“So, it is still open…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, go on. You were saying something happened?”

  “I was chasing this fool dog and he’s ‘bout to go hightailin’ further down the road to go splashing around in the millpond when those cruisers came racing by. Thank the Lord I managed to grab him by the dang collar ‘fore he got out on the road. I was worried they’d run us over. Funny thing though, with all them lights flashin’ I could see straight to the honky-tonk parking and I swear there’s one car of theirs already there. Detectives’ sedan, you know? Couldn’a been much help for whatever went down there though. I walked closer and watched ‘em pulling enough of those black bags out to fill a few pews at church, yeah? Horrible, just horrible. Before I could even get one word out to ‘em, one of those little junior deputy-types told me to go home. Can you believe that? No goddamn wonder everyone hates the motherfucking police these days. Incompetent assholes!”

  Roger nods. His house becomes a magnet—pulling him toward the quiet security it’s provided for years.

  “Gotta go…” he mutters.

  As Roger plunges back into the abyss, the Widow Brandon calls after him. “Well, bye, then!”

  Her throaty chuckle, a cheap amateur-hour Mae West, gets overwhelmed by her barking dog. Both sounds fade into background noise and then dissipate to nothing at all. Darkness smothers sound and narrows vision. For most of the long walk back, Roger focuses on the basics. One foot in front of the other, trying to stay in a straight line while traversing the rough terrain of the driveway. Walking down it once was bad enough, the trip back is pure hell.

  Except sometimes, there is light. Sometimes, when Roger glances to the right, to the side closest to the trees, the quiet, pale stranger’s face returns. It watches him from the forest.

  At first, he ignores its presence. Some instinct reinforced by years of living in the middle of nowhere tells him, If something bad’s gonna happen to ya, then it’d already have happened. He’s determined to leave the stranger alone, to let it keep pace with him from between the trees.

  When his truck is in sight and his return trek’s almost ended, Roger grows bolder, more daring. He steps off the gravel and heads for the trees. He doesn’t call for the stranger. He pretends to let them be, and walks with his head up and his eyes clear. Like there’s something else in the woods that’s grabbed his attention, something other than the strange white peering out from the trees. It’s a terrible performance he gives, so Roger’s not surprised when his efforts prove fruitless.

  When his foot crosses the tree line and his hands reach for where he thinks the stranger’s hands should be, there’s no one there.

  Like a thin film of smoke dispersed by a whisper.

  Roger finds the house as he left it. Quiet and dark.

  Circling the house, checking for the bone-white stranger hidden somewhere on the grounds, Roger scoffs at the black-out curtains hanging in his grandson’s windows. He believes it’s dark enough, without needing to help things along.

  Inside, Clint’s black door exists as an endless abyss against the plain, powder-colored walls.

  Standing before it, Roger again imagines the darkness has crept into the house behind him and gained more than a toehold. The old man doesn’t knock or call out and wait for a response from within. His hand closes around the cool metal of the doorknob and twists.

  He pushes the door open.

  Dim light from the hallway shines into the otherwise darkened room.

  Clint stands in the doorway. Staring ahead. In stasis. Like Roger’s peeled open a cocoon to find a caterpillar catatonic, mid-transformation.

  Roger’s hand trembles. The spots on his knuckles dance. Then, he slaps the boy’s cheek. One swift, decisive strike, before the old man’s arm falls to his side.

  Already, the splotchy red blob of a handprint is forming on his grandson’s face. A mark imprinted, tomato-red against pale skin.

  Roger pulls the door closed. He won’t check if Clint’s okay, won’t check if he’s weeping like his daddy, or if the young man’s even moved at all.

  It’s enough to pull away with the skin across his hand tight and tingling, pain and confusion burning inside.

  Roger will wait until the boy’s ready to talk.

  He’ll wait as long as it takes.

  Richie never talked to his old man about their differing creative pursuits. He never let himself get engaged in conversations about the melodies on his electric guitar. Never asked questions about the gruesome, slimy, painted canvases his old man used to create and ship off to the publishers in New York City. Didn’t seem to give a good goddamn when those same horrific images Roger painted came back shrunk down and fitted with foil-embossed titles or peekaboo cutaways revealing grinning skulls, sharpened silver knife blades, and bloody-mouthed werebeasts. If his son read any of the books his old man had a hand in creating, Roger never saw any of the evidence.

  The sole time Richie ever shared his art with Roger, without obfuscation or embarrassment, was when he’d finished with Alma. The scene inside the bedroom, produced to a score of howling guitar feedback, represented the young man’s masterpiece and he’d beamed at his father as he finally had the opportunity to share his work with an audience who might appreciate the craft and artistry behind it. Richie left his guitar plugged in, resting against the amp with the speaker volume turned to its max setting. The raging static flooded Roger’s ears until he detected the voices beneath those relentless pulses.

  No, not voices. One voice. A droning chant pulling everything to it like the tides toward and away from the shoreline.

  “What have you done?” he asked.

  “I made this for you, Dad. Made it for Clint too. I call it my Moon Man Sonata.” He reached down and plucked one of his mother’s strings. The sound echoed throughout the house, pressing forward into an endless night.

  The day’s wait isn’t so bad.

  Roger stays inside, making sure all the doors stay closed. He pushes aside the shades and peers down the long driveway, but no one comes.

  Shadows appear around mid-day and grow longer, stronger under his watchful eye.

  Roger listens to the radio. Local newsreaders offer breathless updates about the “Honky-Tonk Massacre.”

  They read victims’ names, working overtime to ID bodies after the summer camp incident. They want to give their viewers the impression that they’ve learned something, that they’ve grown.

  Two detectives. A vengeful father who’d promised—promised—his wife he’d stay away from the outskirts of town. Strung-out junkies and winos with nowhere to go except to stumble into death’s embrace. Some crackpot calls in the on-air tip line, babbling about how “the Moon Man’s returned, after all these years,” but they cut him off and apologize for the interruption.

  Roger sits at the kitchen table with emptied shoeboxes and pulled-apart photo albums. He’s curated a gallery of images on one side of the tabletop. Pictures of his grandson. Smiles, hugs, kisses. Showing off his newest toys with a lopsided grin or pointing to cuts and scrapes with watery eyes and wrinkled lips mid-tremble.

  With the last photograph, Roger holds it up for closer inspection. A younger Clint sits at the same kitchen table holding the remnants of a PB&J in his tiny hands. Cherry jam’s smeared across one side of the boy’s face.

  Like Roger’s red handprint.

  Like blood.

  On the other side of the table: every knife or bladed implement that he could find in the house. All butter knives, the butcher’s knife, the bread knife, a hacksaw, the set of steak knives saved for special occasions, even pieces of plastic cutlery saved from long-ago trips into town for Chinese take-out. Each blade is laid out side-by-side, like misshapen rows of teeth. Some straight, some curved, some with jagged sides. He’s even got out pocket knives and hatchets. A machete used for clearing brush.

  Roger’s checked, again and again, updating his mental catalog. He’s ready to sit back, to breathe. Until he remembers…his X-Acto knife in the studio upstairs.

  The chair’s creak from his weight shift is drowned out by the click of a black door opening down the hallway.

  Clint’s door.

  The timing’s perfect. Lights go out, extending the darkness painted on the boy’s door to everywhere and everything inside their home. Roger waits, keeping his hands close.

  One breath in, one breath out, then repeat. Until a pale visage disrupts the black.

  The face from the woods.

  Roger knows this face. He’s worn this face. He’s used this face when necessary. It’s the face he created, the face Richie re-created as well, and now Clint’s having his turn.

  It’s a face designed to keep secrets. It’s a face that is plain and unspoiled, demanding nothing and asking so little in return for the use of its likeness. Like a blank sheet of paper, a melody waiting for its tempo, or a piece of wood, it’s nothing more than raw material…a tool used for creating a multimedia masterpiece linked in blood and shared across generations of the Grimsby line.

  For us, there simply is no separating the art from the artists.

  “Come out here, boy,” Roger says, tapping his finger against the tabletop between the old photos and knives—a nexus of possibility.

  “Come out,” he repeats. “I want to show you how to do this right, so you won’t get caught. I tried to show your daddy…but he didn’t want to learn. Thought because he made music that his old man, the painter, couldn’t help him or offer insights on the art. Your daddy had the talent, but not the discipline. His art was raw, lacking direction. I let him go too long without saying a word. No ‘this is good’ or ‘this is bad’ or nothing like it. Looking back now, I understand why he did what he did. But I can’t condone it. Couldn’t then, can’t now. He hurt your grandma. Killed her. Probably did the same for your mama, too. Always had a hard time keeping his story straight about what happened to her before y’all came to live with us. I watched him, watching you. You’d squish Play-Doh in between your fingers, but the way you worked it after… You made this face. You know the one. If it wasn’t for the musky, salty, wheat smell, you’d swear it was real. Your daddy didn’t like that. I believe he would’ve hurt you too.”

  Roger chokes back a sob, strangling it in his throat before he continues. “Dammit. He just didn’t get it. Didn’t understand the art’s meant for building something, all of us, together. Putting him down was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. But it had to happen, so the art could continue…so your contribution to it could develop. I saw it then, but I didn’t accept it until what happened at your summer camp.”

  Creation, destruction…the canvas we’re given in life, it’s the same in the beginning and at the end. A blank, pale white surface on which hopes, dreams, nightmares, and fears are given shape.

  He doesn’t share the last part. Some lessons can’t be passed along from one artist to the next, from family member to family member. Those insights come from experience alone. They come with getting hands dirty, brainstorming, testing methods and materials until you find the perfect combination, something that brings what’s inside your head the closest to reality. In short, it’s the creative process in all its bloody detail.

  Having said his piece, Roger watches as the pale, silent stranger gathers the knives, taking the tools needed to perfect the art, and then retreats behind the black-painted bedroom door. Rogers knows that he won’t be the one to open that door after it closes again. He won’t peek inside. As long as he never checks, he won’t have to confirm if the stranger’s no stranger at all but the boy he loves, the boy who loves him.

  But he does bend down and pick up the X-Acto knife from the floor, rubbing a finger across the blade. He moves from silver to crimson stain and back again. Then, he stands back to study the door with the words cut through the wood. Splintered white disrupts the black of a so-called “Permanent Midnight.” Words wait for the elder Grimsby.

  T EAC H M E

  The murky darkness inside the house reminds Roger of the impenetrable cold black waters of the millpond. Strange how all those years, all those disappearances from the honky-tonk and the surrounding area, and no one’s ever dragged the pond.

  It’s so long ago now, even the small-town folks obsessing over every detail of their small-town lives don’t remember those original honky-tonk disappearances. Without bodies, without something to show, what’s even the point? They’ve moved on to the next tragedy, the next sanitized crisis pre-packaged for consumption.

  But Roger’s always known someone is watching, peering over his shoulders and the shoulders of those who came after, always trying to see what they’re creating. Encouraging them to keep going, to never stop—to do more, better.

  It’s the moon. The lumpen satellite circling the Earth and reflecting light from the sun back onto the planet. The ancient space rock hanging in the night sky and watching. Each phase, a different face, a different flattened expression writ large.

  Each one so quiet, so white.

  IMAGO EXPULSIO

  (The Red Animal of Our Blood)

  J.A.W. McCarthy

  I’m standing in front of the fireplace when the painting begins to vomit.

  It starts with a bubble on her lips, wet motion in a mouth about to pop. Her because she is a young woman—hair to hips, arms crossed over bare breasts, eyes closed and head slightly tilted back in a moment that might be the advent of slumber or surrender—captured in Baroque admiration on the three by two-and-a-half foot canvas perched above my fireplace.

  Finally. This is how she speaks to me, after all these years.

  The bubble pops, her lips peeling back and jaw releasing into a gaping yawn. She speaks from that torn-open mouth, long-dried oils crackling and corroding the same way celluloid burns. Black, to yellow, to hot orange. Edges curling, a speckle of holes like pustules, joining and spreading into a cascade that pours over the eight-inch buck knife displayed below it, laps at the mantle, the hearth, my feet too damn close and too damn transfixed to move. If I didn’t know better—if I had let time strangle belief—I would blame the paint, something about years of shitty apartments infested with humidity and condensation and mold causing this combustion.

  She makes little sound. The canvas never splits, its weave still obscured by layers of an ever-changing mind and assurance and time as underpainting. Thick liquid bubbling, sizzling to the eye only. I get a whiff of wet asphalt, cedar—how it smells when it rains here. The vomit, settled between knick-knacks and mortared bricks and my feet, turns back to black. Dead paint.

  I’m both nervous and excited. The waiting became too comfortable, even though I’ve been ready. Wanting.

  It’s when I think to grab rags and cleaner that something new slips out of that churning, sparking universe that used to be her mouth. A slim scrap of ghost-white flesh the length of my forearm slides out in a squelch of what could be blood and mucus. Its center is slashed in stigmata. I watch it ride the floor in its afterbirth, stopping only when it hits the bookcase. I shouldn’t, but I want to pick it up with my bare hands. I want to feel it.

  Because I know what it is. Whose it is. I’ve touched and tasted and loved that scar before.

  Elise and I didn’t have any classes together, and no one I knew shared classes with her, but that wasn’t unusual; students often drifted in and out of our small art school, and seniors were consumed with finishing up our required Humanities credits and haunting open studio time as we worked towards our final projects. If our heads weren’t up our own asses, they were pressed into paper and canvas and wood, woozy from the toxic fumes of our endeavors. We sleepwalked past our classmates in the halls; snippets of skin, blurs of hair, voices smeared in a flurry of deadline-driven motion. We often joked that anyone could slip into a class or take advantage of the facilities, so why were some of us stupid enough to bear the crushing burden of student loan debt? When I first saw Elise, I wondered if she might be one of those clever interlopers, just quiet enough, just unassuming enough to get what she needed and slip out again.

  It was not love, or even infatuation at first sight. Her back was to me. It was just before 11:00 p.m. and she was the only one in the paint lab, her and her easel ringed in studio lamps as the shitty fluorescents stuttered overhead.

  “Sorry,” I said when she jumped at my presence in the doorway. She didn’t turn around, but her shoulders jerked, a reflexive straightening I recognized in the back of her neck. “I didn’t think anyone would be here this late.”

  “Can’t help when inspiration strikes,” she said, punctuating her statement with a little laugh that was either a nervous opening or a polite ending.

  I moved to the wall of cubbies and pulled my canvas from the slot where it had been resting untouched for the last week. I had a critique next week, and working during open studio hours wasn’t enough anymore. Unlike Elise, I was more comfortable standing on a tarp in my tiny living room than in this crumbling brick building just ten minutes before the paint lab tech would hustle us out.

  “I’m just getting my canvas,” I said, because she wasn’t saying anything. From my position, I could see a sliver of her face, a dash of eyelashes and pursed lips in profile, the lights lifting the auburn and blue tones in her long, dark hair. I didn’t know how she could work like that, how she could have all that hair loose without constantly pushing it out of her face and leaving smears of oil paint along her brow and cheeks. Her oversized cardigan and white t-shirt—the cover of the “Man-Size” single with PJ Harvey’s slick black bun and the rose in her teeth—and jeans appeared unmarred as well, what I could see from that angle, anyway. Even her canvas was tidy, background brushstrokes ending at the crisp lines of her portrait sketch. I found her neatness validating. I was the opposite of the frenzied artist other students aspired to, all amphetamines and outbursts, paint splattering the walls same as their untamable and unknowable muses. Destruction had never been a part of my process, and for that I’d been called uptight a time or two in critiques.

 

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