This was his nightmare.
This was his reality.
Did the two now belong to the same version of him? This version? Was there another version?
Adam stood at the base of the staircase, looking up, where the light burned through the canopy of greenery that had enrobed the once naked glass of the ceiling. There had once been daylight beyond, visible from even down here in the darkness. Now there was only the memory of those clear skies. Both the sun and the moon ruled in an equal partnership now, but even that was hidden to him.
All at once so familiar. That familiarity that had only hovered in the recesses surrounding his waking moments. It now had it’s tendrils across the surface of his brain, and he knew that where he was now, at this very moment, was where he had wanted to be since
the accident
or
long before
he could remember.
How long had he been plagued with this same nightmare? Had he always had it?
A memory of his childhood. Unhappy, but no more so than any other childhood. Parents ignored him, a father who only spoke to him to ask him to fetch another beer from the fridge. Neither of them had laid a finger upon him however, and he had largely been left to his own devices.
Yet.
The screams he had during the night. The ones that would anger his father so much.
“God dammit Adam I heard you scream again,”
There was always the cloud. That black storm cloud above their house. It threatened to rain almost every day, yet it never did. His father’s threats went unfulfilled, and there was a dysfunctional harmony until they day he left home, never to contact either him or his mother again. But god, those dreams. He had forgotten them.
Have I forgotten so much?
Yet here he was., and yes, he had dreamed these moments since he was young. He awoke in ungodly hours, during times when the veil was thinnest between worlds and superstitions spoke of creatures passing over. Two o’clock, three o’clock. He would writhe in bed, shrouded in a cocoon of sweat, until one of his parents entered his room and woke him properly. Had he not imagined that his room was covered in ivy? It creeped through the window across to his bed, it threatened to ensnare him and take him back out. Perhaps to those thin thresholds that he knew must be out there.
Had the accident brought them back? Had he had them as an adult prior? What did happen prior to the accident?
There was a pressing need to move, to ascend, and he did so, crossing the atrium to the foot of the staircase, putting one foot on the first iron riser, his hand on the ivy covered railing.
He ascended.
As he did so, he thought back, to that day of the accident. There were fragments that had always been missing, others he was remembering wrong. He had a feeling that it would become clearer the higher he rose. If he could just reach the top floor, where he knew there to be a doorway, then it would become clearer. The jigsaw in his mind was being assembled, and he could almost hear the pieces snapping together. One at a time.
The bees had stopped emerging from his legs. The ones that still clung to his skin unmoving. Some pain came back but was quickly pushed away when he consumed this last few insects. He didn’t think he would require any more soon. He was nearly at the end, but he was rising. He was regaining clarity, just as he had regained his purpose. He only had to think that, and to wrap his fingers around the strap across his shoulder for his spirits to lift.
Onward and upwards. It’s always up. There isn’t going to be a slide down for me. I have been ascending for aeons, and rise I will continue to do. It’s my potential up there. Isn’t it. And she will be there, waiting for me. I was given this task and it’s only me that can fulfil it.
He smiled widely, taking a moment on the third landing to look out and up. A small face looked down. Far, far, above. It bore an expression of
fear
surprise, and quickly ducked out of sight. A noise from below distracted him momentarily and he looked back down, towards the atrium.
He should have been able to see the floor he crossed, but there was only darkness.
That sound.
Was it a growl?
It passed, but it brought his attention to another sound. Still a distance above him. The one he had heard outside. The shrill ringing of the telephone. It was ringing for him. Because it had been ringing for him in his dreams. He continued his ascent, the pain now gone from his legs, his hand skimming the ivy on the way up. Every time he paused, for whatever reason, the tendrils threatened to wrap themselves around his hand, holding him into position. He wouldn’t let them. Why they wanted to impede his progress he didn’t know, but he had an appointment to keep, and keep it he would.
He had loved her, actually, and that’s what he felt surge within him again. They had been happy, despite the secret trysts away from Amber. If she had suspected before she confronted Adam, she had never shown it, so it would have been a shock for her, he knew that, but could she have ben surprised? The love and warmth that had filled the space between them had all but been extinguished. Where there was fire, there was only water, washing their names from the sand. It had been his right to seek comfort elsewhere. If his wife would show him no love, then she would, and laud his achievements, and his vision, at the same time.
She had ignored you. She is a stinger to you now.
That could be tru. He didn’t doubt that. Then again, this inner monologue was biased against him, and always had been. Was it not his very own mind that was putting events out of sequence and convincing him of truths that he now could expose as sheer ignorant fabrication? His doctor, once alive and now very much dead, leading him to an exhibition where his new flame had spoken to him as a stranger. How much of that was likely?
He had been lied to, by himself. One of the other versions of him, or perhaps all of the other versions of him. Conspiring against him.
They would not win.
He would not win.
This version of him, this true version of him, would win out. Or damn him.
But also: Damn that phone.
It was louder and more shrill with every step. The landing just above. It rang there.
But now, below. The sound commenced again. A deep machine.
Yes, this is how it goes, he thought, pleased that it was happening the way he had foreseen it in his dream. He thought now of the book, and how similar they were. Yet in the book, the girl was pursued, and in his dream, he was pursued. He wondered why that what, until he looked down once more and saw that pale face ascending from the bottom of the staircase.
Of course, it’s both.
And it should be both. For was he not possessing of an intrigue? A duality? They all were. His wife had bene Amber, and also not-Amber. She inhabited a person now unknown to him, whereas before every part of her had been laid out naked before him. His daughter, across the ocean, was both in his memories and severed form him in a way that he couldn’t fathom.
This duality was what drove him. He was Adam, yet he was art itself. He was creation.
Trent d’Marcan had once spoke so loftily of himself. Back before graduation, he had already thought him transcended above mere artist. He had seen himself as two distinct entities and Adam had scoffed. Trent had met a woman, so he had said, who was his muse, and it was through her he had created such wonders.
Adam had scoffed again, disbelieving that someone could hold thatch sway over someone so singular of purpose as Trent.
Yet that had been it, hadn’t it. Singular of purpose perhaps, yet converging from a duality of being.
Only, Adam thought, as he reached the landing where the phone rang, he was perhaps wrong again. There was a convergence, yet not of soul and art, but artist and muse. The convergence had been Trent, and this woman. Just as Adam could easily see that the convergence between himself and Daphne was what bore such sweet fruit.
Now the machine churned far below and she was rushing up for him. Panic swelled and beat in his chest briefly. He had to get to the top before she caught up with him. Her intent was still unknown, but he couldn’t risk anything stopping him from reaching his goal.
He paused before the phone. It was next to a door that was unusual from the other doors on the landings below. Each of them had borne nothing. No identifier. This door was different, and in the optical centre there was a plaque of brushed bronze with two words etched clearly in copperplate type.
OCEAN ROOM
The telephone demanded his attention, and he felt that whomever was calling, was doing so from inside this room.
He picked up the receiver, despite his fear.
“Hello?”
“Daddy?” The line was faint, the sound of surf breaking, yet the voice was unmistakable. “I have been waiting for you to answer.”
“”Violet,” he said, “why are you calling me here?”
“This is the only place I can reach you.” Her voice was flat. Lifeless. “I’ve been trying to reach you before but I couldn’t”
“What is it? Are you with your mother? She wasn’t returning my calls. I’ve been -“
Worried? Had he really? At one point he had been but then he had forgotten. He had forgotten about his own daughter
because she’s not important
when she should have been at the forefront of his mind. Yet she was with Amber. So why did he have reason to worry really?
“She’s not here. She’s never been here. I’m too far for her. She won’t hear me.”
The sound of hurried footsteps on the stairs. Across the landing possibly two floors down.
Ivy rushed up to meet him. She didn’t know how he was ahead again, or why that should be, but he was between her and her mother, and she had to catch up with him. The great machine below masked out the voice of her sister, yet even now she knew that she wouldn’t be speaking to her. She wasn’t her sister at all, not really, and now she was talking on the telephone above her. It had been answered, and that’s why Ivy knew that she could not catch him. She was fleet of foot, and possessed of a great urge.
She would catch him.
Adam couldn’t focus on the sounds in the telephone. The words of his daughter even as they slipped away, below the increasing sound of the surf. The footsteps were hurrying up to meet him, and he had to go.
“Go to your mother, you’ll be fine, just go to her.” He said.
“I…can’t…I…thought you would…” The words were fading, losing coherency. Like a radio being tuned out.
“You can, I need to go.” He began to move the receiver away, taking a final look at the door that would forever remain closed.
“Daddy I lo -“
He placed the receiver down, just as Ivy rounded the corner of the stairwell and ran towards him, arms outstretched.
Her face.
Oh god, what’s happened to her face.
Adam turned and ran. His legs were strong. They felt like his and they were strong.
The machine was a cacophony of sound below.
The girl would catch him. He was fast, but not fast enough.
The next landing, the door here a blur. Back on the stairwell. A hand brushed his leg, fingertips on his calf. He shouldn’t have been able to feel. It. This wasn’t part of him. Yet it was.
The drawings threatened to fall from his shoulder. He adjusted them, losing precious distance, and that hand grasped again. He had no doubt that there was strength there, even more than the tiger. If it caught him, it would drag him down. Al the way down to where that machine churned int he darkness. Yet he had his art to gift to Daphne. He wished to show her how her words had sparked a beautiful vision. That this was the child borne between both of them.
A cry of pain and rage from just below, yet if he focused on that the heart would leave him. All he could do was run. In another world, another time, another version of him was caught, pulled roughly down on the steps, his nose rupturing, his face splitting. She was on his back and she would tear the flesh from his spine. Yet not this time. Not this version of him. He was the best version of himself, and he would reach the top.
One more landing ahead. There it was. The doorway was open. It had been slammed open from inside and he could nearly see within.
Yet she wouldn’t give up. She was at his heels, so close all the way.
So he did what he had to do. He stopped, letting her gain those few steps, and he turned, pulling the large tube from his shoulder and arcing it around towards the bannister. It connected with that horrid unthinkable visage and the small body, throwing her towards and over. Her had tried in vain to catch hold, yet could only grasp the dead air.
She fell.
Into the machine.
She fell.
There was no sound. The machine was too great, too loud. The blackened maelstrom of aged machinery would claim her now, and there was nothing he could do. This wasn’t on him. None of this was on him.
He collected himself, put the large tube back over his shoulder and walked the last few steps facing the doorway now.
Three figures emerged as the room beyond was suddenly filled with bright sunlight. Adam stumbled backwards, until the small of his back was agains the railings. The three figures themselves didn’t surprise him so much as what he thought he could glimpse in the room beyond, just before the door was swung shut. It was some kind of studio, a large easel setup before a great window. The painting on it was one of the most wondrous things Adam had ever seen, a staircase of majestic proportions, the original painting that had hung in the Rascal dGallery that may or may not have existed outside of an alternative reality had been perfected, in what was no doubt a much later iteration. The artist was still working on it. He had turned to look at Adam briefly, a blank expression on his face. Registering no recognition or surprise at catching sight of Adam, despite the years that had kept them distant from each other. He was obviously too focused on his work. His next opus.
Trent d’Marcan, there, and now gone. Behind the door that slammed shut.
There had been others also. Many others, far beyond and to the sides of Trent. A sculptor, a carpenter, a musician. Each one enraptured in their work.
“Here he is then,” Vemier Mamoulean said, glancing sideways at the other two.
“Here he is,” Lon Raschold echoed, nodding his head.
Both men now looked to the figure in the centre, who look a few steps forward.
“You have finished?” Daphne Maringian asked.
“Y-yes,” Adam stuttered. “I’m finished.”
He thought he caught a fleeting smile across her tanned face, gone as soon as it materialised.
He passed the tube to her and she in turn passed it back to the two men, who knelt on the floor and unrolled the contents.
“Thee it is, the potential,” Mamoulean said, finally sounding as though he was impressed, be it only a little.
“So vivid,” Raschold said, running his fingers over the surface.
Adam remained where he stood, arms behind, hands resting on the railings, unaware of the ivy that now wrapped around his skin.
“Are you sure we cannot take him?” Raschold asked, almost petulantly. “There is much here we can use.”
Daphne spoke without taking her eyes of Adam. She placed one had on his shoulder, squeezing slightly. He felt a rush of blood to his nether regions. His lust overriding any other response.
“It was my intention,” she said, almost sadly, “and all I wished was for an acknowledgement. Remorse offered, forgiveness sought. We gave him what he wanted, but he remained blind. We gave him the chance to walk, and he only crawled.”
“I don’t understand,” Adam said, “I can walk now.”
Daphne shook her head.
“She wants you instead, and I promised her before I promised you. I dedicated it to her, and you took her away.”
Daphne produced a sheet of paper, seemingly from the air itself, and held it before Adam.
He read the two words printed upon it. The dedication page from her book. He hadn’t been in possession of it. It wasn’t with the others.
FOR IVY.
“He has so much potential,” Mamoulean said. “We want him.”
“I don’t want him,” she said. “He’s broken.”
Adam pushed forward, but the ivy gripped him tighter, pulling him closer to the railing. Pulling slightly over the railing.
“I’m not, I can walk.” He said, moving his legs, the ivy infused limbs now a part of him in a way that only his own flesh and bone had been before.
She smiled again. That one that never moved much further up her face. Her eyes cold in the dim light. Two steps further towards him and she was in front of him. He could smell her. Those far off scorched lands. He realised only then just how far off. Just how scorched. Wherever it was, it didn’t exist any more. Shouldn’t exist any more.
“Not there,” she said, glancing down before looking directly in to his eyes.
The ivy loosened it’s grip, yet still he didn’t notice. He was held in that gaze. In rapture.
“There,” she whispered, lifting one delicate bone china hand, and pressing against his forehead with her forefinger.
It was so cold.
The ivy had loosened completely. There was nothing holding Adam to the railing.
She pushed.
For one sickening moment he felt he had a chance to redress his balance. His arms flailed wild out, forward. His breath came in short panting gasps. He took everything in. Daphne stood there, finger still outstretched. Behind her both Raschold and Mamoulean watched on in near complete shadow. The door opened. Darkened figures crowded in the threshold, all eyes upon him, before it swung shut for the last time.
He fell.
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