"It's time to play, my sprigs," she cackled. Slowly, steadily, everyone except Pera stopped what they were doing and walked to the elderly woman, encircling her. I was the last to stand and join their circle, standing next to Oskar and a woman I had not yet been introduced to. The ancient beldame stepped to Oskar and wrapped her ribbon so that it covered his eyes, tying it behind his head. She led him to the center of our circle, then joined our number.
We did not join hands, but everyone began to hum in a low, nearly inaudible way, and our circle began to rotate slowly. As we moved around him, Oskar reached into the air as if ready to touch our faces. At last he reached out and touched the face of one of the women I did not know. He said her name, and she laughed as she untied the band from around his eyes. Above us, the cry of crows mingled with her laughter.
Oskar skipped to me and clapped. "My turn to choose, and you're it, Hank." I wanted to protest as he pulled me to the center of the circle and began to tie the ribbon 'round my head. "Do be a good sport, old boy," he requested, and so I stopped fidgeting and let him finish. My attention was focused on the smell of his jaundiced flesh and its effect on my appetite. He tied the knot and began to take his hands away, but I clasped mine over them and pressed them to my nose, my mouth. He allowed me to savor his mortality for a few moments, and then he sighed, "Do let go, there's a good lad."
I sensed him walk away from me, and then I heard the sound of humming encircling me. Feeling slightly foolish, I raised my hands and, although I couldn't see anything, shut my eyes. I thought that I could feel a faint and shifting radiance on my hands, as if globes of soft auras pirouetted before me. Pitching forward, I grasped a face. The atmosphere grew still and silent. My fingers investigated the invisible visage; they felt the thick nose and full lips, lips that flexed so that my fingertips played against large square teeth. Thick stubble, almost a beard, covered the chin. Was it Philippe? Had he shortened his beard and I not notice it? I moved my fingers along the face and felt the ragged scar beneath the right eye, and on my other hand I felt the heat that emitted from a mouth that mocked with easy laughter.
Cursing, I ripped the band of cloth from before my eyes, and then cried in fright as a winged shadow fluttered before me, squawking risibility. The crow's beady eyes stared directly into mine as I felt the wind of its flapping wings. And then it vanished to join its comrades in the boughs above us. I stood in the center of the circle, looking at the faces that were all too far away for me to have touched.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The circle broke up and my companions moved away. Eblis, who had not been a part of the circle, jumped out of a tree, landing near Pera. She arose and held onto the handles of his wheelchair as he leaped into it, maneuvering his stunted torso with hands, like some malformed monkey. I stood beneath the trees and listened to the sound of birds moving among the branches. I heard the patter of rain on bark and leaves, drops that slipped between those leaves and fell into the nearby pool. I looked at the others, who had crossed the road and were entering the building as Oskar held its door open for them. He stood there alone for some time, gazing at me, and then he waved and went inside.
A loud clap of thunder shook me from my mental void. I leaned against a tree and closed my eyes. My sharp hearing took in the sounds of storm, of moving shadow. The world was alive with sound such as I had never experienced. Pushing away from the tree I passed the pond and peered into its water, not understanding the spheres beneath its surface, those pale globes that seemed almost to watch me.
I ran through the rain, into the building, and stepped into the drawing room. The tiny lights of the brass chandelier spread dim illumination through the room. Stopping before the painting of the oak grove, I examined it with interest. I saw that the «rainbow» was not actually white but rather a mixture of pale yellows and greens. The same wan green glowed among the numerous brown clouds. My eyesight oddly blurred as I stared at the thing, and that painted mass of nubilation seemed to billow and convulse, its patches of pale green reflecting a kind of alien light.
Turning away, I rubbed my eyes and listened to the frail music that issued from some distant place. I stepped into the hallway and passed Pera's closed door, approached the door that opened onto the catacombs, and crossed its threshold. I needed no light as I held my hand against the rough-hewed wall and climbed down the small stone steps. Curiously, my discomfort for small dark places had deserted me. Glancing to where the whistling music was coming from, I noticed a doorway cut into the basalt, into which a squat round door had been fitted. Beside the wall leaned the dented wheelchair. Cracking open the door, I peered into an incommodious cell.
Eblis sat upon a squalid mat, looking like some troglodytic chimera, a plate of food before him. He watched me enter his domain as he put a slab of webbed meat to his mouth and tore into it with diseased teeth. Oskar stood in one corner, facing the wall as he played some flutelike instrument. Ignoring both of them, I went to examine the dark painting above the goblin's mat. Unlike the others, it did not represent another artist's work. Rather, it was a simple representation of Eblis Mauran in his wheelchair, the knobs that were his hands in his lap.
Oskar killed his music and turned to face me.
"Tell me about Pickman," I ordered.
"Not much to tell. He disappeared in September of 1926, after an unsuccessful career as an artist in Boston."
"Why did he paint his chosen subjects?"
"He was attracted to the macabre. Who can explain why? Tell me why Goya's mood so darkened that he ended his career with the so-called Black Paintings. What moods arrested Poe and Baudelaire so as to produce their diabolic lore? Hmm?"
"Stop being precious and tell me about Pickman."
"Henry, there's little to tell. Like Goya, his mood darkened near the end of his life, fueled perhaps by his lack of luck in being able to exhibit and sell his paintings. People were turned off by the image of the morbid changeling that kept appearing in his work, that became his whoreson theme. People felt abused when looking at his art."
"I'm sure they did."
"Look, I'm busy. Eblis has a session with the Mistress. Good day." So saying, he exited the room and picked up the old wheelchair, carrying it away.
I frowned at the goblin, then turned my attention once more to his painting. It was a large work in an ancient frame and seemed quite accomplished. And then I noticed the hands that nestled in the painted figure's lap, the nubs of which were both fingerless.
The gnome's plaintive voice spoke. "Master Pieter painted it just after I was woven."
I looked down at him. "I don't understand you."
"The Mistress grants me a new addition tonight." He held up his arms and smiled. "Will you carry me?"
I tilted to him and he scrambled into my embrace. His tiny arms wound around my neck, his large sad face fell onto my breast, and suddenly there were tears in my eyes. I could taste his loneliness. I carried him up the steps and into the hallway, then placed him into his wheelchair, which awaited him. He thanked me in his high and childlike voice, and I followed as he wheeled himself down the hallway and into the parlor. As I watched the tiny creature work his chair, something that Oskar had said about Pickman reverberated in my head. Oskar had described the creature in Pickman's painting as a changeling. Watching Eblis, I was certain that the word exactly described him: a secret child, unwanted in this world.
I followed Eblis to a door, which I opened for him. The crone sat at what looked like a prehistoric spinning wheel. In her left hand she held a moist mass of flesh, which she worked into the spindle and pulled through the outlandish device. I watched as the stringy meat was twisted and wound into a thread of glistening brawn. On a nearby table sat a shallow metal bidet in which a pile of the fibrous stuff had been tossed. Beside that mass of meat lay a large silver tray on which some of the flesh, woven together, was piled, ready to be eaten.