N - Echoes Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen
Fifty years earlier Henry Shieldsley crouched on his bed in the
darkness of his cabin and contemplated suicide. The rain, just a light
drizzle earlier, had matured into a full-blooded torrent and on any
other day he would have enjoyed the warm and dry cosiness of the
building. Not this day. Somewhere else in the wood, two bodies were
being disposed of, and he had killed one of them. He looked down at his
shaking hands and thought of Macbeth. However he could see no blood on
them. It had been washed away by the raindrops, pouring out of the wood
and down the hill to where it could return to the village. The knife he
had used lay beside him on the bed, its point stained by bitter
memory.

He leaned back against the hard, unfeeling wall and gripped his
blanket in both hands, silently mouthing a prayer. "Someone out there
protect me from this place. Someone tell me this isn't real. Please."
The words were deafening to his mind but failed to drag themselves out
of his mouth. The cabin just stood there, accusing with its silence and
condemning with its gloom. He tried to anchor himself to his home, to
the walls which he had built and to the bed which he had made. But it
was no use. He was being gradually tugged away from reality and drowned
in a sea of madness. He had tried to find something to hang onto, some
tiny shard of sanity that was tossed over the waves with him, but there
was nothing. His ship had sunk without trace, all hands lost.

He peered out the window and saw that the day, which had never really
broken free of the gloomy dregs of darkness left over from the previous
night, had finally succumbed to the inevitable and sunk back down below
the western horizon. The rain was now only an invisible noise, giving a
voice to the thousands of silent trees which shivered in its
intensity.

"Will you show yourself to me now?" he whispered and his voice was lost
and became part of the sounds of the forest. "You told me you sleep in
the day. Is it only part of you which sleeps?"

"You are more intelligent than I have given you credit for, Henry
Shieldsley. Now I am awake, and you will paint for me."

Shieldsley saw a dark form standing in the opposite corner of the
room, feminine and panther-like. He realised that the rain had stopped,
and the wood outside was dripping onto the soaked ground. The trees,
heavy with water, bowed themselves to the ground in reverence. The
clouds were breaking up, and tiny patches of star-laden sky were
scurrying across the night. Of course, he didn't actually see any of
this. He pictured it in his mind much as he did when he was about to
paint, yet the feeling had never been so intense as this. He strained
his eyes to penetrate the gloom surrounding his visitor, but could see
only two silver glitters, like diamonds, against the greater blackness
of her figure.
"Can you tell me...who you are, now? Was it you who murdered the girl
today? You must let me leave and..."

"Silence, Henry. I am a creature of the night. This is my true
appearance. When I sleep during the day, it is often difficult to
prevent my thoughts from wandering. You are safe because you are so
dear to me. I know nothing about the mortal who died. They must have
threatened you in some way."

"The man didn't see me until the woman was dead. I was forced to kill
him. He thought I'd done it. Don't you see what I've done? I've
committed murder. I came here to escape doing that. Let me leave. If i
stay here, then I won't be able to live with myself."

"They were killed because I only want you here, Henry." She moved
forward slightly and her silver robe caught a beam of shimmering wet
light from the window and glowed. Shieldsley felt the moon breaking out
from beneath the suffocating clouds, and gulping in great portions of
the world as relief from its near-drowning. "I shall suffer none other
of your kind to enter this wood and live. I have been so lonely. You
will be my companion. My only companion."

Now Shieldsley saw a young girl cowering in the corner of a room which
glowed with fire and suppressed power. A being composed entirely of
white light towered before her and wept as her world was enveloped in
flames and her mortality was burned away. He was shaken out of his
reverie by the touch of her hand on his neck. He felt an electric
tingle spread down his body and into the ground. For a moment, he was
sure he actually saw tendrils of light erupt from his feet and vanish
into the air. Her face was only inches from his own and he could see
the depths of her eyes, a bottomless, translucent silver that changed
hue and intensity with the slightest movement of her head. He reached
out his arms and held her to him, experiencing the same feelings of
desire and awe that had overcome him on that long-distant night in the
clearing. Now he had time to dwell on the most precise features of her
face, on her long hair that seemed almost colourless in the darkness,
on her pale skin that seemed to shimmer whenever there was a gap in the
far-above cloud. He leaned forward to kiss her but she backed away and
her face became vague and distant to him again.

"No. Paint for me first. I will sit and watch you. We will talk. I
know everything about you, Henry, but you know nothing about me.
Perhaps it is time I told you."

"What do you want me to paint?" For a moment, he thought he was going
to be able to become part of this...being, to tangle his limbs with
hers while their bodies shone brilliant white by the light of the moon.
Now his senses and emotions were reeling, his legs quivering, and his
stomach lurching. Painting was the last thing on his mind.

"Paint the first thing that comes into your head, Henry. Don't paint
my forest. Every inch of it is imprinted on my heart. I know every leaf
and every grain of dirt. Paint me something else. Something that I
haven't seen. A village on a hill and a man working the land. I want it
to be an escape route for me, a chance to see the world which you come
from."

"You mean...you can't leave this wood either?"

"No! Now you are being unintelligent again, Henry. I am bound to this
place in the same way as you are bound to me. A long time ago, a man
imprisoned me here. He lived with me for a long, long time. He lived
for two centuries. He had been...united with me and his life span was
lengthened because of that. He was a very strong man. Far stronger than
any I had met before. Stronger than you, I'm sorry to say."

"He...captured you? How? How could any human manage to capture you?
Did he harm you in any way?"

"You mean apart from keeping me locked away in the dark for two
hundred years? Yes. He would beat me, he would satisfy his sexual
desires on me. That was before I discovered what I could really do.
Then, I was able to kill him. He had become old and weak and
unsuspecting, but, you see, the stronger a man is, the longer he can
keep me for. Even when he was dead, I was imprisoned. I ran for the
edge of the wood but I soon became ill and tired and I began to fade
away. To leave would be to forego my existence, Henry. I can only exist
here. Now, please paint. Paint me a man in a field. I want him to stare
out at me as if saying "Here is my world." I know I can never go there,
but can look at it and dream."

"I fear my painting will be of little comfort to you. I have been
accused in the past of painting like an untalented schoolboy. Why me?
Why have you chosen me to come here and paint for me?"

"You are full of questions tonight Henry. That is understandable. You
have received very few answers in the past. I feel that I have already
told you enough, but your inquisitiveness deserves a reward. I do not
care what your paintings look like, Henry Shieldsley. It is the mind
that creates them that is more important to me. You are a creature of
the imagination. You don't create art from what your eyes tell you. You
look into yourself and paint from there. Your painting is pure thought.
It is a very rare ability for your kind. There have been others. The
man who kept me here, he also painted. And after you have finished your
painting, I shall show you one of his. Now, I want no more questions. I
think you will need some light."

She blinked and a ball of light hovered in the air above Shieldsley's
head, surely the same light which had guided him home safely on the
night he had followed this woman to the clearing. And Shieldsley began
painting. He created a swirling blue sky and a misshapen sun that
spewed out its golden power across the canvas. All the while she
remained standing in the corner, not speaking, not even breathing as
far as he could make out. He felt those silver eyes boring into the
back of his head and being filtered through his brain like light
through a prism. The multi-coloured spectrum that shone from the other
side was his rapidly-developing painting. Below the sky he painted a
ridge of rolling greenish-yellow hills, some of which he topped with
little clusters of pine trees, crouching close together for protection
from the blasts of creativity which assailed them. He painted a village
on the nearest hill, many of its houses impossibly balanced on its
precipitous slopes.

Shieldsley might have stopped to ponder what life would be like in
that bizarre village. The windows of many of the houses would be on the
floor of the rooms and the occupants would be happily sitting on the
walls. But his mind was not on his painting at all. He was preoccupied
with a sequence of vivid, almost painful images that were surely
emanating from the twin beams of moonlight pouring into his
brain.

He saw a man fighting his way through the undergrowth in a sticky,
grasping forest. There was a brief glimpse of a naked woman bathing in
a crystal-clear pond before the man shimmered and blurred and became a
stag, majestic in the shine of his coat and the proud thrust of his
antlers. But he was set upon by hounds and ripped to shreds before
Shieldsley's eyes, and the leaves of the forest were steaming and
dripping with his blood. Somewhere else, two figures arched in a
magnificent blue sky. But the sun grew larger and hotter and one of
them fell screaming, his wings falling to shreds behind him while the
Mediterranean earth rushed up to meet him. Mighty figures crawled up
the sides of a black precipice and thick fog swirled around them
through which fire occasionally flickered redly. Thunderbolts screeched
out of the sky above them and they were struck from the craggy cliff
walls and sent burning into the mists below. Then he saw a vast host of
bodies falling from a gaping hole in the sky through which poured
brilliant golden light. The bodies shrieked and moaned as they fell,
and, far below, another hole opened up with a tortuous rending sound
and smoke and flames belched forth. Shieldsley woke with the stench of
sulphur in his nostrils and the screams of the damned ringing in his
ears.

The painting was finished. He could remember starting it, making the
first blue dashes that were to be the sky, but very little else. The
light still pulsed above his head and he felt slightly hungover, as
though he had drunk a little too much a few hours previously. He winced
as a sharp movement caused needles of pain to prick his temples. What
of the painting? The harsh light gave it a desolate, lonely appearance.
The man standing by his plough and horses on a deeply-furrowed field
looked back at him with empty eyes and the village on the hill behind
him seemed barren and deserted. This was hardly an inviting image of
the world beyond this wood. It was also false. Most men of his age had
gone off to die somewhere, and the ones who worked the land were
probably conscientious objectors like himself. "Do you like it?" he
asked, unsure if she was still standing behind him.

"Oh yes. It's just what I wanted from you Henry." She said nothing
else and Shieldsley jumped when the globe of light, suspended unmoving
in the air for so long, was suddenly sucked into the painting like a
ship into a whirlpool. It entered the canvas where his sun shone
unsteadily in the midst of its swirling sky and for a moment it seemed
as if that sun really burned. It blazed down warm rays of life onto the
desolate scene below it, and the man's face momentarily shone, and
specks of fire danced in his eyes. Then the light was gone, and the
village was again nothing more than different shades of paint spattered
over green/blue chaos. He ignored his throbbing head and turned round
to face the woman. She was leaning against the far wall, her eyes
closed and her hair damp against her forehead. For the first time
Shieldsley noticed the rise and fall of her breasts and could accept
that she was actually alive. Flesh and blood. Some of the time. "Are
you tired?"

She opened her eyes and the silver light was dimmer than usual. "Part
of me has entered your painting, Henry. I feel smaller and weaker. I
want you to hold me for a while."

He walked over to her and she leaned against him. He took most of her
weight and she was surprisingly light and slender in his arms. She
seemed nothing more than a human child, wilting now that the long day
was drawing to a close. He buried his face in her hair and shuddered
when the scents of the forest, leaves, bark, mud, flowers, rain, hit
him all at once and immersed him in their soft, silky comfort. He
lifted her up and carried her over to his bed where he lay her on his
rough blankets. She seemed more than asleep and he had to check her
pulse just to be sure. It was faint, but it was there. She had lived
for at least two hundred years so he doubted the events of that day
could cause her any serious damage. How could this apparently weak and
tired girl have caused the disastrous events of that day? The mind that
lurked behind that pale and drawn face was capable of murder, but
Shieldsley was finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile these
apparently contradictory characteristics. He remembered her words from
a few hours before. While her body slept, the enormous power that it
contained was free to roam the forest, hunting down and killing any
intruder, unhindered by the calming influence that she seemed to
represent.

What had he stumbled on? He had entered a murky and shifting world
which lay below what humans consider as reality. This was just as real
as any war or shop or bank or whatever else used to be important to
him. And this woman was more real to him than any of that. She
controlled the world that he had become marooned in, and her burning
eyes, delicate body and soft, radiant skin had captured him as easily
as a butterfly in a net.

He turned back to the painting but it was only a dark rectangle now
that the light was gone, and he was glad of that. The little man with
his staring eyes somehow unsettled him and he would be happy to let her
take it wherever she wanted, as long as it pleased her. He clambered
onto the bed and lay against her, staring up with sightless eyes at the
ceiling and feeling her body moving slowly against his.

When he opened them again she was gone, and the sun blazed through the
windows, hurting his tired eyes and his pounding head. He rolled over
to where she had been lying, but her warmth had gone and the sweet
scent that he expected to smell had blown away with her. Of course. It
was day, and she had gone to whatever hiding place she chose. As she
slept, her dreams did not remain shut up within the span of her
subconsciousness.

They flew from her like birds from the nest and walked the forest.
Shieldsley thought of the days when trolls and goblins were supposed to
lurk at the heart of rotten trees and wait beneath bridges for
unsuspecting travellers. The woods would be full of them now, and
although he had felt quite safe in the presence of talking magpies and
grim reapers, he resolved to spend the day inside his cabin and simply
to sit thinking in the blissful silence. After all, he was now the most
knowledgeable man in the world, and he had plenty to think about.

Then he remembered the painting, deciding that he would never be able
to think with those eyes gazing at him. But it was gone, and the easel
stood empty. It seemed to be reproaching him for so freely giving away
the product of its labour. He grinned back at it and prepared to make
breakfast, completely forgetful of the fact that he had considered
suicide only twelve hours before. He paused each time he passed a
window and peered through the trees to check for goblins, and then
burst out laughing that such a man as himself should accept their
existence without reservation.