Henry sees for the first time that he is the child.
The monster, lurking in the corner of the scene, is hunched over, drool dripping from sharp fangs. The monster growls and breathes fire at the Princess. Her flowing gown, which is already tattered and torn, bursts into flames, but she protects the little boy with her body.
Then, releasing a fierce battle cry, she charges at the monster, a trail of flames flowing behind her like beads of water in the air.
The Painted Darkness Page 6