Something to look forward to.
He went back to the main area and browsed through the movie selection, found a copy of The Best Years of Our Lives (Dad’s favorite movie), and was getting ready to put it in the VCR when he noticed a watercolor painting that was hanging on the wall among the children’s drawings.
It was a painting of a large, dark, Richardsonian-Romanesque gothic building—an old school, perhaps— complete with turrets and a belfry.
Two things immediately registered: he’d seen this building before, and recently, and damned if it didn’t look like it had been painted by the same guy who’d done the watercolor he owned.
Looking over at the nurses’ station to make sure no one was watching him, Martin took the watercolor from the wall and went back to his room. True to her word, Amber had returned his painting, leaning it on the desktop. Martin grabbed it and sat down, holding the two paintings side by side.
It didn’t take an expert to recognize that the style of both paintings was exactly the same—all you had to do was look at the signature in the lower right-hand corner: R.J. Nyman.
Martin Tyler was not a man who put a lot of stock in meaningful coincidence, having experienced so little of it during his lifetime, and anytime he did encounter something that might be chalked up to it, he did then what he did now: shook his head and came up with a reasonable explanation: Okay, so the same guy painted both of these; so what? It doesn’t mean anything. The guy told you that he made part of his living doing this, painting watercolors of local landmarks and buildings. Stands to reason that he’d do a lot of them, and that one of them would end up here.
This almost worked, until it dawned on him where he’d seen this other gothic nightmare of a building.
Rising to his feet, he walked over to the only window in his room and looked out through the streaked glass and wire mesh to the building across the street, whose sign declared it to be Miller Middle School, a building that would be right at home in a Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, or Bela Lugosi fright-fest.
Martin would have dismissed this as another so what? had it not been for the things standing at various spots across the length of the roof; near the edge, atop the turrets, above and even inside the belfry, at least a dozen of the camera-creatures similar to the one from the other night milled about, hopping to and fro, beaks and wings working furiously, all of them turning in his direction at once and freezing as if challenging him to a stare-down.
Martin backed away, not looking away from the sight until he nearly fell over the chair.
It’s the drugs, he told himself. That has to be it; you’re still wonky from the meds and your brain is just dredging up this same weird crap like it did last night.
Setting the watercolors on the desk, he took a deep breath, released it slowly, and looked back.
The camera-creatures were still staring at him, only now their brass eyes were opening, and from each set emerged a bright golden light, the beams crisscrossing until it appeared the top of the school was encased in a giant, shimmering web of gold.
Easy there, sport, he told himself. There’s an quick way to prove that you’re still hallucinating. Opening the door of his room, Martin leaned out into the hallway and called, “Bernard?” The attendant came out of the nurses’ station right away. “Something wrong? You okay there, bud?” “Could you come in here for a minute, please?” Bernard approached him slowly. “What’s going on, Martin?” Ethel and Amber stood at the door, watching.
Think fast, sport; don’t make this any worse. “I was just wondering about this building across the street.” “The school?” asked Bernard. “Yeah . . . I was wondering if it’s the same building in this picture I found hanging on the wall out there.” Bernard came into the room. Martin handed him the watercolor. “It looks like this is the same building. Is it?” Bernard looked out the window, as did Martin. The creatures were still there, but if Bernard saw them, he gave no indication.
“Oh, yeah, it’s the same place. The guy who did this, he’s got stuff all over town. You ever been inside the Sparta or the L&K restaurant? They got watercolors he did of their places hanging in there. He did one of the courthouse, the old Savings & Loan . . . hell, you can’t go into a restaurant or city building and not see one of his watercolors.” Bernard looked at the painting. “‘R.J. Nyman’. So that’s his name. Huh.”
Martin realized that he could just ask Bernard if he saw the things on the roof—at least that way he’d have his answer—but he suddenly didn’t want to know; if Bernard said yes, then reality as Martin knew it had wandered off the highway; if Bernard said no, he’d follow it up with a lot of questions—Why, what do you see? Camera-creatures, you say? With wings and wolf’s legs and brass eyes? A giant golden web, you say? Hang on a second, I think Ethel might have another cup of pills for you . . . .
Better to stay quiet.
“I thought something about this painting you brought with you looked familiar,” said Bernard, holding the watercolors side by side. “You buy this off him, did you?” “A few years back. I gave him fifty dollars for it.” “I’ll bet he appreciated that. Huh—small world, isn’t it? You having a painting of his.” “I guess so.” Bernard handed them back. “I wonder whatever happened to that guy.” “Yeah.” Bernard stared at him for a moment, then asked: “Was that all you wanted?” Martin nodded. “Just making sure that I wasn’t seeing or imagining things.”
Bernard laughed, then clapped a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “You’re not ready for a ride in the Twinkie Mobile just yet; it’s the same building.”
“You have any idea how it . . . how the watercolor came to be here?”
Bernard thought about it for a few moments, then shook his head. “Beats me. You wanna ask Ethel? Maybe she knows.”
“No, it’s all right. I’m not all that curious.” Which was a lie, but he didn’t want to risk drawing any more attention to himself than he already had.
Reminding him that lunch was in an hour, Bernard left Martin’s room and returned to the nurses’ station, where he informed Ethel and Amber that it hadn’t been anything important.
Martin closed the door to his room, then walked back to the window.
The golden web was gone, as were the creatures.
And Martin was scared—scratch that: he was (as Wendy would undoubtedly put it) fuckin’ terrified. Yeah, some of this could be chalked up to all the drugs that had traveled through his system in the last twelve or thirteen hours, but not all of it. Jesus! Had he done something to mess up his brain chemistry? Had some of the pills from last night done serious, irreparable damage before he’d gotten sick? Was this temporary or was it going to get worse? After all, he hadn’t given a second thought to brain damage when assembling the ingredients for his Shuffling-Off Cocktail (as he’d thought of it), no; he’d intended to go all the way, so why bother worrying about the possible consequences of what might happen if he didn’t finish the job?