After a number of days, Liam again became complacent about to-doings at work. He saw no one else there apart from his friend. One day he arrived home to trip over his sleeping bag lying in the bedroom floor. He could not account for his forgetfulness in not stashing it in the closet that morning. If its presence suggested an early bedtime, a ringing telephone interrupted this idea.
The nephew had believed his aunt’s phone disconnected many months hence. The device was located with difficulty in the sewing room. Bundles of dusty fabric were searched and, by appearance, this material was the abandoned beginnings of window curtains—such that exceeded the needs of the small prairie house. Nothing beneficial could arise from answering the phone call, but its summons was amplified tenfold throughout the house over the intercom system.
Howard reminded his friend, “Your winter classes at the community college begin tonight.”
“Why didn’t you remind me of this earlier at work?”
The caller may have shrugged, but this communication was unavailing in the situation.
The annex was unlocked. The absent-minded instructor stepped panting through the double doors with nightfall uncomfortably close behind him. The clock in the lobby gave him five minutes to spare, but his haste to arrive on time meant he failed to pack still-life objects in his bicycle’s basket. Turning up to his classroom unprepared without a lesson plan was his peculiar terror, yet his éclat and resourcefulness in these matters overcame every privation.
His perennial student Howard approached him and offered one additional dilemma. “The utility cabinet is locked. You have no access to clamp lights.” He then gestured toward the middle of the large common room where a partial solution was supplied. “I had a hurricane lamp in my truck.”
A large, low-built wooden platform sat in this area, and served equally for setups of still-life subjects or a posing model. The lantern might suffice for spelunking or crawling under a house, but it could only glower over a sparse scene from its slatted chair. Its diffuse illumination struggled to separate itself from ubiquitous overhead fluorescents.
What occupied this table was just as unpromising: Pillows were heaped on one another in a make-do landscape, though it would take coaxing to seduce a pleasing arrangement from them.
The instructor need not have bothered on this account. While surveying the room for complementary objects, a young woman, who did not comport herself with the nonchalance of a student, stepped up to him. “I am here to model,” she said. “Where can I change into my costume?”
“Costume?”
“I brought a costume for my pose.”
Liam thought it odd that this stranger should arrive at the school with both initiative and presumption about a lesson plan, yet he was grateful for her offer. Directions were given to the restroom, and without beguile or any readable expression, the woman exited the classroom.
Were it not for his befuddlement, the teacher may have remarked sooner on the model’s resemblance to the woman on the posted factory flyer.
Howard had paid no attention to the woman’s features. Moreover, he was of the mind that no offer of modeling had been made by anyone in the room.
The model did not return, so a female student was sent to find her. When this person did not return after a sensible time, Liam was returned to his distress about having no assignment.
A ratty blanket was found among the drawing horses, and on returning to the table of pillows, it was draped over them in a bid to create a pleasing series of folds. The composition was deemed sufficiently challenging to occupy the students, but rapid consternation was perceived on their faces.
One belonged to Howard, who declared, with rare gruffness, “I have no wish to draw a blanket heaped on a table. That subject reminds me of the measles-infested blankets your ancestors gave mine.”
He left the room.
The remainder of the students stared at the make-do still life, but none commenced drawing. When one was asked what the problem was, the young man complained, “Whatever is under that blanket won’t stop fidgeting.”
The table was again surveyed, and something was changed in the composition. Peeking under the blanket, the teacher found no one hiding under it.
The ceiling vent over the table was the likely instigator in this unsanctioned redistribution of folds, so the fabric was fanned over the pillowy pile and the subject matter recast. A few apprehensive clicks of his attendance pen followed from the doorway, but Liam thought the situation stable and left the room to conduct a search for the missing model.
Repairs were underway to the other end of the building. Tiles of compressed fiberboard had been removed from brackets in the dropped ceiling and left to accumulate on the floor.
Wading through this ruin, the searcher saw no underside to roof timbers or conduit. Given the bright fluorescent interior light, this exaggeration in contrast between white enamel walls and dark cavernous space overhead made his eyes less responsive to subtleties in the latter. If he believed this was an empty night sky on display, the lack of a detectable draft persuaded him against the formulation.
The model was not in the bathroom, and walking to the far end of the hall produced neither her nor the woman sent to find her; the teacher did not immediately leave the area.
The annex was a solidly built cinderblock structure, yet the westernmost wall was unsupported plasterboard. Situationally it marked an exterior boundary, though bore no fire door or any other door. It was accessible throughout its entire length, yet was undistinguished apart from a bulletin board, which was bare but for a surplus of staples and pushpins. Snips of paper were snagged here and there among these fasteners where announcements had been ripped down. The staples, in not being pulled clean, stuck out like cactus pricks and suggested, in the hazard they presented to passersby, a hasty evacuation.
One remaining tear of paper was fluorescent pink, and might have been the original flyer for the artist model. Liam wished against its removal simply for purposes of comparing its visage to that of the missing young woman.
The building’s state was reassessed, whether it was being remodeled or demolished. The flimsy wall was thought too insubstantial to be a permanent fixture, and was more like a shoddily erected rampart that would buy no more than two or three minutes as a delaying tactic against whatever advancing adversary should test it.
A protuberant shape occupied this wall. It was first thought to be a night bug, but closer examination revealed it to be an unremarkable hole. It was too small to hold a switch box, though served admirably as a peephole. By sight, this opening communicated with nothing more sinister than the parking lot, yet in lingering over it, something was spotted leaning against the far side of the wall.
Liam pressed the slab of plasterboard, which warbled and pushed back. This action was repeated with force, and whatever rested against the partition lifted briefly away from it before resuming its position with a soft thud. This object possessed enough weight to make the wall bow inward, yet was not so hard as to knock loudly against the substrate when propelling back onto his blow.
Quitting his search, the instructor came on his friend laying across a sofa in the student lounge. Howard was tucked into the darkest corner of the room, and upwind of the disinfected fluorescence that was, everywhere else, unflagging. His concealment was not so good as he may have imagined, though, in being found out, he did not shrink from the complication.
“Why are you here and not drawing?” asked the teacher.
A sparing defense was offered. “I am playing dead.”
“Why are you playing dead?”
“Because my people have no word for goodbye in our language.“
Liam was not disposed to humor his friend’s funereal pronouncements, and since Howard was not inspired to draw pillows, or measles-infested blankets, he was left where he was found.
The instructor returned down the corridor. Passing several classrooms, other students were seen to have taken similar initiative to disperse. In each case, they sat in the floor with their newsprint pads opened over their laps. They faced away from the doorway and sketched, by appearances, unoccupied corners in the rooms. Not only had they abandoned the still life for the prospect of an unexceptional grouping of cinderblocks, but they had further handicapped their endeavors by switching off the overhead lights.
It was this detail that particularly disturbed the teacher and prevented him from entering these rooms: The darkness at the other side of the building would waste little time in construing this darkness as identical to its own, and claim each room in the way rot incrementally claims a fish.
He arrived at his classroom in a troubled state; one student remained there. She too had turned off the lights and faced an empty corner. Gazing over her murky effort, only rivers of black, molting charcoal of little descriptive detail covered her paper.
“It’s an awful thing to draw,” she confided with anguish.
Sights were trained on the corner, and for all his skill in seeing, the instructor saw nothing. He fetched the lantern from the forsaken still-life and explored the premonitory pocket of shadow.
Lantern light bounced off either of the two walls, but did not illuminate the place were they joined. They seemingly traveled parallel to one another until, at some point, they converged, although this point of convergence, by his inability to locate it, was theoretical.
In his attempt to resolve the paradox, the searcher succeeded in rousing a new shadow, which was instantly pushing toward his light through the interstice. This dark specimen produced no relief where his lamp struck it squarely. Its blurred outline swarmed like wasps over a disrupted nest.
Withdrawing from his inspection, the frightful presence lurched after his light beam with the single-mindedness of dispersed ink to absorb it. Worst still—the faltering illumination, like flame for a moth, added momentum to launch the malignancy out of a depth.
The lantern was wisely turned from the corner and the teacher resolved to do the only thing that made sense: to wake from his involved and protracted nightmare.
Resigning his academic responsibilities with uncharacteristic ease, he crawled on top of the disfavored table of pillows. The light was again left on the slatted chair, and fearing any collusion between proper shadows and those he may have unwittingly unleashed into this part of the building, it was left on to decant its buttery light over the bedding arrangement.
Liam did not intend himself to be a still-life subject, so turned away from the drawing horses and pulled the blanket over him.
Footsteps preceded him to a period of inattentiveness. The last of them—bare, plump, and soft—dropped off beside his head. He had no desire to encourage this dream aggregate, and turned again to face the slatted chair and safety light.
A silhouetted figure now shared his attitude on the table; Liam was certain it was his model returned to the classroom. A trough of still air lay between them, but the eidolon was not delineated in any degree. She wore a vintage costume with ruche sleeves, one whose fusty lace was unsuitable for sleep, but was perhaps appropriate for modeling for unprofessional art students. The garment was not, in any view, meant for prolonged inspection. Its aged smell was as sharp as its creases.
The more these unpleasant sensations pressed on his senses, the more Liam believed this was a presentation of burial clothes. He was surprisingly calm composing this idea, yet was incapable of confronting his bed partner due to a pronounced inertia of sleep.
Scribbling from his solitary student gained in volume, and though nothing of her was seen for the outline of his bedfellow, the teacher sensed other students may have returned to the room to join her. He was certain that they now drew the model, the table, and him.
This need to remain motionless added to his paralysis.
A portion of the model’s face surrendered to his searching gaze, and it seemed of a long, settled order. It mesmerized chiefly because its remainder dipped into blacker regions of his sleep to channel memories like disguises. Where this outline was not steadfast, it split her visage in two halves, although this was the reverse of a Rorschach test since only half an inkblot was exhibited. The buoyant cheek assumed the crescent of her eye and, like a fractal begetting a fractal, the side of her nose took up the stamp. What he could not see of her remained tactile, though rerouted through other forms of understanding.
Her hair smelled of thawing ground, and her gown betrayed someone who, in unrested dreaming, invaded his dream. The scribbling he had imagined no longer resembled pencils on newsprint paper, but instead compared to wriggling. It was the costume and not the bed partner that stirred, and in ways that did not correspond to natural movement.
Maggots or burrowing insects erupted in his mind.
A lock of hair swept over her ear, and as this resembled a solemn wreath, it was the closest thing to a sensible thought when he inquired, “Are you the missing woman?”
His lips grazed her aniline skin. This contact was not a sensation of complete atrophy, but of something flopping under a bed sheet to wake a terrified child. Any whispery reply from her was embedded in a low chime, like a dull note of tinnitus buried in his pillow.
It brought a charm to his attention, which dangled from a chain around her neck. Before reason supervened, Liam pulled on it and felt a brier prick him: one whose thorn was dipped in a philter.
Having skirted treacherous sleep, the dreamer repelled against it—light was gained from the bedroom window, which left the riser poking the far side of his sleeping bag vainly. Only residue of a calefacient lingered in his hand, since the necklace had vanished as readily as its wearer.
He sprang from the floor and toward the doorway. A cloud of dust, such as unleashed from the manhandled remains of a mummy, swirled in the pale exigent light. The resident stepped after his phantom, yet pursued its immateriality no further than the hall.
Copyright © 2008-2022 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.