Fan Fiction ❯ The Painter ❯ The Painter ( Chapter 1 )

The Painter

by P.H. Wise

Jack sank into the cushions of his sofa, and the hypodermic needle clattered to the bare wooden floor of the apartment. The glow of the television cast queer shadows across the room, lending an air of menace to the stack of unfinished paintings that lay in the corner, next to the set of paints and the broken easel that seemed to be more supported by tape now than by its frame.

It was a small, two-room apartment, with one room that doubled as a kitchen and living room, and the other that served as a meager bedroom. The bathroom was little more than a small closet, holding a toilet, a shower, and little else.

The living room was bare, with only an old sofa, a television (which sat on the bare wooden floor), and a large bookshelf, the bottom half of which housed such titles as Illiad, Oddessey, Divine Comedy, Anaenid, The Republic, Metamorpheses, Ethics, and The Art of Love, albeit covered in dust and untouched since the day of their purchase. The top half housed Jack's DVD collection, which was mostly pornographic videos, with the occasional `blockbuster hit' scattered here and there.

The needle rolled across the floor and settled in a small knot in the wood,

its contents sloshing back and forth for several long seconds before finally coming to rest.

There would be no insulin shot for him today. He faded slowly into unconsciousness.

The paramedics came for him, and he was taken to the hospital, but he had no awareness of this. I had no awareness of this. But in the hour when dreams speak truly, I found myself in a strange time and place. I had fallen into the deep water, and I understood nothing.

Green flowed towards me like the tide, and purple, and red, and beauty, and tree, and water, and many other things besides. Everything I had ever known swirled round me in a mad tempest of shape and form. They were each familiar and yet not. I looked upon green and realized that I had never seen green before. Water looked like that. Felt like that. I looked upon beauty and all I had ever called beautiful was as straw. And through it all, a song, a haunting melody, flowing from the deepest depths to the highest heights. Now ebbing, now flowing, now rising, now falling. I clenched my eyes shut and held my hands to my ears. Beauty pierced me like a sword, and I screamed.

The images and shapes, perhaps for my sake, became understandable before my eyes, and I stood in a vast green country. The mists of dawn curled gently over the surface of the shining lake, and through the trees all around, and over the rolling hills. Nothing here was unfamiliar. The lake was a lake, and the hills were hills, and the trees were trees, and they were yet unlike their earthly cousins; more awful, more divine. The colours of the sunrise struck me blind. I must have stood for hours.

A broken staircase (if staircase is the right word) made of logs... really, it was more like a cross between a staircase and a rope ladder… it stretched upwards as far as I could see. "Climb," said the voice of my guide. I had not known him before that moment, but of course I had a guide. How else would I find my way around this place? I climbed.

Upwards and upwards, climbing the broken staircase, ascending endlessly upwards. Sometimes I would fall, and barely catch myself on a hanging rope. Sometimes the ropes were attatched to nothing, and being grasped, came loose, and fell. Many times I came close to my death, and many times I was saved at the last moment by the strong hands of my guide.

When I reached the top at last, I stood on the shore of the lake once again. Before me was a wooden cross. It was bloodstained, and on it was carved names beyond count. Some were familiar, some were not, but all were saints, and I knew that I would do as they had done. A small plaque lay at the foot of the cross, on which was written:

Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,
mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað.

I didn't understand the words. A sharp pain stabbed out from my forearms. I began to roll up my sleeves to see what it could be, and was shocked to find that a giant, ugly, deformed hornet had been somehow fused to the skin of my arm. It buzzed angrily, its insect-legs twitching madly. With a flash, it separated from my arm and flew away. The pain was still there. I rolled up my sleeve further, and found another hornet, larger than the last. It too separated and flew away. This happened again and again, and with each separation, the pain increased. The thought of stopping never occurred to me.

Finally, I reached the last hornet, and as it separated from my arm, I grew angry. I struck it as hard as I could. This only enraged it. Buzzing furiously, it flew towards me with incredible speed, and slammed into my throat. Pain thundered through my body, and I fell. Down , spinning through the air, the world whirled around me, and I hit the water with a tremendous splash.

It was my guide who pulled me out. I must have looked like a drowned rat. He didn't say a word, but I could clearly see the sadness in his eyes.

"What? What is it?" I asked.

He pointed to my throat, and I felt an uncomfortable squirming sensation. I looked down at my reflection on the surface of the lake, and saw that the hornet was fused now with the flesh of my throat. I vomited noisily.

A haunting cry brought me back to the here and now. I looked, and I saw a great crowd of things for which words cannot suffice.

"What in the world…?"

"Come away," said my guide. "There is more that you must see."

"What are they?"

"Come away."

"But what are they?" I asked, pointing to those incomprehensible Things in the distance. "Why won't you tell me?"

"You're not ready for that yet," my guide replied.

I frowned. "I think I am. I want to go meet them."

"You aren't ready," he insisted, and his voice grew cold. "If you went to them now, you would lose your mind. Come away."

I looked longingly at what I did not, could not understand. I glanced at my guide. What did he know? He lunged to stop me as I darted past, and my coat tore free in his hands, but the rest of me went sprinting towards the Things that lay at the border of the green country. They had begun to move away, and seeing this my sprint became a mad dash. "WAIT!" I cried.

And then one of them turned and looked at me. Its antediluvian eyes met with mine. I don't remember stopping. I don't remember time passing. The stars whirled overhead, and the sun hid her face. The music that had once delighted me now filled me with a horrible quivering terror. There came a mad cacophony of warbled, mindless noise. The pounding of horrible drums, and the mad piping of blasphemous flutes from places outside the ordered universe, where nameless Things gnaw hungrily in chaos amid pounding and piping and hellish dancing. Blind, voiceless, tenebrous, and mindless.

The night sky became as black as ink as every star faded. Only the moon remained, and he became as blood. The lake began to boil, and the reek of it filled the country-side. I then beheld all manner of nightmarish Things. There came a creature that seemed a bizarre cross between a scorpion and a swarm of bees, and yet all one creature. Also came a thing which held no definite shape, or beginning, or ending; one could tell where it was and where it was not, but the line between the two could not be discerned. The night came flapping in on vast, membranous wings. There came the things that filled Lovecraft's darkest dreams. Things that were not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor vampire bats, nor decomposed human beings, but things which cannot and must not be remembered. Things came which no sound eye could ever wholly grasp, nor any sound mind wholly remember. I tried to scream, but no sound passed my throat.

In that moment, as I stood before the nightmare-tide of the incomprehensible, I understood. What was, what is, what will never be again. A brilliant flame, snuffed out in an instant and gone forever. A flash in the dark; here and then gone. Beauty is born. Beauty grows. Beauty blossoms. Beauty fades. Beauty dies. Beauty lies still in the earth. Beauty rots. Beauty is food for the worms. Who can stand against the march of time? Who can call back from the abyss a moment that has passed?

I was seized by cold, bound by frost in icy fetters. I was transfixed beneath the whirling sky as the music waxed in beauty and in terror, and the world grew bright around me. A pillar of ice arose beneath me, lifting me ever upwards. Terrible whiteness overwhelmed me. And not an empty whiteness, but a whiteness full of things too wonderful for words. I had come into those realms where joy is eternal, to which Beatrice had led that poet long ago.

I looked upon my life, a failure on all accounts. I saw my care-laden body, my paintings, pathetic attempts at self-expression that they were. I beheld the whole course of history, from beginning to end, and from end to new beginning. "Groves blossom, towns become lovely, meadows beautiful, the world hastens on." I saw these things, and I loved them. From the lowliest to the greatest, I loved them. I saw all of the men and women who had ever lived, and I loved them, and it hurt. I saw the hatred, the violence, the horror, the death, and the injustice that they had poured out on one another, and it pierced me to the core.

And then I looked up, and saw, for an instant, the face of Him from whence this love came. Words fail. Memory fails. Imagination fails. Knowledge fails. Understanding fails. The incomprehensible fails. Reason fails. Life fails. Death fails. But these three things are eternal: Faith, Hope, and Love. And the greatest of these is Love.

Jack awoke in a cold hospital bed, surrounded by faces that would remain caring for as long as he could pay his bills.
"How do you feel?" asked a pretty young nurse. Her name was Mary. It had been a long day, and she was tired. They were all tired.

She had seen Jack in the video-store buying pornos the other day, and wanted to be done with him as soon as possible. He hadn't even had the decency to blush, but had met her gaze with a challenging look, as if to say, `who are you to judge me?'

That kind of attitude infuriated her.

"I saw Him…" he whispered.

Mary quirked an eyebrow. "Saw who?"

Jack fell silent for a long moment, and her interest stirred.

At length, he shrugged. "Him," he said, and wonder filled his voice.

Mary shook her head and sighed. What a waste of time this was. "Get some rest, Mr. Manning," she said.

Rest. That sounded good to Jack just then.