He did not draw his first full breath again until he crossed over into the little idyllic town. The students were already settled in for the academic year, so he was arriving at a time when he did not have to contend with other U-hauls and mattress-bearing cars clogging the one-way streets.

The mover had a late start in the city, so it was late before he found his way to the address the lawyer gave him. He parked his car and trailer on the street and got out on foot to look for the exact house. A footpath led directly into an open quadrangle of dwellings, all of which were built around a courtyard buried under scarlet and copper leaves. The residence bearing his address was the one nearest to where he came in. It was reminiscent of a fairytale house topped with gingerbread shingles and stitched together with glaucous vines. Michael could feel himself being drawn into the ambience of the place walking up to the door with his key in hand. A small wood plaque hung at eye-level:

Spyglass Darkly House.

Wedged between the knob and doorframe was a folded-over note:

Mr. West,
Electricity in the house is off until sometime tomorrow. Sorry for the inconvenience. Here are some things to aid you. If you need to call me, a payphone is down the block at the sandwich shop. Welcome, Caretaker, Andrew Tommen

Michael looked down to see a box of candles and matches just inside the entrance, but was too excited by his new prospect to be bothered about a lack of power.

The rooms were large and spacious, and exposed wooden beams wove throughout the house like dark-hued veins. The place was lightly furnished with vintage fifties-style décor, including molded plastic and metal furniture, synthetic wool upholstery, and burlap lampshades; an old tube-bearing television was in the living room. After a cursory inspection of the property the tenant settled on the huge attic with its skylight window as the best room to set up his studio. Most of what he had brought down from Chicago was lumber and art supplies, and taken altogether his belongings barely made a dent in the house. Due to the lateness of the day, and lack of power, he was eager to move his materials up the two flights of stairs before it got too dark. Twilight was almost immediately on the steps, and halfway through the unpacking, the diminished visibility required stopping to light several candles. He placed them along the steps and resumed his effort. Taloned flames flicked at the cuffs of his pant on each trip up and down the creaking staircases, and tossed his vacillating shadow higher and higher on the well walls. By the time a quitting place was reached, the house was completely dark. The resident walked back down from the top and blew out each candle in turn. He took the remaining candle into the kitchen to contemplate the still early hour. He was not tired, though the darkness gave him few options. A thorough examination of the residence would have to wait until daylight.

After turning in his rental trailer, the new citizen parked his car downtown to walk around. Purcell College, a large private school, was Stonesthrow’s primary reason for being and accounted for half its population of sixty thousand. As a result, the local economy was mainly a false one due to the students’ infusion of cash. There were a number of ethnic restaurants and stylish little boutiques, but little else. Like most college towns, Stonesthrow had a pedestrian-friendly layout, and the main drag would be an easy hike by foot from his house. Broadway was the principle street and ran parallel to the campus. Several blocks of small storefronts made up the town side, including a copier place, a vintage clothing store, and—thankfully—a coffeehouse.

The name of the coffeehouse was Bean and Nothingness, and it possessed that bohemian patina Michael loved so much. It would be a perfect location to write a novel or plot an overthrow of the government. The painter stepped into the establishment that would be his home away from home and sighed with relief. Coffeehouses by night, he thought, were more alluring than their daytime counterpart. Darkness pressing in on the windows put one in mind of campfires buried deep in the memory of skin.

On getting his latte, he moved to the condiment bar to doctor his drink. Unfamiliar locations where unfamiliar people were bound to be found made for a potent phobic mix, but the practically housebound man was anxious to push through this initial phase so he would have at least one designated “safe place” to go in town each day. Even allowing for this eventual acclimation, it would never be a comfortable fit: As he would strive for anonymity as a familiar fixture in this outpost, he was sure to be noticed disapprovingly by a few as something overly familiar on the landscape; and he always felt eyes, real or imagined, watching and judging his every move. This made him keenly self-conscious in public situations, and resultantly he kept his mannerisms staid, small, and close to his body, and never took big or hurried steps. Similarly he avoided eye contact until, shielded by the blind of his “regular table,” he deemed it safe to peek out at others. His journal was a reliable companion on these outings, and he used the pretense of reading or working in it as a cover to justify his being alone. It gave his eyes and hands something to do, and the activity would hopefully strike onlookers as nothing out of the ordinary. Still, one potentially embarrassing area of transition was at the condiment bar where, given his veracious sweet tooth, he routinely put twelve Equals in his coffee. He endeavored to mask his action by opening four or five at a time with a single tear, then crumpling the emptied packets into a tight ball before releasing them below everyone’s line of sight in the trash receptacle. In restaurant situations where no trashcan was on hand, he discarded the incriminating wad by putting the paper in his pants pocket. On this occasion, the coffeehouse was empty of patrons, so he could afford to be less guarded on all fronts.

Michael gravitated to a window seat and envied young couples moving in and out of the shadows on the sidewalk. All were wrapped arm-in-arm with unuttered destinies tugging at their bodies, and the form of them so close to the panes was enough to have him anticipating his own hopeful fate. In such caffeine-induced moments he longed to close distances, or at least entertain the thought it was the most desirable of things. He began jotting down a few first impressions in his journal.

A poster of Millais’ Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece, Ophelia, occupied the wall across from him. In the painting Shakespeare’s doomed heroine floats face up in mossy water, suspended halfway between a living reddish-green Earth and one brown, desiccated, and dead. Her wrists break the water’s surface in a Christ-like attitude. Wildflowers, mimicking blood, trickle away from one hand and down the front of the gold-threaded gown. Elizabeth Siddal was the model for the work, and was reported to have posed in a bathtub kept warm by placing a lamp beneath it.

Before leaving the coffeehouse, a scribbled advertisement soliciting for an artist’s model was left on the community bulletin board.

The painter was turning over more than one new leaf.

He shortly returned to the house and, on relighting the candle on the kitchen table, proceeded upstairs to the bedroom. The substantial bed was imposing with its four flanking ebony posts, and it would take some getting used to sleeping in a fortress. The candleholder was placed on the dresser while he poked about for bed linen in one unmarked box. He hoped, given his exhaustion, he would fall asleep without difficulty, yet worried about his new environment in view of his occasional sleepwalking. It had always been easy enough to lock himself in his small, one-room apartment in Chicago, but this bedroom door had no lock. The idea of tumbling down dark stairs would be an unfortunate beginning to his occupancy here, so it was advisable to block the door with a piece of furniture in a makeshift barrier.

When he went into in the hallway to retrieve a chair, he noticed a painting hanging outside the doorway he had passed in haste hauling boxes upstairs. He brought the candlelight back out to look at it more closely. The image was of a black box on white drapery. It resembled an antique phone with a rotary dial and sprouting funnel-like earpiece. The odd humor of the work reminded the painter of the French Surrealist, Rene Magritte, though the brushwork was more old master than modern. With his eye for reverse-engineering works of art, Michael deduced that the silky texture of the rendered cloth was achieved by a meticulous overlaying of flake white scumblings. Two complementary tints, likely pale chrome yellow and a weak tint of ultramarine blue, were woven into the neutral color with stand oil to create a milky white agate. The black box was probably made with a transparent glaze of Prussian blue brushed over opaque Mars black. It was a well-crafted painting, though dulled by dirty glass and a dreary Baroque frame. The title on the brass engraving added to the enigma:

The Ghost in the Machine by Daedalus Monet.

Between this work and the poster at the coffeehouse, the artist was almost too excited by his new life to sleep. Still, he was ready to retire for the evening, so secured the door by wedging the chair under the doorknob.

The view out his bedroom window was unusually dark. Even allowing for the rural character of the town, it seemed strange only one lit window would be visible over the roofs of Willis Quadrangle. It shone from the top floor of a house across the way, and revealed, through parted curtains, a half-dressed woman pacing anxiously with a phone to her ear. The resident set about unpacking a few essential toiletries when he stumbled over his own telephone. There was no hurry to do so, but seeing a wall jack conveniently by the nightstand, he took the opportunity to plug in the power cord. It was rare when he got a phone call, and even rarer when he made one, yet he was embarking on a new life that might imaginably require a telephone.

The candle at his back was impatient for him to get to bed and snapped with annoyance, so after brushing his teeth he crawled into bed and blew out this last vestige of his daylong journey. No sooner did his head sink into the pillow than cracks and moans of the unfamiliar house reminded him of one crucial detail.

His fan—he did not load his fan into the trailer.

Michael turned on the bed, stirring up more thoughts like dander. Did the evil neighbor steal it when he was not looking? Even though no electricity was in the house, he would need to buy a new one at his earliest opportunity. He turned again, following what must have been the scampering feet of mice in the attic.

At his earliest opportunity, he thought...

The quietude threw up no additional fences that needed tending, and it was akin to freefall. Michael occasionally twisted in the sheets, groping for a cliff face, but then would ease back into the placidity.

Peep! Peep! Peep! The phone was ringing on the nightstand. Peep! Peep! Peep!

He struggled to move his arm, and then to find a hand at the end of a wrist. The bedpost dropped away like a gangplank, sending the rest of the room careening over into an odd geometry and him flying up on the bed.

A high-pitched ping was emanating from the ceiling. Peep! Peep! Peep!

Covering his ears, he leapt up on the mattress and yelled, “Goddamn it!” Being directly under the screeching smoke alarm, he ripped it off its screws and hurled it to the floor in a rage. It struck the leg of the nightstand and shot under the bed. “Goddamn it!” he again screamed.

Peep! Peep! Peep!

He was quickly on all fours and groping under the bed skirt for the hateful thing, but could not lay a finger on it. Just when he rose to his feet with another curse, the battery-operated detector stopped chirping; the sobering moment allowed him to catch up with his rash action. Michael was easily upset by sudden sharp sounds, yet could not think what had triggered the sensor. He followed the glowing threads of floorboards over to his window and threw open the sash. His olfactory sense was almost as sensitive as his hearing, and it was not unusual for him to be awakened in the middle of the night by the smell of a house fire miles away; nothing on the air merited alarm on this occasion.

As he was about to close the window he spied something dark slumping against the clapboards below. It could have been a rat or rabbit, but its sleeping posture suggested something almost human. A breeze pinched at its mangy fur like dandelion tufts. Was it sickly or dead? The full brunt of his fear only sank in when the creature, with eyes still closed, rose up to slink away along the wall. He watched its flat shadow climb higher on the outside of the house like scorching smoke. The form was as big as a bear by the time it disappeared around the corner. Unnerved, Michael shut the window and turned back to the blocked door. He wanted to check the hall and make sure none of the candles on the stairs had rekindled, yet could not trust he was awake—could not rule out he was sleepwalking. He retraced his steps to the bed, resolved, reluctantly, to leave his monster on the other side of the door.

Chapter Four/ Back/ Contents Page

Copyright © 2007 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.