The Painted Room Read online

Chapter 9

  Stuck

  Oddly, the hay wain had made almost no progress in its journey up river by the time they got to the stream. On the bank, they came upon a man observing the hay wain and its occupants. He was smoking a pipe and dressed very neatly in a black wool suit.

  "Hello, how do you do?" greeted Carlisle.

  "Better than some, I'll wager," answered the man, tipping his hat then gesturing with it to the hay wain.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Stuck on the bottom. Horses can't seem to drag it out."

  "How long?" asked Carlisle.

  "Must be a little more than an hour now. That's how long I've been here," The gentleman pulled a gold pocket watch out of his vest. He looked at it then closed the lid smartly.

  In the middle of the stream, the driver of the hay wain urged on the horses; while a young man, covered in wet mud from head to foot attempted to push the wagon from behind. After a few moments of useless effort, the driver called to him, "Awright, son. S'no use. Take a break fer a while."

  "They should've planned better, really," said the gentleman, sliding the watch back into his vest pocket in an automatic gesture.

  Having grown impatient with the chit-chat, May said: "Mister, do you happen to know the way out of this place? We just came from a strange border and we're trying to get out of here."

  "Strange border, you say? Most peculiar. Live in that direction, myself. Don't know anything about a border. Don't travel much either, I'm afraid. Sorry."

  "Maybe the man in the wagon can tell us something," said Carlisle. He stepped into the river, shoes and all. "Wait here for me," he called over his shoulder. He waded out to the cart and stood talking to the driver for several minutes.

  The gentleman leaned on the gold knob of his walking stick and seemed amused by all the activity.

  The load in the bed of the wagon was covered by a dirt-smeared tarp secured by a rope. There was a bumpy arrangement underneath the cloth. The whole of it was wrapped up as tightly as a sausage link. Whatever the rig was carrying, it was definitely not hay.

  Carlisle and the driver laughed about something and the sound carried to May who was getting a headache in the heat. "What is he doing? Telling jokes? He's taking forever. What do you suppose he could be talking about for so long?"

  "Who cares?" said Sheila, paying more attention to the driver's son, who was leaning lazily against the side of the cart smiling at her. His teeth sparkled pure white in his handsome mud spattered face.

  "Why don't you just ask him to take his shirt off?" said May.

  "Why would I want to do that? It's clinging to him so nicely as it is."

  Carlisle finally finished talking to the driver but instead of returning to the bank, he went around to the rear of the cart, tossed his jacket on top of the canvas tarp, then got into position next to the driver's son to help push.

  As soon as the driver yelled to the horses, the cart lunged forward, and both Carlisle and the young man nearly plunged head first into the stream. The driver cheered and called out his thanks as his son ran after the wagon and jumped in. The young man threw Carlisle his jacket, then found his own cap and waved it at Sheila before putting it on.

  May caught the gentleman's eye next to her and raised an eyebrow at him. "I guess it just needed one more person to push."

  The gentlemen took the pipe out of his mouth. "Right, right. Would have done myself, but ..." he lifted up a foot and tapped it with his pipe stem, "… new shoes."

  Spotting a stranded rowboat in some reeds, Carlisle trudged back with it to May and Sheila, then held it steady while they got in. "Would you like to get across?" he asked the gentleman.

  "That's most kind, but no thank you."

  There were no oars. The stream being shallow and his feet already wet, Carlisle tugged the small boat behind him as he forded the shallow stream.

  "What did the man in the wagon say?" asked May, looking after the hay wain.

  He shrugged. "About the edge, you mean? He didn't know what I was talking about either. Says he travels up and down the river all the time, and he's never seen anything like it."

  "That doesn't make any sense."

  "What was the problem with the wagon?" asked Sheila.

  "For some reason, it wouldn't budge. He told me he never usually has a problem here and figured the streambed must have changed. Well, whatever the problem—it took hardly a push to get it going again."

  "What's he carrying, anyway?" asked May.

  "I didn't ask," replied Carlisle.

  "What the heck did you talk about so long then?"

  "Oh, this and that. He has lumbago."

  "Lum—what?" said Sheila.

  "You talked to the man for ten minutes about back pain? Are you kidding?" said May.

  "Well, I didn't exactly do most of the talking. He really ought to get a padded seat for that cart, if you want the truth of it."

  They were at the opposite bank by this time. Carlisle held the boat steady and let the girls out.

  "The man's gone," said Sheila.

  "Who? The old, stuffy guy in the bowler hat? He said he lived around here," said May.

  Sheila stared after the hay wain, now a speck disappearing in the distance. "Should we follow them? Where are they going to anyway, Mr. Carlisle?"

  "I don't know. I didn't ask. No, I think our best bet is to head past the farmhouse and find the opposite side of this place."

  "The shortest distance between two points is a straight line," said May.

  "Excuse me?" said Carlisle.

  "I'm just agreeing with you," May said to him.

  "Oh."

  A tri-colored mutt bounded up to greet them. Carlisle crouched down and scratched behind its ears while the dog licked his face.

  May was thoroughly disgusted. "You don't even know where that mutt's been. Do you realize the germs you're getting?"

  "The what?" he asked, closing one eye while the dog licked his temple.

  "Just—will you please stop already?"

  "Okay, okay," said Carlisle to the dog, chuckling. He gave it one final scratch behind its ears and then stood up.

  The day was hot but dry. The dog followed them a small distance through the field, then made its way back to the farmhouse and an evening meal.

  The farmland was flat and even, only occasionally rolling into a gentle hill here and there. After a short while, May began to make out several figures coming towards them—one tall, two shorter—gradually increasing in size—until she was sure that they must be approaching the mirrored surface of the edge and that the figures ahead were their own reflections.

  For a while now, she had been trying to recall Sheila's living room, but she was drawing a blank. Sheila's mother had the habit of changing her decor around so much, it was always anybody's guess what the interior of the house would look like from one visit to the next.

  This was compounded by the fact that Bonnie Hazelton was constantly buying and selling artwork and her walls were always in a state of flux from one sale to another. She would often hang on to a piece she particularly liked, then sell it when she became good and tired of it which, like her husbands, was usually within a remarkably short span of time.

  Bonnie wasn't a bit like May's mother who had a more utilitarian style. In fact, it was so unusual to enter the Taylor house to find that anything had changed at all that May had simply stopped seeing it after a while. She knew her home like a mole knows its own burrow. She could navigate through it with barely a look up from a homework paper or a look out from an internal thought. There were never any unexpected coffee tables springing up to bang her in the knees, no furniture jutting out in previously empty corners to surprise her.

  After a while all pictures at the Taylor's had stayed where they were just out of necessity, being that most of the white painted wall had yellowed around them over time. Any rearranging of artwork exposed unsightly rectangular wall patches. It was an unspoken agreement that all was better left undistu
rbed.

  The discoloration of the wall probably wouldn't have mattered to the Taylors—they seldom noticed anything in their surroundings after it had been there for more than a few days—but it was on account of the neighbors, who already thought them a weird and reclusive bunch.

  Not that they looked down on the Taylors; her father was a tax lawyer; her mother was a financial advisor. Charley was tall and good looking and valedictorian of the junior class. May had a reputation for being an oddball, a forgettable sort of girl who always had her nose buried in a book. That was fine with May, for when people actually did notice her, they would usually remark on how closely she resembled her mother.

  She finally asked, "Sheila, what's the next picture on the wall? We must be going to the left around the room."

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know? How can you not know your own house?"

  "How can you ask that? You know my mother is always rearranging things. She watches that home network nonstop. I can't keep track anymore of what stuff is where. It's a waste of time. Next week it'll be someplace else anyway."

  They were standing in front of the mirrored wall now.

  "Okay, okay." May began thinking out loud. "Well, we must have gone to the left around the room because—" she looked at Carlisle, remembering the picture of his wife which had been right next to his painting of the castle. He didn't need to know about that right now. "Well, just because is all. Which means the picture we're in now is over that half circle table, the one with the purple vase of flowers on it, and we're approaching the corner by the—"

  "Purple? You mean blue?" said Sheila.

  "Blue? Really? What the heck kind of—"

  "Hush," ordered Carlisle harshly, holding up his hand for them to stop.

  May stared at him with an expression of both surprise and pique.

  Ignoring her look, he bent over a little and bowed his head while his eyes scanned the ground. She realized that he was listening to something.

  Then she heard it, too. It was a barely audible, rhythmic drumming, emanating from the other side of the mirrored wall. There was a lazy quality to it, and she could hear an occasional scraping noise between the beats.

  "That's weird," said Sheila.

  Carlisle tilted his head to the side. His eyes shifted. "It reminds me of a boat hitting against the hull of a ship."

  "The ocean, maybe?" offered May.

  "Let's hope we can find out," he said. "Sheila, do you think you can find the door like last time?"

  She shrugged. "I can try." She began walking down the length of the wall, drawing her finger along the liquid surface as she went, leaving a small wake behind her. All at once, Sheila seemed to clutch at something, and in the next moment, a blue-green crystalline doorknob glistened between her fingers.

  "The devil," whispered Carlisle, but appreciatively this time.

  Sheila waited for them to gather around her, then opened the door.

  The tangy smell of salt water hit them immediately. From the frame of the doorway, they looked over the open ocean. In the distance, a large sailing ship loomed on the water. A wave splashed against the raised threshold of the doorway and sent up a cool spray at them.

  Carlisle leaned out of the doorway with his hand on the jamb and looked to the left where the banging noise reverberated more loudly now. He took off his jacket and vest and threw them on the grass.

  "I can see a rowboat about ten yards away down the side," he said, unknotting his green silk tie. Stuffing it in his trouser pocket as he stepped out of his shoes, he said to Sheila, "Please, whatever you do, don't let this door close."

  "Don't worry, I won't."

  He smiled at her then dived smoothly into the water.

  "I wonder why he didn't ask me?" said May.

  After reaching the rowboat, he lifted himself aboard. Luckily the oars were still in it, and he rowed back to them. Taking hold of the edge of the threshold, he said, "Who's first?"

  "May is," said Sheila quickly.

  Watching the boat bob up and down in the choppy surf, May sat down on the threshold of the door. Carlisle held out his free hand to her. She took it and stepped into the rowboat.

  Sheila was next. She squatted down and placed Carlisle's shoes, jacket and vest in the boat, then grabbed his hand and hopped in.

  "You aren't afraid of the water, are you?" he asked Sheila before he let go of her hand, wondering why she had volunteered May first.

  May said, "Nah, she swims like a fish. It's me. I hate water." She added right away, "I love boats though. I never get seasick or anything."

  "Oh," he said, smiling, "a sailor. We'll just have to make sure you stay in the boat then."

  The sailing ship in the distance appeared to be at anchor. With its sails furled, it looked stark and barren against the clear blue sky. Squinting in the bright sunshine, Carlisle studied the vessel in the distance while he put his shoes back on.

  "I only remember one ship scene of your mother's," said May. "A French galleon upstairs on the landing. She must have moved it to the living room."

  Sheila shook her head. "Yesterday, I think I remember seeing some ships over that half-moon table."

  "I only see one ship," said Carlisle, scanning the horizon. "Are you sure?"

  "Pretty sure," said Sheila. "In the picture, there's a storm; the ocean looks almost black. I think the ships are fighting."

  Transparent blue-green water gently slapped the sides of the rowboat. Above them, wispy white clouds floated in a turquoise sky. Carlisle looked puzzled. "A battle you say? Could you see the flags?"

  "The flags?"

  "On the ships' masts."

  "Oh, right." Sheila thought for a moment. "Well, one was white and I think it had a red cross on it. In the middle, I mean. Not like a cross like you see in church, but more like a plus sign, so it had, like, four small boxes." She drew an imaginary cross in the air with her index finger. "One of the boxes at the top had some red and blue in it."

  "British," stated Carlisle. He looked at the ship in the distance. "This one is French. What color was the other flag?"

  "Black, I think."

  He looked up sharply from tying his shoe. "Black?"

  "Oh, and it had some white on it, too. An X—a white X, and a—a circle above it I think."

  "A circle or a skull?" he asked.

  "A skull? You know, now that you mention it, I think it could have been a skull."

  "Are you quite sure, Sheila?"

  "That can't be right," said May, cutting in. "I know the painting she's talking about, but I haven't seen it for ages. Her mother must have sold it a while ago. Look, there's not a cloud in the sky and the flags are all wrong."

  "Sheila? Honey? This is very important," he said. "Are you sure you have the right painting?"

  "Well, I—I think so."

  "The one upstairs was a picture of a French ship," said May. "Her mother moved it downstairs is all. Look! There's no other boat for miles around. She has them mixed up."

  Carlisle began rowing. "It sounds like it. Let's hope so, anyway."