He couldn’t sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes he was there again, right where he didn’t want to be.
With each dream came a new level of fidelity. His senses were becoming gorged on these artificial subconscious sights and sounds. He woke up with the memory of ivy on the palm of his hands. The touch of damp on the soles of his feet. The latter memory ached the most, and took the longest to dissipate.
He awoke again, this time not even piercing the veil. The sound familiar against his living room wall, loud from the sofa. He couldn’t recall when he had first fallen asleep, nor what he had done the previous evening to exhaust him to the point where he was unable to cover the distance form the sofa to his bed. He could see it there in the gloom, in the dark rectangle of the doorway. The old phone was on the floor. The phone that wasn’t his and yet was his. His un-made bed. Strewn with items.
He was hungry. His mouth dry. So he was also thirsty. He licked his lips, they tasted of ashes.
It was day, only the light was weak. The blinds were down hind him, and when he turned to open them, he recoiled at the sight of an elongated arm reaching out for him from somewhere outside.
Ivy.
It had grown.
So much had it grown, to the extent of him wondering just when he had fallen asleep. What day. What month. How long had he been under?
It covered half of the large living room window, obscuring the lower right hand portion of his view. Part of the Park and the Flats behind. The tendrils had multiple, small spines protruding from it and sticking to the glass. Impossibly, it had grown. So much. From where he couldn’t see, only that it had also begun to appear on the side window next to the alcohol beyond which lay his front door. There was a tall slim window there, around the corner of the building from the main window. It had a view of the east side of the city. Squat brown building stretching towards an uninspired horizon. A view that would never inspire a painting, would never be a muse to a landscape that would capture a landscape that would remain in oil rendered time immemorial. Thin fingers of ivy from the lower left corner. Tentatively teasing, caressing the glass.
Whump.
A soft cooing sound. It had begun again. Or it had never stopped.
There was something important he had to do. He would be damned if he did not do it. Everything would be damned. Something about Violet, or something else.
It was in his hand, where he still tightly held it.
The card.
He opened it, reading the few words again. It flooded back then as it had before.
The small round woman ad the tall man.
His rent.
His food.
On cue, his stomach rumbled. He thought back to when he had eaten. Canapes at the Raschold? They were on offer, yet he didn’t think he had taken any. He had wished to remain aloof, knowing full well he had ended up the night feeling quite the opposite. Humbled. Shamed. Humiliated. He had fallen. Not just that evening. His descent had begun a long time before. In effect, he was still falling. All the mattered was when he would stop. Or how he would stop.
If I will stop.
He lifted himself into his chair, ignoring the various protestations from his body. Age, fatigue and the results from the accident meant that pain was a common occurrence urence. He had paracetamol somewhere, 400mgs. It would do him good to get a few of those down.
The bathroom.
Food could wait. This was more important.
The bathroom cabinet was empty aside from the screw top plastic container of pills and a half squeezed out tube of toothpaste. His razor was there, the blade speckled with rust. He scratched at the growth on his face unconsciously as his gaze drifted over it. He had supposed himself presentable at the gallery, but he must have looked like a vagrant given a second hand suit and shoved into a dignified function for the amusement of the upper classes. His face burned. He had no business going. To hell with them all. To hell with Trent, who had always been an insufferable beacon of pretension. To hell with Mamoulean and the simpering Raschold. And to hell with
[blank]
whatever her name was -
Wait. Who?
Had he met someone else there? Cold fingers on his brain. An attempt at recall.
You’re fucking losing it Campion.
That wasn’t even his internal voice. Who was that.
Who was she?
He downed four tablets and chewed them, relishing the bitterness. He leaned into the sink, cupped his hands full of cold water and doused his face. It felt good. Refreshing. Vestigaes of the nightmare were still clinging to him, but they would soon fall away like dead leaves in a summer breeze. Until he fell into the dark again, when they would once more grow and cling to him, wrapping around his unconscious body on tendrils of his nightmares.
Whump.
The card was still in his hand. He had crumpled it within his fist. He let go and it fell to the floor. He bent and took hold of it again. The front was still her. Still Violet. This wasn’t her card though, but he doubted if he still the original. How lackadaisical he had been with her gifts to him. With her drawings. Her schoolwork. Her reports. He didn’t do more than give each a cursory glance. He filed them in whatever drawer or cupboard was nearest. Let Amber keep them properly. He knew he would never think to look at them again. The marks of his daughters growth.
What he would give now, for something new. Even something old. What he would give to see her suddenly run into the bath room and gift him a new handmade card, or excitedly pass him a class jotter with what she had written that day. Anything.
A shadow ran towards him through the open door.
Whump.
It reached out towards him.
He blinked and it was gone, the sickly light from the window casting strange shadows. That was all. A bird flying past the building. A cloud in front of the sun. Nothing there now.
No shadow.
No Violet.
Not any more.
Nevermore quoth the -
Whump.
Plaster dust from the ceiling. He should go and see. Go and speak to Yana. Try to speak to Yana. Yet he was scared of what would happen if she asked him in. He was scared as to where he would be lead, through their doorway and into the darkness of their apartment. He didn’t wish to know what was there. He didn’t wish to know what was making these noises. Not the impact, heavy and disruptive as it was, but even less so the strange mollifying cooing noises that seemed to follow it. Something was being appeased. Something was being calmed.
FINISH IT.
What was the card inferring to? In that strange script?
Yet he thought he knew. The recollection of Father’s day. The thing he had been working on. Mamoulean’s words, caustic as they were, had stirred something deep within him. Given life to his slumbering or mummified excuse for a muse that lay wizened and undisturbed somewhere deep within him. That initial as well.
D
It stirred something in him and he could almost see -
He would need to go downstairs. To the basement. To where he had stored all his things when he had moved in. All that he had left that he hadn’t the heart to get rid of nor to take up to the apartment with hm. All that he once was. All that he couldn’t face. Things of hers. Amber. More importantly things of hers. His daughter.
Who tried calling you.
She was drowning.
You didn’t call her back.
He shook his head. Neck sore. Body still in pain. The tablets weren’t doing their job. He took two more, still had the tub with him. Chew. Swallow. Grimace.
He hadn’t brought a single thing of Violets up to the apartment with him. He had brushed her aside. Cast her as nothing more than a memory from his other life. He didn’t have the guts for it. To face what he once had.
Easier to throw it away.
You threw it away.
“Fuck off,” he said aloud in that alien voice. He would go down. Now. In his trousers from the previous
month
evening. He didn’t care. Who he was going meet. Denys? Yana? Denys would be at work, or if not, juts in the apartment. Yana meanwhile was obviously busy with
Whump
and besides, he had never once seen her in the hall or encountered her when going to and from his own place.
Him on the ground floor. The one who is quick and silent. The one that makes the sound like a corpse falling from the roof of a building. A rush of dead air.
He wasn’t going to the ground floor. So that wasn’t likely either.
He was naked form the waist up and grabbed an old t-shirt from the floor. It smelled ion old flesh but he didn’t care. It would do.
The door was unlocked, but before he left something caught his eye. A jar on the small shelf in the alcove. He frowned. He was unsure what was a in it, but like most things had a vague recollection. Denys looking like a proud father, handing it to Adam despite his protestations.
Honey.
Yet it didn’t look like any honey he had seen before. Most of the contents of the jar was black, the glass smokey and cracked as though subjected to a temperature change, or whatever was inside had changed state to the effect that it was straining against the container that could no longer hold it. Some of the black liquid had pushed out from under the lid, which was np longer secure on the top of the jar. He brought his face to it and sniffed, recoiling at the bitter scent. It was familiar but nothing he could place.
He would deal with it later.
He opened the door and made his way to the lift, pressing the button and watching the light ascend from the bowels of the building. As he waited, he thought he became aware of a slight shift in the atmosphere behind him. He felt, as opposed to heard, the door open. A stealthy, forbidden action was taking place, and he found that he had to resist the temptation to turn. He wasn’t exactly sure he could trust what he thought he would see.
What is you you think you’ll see?
He stared fixedly at the door of the lift. Willing it to open.
She’d looking at you.
If he turned, he would see that face, ducking back into the doorway.
So turn.
He looked up at the light as it paused on his floor, and waited.
The door slid open. He entered, pressing the button for the basement. He didn’t look round as he did so, and the door slid closed again. He didn’t see anything, nor did he try to.
The lift descended.
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