Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“Do this much for me at least,” he said. “Come away from this place. Make your decision while you’re not directly under Rushkin’s influence.”

Isabelle glanced at the open door behind him. “You mean we can just walk out of here?”

“Rushkin’s banking on your not being able to leave—not because he won’t let you, but because he doesn’t want you to. It comes from the same arrogance that insists you’ll keep on bringing us across to feed him. You tell him you won’t, but—” Isabelle’s gaze followed his as it tracked to her uncompleted painting. “—but just a few moments ago he was boasting to me that in the end, he always wins.”

Isabelle shook her head. “Not this time.” She walked over to the easel and took her painting down.

“This time I’m taking charge.”

“And what will you do,” a familiar voice asked from behind John, “now that you’re ‘in charge’?”

They both turned to see Rushkin leaning weakly against the wall outside in the hall. In one hand he held what appeared to be some artist’s juvenile work, an awkward painting lacking depth of field or any sense of composition of light values. In the other he held a knife, the tip of which rested against the top of the canvas. Isabelle glanced at John to find that his color had gone ashen. Rushkin was smiling at John’s reaction.

“I’m in desperate need of sustenance,” he told John, “but I’ll forgo it if you’ll convince her to finish the piece she’s working on instead.”

“What’s going on here?” Isabelle demanded, feeling utterly in the dark.

“That’s my source painting he’s holding,” John said in a flat voice.

“Have you gone mad? That’s not even close to The Spirit Is Strong.”

John shook his head. “I took the original from the farmhouse, long before the fire, and had Barbara paint that over it. She was hiding it in the cupboard where she keeps whatever bits and pieces she’s been working on that don’t quite turn out.”

“Not exactly an original solution,” Rushkin said. “Did you honestly think you were the first to consider it?”

“How did you know she had it?” John asked.

Rushkin smiled. “I didn’t. It was no more than a lucky guess.”

“And she simply gave it to you when you asked for it.”

“No. She gave it to Bitterweed.”

Thinking that the doppelganger was John, Isabelle realized.

“I’ve been most patient, holding it for an occasion such as this,” Rushkin said.

John gave him an icy smile. “Well, you wasted your patience. I’ll welcome oblivion, if it means I don’t have to share a world with you anymore.”

“No, John,” Isabelle began. “We can’t ....”

Her voice trailed off as John turned toward her. The look on his face was a chilling reminder of how he’d regarded her on that snowy night all those years ago, just before he led Paddyjack away into the storm. Cold and unforgiving.

“You can’t imagine that I’d let another die in my place,” he said.

“Ah-ah,” Rushkin broke in. “I think the choice has been reserved for Isabelle to make.”

John faced the old artist once more.

“Stop me,” he said softly.

And then he lunged for him, but Rushkin was too quick. The blade of the knife pierced the canvas.

Before John could reach him, Rushkin cut downward. Halfway between Rushkin and Isabelle, John simply disappeared from sight.

“No!” Isabelle cried.

She dropped the painting she held and rushed toward him as well, ready to murder the monster, but the change in Rushkin was immediate. Fueled by the life force he’d stolen from the painting, he stood straighter. His shoulders seemed to broaden and he moved without hesitation. The ruined canvas dropped at his feet and the knife rose to chest level, stopping Isabelle in her tracks.

“My creatures might not be able to kill you,” he said, “but I am not constricted by whatever it is that binds them.”

Isabelle’s anguished gaze found the canvas that lay at his feet before tears blinded her. Rushkin pushed her back into the room.

“Finish it,” he said, indicating the ghostly image that looked up from the unfinished painting she’d dropped, “or the next one to die will be one of your flesh-and-blood friends. Nothing inhibits my creatures from harming them.”

The door slammed. She heard the lock engage again. And then she was alone once more with her pain and the knowledge that she’d caused yet another death. She dropped slowly to her knees and gathered up the painting that Rushkin had slashed, holding it against her chest.

Gone. John was gone. She’d grieved for him twice before, first when he walked out of her life, then again when she thought he had died in the fire. This time he was gone for good. She clung to the painting and knelt there, tears streaming, unable to move, unable to think, for her grief. It was a long time before the flood of her despair settled into a hollow ache. Still holding the painting, she slowly rose and stumbled to the worktable. She laid John’s painting gently on its surface. She ran her fingers across the raised relief of Barbara Nichols’s brushstrokes, then had to look away before her grief overcame her again. Blowing her nose in an unused cleaning rag, she stared hopelessly around the confines of her prison, her gaze finally setding on the image of her angel of vengeance.

By killing John, Rushkin had achieved the exact opposite of what he’d intended by the act. She was no longer afraid. She wanted vengeance now, but it would not involve the creation of more numena. How could she complete this painting, knowing what its fate would be? But she had to do something.

Rushkin’s awful threat echoed on and on, cutting across the hollow space that John’s death had left inside her.

Or the next one to die will be one of your flesh-and-blood friends.

Who would he set his numena upon next? Jilly? Alan?

Slowly she picked up the painting and stumbled back to the easel with it. It wasn’t a matter of courage anymore. Rushkin hadn’t left her any choice at all.

She swallowed hard. But that wasn’t true, she realized. There was one other choice she’d been left—one Rushkin would never expect her to make. She could follow in Kathy’s footsteps.

V

When she walked away from the other three, Rolanda couldn’t help but feel that she had abandoned them—especially Cosette. It was an odd feeling, for it grew from no reasonable source. She knew she was doing the right thing. She definitely drew the line at condoning any sort of criminal activity, and so far as she was concerned, murder topped the list of criminal activities.

And no one was expecting her to condone it, she reminded herself The guilt she felt was self-imposed. Not one of them had said a thing. She’d taken it on herself.

By the time she reached the front walk of the Foundation, she’d decided that what she had to do now was to put it all out of her mind. Never having been a brooder, she dealt with problems as they came up. She’d worry about what Alan and his companions were getting themselves into this evening when she would either have heard from them or be forced to call the police. She concentrated instead on her current caseload. There’d be sessions to make up for the time she’d lost this morning, and god knew how many new files piling up on her desk

A sudden commotion arose from inside the Foundation’s offices as she opened the front door. She recognized Shauna’s voice, uncharacteristically swearing. But before the incongruity could really register, Rolanda was confronted with two figures barreling down the hallway toward her. One of them was Cosette’s friend John. The other was a teenage girl with the pale washedout features and black wardrobe of a neo-Gothic punk. Both were carrying paintings—torn down from the wall of the Foundation’s waiting room. The girl was in the lead. John fended off Shauna with one hand as he followed on the girl’s heels.