The Painted Room Page 23

Chapter 20

  The Starry Night

  By late afternoon, a shoreline appeared in the distance. By degrees, the sun set and a fat crescent moon appeared over the land, casting its pale light on the water. Stars arrived to twinkle in a midnight blue sky. Cool air whirled and eddied about them as the small scallop shell boat crunched onto a sandy shore.

  Carlisle was first out of the boat. After putting the strap of the satchel over her head, Sheila took his hand and got out after him. May was last out and just in time; the craft moved under her, beginning its unmanned voyage back to the opposite shore.

  There was just enough moonlight to see the shape of rolling hills and trees illuminated in translucent blues and greens. In a rolling valley in the distance, there was a town. A large white church shone in the center square, its steeple gleaming alabaster in the silvery moonlight.

  The ground itself gave out an electric energy just on the verge of sound; May felt it as a low vibration in her body. She was dizzy with it. Audibly, there was only silence; not a bird or a bat or the buzz of an insect; no rustling of leaves in the swirling wind that puffed and gusted in unpredictable, unexpected ways.

  "Oh, I love this one," said Sheila.

  Carlisle sank down on the grass and watched the swirling liquid sky fold and unfold itself over and over around a sea of brilliant stars.

  "Vincent Van Gogh," May said to him. "He lived around your time, but I doubt you'd have seen his work. Come on, we better get going."

  He looked at her with an odd expression, "Does anything ever really move you, May?"

  "Did I say something wrong?"

  He shook his head as he got to his feet.

  The village was directly ahead of them, and they began to make their way down to it. They came upon a dirt road which led into the town and looked untraveled. The dirt changed to cobblestone as they entered the outskirts of the village and still the strange silence persisted. May heard only the sharp footfalls from Carlisle's hard bottomed shoes and the creak of new leather from the belt of the scabbard at his side.

  Most of the stone houses emitted light, but there was no activity inside any of them. Not even a moth came to flutter about the candles and lamps that burned unattended.

  May couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched.

  Sheila said, "We don't have to stay here too long, do we?"

  "I hope not," said May.

  When they passed the church and the churchyard, Carlisle said, "There aren't any names on the gravestones."

  From the corner of May's eye, she saw a shadow move around a building—the quick flash of a dark robe. She looked at Sheila and Carlisle. They hadn't seen it. Another shadowy figure moved to her right around a house, and they still seemed oblivious to it. She decided she must be imagining things.

  But even as they followed the road out of town into the turquoise hills, the feeling of being watched didn't leave her. She felt exposed and vulnerable.

  All at once, the earth trembled under their feet. All three of them stopped and watched the ground. The tremor lasted only a few seconds and then was gone.

  "Let's pick up the pace," said Carlisle just as another tremor hit.

  May had always known that the land floated over a sea of molten rock but she had never had the experience of it. She had come to rely on the dependable solidity of the ground during her fifteen years. That surety was gone in an instant as she felt the land shift like water under her.

  When the shaking stopped, all three of them started forward immediately, but another quake hit again—this one larger and more terrifying than the last two. The land wrenched open in front of them, forming a crevasse about three yards across in a matter of an instant. May dropped to her knees.

  She watched Carlisle teeter at the edge of the crevasse, his arms spread out for balance like a tightrope walker. When the land settled down finally, she retreated as fast as possible away from the newly formed precipice like a crab, but Carlisle didn't move. He just gazed down into the dark vacuum of the abyss in front of him.

  She got to her feet and darted forward to grab him, but Sheila held her back and whispered, "Don't! You'll scare him. He might fall in."

  "That's not what I'm worried about!" said May.

  "What do you mean? You mean—jump?"

  "Oh Sheila! I should have told him about his wife!"

  "Don't worry. I already did," said Sheila.

  At the edge of the abyss, Carlisle took one unsteady step backward. He turned around and brushed by them. "Let's go."

  As May's relief turned to anger, she waited until he was out of earshot and then said to Sheila, "You already told him? When?"

  "When you fell asleep in the rowboat after you almost drowned."

  "He's known all this time? Then why did you even bother to ask me whether we should tell him or not?"

  "Because I was certain you'd say 'yes'. I'm sorry May, but I'm glad I told him."

  So was May. "Quick, we better follow him. He's hard enough to keep up with, and he's headed in the wrong direction."

  They started to run after him, but Carlisle stopped abruptly, realizing his mistake. He threw up his hands, turned around and headed back towards them.

  They joined the road again where towering dark green cypresses lined the way like menacing soldiers. Around a sharp corner, the road ended without warning at a mirrored wall. Without being asked, Sheila began walking along the length of it, searching for a door. When she had gone a few hundred feet, she doubled back and continued in the opposite direction. As she passed by May, she met her eyes; she wasn't finding a door this time.

  Carlisle had been pacing for some time and seemed ready to burst out of his skin. He yelled at May, "For Heaven's sake, you haven't found the door yet?"

  "Why are you yelling at me? Sheila's the one who usually finds it."

  But they both knew he couldn't yell at Sheila.

  "Mr. Carlisle," Sheila said anxiously, "with you pacing like that, I don't think I'll be able to find anything. You're making me nervous."

  "Oh, sorry," he said, standing as still as he could and crossing his arms. But his eyes darting around and a deep sigh made it obvious he was still wound up tighter than a metal spring. He said, "May, there's something you're not telling me."

  "What do you mean?"

  "About this place. About this painter."

  May thought. "Well, he did spend a lot of his life in an insane asylum."

  "That's too bad," Carlisle said, unfolding his arms.

  "You didn't go insane, did you?" she asked suddenly.

  "No, nothing like that. Just—I don't know—melancholy from time to time."

  "Sure. You'd be crazy not to, right?" said May, relieved. "I'd like to get out of here myself. I keep getting the feeling I'm being watched."

  "Again? And you're worried about me?"

  Without warning, the ground convulsed, and May fell against the side of the mirrored wall. Instead of feeling the impact of a solid surface, she plunged into a silver pool of water. There was a sucking noise in her ears as she popped through to the other side.

  She bumped down painfully on her backside. At first there was light then everything went pitch black, like a lamp being extinguished. A horrible smell met her nostrils—the stench of rotted meat and decay. The surface under her hands was slippery with wet. She got to her feet and rubbed her hands on her jeans.

  She sensed the air move in front of her like the parting of a curtain. As her eyes adjusted, she began to make out a hulking shadow tensely poised in the blackness ahead of her. She stood still and held her breath, hoping that the creature in front of her was as blind as she in the darkness. If she had only known how long the creature had lived in the shadows, how accustomed it was to the half-light, she would never have held out that hope.

  All at once, the creature pounced.