Sleep continued to elude him for the rest of the night. He began to feel afraid at the prospect of falling unconscious and experiencing the same nightmare. It was an intermittent horror, something that he’d always had with him, ever since that damn book illustration he had seen when he was ten. It had never occurred twice within the same twenty four hour period, and now he was fearful that he would sleep and be standing once more at the edge of the balcony, over-looking the stairwell. Instead, he lay awake in the darkness, and listened to the sound of the night.
The sound of sirens, somewhere in the city far below. The direction of the Flats, those teeth-like protrusions on the horizon of his view. If there were sirens, it was there that they would be going. He never went to the Flats. No one went to the Flats. Not unless you ended up there by mistake. He had, in is former life, been invited to an exhibition of an old art school associate’s work. He had left early, flagging a taxi outside and given the driver specific directions home. Directions that would have ensured the cheapest fare and the most amenable route. Directions that had, of course, been ignored in favour of an egregious way home that took the long way, through the Flats. It had seemed quiet through there, too quiet for a Saturday night, the taxi one of the only vehicles on the potholed road. That was until it stopped at an intersection, engine idling under the red light. From the shadows between two of those large brutalist structures there had emerged one single hooded figure, cowled and low, almost animalistic. It approached the lights, standing hunched over about five feet form the taxi. Despite the proximity, Adam was unable to see his face (for the silhouette was undoubtably male), the shadow from the overhead lights casting all but a scarred chin in darkness. He had produced something from the front pocket of the hoodie in one hand, something else from his rear tracksuit trouser pocket in his other. Adam realised all too late what it was, and shouted for the taxi driver to “put your fucking foot down!” He had, but not until the firework had landed on the bonnet of the car, exploding and shattering the windscreen. The glass held, but was a mess of cobwebs that Adam was surprised the driver could see through. The tyres protested loudly as the car jolted into motion, just as a slew of hooded figures joined the lone assailant. More explosions littered the street behind the fleeing vehicle, Adam taking fearful glances through the rear windshield. There were shouts and jeers above and below the fizzing and popping. Stones and bottles joined the fireworks, raining towards the car, hopelessly out of range already, but the sight of the missiles being thrown with such venomous force nonetheless threatening.
By the time they had arrived at Adam’s home on the outskirts of the city, the taxi driver - a middle aged man with thinning hair and a scar across his left cheek - had been badly shaken to the extent that Adam had asked if he would like to join him inside for a moment, offering a cup of sweet tea to help calm his nerves. The man had refused but Adam tipped him generously nonetheless. He didn’t know if the man was insured for the damage to his car, and it certainly wasn’t his responsibility that the man had ignored his directions in favour off scalping more money from customer, but his conscious got the better of him, as it was want to do back then.
That had been the shining end to the altogether shitty evening at the art exhibition. It was, Adam recalled later, one of the only times at the point in his life that he had arrived home and poured himself a drink, the bottle of single malt lying unopened for years suddenly springing from the bottle into a glass tumbler and down his throat in one fell swoop.
Had that been the beginning of the resurgence? It may have been.
The art school associate had been an intermittently intolerable human being by the name of Trent d’Marcan, and had the audacity to introduce himself as such when they had first met on that initial art history lecture. That was the first red flag. The fact he was called Trent. Adam wasn’t sure what parent would wish to inflict such a name on their child, but Trent was exactly the type of person you would expect someone with the name of Trent to be. Loud, brash and possessing of a self confidence that Adam and the rest of mortal kind could only wish for. They hadn’t exactly been friends, or close in any way possible, but had spoken on occasion nonetheless and even kept in touch - albeit at a distance - afterwards. Hence the invitation.
The man had been what Adam’s Uncle Steven would have called a “pain in the fucking arse”, in his own eloquent fashion. He would have been correct as well. The man was a pain in the fucking arse. His art had been intriguing however. He had studied the old masters better than any of them, and developed his ability to paint in oil to the extent that his work at times was close to eclipsing them. Portraits mainly. Pale faces looming from inky blackness beyond. The show had been at an old power station that had been converted into a gallery, and Adam had attended more out of jealousy than anything else. His own art - rendered in a more interpretative style with an overt use of suggestion and abstraction utilising negative space - was floundering. He had held his own show the previous month at a small gallery space on the other side of the city and he had sold a paltry handful of paintings, the attendance figures about a third of what he had hoped for. He had gone on the the slightest chance that Trent’s exhibition would fail worse than his had, yet had been disappointed to arrive and find the halls teeming with attendees. A string quartet was playing classical renditions of eighties pop classics somewhere out of sight, the sound ascending to the high open ceilings were it mingled with the hushed and oh so very polite conversation. Adam was dismayed to note that it wasn’t just that more people had turned out for Trent’s exhibition, but a better class of person. He was no snob, and cared little for the upper classes, but damn it if they didn’t have the kind of disposable income that he wanted to tap into.
Adam had done his best to mingle, trying not to appear as out of place as he he had felt, and began almost immediately to regret accepting the invitation to attend. To spurn Trent would be to very obviously posses an entire bunch of sour grapes, and that was very much out the question. He had made sure not only to accept immediately, but to include a handwritten note in the response, enthusing about how much he was looking forward to attending.
They masses had assembled in the main atrium, a few of Trent’s pieces on the vast brickwork around them. The paintings themselves were massive and imposing. To view one was almost inviting it to take up residence inside your mind, where it would live for ever more. Perfectly posed young men and women against an almost impermeable backdrop of darkness. The thing - other than the subject and the intruding sections of rusted machinery than bled almost seamlessly into the white flesh - was the fact that the darkness was never absolute. It constantly felt as though it was thinnest of veils, masking - but not completely - something far more interesting that was taking place in the background of each of the works. Vemier Mamoulean, one of the countries most noted critics (who had, of course, spurned Adam’s request for attendance at his exhibition but had obviously deemed it worth of his time to attend Trent’s showing) had later written about the “subconscious and near invisible urges inherent in each piece, the foreground and subject matter merely a temporary diversion to the existentialism explored in the coast darkness beyond”. Adam had known he was there that evening. He had seen the wild spray of white hair, an explosion in freeze frame, beyond the mass of the well coiffured and trilby hat wearing pretentious crowd. The sight had caused his guts to knot up so tightly that they remained like that for the rest of the night.
Trent had appeared on the lower steps of a wide staircase, giving the room a shark like grin before launching into a pre-prepared speech that Adam had tuned out of after the opening words. That part said and done, it was time to move through the rest of the gallery space and explore the exhibition proper.
Grudgingly, Adam had to concede how impressive it all was, and spent a long time at each piece, feeling himself drawn towards that veil beyond those biomechanics which dominated the fore.
He moved away from the assembled masses, canapé in one hand, glass of champagne in the other. He took one sip of the champagne for appearances sake when he was handed it by the reserved waiting staff, then found a spot to relieve himself of it once he was out of sight, pouring it into the base of one of the artificial plants that lined the corridor in which he had entered, and placing the glass on the floor between the base and the wall. At that point, pre-taxi ride home, he hadn’t drank for years, and had no wish to start again that evening. How little he had known then.
He walked from room to room, each room he entered more devoid of guests than the last. They were taking their time moving through, the majority of them in attendance probably only there for the free food and drink. Still, that made no odds. Even if most of them never left the main atrium, they would imbibe enough booze to get their wallets out for posterity and start buying up the paintings that Trent had arranged around them. All of those would go, and Adam had no doubt that those were the most expensive pieces. Another pang of envy. He had always thought himself the superior artist. It was he, Adam Campion, that had curried their tutors favour, that had won the degree show awards. Trent’s work at the time was too safe. Too derive, too staid. Yet look at it now. This horrendous melding of man and machine had captivated the country nay, the planet. Adam’s own pieces had barely merited a second glance. What he had once thought boundary pushing, and a new way to interpret the subconscious, was looked upon as being naive and substandard, whilst Trent’s work had been snowballing, gathering one overwhelmingly positive review after the next.
He left the corridor and was in another smaller room. More high ceilings and white painted brick walls. A few benches were arranged in the centre of the space, looking out towards the walls, where upon each one there hung another large and imposing oil painting.
For want of something else to do, and figuring it too early to go home (he had no intention of staying most of the night, however to leave too early would be an open admission of envy, undoing the haste at which he had replied to the invitation and the seeming willingness he had to attend) he wandered to the nearest bench and sat down, taking a tentative bit of his canapé. He had to admit to himself that it wasn’t too bad. Something with seafood, a few salty capers adorning the top. He normally wasn’t a fan but he found himself wishing he had taken two from the plate as he finished it in another bite.
The music from the lobby was still audible, albeit faintly. The quartet were now playing a slow classical interpretation of Toto’s Africa. Trent would have been tickled by something so anachronistic. The traditional timeless exhibition opening, itself unchanged over centuries as the bourgeois descended on the showing with their new money, looking to elevate their social status by purchasing expensive pieces, and to be seen to be doing so. All milling around vast cavernous spaces with food and drink in hand. The music played would have - should have - been more traditional, yet here they all were now with the notable chorus refrain about a man’s love for the world’s second most populous continent echoing through the evening. Second most. Like Adam himself was second only to Trent’s work. Only, he wan’t, and if he believed that then what really was the point? Art was subjective, yet it was also subject to the zeitgeist. Just because Trent’s paintings were praised now, and Trent himself the latest critical darling, that didn’t mean to say that it would be thus for ever more. Hell, Adam mused as he leaned back against the wrought ironwork of the bench, just the previous year there had been another artist raking in the reviews and the plaudits. A matter of months ago. His name was unheard and unspoken already. Baran O’Connor was a sculptor who wrought iron into the most fabulous shapes, splicing the classical with the contemporary. Mythical beasts taking on political figures and celebrities in loose interpretations thrown across hot coals of chaos, each piece a conflagration of noise and movement, the minutiae almost imperceptible to anything but the most perceptive critics and appreciators of such things. Adam conceded that at least Trent’s work was more approachable, at least initially.
The subject of the painting he sat and faced glowered down at him from the wall, it’s relative position and expression rendering it aloof. More than than. Worse than that. A classical princess, pale skin and large eyes. Full lips and high cheek bones. Classical beauty yet unmistakably hostile. If Trent had used a life model for this piece, it was clear that either he had instructed her to hate him, or he had taken it upon himself to distort her otherwise pretty features to despite the observer. The large eyes were black and creased at the sides, the lips pulled tight into a grimace. Adam studied her further, the obscure and rusting machinery erupting from the exposed parts of her heck, her décolletage. The skin around each piece of cruel machinery was red and swollen, the detail - Adam had to admit - was
“Impressive, isn’t she?”
He hadn’t heard her sit down next to him, the sound of her voice causing him to start visibly. He turned to see a young woman with short bobbed dark hair over thin features. Not traditionally attractive but nonetheless arresting in a way that ensured Adam blushed slightly at the sight of her. Her lips were narrow, turned up at the sides as she broke into a slight smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the trace of a European accent, something from the south east possibly. Her skin was olive in tone and actually, bugger that, she really was quite beautiful. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You were,” she nodded her head towards the painting, “deep in appreciation.”
“You could say that,” Adam replied, feeling the heat thankfully ebb from his face, collecting himself. She turned and looked back to the painting and he followed her gaze.
“Ivy,” she said softly.
“Adam,” he said, mistaking her comment for an introduction. She didn’t answer him, and he realised that she was looking at the small panel underneath the painting. He squinted slightly, only just making out what it said. Her eyesight must be better than his. Nevertheless, he realised his mistake, and the redness returned to his cheeks, causing him to look away briefly.
“For Ivy, in her infinite rapture,” the woman said. “What do you think it means?” She stood and walked slowly over until she was standing a few feet in front of the piece, equidistant between the art and the bench.
“I’m sure I have absolutely no idea,” Adam said, standing and walking over beside her. His heart was beating harder in his chest, to the point where he began to wonder if she could hear it. The room was still empty save for them both. From that some indefinable point, the strict quartet were still playing, this time their version of Rick Astely’s Never Gonna Give You Up. Adam didn’t think this one worked quite as well as Africa but then what did he know. He quite clearly wasn’t in on the joke.
“She looks upon us not with disdain, I think, but longing,” she continued, the awe unmistakable in her voice. That familiar pang of envy. Adam knew that no-one would have ever looked upon his work with such admiration. Trent was, he knew, on a different level entirely from Adam, one that was unassailable. This woman was the vanguard. The rest would soon file in and behold the painting as much as they had the others, and the bidding would continue. Adam’s initial assessment of the night was wrong, of that he was now certain.
“Longing for what?” He found himself replying.
“Why, longing for what she can’t have.” The woman never took her gaze off the painting as she spoke.
“And what is that?”
“Our life. Our freedom. See here, she is bound to the machines that consume her. She has it all, her wealth, her status, her beauty, and yet she has none of it.”
Adam peered closer to the painting. His eyes once more beginning to be drawn not to the subject, but what lay behind. The composition encouraged it, if not outright demanded it. The subject sat off centre, nearly a third of the large canvas area devoted to the seemingly black void beyond. Yet it was not all that simple.
“It’s what lies behind her, beyond these machines, this darkness,” the woman said, as though she could almost hear Adam’s thoughts. “And it is here that the true artistry comes into the fore. It is here that our artist has captured what shouldn’t be able to be seen. The casual observer would miss it. Even this most avid observer may take some time, and still miss it. But you, I think that you see it? Do you not?”
Adam was aware that she had turned once more to face him, but he couldn’t draw himself away from the darkness. What he first saw as being nothing more than a flat black matte background secondary to the focus of the piece, he now saw as the true focus. This was the subject, this was where it was hiding.
That was then he began to see it.
The staircase.
Shrouded in darkness. There was texture there. Layers of texture and subtle nuances of light and shade. How could he have missed it before?
He tried to think of words, something. His mouth forming in to shapes. Movement at his side, the diminishing of a form, space where there was none before. Light.
“Nice to meet you Adam,” she said. By the time he was able to prise his attention from the painting, she had gone, leaving nothing but scent of her perfume in her wake, a diminishing memory of her.
When he turned his attention back to the painting, he found that he was unable to discern the same detail from the darkness, and it became just that, a formless void, containing nothing.
In hindsight, it transpired that this moment was the highlight of the evening. No sooner had the woman disappeared from sight, did the masses begin to file in to the exhibition space. Adam was no longer alone with For Ivy in her Infinite Rapture, and upon catching sight of Trent holding court with a flock of slack-jawed sycophants, he decided that he had probably seen enough and it was time to leave. Unfortunately, the way in which had had come in, the way that everyone had come in, was also the only way to leave, and he had no choice but to surreptitiously attempt to make his way past where Trent was espousing without being seen. He had nearly made it to the far side of the opening, seeing the main Atrium ahead and his sweet release from this torture, when he heard his name bellowed loudly by an all too familiar voice.
Trent had called him back and soon absorbed him into his flock. Adam made nice as long as he could bare, but even so could’t leave for another two hours, by which point he was in an altogether foul mood until he had been able to flag the taxi outside. Trent had a way of making him feel like shit, even when plying him with compliments. He constantly made Adam the centre of the conversation, and continuously brought up Adam’s own work, and referenced his own ill-fated exhibition. He painted it out to be a rousing success, which only riled Adam up more. He had no right to do that. Not here. Not at his own flourishing exhibition. Not in front of these morons that possessed more money than sense. Was Trent even at Adam’s exhibition? Adam had sent him an invitation, out of politeness above all else, but he was sure he hadn’t attended. Then again, he had spent most of the opening night cowering and nearly in tears in the kitchen, not baring to go out and confront the half full, half disinterested gallery. He may well have been there and left before Adam could even catch sight of them. Perhaps his compliments had been genuine. Perhaps he was holding it too much against him. Perhaps it was merely just plain old jealousy. Either way, Adam wasn’t in the mood for such perceived condescending platitudes and so, after replying in kind, and keeping a smile so fixed on his face he thought it would stick like that for the rest of his life, he had made some piss poor excuse about needing to get back and see to the dog that he didn’t even own. He felt Trent’s gaze burning into his back as he walked to the exit, despite the fact that when he turned around, Trent had already turned his attention away, and had disappeared off into one of the other rooms. It was then Adam realised that it wasn’t Trent that he felt staring at him, but the works on the wall that all watched him leave. Those figures looking from the dark. Each in turn gazed down upon him. Perhaps the woman had been right, perhaps it was longing, jealousy of his freedom. Right then it felt like nothing more than simple, plain hate.
As his taxi ride began, before the ill-fated route through the Flats, Adam found himself thinking of her. The woman he had met.
Then he began thinking of her, and the callous way that she had gazed out at him, despite being just a figment in oil.
For Ivy, he thought, in her infinite rapture. There was no rapture there, but there was the infinite. He had seen it lurking behind her. Before it moved just out of sight.
The staircase.
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