F - Echoes - Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Shieldsley sank beneath the coarse grey blanket, not daring to even
imagine seeing his breath floating in the chill air of the cabin.
Somewhere else in the world, people were killing each other, casting
eachother's limbs into the mud. He could have been out there, sprinting
breathlessly across some devastated European field, the cloudy sky red
with the death of some poor, bombed city, the ground littered with
mangled human debris, faces that had once been kissed by mothers,
wives, lovers, ripped to shreds by shrapnel, buried in the trampled
mud. He had fled north. Some would say he was a coward, but it was
better to be a coward than to be dead, surely? He cared little for
human company anyway. The southern cities had terrified him with their
choked streets and busy people, always rushing from one place to
another, never stopping to take in the delights of existence. Had they
ever stared up to the sky, and traced with their eyes the countless
stars that smiled back at them? Had they ever felt that delicious
shivery sensation when they wondered just how far the universe
stretched? Had they thought that some of these glorious glittering
stars were dying or dead even as they stared at them, their light
racing across eternity long after its source had been destroyed in a
cataclysmic explosion? No, they probably hadn't.

From time to time he wondered what was happening outside in that mad
world. When he had fled, men had been signing up for the armed forces
in droves, and the crowds had cheered them on, waving flags and singing
as if the soldiers were going on holiday. The celebrations had sickened
him. In a few months some of those happy, expectant young men would be
coming home in coffins, and their friends' smiles would turn to
tears.

He had to get away from all of that. In that lonely, isolated cabin in
the heart of a lonely, moorland wood, he could have been anywhere. The
emptiness of the landscape captivated him, bound his heart to this
place where he could wander at will through crowds of trees and bushes
whose only obligation was to change appearance with the flowing of the
seasons. Here there were no deadlines, no menacing build-up of dire
news from the western front. Just him, nature, and his painting.

Painting. His life. When he painted, his mind left this world and
became immersed in the soft stroke of brush on canvas, in the fictional
world that he created. He had all the attributes of a god, alone in his
own domain like God in the blissful silence of chaos. And he could
create; invent people and places that belonged solely to his own mind.
And if he didn't like them, he could tear them up.

Perhaps God should have done that
straightaway. As soon as the first cracks appeared in his faultless
creation, one blink of his majestic eyes could have consigned
everything back to darkness. He would love to be the last, the first,
the only man on the planet, as long as he could paint. Let God end
everything else, but leave him intact.

The strange thing was that he didn't paint what he saw in front of his
eyes. Of course, imprints remained in his mind of things he had seen,
valleys, woods, rivers, and yes, sometimes even people. But while he
always sat outside to do his painting, his mind wandered far from the
scenes before him. It delved into itself, pulling up forgotten memories
like a gardener pulls up weeds.
Weeds? Perhaps not the best image. His visual memories were far
superior to weeds. They were trees in the blossom of spring and in the
gold-red death-throes of autumn. They were ecstasy.

He remembered a time when he had been sitting on a beach. Where? It
didn't really matter. Perhaps Brighton, perhaps Great Yarmouth. Then
again, was it anywhere? Was it merely another product of his own
enhanced imagination? Anyway, it was a hot day, and the hissing of the
sea as it rolled up the sand and then sank back again had lulled him
into a dreamy state that was perfect for painting. But, of course, he
hadn't painted the beach, or the rotting facades that leaned down onto
it. He had been painting a range of snow-capped mountains, majestic in
their stillness, their immortality. Two children (a brother and sister?
He wasn't sure. Their faces were imbedded deep in his lowest level of
memory) had come up behind him, staring in silence at his work,
squinting and sunburnt.

"Do you like it?" he had asked.

He didn't really care about other people's opinions of his work, but
their silence had begun to unnerve him.

The girl had blinked, blushed and giggled, before running off to find
her parents, or swim in the sea.

The boy, the younger of the two, asked, "What is it?"

"Mountains. Somewhere. Not here. In here." He tapped the side of his
head and smiled, realising that he must appear deranged, but, again,
not really caring.

"They're in my dreams."

"I don't dream of mountains," the child replied. "Things chase me.
Dark things with red eyes and big teeth. Dad says I shouldn't eat
cheese before I go to bed. I don't know what he means."

" You can eat as much cheese as you want. It's good to dream. Have you
tried drawing what you dream about? You shouldn't run away from the
monsters you know. Turn round and face them. When I was a kid, I used
to have terrible nightmares. It was always like someone was trying to
get into the house, and I was the only one inside. I would hear it
smash down the front door and then move around downstairs until it
realised its prey was upstairs. I'd listen to its hooves creaking on
the stairs, and then, when the 'thing' started knocking on my bedroom
door, I used to make myself realise that it was only a dream. I tried
one of two things. First, I'd shut my eyes tight. This was still in the
dream, of course. If that didn't work, and the thing was already
knocking the door down, I'd shout "It's only a dream!" and that would
always work. That way, you can control the most secret parts of your
mind."

"Why are you sitting there painting mountains? My dad says there
aren't any mountains in England."

"Oh, there's plenty of mountains here if you just imagine them. You
don't actually have to see them. It doesn't matter where I paint as
long as it's outside. Indoors, I feel...sort of shut in. It cramps my
style. Anyway, I like the sound of the waves. It helps me think."

The child stared at the painting for a few seconds, then turned back
to where a group of people were gathered around a few deck chairs and a
brightly-coloured umbrella that was waving gently in the sea
breeze.

"I think we're gonna have lunch. I don't think they look much like
mountains, anyway."
He turned back again, and scampered across the greyish sand towards
his family. Shieldsley smiled briefly to himself. He had been told many
times that his painting was just not up to scratch. He'd never managed
to get an exhibition arranged, because most people seemed to think his
work had been done by a schoolchild. He looked at the mountains, at the
sun that hung precariously behind them, apparently in danger of oozing
down the canvas and melting into the rugged hillsides. The actual
physical result of his painting was unimportant. He was the important
factor in all this, and his work wasn't intended for public exhibition.
Did people seriously expect pure thought to appear neat and tidy? The
Impressionists were nearer. In fact, he considered himself a modern-day
Impressionist in the most literal sense, because his painting was
composed entirely of impressions, lingering afterthoughts of
experiences that had occurred in the earliest days of his life.

Take the mountains, for example. He had travelled to Austria with his
parents when he was four, and yet his recollections of the trip were
surprisingly vivid. There they were, right on the canvas in front of
him, glistening in a sun that was twenty years older, and shining on a
beach that was hundreds of miles distant.

Yes, he had dreamed a lot when he was a child. Some of these dreams
had been quite horrific. He remembered a time when he had been
terrified to go to sleep, afraid of the fantastic worlds that he was
about to enter, where the bounds of reason did not exist, where there
was no parental reassurance. Afraid too of the moment when he lost
consciousness and plunged into the darkness. How he used to long for
the bright light of the morning, shining evidence that he had survived
another night and had some twelve hours to enjoy before he must face
the blackness again. As he lay in the lonely cabin, he smiled to
himself that here was the same person who used to suffer such paranoid
fears, and who had absolutely no qualms about spending years living on
his own deep in the wilderness, living completely off the land.

Sleep came just as he was thinking this, and it was undisturbed,
restful, until the early hours of the morning when he rolled over in
the gloom and faintly heard the rustling of leaves beyond his cabin,
the snuffling of some inquisitive nocturnal prowler at the crack below
his door, and the shining of the moon, invading his dream world with
its monotonous, regular pulse.

A fox crept cautiously around the building, nostrils twitching at the
strange mix of unfamiliar scents that poured from the door. It peered
up through the waving boughs and made for the deeper cover of the
trees, its tail between its legs and its haunches raised.

From within the building had come a scream, short but nevertheless
chilling. Shieldsley awoke and realised he had cried out in his sleep.
A dark figure was silhouetted by the moonlight, framed by a window. It
was female, and extended a long, slender arm towards him as he lay,
still sleepy but eyes gradually widening in surprise, enclosed in the
comforting warmth of his bed.

"May we walk?"

Did he hear the voice, or was it merely in his mind? Whichever, it was
alluring, soft and beautiful. The figure moved forward, and a moonbeam
slanted across her face, showing pale, smooth skin and wide blue eyes
that glittered like silver. She smiled, and he could not help but smile
back, his heart thudding fiercely in his chest.

"Where?"

Her smile widened, and she turned her face slowly towards the window,
beyond which the wood waited tensely, bathed in nocturnal
silence.

"Wherever you want to go. Outside. The night."

"I don't understand how you got in. The door was locked. Bolted.
Please, don't tell anyone I'm here."

"Of course I won't. I've watched you for a long time, Henry. Ever
since you arrived. I know you're hiding from the war. If I was going to
tell anyone, I'd have done it by now. Wouldn't I?" The smile left her
face and her eyes misted over.

He rose from bed. "Do you mind if I get dressed?"

"Go ahead. I won't watch."

She glided silently to the door and waited in the gloom that had
gathered there. As he changed, he felt certain she was watching. The
glint of her bright eyes seemed to dispel even that deeper
darkness.

"OK. Listen, I don't know why I'm doing this, but if this is a trap
I.."

His words were quickly stifled as she slid out of the darkness like a
moth, and pressed her lips against his. He drew back, but her hands
were already gently stroking his neck, and his resistance crumbled as
he felt her curved, lithe body pressing against his. Their tongues
joined and he moaned into the warm stillness of the cabin and smelled
leaves and rain in her silvery hair.

Just as quickly and as silently she withdrew into the darkness, and
the door creaked open, bathing his face with a soothing rush of cool
night wind. He realised that he was shivering all over, not from the
cold but from some uncontrollable excitement that drew him out among
the trees and the grass shimmering with the moon's dreamy light.

He briefly considered closing his eyes, afraid, as he had so often
been as a child, of becoming trapped in an endless nightmare. But that
wouldn't have been right. He had no desire for this particular night to
end, and the morning sun, instead of offering relief, would seem sullen
and rational to his enchanted eyes.

The visitor was leaning against an oak, its laden boughs floating
above like ghostly clouds, its trunk descending into scented darkness.
She was smiling the same enchanting smile. Then she was gone, flitting
bat-like into the undergrowth, and he took a deep, steadying breath
before plunging in after her.