There was water tricking down from somewhere above. The sound had been a constant companion to his forensic analysis of his belongings since he descended into the basement. He wished he had his phone (either one) or still wore a watch. Time had been more and more of an abstract construct recently, sometimes not playing by the rules at all. He was beginning to accept that this was the way things would be for him from now on, even if he did not particularly like it.
There was the occasional sound of traffic. A car or bus on the street above, somewhere beyond those thin green tinged windows set high into the wall, just a the base of the ceiling. These windows looked out on to street level but were so overgrown with moss and other greenery that it was all they could do to permit a small amount of the bright midway sun into the otherwise dark foundations of the apartment building. There was an overhead light, a naked build that hung almost apologetically in the middle of the room, but the light could don’t do much to pierce the shadows that liked to accumulate in dusty corners, like black cotton.
Just the water.
That endless trickle. He did his best to push it from his mind, as he had tried to do before. Yet the more he tried, and the more he became absorbed in his endeavour, the louder it seemed to get. The air was dry, and there was no dampness in his hands. A small mercy then, that it wasn’t leaking directly into the cellar itself or - at least - not where he was storing his belongings. There were other things. Other boxes with no names nor labels, scattered around that he could make out the shape of weakly. Yet he did not care for these nor give them more than a cursory glance. He was here, in the centre of the room, at his own stack of boxes and bags, pulling various items out and placing in one of three piles. One pile for keeping, yet the contents would remain down here, to be unearthed again in another vague amount of time. One pile that he would - over the course of the next few days (or weeks) - gradually take outside and discard at the rear of the building, beside the bin storage. If he phoned the council for an uplift they would come and remove it for him (with, he was sure, a small fee attached… so perhaps not), so he didn’t need to give it much thought once he elected to dispose. The third pile was the smallest pile so far. That was the pile that he was not only going to keep, but to (try and) take upstairs with him. So far it contained a hair clip from Violet, one of her trainers that she had owned around the age of five (he had no idea why he just had one, and why he had kept it at all, only that he had a sudden urge to take it, and keep it), as well as some of his drawing and painting materials, the ones he hadn’t taken upstairs. The older stuff that he didn’t use. His oils. He had moved to airbrushing for the last couple of years, when he had done any work at all. He didn’t have the patience for oils. Hadn’t touched anything like that since before… It was the latter pile contents that forced him down into the dark, musty part of the building, with the constant trickling water like some kind of torture.
Even the elevator had seemed reluctant to complete it’s descent, stopping on the ground floor and initially refusing to budge, no matter how many times he pressed the button. The doors instead kept t opening and closing, giving him nothing more than a view of the bottom hallway - a long dark passage leading to a rectangle o obtuse sunlight that he couldn’t stare directly into without squinting. When it had eventually begun to move again, it had decided to take him back up to his floor, before continuing with it’s old tricks of having the door open and shut repeatedly. He had been forced to removed the panel and use the override, something that he had never done (or had cause to do) before, but found straightforward enough, feeling that he may need to start doing it more often if the lift continued to play up. Eventually it had done as he had requested, and disgorged him out into the arid dark. The floor was concrete but uneven, as though it had never been spread properly, and just been left to dry in clumps wherever it had been poured into the foundations. That, in conjunction with the amount of detritus (human junk yet also - alarmingly - a few desiccated corpses of rodents), made going very slow, and he was hot and uncomfortable by the time he reached the centre, where he had unloaded all his items so long ago. Rather, where the removal men he had booked (and somehow gotten way without paying) had unloaded it for him, under his direction. He had always meant to come down and go through it all, yet he never did.
Yet here I am and I don’t really know why.
Only he did.
FINISH IT.
What had he to finish? Part of him knew. An itch at the back of his skull, between his brain and his skull. Something dark there sat and scratched at him.
Old boxes. Full of junk. Dead spiders fell like black stars when he pulled something out. Only to frown at it and put it in the discard pile. Old framed pictures of nothing, ornaments, bric a brac. The things Amber hadn’t taken and he had. For reasons unknown. Perhaps because he saw them as a link to his old life. To happier tiems.
There had never been happier times.
Either way, he didn’t need it now. None of it mattered. She hadn’t wanted it and neither had he. He had been falling himself.
A print of him and Amber in front of a fountain. He couldn’t remember where. A holiday. Before Violet. His face was smooth, uncreased. Hers too. Her hair long and voluminous. Smiling. A stranger taking the photo. They hadn’t got it quite right. His feet were missing. His legs were, below the knee. She was sitting on the side of the fountain. He standing. She was in shot.
He went to put it to one side, but it slipped from his grasp before he could place it down. The glass shattered. The frame broke. He didn’t give it more than a cursory glance. He had found what he sought. A box behind this one. He moved it aside. Didn’t need to see what else was in it. Photo albums. Some books. A collection of medals from some marathons he had run. Raising money for charity. Never knowing what they did with it. Never receiving a thanks. He had only done it because he thought he should have. He ran for himself, although it never did hurt to look altruistic.
An old news paper clipping on the top of the box he sought. It looked like it was from a large piece that had probably been used to wrap and pad out something valuable (like the picture he had just broken). Something about the headline on the diminutive article caught his eye.
10 YEAR RETROSPECTIVE FOR BARAN O’CONNOR IS AN ELITE AFFAIR
The name was familiar. He took out the piece and crumbled it, placing it on his thigh and smoothing over it with his hand. It had yellowed with age, the type faint. Yet his position was perfectly in line with the strongest shard of sunlight from the cleanest window, so he found he could read it so long as he held it closely enough to his face.
The Raschold Gallery held an exhibition of the works of Baran O’Connor this week, in a showcase that is scheduled to run until January. The opening night was, as expected, a veritable who’s who of the city’s art elite, as Lon Raschold himself held court and introduced each of the renowned sculptors best works. Also in attendance was respected and venerable critic Vemier Mamoulean who, when asked for comment, had this to say.
“I believe that O’Connor is still out there, somewhere, perhaps watching over us. I ope he approves of the way we have displayed his pieces, in such a fashion as to tell a story in chronological order of his meteoric rise to become the darling of the early twentieth century. He is a sculptor without peer and, as far as this humble critic is concerned, shall remain so for as long as my life may run and then beyond. His ability to cast in bronze the deepest desires from the subconscious and render them in such a way as to be instantly unpalatable, anarchic and nauseating, yet at the same time be something that you just cannot take your eyes away from and even if you do, what you have seen here will stay with you until the sun sets for the final time.”
It has been ten years to the week since O’Connor disappeared whilst hiking through the Scottish Highlands, with all search and rescue attempts to find him coming up empty handed. With no family to put out an appeal, and with seeming few friends despite his reputation, the search was slowly scaled back over time. There are still some who think that he is still very much alive, and merely chooses not to be found. Something the authorities also share, as he has never officially been declared deceased, and is still registered as a missing person. One person who does not hold such views, is Lon Raschold himself.
“He is dead,” said the gallery owner when asked for comment later in the evening. “I have no doubt in my mind of this, and it is why such value has been placed on his work. He was a great man. A true visionary, and this is all we have left of him. I hope that you will all join us here over the course of the exhibition to celebrate his output and bid on some of his pieces.”
Some circles believe that it is all a hoax, and Baran is not only still alive, but profiting from the inflated prices his work now fetches owing to him being “dead” and unable to produce more.
“Bull,” Raschold responded when it was put to him by this reporter. “If you continue to spread unfounded filth like that I shall sue.”
It was then that I took my cue to leave. I shall leave all over interpretation up to you. Save for leaving you with my lasting memory from the evening: Overpriced art bought by sycophants after too much champagne. I am not underestimating O’Connors legacy to the artwork, but I do think there are some out there who have blown it out of proportion.
Adam looked at the date on the article. Twenty years old. Why had he kept it? Why this particular piece? The only thing he could think of was perhaps the box itself was used for one of his previous moves. Perhaps one of the flats he had moved in to after art school. He had moved around a lot in his youth, never staying in one place more than six or eight months. It was conceivable that he had kept the boxes and the packing he had used. A cursory glance to the outside of this particular box revealed it to be battered and scuffed, certainly indicating it had a fair bit of use over some time. Why this particular article now? He tried to recall if he had actually gone to the retrospective. It could well have been something he had visited with Trent and a few of the others. Yet he couldn’t remember. Likewise he wasn’t entirely sure he had even heard of a sculptor by the name of O’Connor. There could be some significance to him holding on to this particular cutting, but he was prepared to accept that it was a coincidence.
Nevertheless, it had an unnerving effect on him. Particularly the last paragraph.
Most curiously of all, there are some who speak of O’Connor’s death as a transition, and speak about his passing away as an almost transcendence. Vemier Mamoulean was overheard to refer to it as a “passing over”, and seemed to continue to speak of O’Connor in the present text. When this reporter interjected, the renowned critic, by way of explanation, referred to it as his “coping mechanism”, before mysteriously adding that O’Connor was “where he most wishes to be, up where the ivy grows.” What this could mean, I have no idea. Save that there seems to be some curious attitudes in certain circles that I’m not entirely sure can be passed off as mere eccentricity.
Adam folded the article carefully and for want of anywhere else to put it, slid it into the side pocket of his chair before going back to the large box in earnest.
He soon found what it was he sought, or thought he sought. Rolls of heavy canvas and loose pieces of frame alongside his dismantled easel and the stretching tools. A cursory glance at some of the smaller rolls revealed portions of paintings he had been working on, and it was these he placed into the pile for taking upstairs. He glanced around to see if there was anything else, but couldn’t bring himself to properly explore the rest of the boxes, content to leave them alone in the darkness, for some arbitrary future date. He would open them later. When he mentally felt ready. He knew this was a lie, but shrugged it off.
After a few minutes of internal debate, he put everything back in the box, alongside the trainer from Violet. The hair clip went back into the other box. It had a few of her hairs on it. He didn’t want to take the up with him.
Couldn’t.
She needs your help.
She didn’t. He was sure of that. Figment of his imagination. His overactive imagination. If anything had happened to her, he would have heard. He would have been contacted.
By who?
But he hadn’t been. So that was that.
Yet he couldn’t quite empty it from his thoughts.
I’ll try and contact Amber again when I get back upstairs. Or the fucking police. Happy now?
Except he wasn’t happy. He hadn’t been happy since
LET’S GO AND SEE THE TIGERS
it had happened. The thing that left him half a man. Unable to keep his wife, his child, his job.
You threw the last one away.
But he was going to remedy that. Now. With this.
He dragged the box close to him. It was heavy. He tentatively tried to see if he could drag it and move the chair at the same time, and found that whilst it was possible, it would be a damn mission to drag it across the uneven globs of dried cement that passed for a floor to the elevator and then down the hall to his apartment. He thought about the possibility of asking Denys for help or
the creepy fucker from apartment two
Fletch, if that’s what his name was. He discounted both almost immediately. The former, because given the time he had left his apartment, he knew he would still be
in the building somewhere
at work, and not around. The latter was a dud because there was no way he was going to knock on the door of apartment two. He had seen enough of someone who blatantly didn’t wish to be seen. So that was that, as well.
There is someone else though.
“Yana?” He said around, flinching instantly at the dead sound of his voice. He at once managed to sound like an elderly man and a teenager going through puberty as his voice broke between each of the two syllables. Would she help him?
Worth a shot.
He dragged the box a few feet, already perspiring, and left it leaning against one of the support pillars before calling the elevator and making his way back up to the second floor. It seemed to be running slower than ever, in addition to now emitting a low rumbling / growling noise that he was sure it hadn’t done before. Less mechanical and more…animalistic. All he would need is for it to break down in mid transit. That would be swell.
A small ting announced he had reached his floor and the doors slid open slowly. Something moved up ahead, ducking out of sight. A pale face from the doorway halfway down. The expression had been blank, the eyes black. Imagination. Nothing more.
The lift growled as he got out, pushing himself towards Denys and Yana’s apartment.
He knocked it twice, loudly, and the door swung in slightly. It had been left open.
As though someone has just ducked inside.
He pushed it slightly more ajar, but was greeted with only darkness.
“Hello?” He pushed himself over the threshold. “Is anyone in? Yana?”
WHUMP
The noise was so loud it reverberated through the hall, and he felt it up his chair, through his body. He unconsciously gripped the wheels tighter. Pushing himself further in.
“It’s Adam!” He tried to keep his voice as loud and as cheerful as possible. He didn’t wish to startle her, aware as he was now of pushing himself into someone else’s home. “I just wondered if everything was okay?”
Entirely inside the hallway now, the door swinging shut behind him.
But not closing.
The doors in the small entrance were closed, one on either side. He recognised the one on the left, where Denys had lead him. Where he had somehow blanked out and ended up at the Raschold Gallery hours later. The other side had a small strip of light leaking out from underneath. He went close to the door, the well practiced move of sidling up to it and placing his ear against it.
Cooing noises from within. Female. Soothing a child or animal. He couldn’t make out words and supposed it was either gibberish or Yana’s native tongue, although he couldn’t even be sure it was her voice. He hadn’t spoken to her much, but he thought he recognised it as being a slightly different timbre. Lower than this high pitched cajoling.
His hand went up to the handle. Touched it. It felt cold. Unnaturally cold.
Turn it
Don’t turn it
He let go, dropping his hand back to his wheel and pushing himself back towards the door. None of this was right, and he shouldn’t be in there. He shouldn’t be here.
His chair stopped, meeting some resistance behind him. A large immoveable object.
“Mr Adam!”
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