The Red “The Art”

I tried to work around it. All day that day I tried to look anywhere but there. I knew that it was a bad idea, or at least that it was non starter. What exactly did I expect to find there? Did I really believe that her parents would still be around, or that they would see me and be willing to talk?

They didn't know me, and I didn't know them. Our only point of contact was a person I never met face to face. I never even spoken to her, and you only ever mentioned her a few times. I am sure if things we know now were available back then, that it wouldn't have turned out like it did.

If we knew what we knew now, maybe we would have done things differently.

Or maybe not.

Definitely not.

If what I saw is true.

I went today to a house I had never been. There was a pull of knowing that seemed to draw me to the right place without me even having to think about it. I wandered, looking from house to house, the ones with vines and the others that have bars on the windows. There are apartments and there are places where small bits of plywood were able to be seen.

You never described her home. But once I saw the house, the exterior cast in pale yellow, a FOR SALE sign on the front lawn, some part of me knew I was in the correct place.

I knocked on the door, and at first I heard nothing from the residents inside. As I waited I looked inside the front bay window into a living room that seemed too organized and structured for anyone's good. The furniture and the decor were all bare and empty, vapid bits and bobs, absent of any edge whatsoever. Dulled gray walls, accentuated with black bookshelves and appliances. The TV was on, but to what channel I could not tell.

It was static.

The only thing that gave the room any color, save the color coming form the light outside, was a painting on the wall, one of a beach at sunset. It was an abstraction, but it was impossible to fail to understand to whom the house belonged. It was only another minute before someone out of sight answered the door.

I had come to see The Artist. I came to see Max.

The handle twisted, and the door opened, a dulled figure looking on at me. Her hair was a mess, and there was a smell that arrived at my nose the moment she opened the door; the kind that lingers in your thoughts when you wish to imagine something else.

I told her that I had been a friend of her daughter. I was going to tell her that I knew you, and that I had come to find you. I didn't want to give away that I knew anything about her daughter's disappearance. My ignorance maybe would make her more open, taking pity when the news hit me.

As it turned out I needn’t have bothered.

She opened the door wide and let me inside before I even fully explained.

She said the her name was Mary, that she was alone after her husband left to go to the store a few days before. I tried not to pry into it, not wanting to upset her. Her breathing was terrible and ragged, and her eyes were red from sleepless nights. I tried to comment on the painting, but she cut me off with a look, pointing up the stairs.

“She is waiting for you.”

First door on the right.

It took all that I had not to run up the stairs. My heart was begging, demanding that when I swung open that door that I would see you waiting there. I wished this not because it made sense but because anything else seemed cruel and sick.

The door swung open without me touching it.

And your were not there.

Instead there was a thing of red, scarlet dripping as the forms that was supposed to look like teeth fell away as it started to scream. There were eyes in sockets, but not eyes. Just the shape of them. Looked at me. It reached for me, but I managed to step back. I went to rush downstairs, but I heard something that made me stop, even though I wish I had started running.

“When...we...dream...,” it said.

“When...we...sink...” they said.

“When...we...dream...” it responded.

“When...we...sink...” they replied.

I turned around.

There were many of them now.

I ran down the stairs at last, and did not wait for them to follow.

As I raced out the door, I heard a series of large forms slam against it, less like bodies and more like a mass. Her mother was on the porch as I went to run away, and she called back to me. It took all the will I had to walk up to her.

She had a shaky cigarette in her mouth and a canvas in her left hand. As she looked at me, the red of the sun caused the sleep to depart from her eyes.

“Max...didn't know...I still smoked,” she said breathlessly.

“Now I am done,' she said as she put out the cigarette on the edge of the painting.

I looked at her in trepidation, waiting for the forms on the other side of the door to burst through and engulf us both. Silently she offered up the canvas to me, and I took it without looking away from her face, transfixed upon the look she exuded.

It was numbness.

She wouldn't say anything else, and did not respond as I watched her head back to the front door. I quickly put distance between us, and I watched as she turned the handle. She opened the door, the forms on the other side hovering over her like a wave refusing to break. She looked back for only a moment before stepping through the threshold. At first I saw her there, and then her body was swallowed by blood.

I stood there in silence, watching as the quick squeak of fear was cut and lost.

Then the door was slowly closed, as the sounds of the outside returned.

I looked down at the painting, and I looked at the date.

It was of a beach, the shore caked with bloody red ice, the sky and the sun bathed in red, as the sea the color of oil swirled and buckled. Had I not been there, I would have never understood the significance.

It was dated September 3rd of last year.

If the date is to be believed.

Is there any will in any of this

Or am I just about to awake from a dream?

As I was driving home, I saw the creature from the hospital, the bean-nighe, looking up from the frozen creek running under and through the street. The creature sometimes is said to be a victim, someone who died in childbirth and was cursed into this role.

It is a harbinger, one that washes the bloody linens and clothing of those who are going to die.

I did not recognize what the cloth was.

I am almost positive that it was skin.

Wherever you are.

Please wait for me.