The Painted Darkness

by Brian Freeman

  The Princess slices at the monster with her sword; he deflects her blow with his massive arms. The sound is odd, though, like steel on steel instead of flesh.

  The boiler screams, but Henry barely hears. He continues to paint, his brush moving from the palette to the canvas so quickly his arm is a blur. Paint splashes on his clothes, the dirt floor, the wooden beams, the stone walls.

  Thump-thump-thump, cries the boiler.

  In Henry’s mind, streaks of colors circle the Princess, swirling and dancing like the fiery bubbles trailing her wherever she goes. She grunts and swings her sword and this time one of the monster’s arms goes flying in a splash of blood.

  The boiler screams.

  Henry feels an electrical current in the air. There’s heat pounding him like the hottest summer day.

  In Henry’s mind, the monster fights back, grabbing the Princess and throwing her across the dungeon, nearly knocking the little boy down. The boy stands frozen in shock, unable to help or run.

  In the cellar, one of the boiler’s pipes strikes Henry in the chest. He falls backwards, the breath ripped from his lungs, but he jumps right back to the canvas without opening his eyes and he continues his work without missing a beat.

  Thump-thump-thump.

  Using a mix of white and gray, Henry adds a wavy bubble of hard air around the Princess and the little boy on the canvas.

  The Princess charges again. The monster takes a swing at her, but the razor sharp claws simply break off when they connect with the protective bubble.

  The monster screams and so does the boiler.

  The colors swirl faster around the Princess, brighter and more vivid.

  The monster backs away from her, into a corner.

  Thump-thump-thump, cries the boiler.

  The Princess—still on fire and badly injured—shows her teeth through a fierce grin as she charges one last time, driving the sword into the moist belly of the beast.

  The monster and the boiler scream—and a second later, Henry is engulfed by the roar of an explosion; a wave of heat blows past him and up the cellar stairs.

  He opens his eyes. The boiler is shredded and the entire cellar is burning. The brightness of the fire hurts his eyes and the heat makes his skin throb. Yet the flames do not touch him; they’re held at bay by an invisible bubble surrounding Henry. The sight is like taking a peek through a portal into Hell.

  Henry feels a surge of triumph, but it is short-lived. The monster is dead, but the explosion damaged the line from the oil tank to the boiler. Black liquid is squirting on the stone walls.

  Henry’s eyes widen and he clutches his paintbrush tightly as he sprints up the stairs to the kitchen one last time. He continues out the door and he’s halfway to the garage when the house explodes in a flash of intense white light, knocking him off his feet. The noise is deafening and the entire world glows brightly like a star supernova and then quickly fades to black.

  THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST (11)

  H

  enry was sniffling and hiding under his bed when he heard the front door of the house open and close. The room had grown dark as the sun disappeared for the day and he was still wearing his yellow rain slicker. His clothing was soaked in sweat, his face was wet with tears. A puddle from the snow melting off his boots trickled across the hardwood floor. He sobbed until his eyes burned.

  The bedroom door opened and his father’s familiar work boots crossed the room, landing every step with a dull thud.

  His father’s pants were stained with grease and grime and bleach. He took a knee and then, after a brief moment, his weathered, callused hand reached under the bed. Henry grabbed onto the hand, not believing it was really there, but his father gently pulled him out from under the bed just the same.

  “What are you doing under there?” his father asked.

  “The monsters…I saw the monsters get you,” Henry whimpered before sobbing uncontrollably again.

  “Son, that’s silly. What do you mean?”

  Henry couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t even get the words to form.

  His father said: “It’ll be okay, Henry. Just start at the beginning and the rest will take care of itself.”

  While Henry’s father helped him out of his rain slicker and into some dry clothing, Henry told him everything he had seen and done, including the fall from the tree house, the herd of rabbits, the trip down the river, and the monsters in the boiler room of the school.

  Henry’s father held him and rocked him while he cried some more. His father said: “Well, Henry, it sounds like your imagination really got away from you today, didn’t it?”

  Henry only nodded, unable to believe none of what happened had been real. He had the cuts on his face from the fall, after all, and his heart ached with a deep pain.

  His father said, “When the weather gets a little nicer, we’ll go look at that tree house together, what do you say?”

  Henry nodded.

  “You okay?”

  Henry shook his head and blurted: “I was so scared of the monsters!”

  “Henry,” his father said, “the monsters don’t live in the dark corners waiting to pounce on us. They live deep in our heart. But we can fight them. I promise you, we can fight them and we can win. Why don’t you get a piece of paper and some crayons. I know something that’ll help you feel better.”

  Henry retrieved his paper and his crayons and he sat on the floor in the beam of moonlight coming through the window.

  “Okay, draw the clearing with the tree house,” his father instructed, standing next to him.

  Henry did as his father told him to the best of his ability, using his green and brown crayons.

  “Now, add the skeleton you told me about.”

  Henry hesitated. He didn’t want to think about the skeleton anymore.

  “It’s okay, trust me.”

  Henry didn’t have a white crayon, so he used yellow. The skeleton was sort of hanging off the tree, drawn on top of the branches.

  “Now, put a big red X over it.”

  Henry looked up at his father, who simply nodded at the paper.

  Again, Henry did as his father instructed, only instead of drawing an X, he crossed back and forth over the skeleton a dozen times with the red crayon.

  “Good! Use the yellow to add a nice happy sun.”

  Henry was already feeling better and he suddenly understood what his father was showing him: he could remove the bad and scary things from the pictures and replace them with something he liked better. Maybe he couldn’t make those changes in the real world, but he certainly could in his imagination. And if removing those bad things and adding the good things on paper made him feel better inside, that was okay, right?

  Henry’s father handed him another sheet of paper and this time Henry drew the frozen river at the moment the ice began to crack. He didn’t need his father’s guidance now that he understood the power of what he was doing.

  In fact, within minutes Henry didn’t even feel like he was sitting in his bedroom. He wasn’t seeing the paper and the crayons in the moonlight. Instead he was on the river again, hearing the ice cracking—and then fixing it. As he built this imaginary world around himself, he created a place where he didn’t fall through the ice or out of the tree house, where there were no scary birds in the trees and no monsters in the basement of the school.

  For the first time, Henry was able to cross between the imaginary worlds he created in the backyard and transfer them into the real world simply by drawing the images on the paper.

  Eventually his father slipped away and Henry continued to draw deep into the night. And as Henry worked, the words he had seen in the colorful darkness behind his eyes appeared in his mind again.

  I paint against the darkness, Henry thought.

  He liked the sound of that. Those words made him feel strong in a way he couldn’t describe. Those words opened doors within his mind; they set him free and they gave him the courage to face the darkest night. He was n
o longer afraid of the terrifying things he was drawing. After all, he could make them go away the moment they got too scary.

  I paint against the darkness.

  The monsters were simply shadows to be erased or drawn over, nothing more, nothing less.

  THE PRESENT (11)

  A Family Found

  H

  enry is numb, but gloved hands are

  shaking him. He rolls over in the snow and stares into the darkness and at first he sees nothing but a memory: Gray and blue sky, clouds gliding to the east. A tree towering above him. A hole in the floor of a dilapidated tree house. A skeleton wearing a yellow rain slicker and boots. A chain necklace, a tarnished silver crucifix.

  With his bruised and bloody hands, Henry touches inside his tattered shirt, feels the metal pressing on his chest. After all of these years, he still wears the necklace he found in the tree house when he was a boy. Even after he forgot where it came from, he has worn the necklace every day, touching it for comfort without knowing why.

  Then the darkness rushes into Henry’s field of vision before being pushed away by the dancing orange light engulfing him: the blazing inferno that was once his home.

  Out of the darkness above comes the snow, falling in waves.

  And then, finally, Sarah’s face appears. And little Dillon. His cheeks are red and round, his eyes wide. Henry’s wife and son are speaking, but he can’t yet hear the words. They’re both beautiful like angels.

  Henry closes his eyes and his imagination shows him what will happen next:

  He and his family huddling in the garage around a small fire, which they’ll start with the burning debris spread across their snowy lawn.

  His family watching the storm pound the countryside for the rest of the night while their home burns into the cellar.

  The fire department and the police arriving in the morning after the storm, when someone reports the thick black smoke.

  His family being driven from the property, never to return.

  THE PAINTED DARKNESS

  Their search for a new home where he’ll build a new studio…but this time, Henry will stay in control of his imagination, he won’t let the imaginary world trapped inside his mind control his real life. Not ever again.

  And as the coldness wraps around Henry, he smiles and he hugs his wife and his son— and he vows to never let them go, no matter what.

  THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST (12)

  W

  hen Henry’s mother came into his bedroom, it was long after midnight and Henry was drawing intensely in the dark. He was dressed in his pajamas and an unfamiliar silver crucifix dangled from his neck, nearly touching the floor as he crouched over his paper.

  “Henry! Are you okay?” his mother cried, throwing herself to her knees and hugging her son tightly. He barely flinched, just continued with his work.

  When his mother saw this, she grabbed his hand, breaking the crayon in his palm with a sharp snap. That shook Henry from his BRIAN JAMES FREEMAN

  waking dream, from the place he had gone while he was drawing, his imaginary world. “What’s wrong?” Henry asked when he saw the smeared mascara on his mother’s face and the fresh tears pouring from her eyes. He had never seen his mother like this in his entire life. She was always radiant and lovely in the way only a mother can be to her children.

  “Henry, where have you been?” she asked, wiping her eyes.

  Henry grew even more confused when the State Police officer stepped into the room and turned on the light. The light was blinding and somehow awful; Henry blinked and covered his face.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

  “Henry,” his mother said, wiping her eyes with one hand while holding on to her son’s arm with the other, as if to make sure he was truly real. “Ms. Winslow reported you missing this afternoon. We’ve been searching for you for hours!”

  She started sobbing and pulled him tight. Henry was stunned. He said: “What do you mean? Dad knew where I was.”

  Henry’s mother couldn’t stop crying and she didn’t respond.

  THE PAINTED DARKNESS

  “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

  “Son,” the State Trooper said, kneeling and stroking Henry’s hair, “I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your father died in an accident at the school today. I’m very sorry.”

  Henry shook his head. No, that wasn’t right. He struggled to free himself from his mother’s grip, but she wouldn’t let go. Henry started to cry and shake—not because the State Trooper said his father was dead, but because his mother wouldn’t loosen her grip, not even a little. Didn’t she understand? Henry could fix this, but he had to get to his paper and his crayons. He could make the bad things disappear if she’d just let him!

  “I paint against the darkness,” Henry said as he fought to pull himself free from his mother.

  But his mother kept holding Henry as tight as she could, as if she planned to never let him go again, and the State Trooper returned to the living room to give them some privacy while he called off the search for the missing boy.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  B

  rian James Freeman is the author of many short stories, essays, non-fiction, novellas, and novels. He is also the publisher of Lonely Road Books where he has worked with Stephen King, Mick Garris, Stewart O’Nan, and other acclaimed authors. Brian lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, two cats, and a German Shorthaired Pointer who is afraid of the cats. More books are on the way.

  AFTERWORD:

  DID I REALLY COMMIT “CAREER SUICIDE” BY GIVING THE PAINTED DARKNESSAWAY FOR FREE?

  W

  hen I told some friends I wanted to give this book away for free months before the publication of the hardcover, there was a wide variety of reactions, but one person was really quite blunt: “You’re committing career suicide if you do that!”

  Let’s hope not.

  Why would introducing my work to thousands of potential readers be career suicide? My friend’s fear was simple: if everyone could read the book for free, they wouldn’t buy the hardcover, leading to appalling sales numbers, which could become a reason for publishers to reject my books in the future.

  In the end, I decided to try this experiment anyway.

  Like most authors, I write because it’s something I enjoy doing and there are stories in my head that demand to be written…but without readers, a story is just words on the page.

  Finding readers is difficult, especially with all of the other entertainment options in the marketplace, and over the years publishers have told me they just don’t know how to sell my work. For example:

  My newest novel was called “too commercial” by every major literary imprint.

  The novel was also called “too literary” by every major commercial publisher.

  The novel was much too dark for a mainstream audience.

  The novel wasn’t dark enough for a genre audience.

  You get the idea.

  Essentially, none of the editors who read the manuscript felt they could find enough readers for the book. Fair enough. I certainly understand where they’re coming from. Buying a book to publish is a judgment call you make from your gut and your heart. Do you love this book enough to champion it into the marketplace? Once there, will there be enough readers to buy the book to justify the decision you made?

  Ultimately, what we enjoy reading is a matter of personal preference. What I love, you may hate. What you hate, I may love. That’s what makes discussing books (and short fiction—don’t forget the power of a good short story) so much fun.

  Which is why I’m going to admit something here that a writer should never, ever say anywhere near a publisher in this day and age where selling a ton of copies seems to matter more than anything:

  I have no idea if anyone really wants to read what I write.

  I mean, yes, there are readers I hear from on a regular basis, asking for more. (God bless them.) But maybe there really isn’t a big market for these stories I feel compelled to
put on paper. Maybe it’s a small market. Maybe it’s a medium-sized market. Maybe there’s no real market at all.

  So how exactly do I figure out how many readers there are for my particular brand of fiction?

  I’ve been intensely curious about that question for a few years now, and that’s why we’re giving The Painted Darkness away for free.

  After all, there are millions of readers in the world, lots of them enjoy “dark” stories, and everyone likes FREE stuff…so what better way to find the readers who might like my work than to give them a free book to sample?

  We think there are readers who will enjoy The Painted Darkness, and now there’s no excuse for them to wait to find out for sure. And hey, if they weren’t interested in the premise enough to read the book when it was free, they were never going to buy the hardcover anyway, right?

  We believe there will be three different possible reactions from readers who take the time to download this eBook:

  1) If you’ve liked what you read today, I hope you’ll consider ordering the hardcover for your collection or as a gift for another reader in your life, and be sure to sign-up for my free mailing list or follow me on one of the social networking websites for occasional updates on my work:

  http://www.brianjamesfreeman.com/ newsletter.html

  http://twitter.com/BrianFreeman

  http://www.facebook.com/ BrianJamesFreeman If you sign-up for my email newsletter, you’ll also receive another FREE eBook later this year. And hey, the list is free, I don’t send a lot of newsletters, so you really have nothing to lose, right?

  2) If you’re just happy having read The Painted Darkness for free and you don’t need a copy of the hardcover, that’s okay, too. It’s why we’re doing this, after all. Please consider using the links above to be notified about my future works. And like I said, I’ll be sending another free eBook to my newsletter subscribers later this year. 3) If this book wasn’t your cup of tea, thanks for stopping by and giving my work a fair shot. I appreciate you taking the time. Maybe we’ll meet again down the road.