Katie slept at a Motel 6 a hundred miles from the house. She rose with the Arizona dawn, stood on the motel’s balcony watching stray beams from the sun ricochet through gaps in low fast-moving clouds, imagined painting the scene.
Quickly packing her overnight bag, she dropped the key through the slot to the night clerk, and drove. The freeway grumbled under the Jeep’s tires. Soon she was on side roads, then off blacktop entirely, running up into the hills on sandy graded farm tracks. With the GPS she found the house.
She stopped by a dry wash, looking up the slope towards the place. A two storey house with steep gables and narrow attic windows. Some of the dull clapboards, which were peeling and sanded in places, had warped away from the house’s frame and pointed at the scrubby desert.
The Jeep chugged over the pitted dry streambed and spurted up the long driveway. She parked in front and stood looking over the plains. Wind-scoured bushes, long stretches of yellow-brown earth, tall desert cactus and little, hardy spring flowers. The sky was a kind of heavy cyan she never saw back east. This would be perfect.
Katie glanced at her watch. Only 8am. She walked through the hundred-year-old house. The kitchen was functional, the bowl in the downstairs bathroom was probably original. A triple-bolted room in the back corner with the owner’s possessions. They’d told her, in the emails, that they came out annually to do maintenance and walk in the desert. They rented the house furnished, even if the furnishings were just as old; overstuffed armchairs, oak table and mis-matched chairs in the kitchen, undersprung beds with kapok mattresses. Katie picked where she would paint and where she would sleep. In under a half an hour she’d set herself up on the first floor, her studio in the corner room where desert vistas were all she would se.
She put her easel up near the window, layed out her brushes on a drop cloth on the chest of drawers. Opening up the paints, she grinned. No browns, no black, no grey. That period was over, excised. She hadn’t allowed herself any darker colors. Even the blue was lighter than the lowest points in the sky. With this limited palette she would have to paint differently, no more paintings of the dead, of the eviscerated and maimed, no more blank and black-eyed people pressed up against dirty windows. Here her paintings would have to be sun, sun, sun.
Dragging a stool up from the kitchen, she sat by the easel, staring into Arizona. Such contrasts, the distant dim rugged hills hugging the horizon, misty and blurred, the spiky nearby cactus and dead-looking bushes. She imagined strolling along trails after dark with a flashlight looking for lizards and snakes.
Katie blinked and stood, knocking the stool down. Not the thoughts to have, she reminded herself. Calm and peace, stay away from the darkness. Stay in light and paint only light.
Something moved across the desert. A dust plume following a vehicle. Katie stood the stool back up, took a pencil and drew a horizontal line a third of the way up the canvas, side to side. That’s my horizon, she thought, above, only sky.
The truck crossed the wash and she walked out and down the stairs. When she came to the front steps, the car was already parked, someone getting out. A man, cowboy hat, button shirt, jeans. Cowboy boots.
“Hey there,” he called up.
“Hey yourself.”
He grinned, his smile pulled a little to the right, his chin clean-shaven, his eyes bright blue. Like ice, she thought. She had all the colors to paint him. If he was blond. He walked around the front of his truck.
“So, what’re you doing here?”
Katie glanced back at the house. “Needed to get away to do some painting.”
“Painting,” he said. He took off his hat. Blond. “Sure could use a dab,” he said, nodding at the building.
Katie smiled. “I guess. Not that kind though.” She held up the pencil, thinking of her single dividing line.
“Oh,” he said, walking towards her. “Art?”
“Yeah.”
“Still, just wondering why you’re on the property.”
Katie frowned. “Rented it. On the Internet, they sent me directions and the keys.”
“I’m sure they did.” The cowboy smiled. “So don’t sleep downstairs.”
“What’s that?”
“I…” he trailed off, stopping by her. “I’m Earle,” he said.
“Yes you are.”
He grinned.
“Katie.”
“Katie, hey. You saw the locked door?”
She nodded.
“Probably thought it was their stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“You better come look.” He held her gaze for a moment, then walked by and on up the steps.
Katie followed him. Earle pulled out a big bunch of keys and flicked through, opening each of the three locks.
“Are you the caretaker?” she said. “I know you’re not the owner.”
“I’m the guy who locked it up.” Earle pulled the door open and stepped into darkness, reaching out. After a moment he found a cord and a light came on.
Katie stepped back.
The walls were covered in paintings. Dark oils of heavy towers and abandoned industry. The pictures were nestled one against the other, almost forming a continuous flow of gloom.
“Mrs Finnsch went crazy,” Earle said. “She disappeared. Mr Finnsch and half the county searched for her.” Earle turned from the paintings and looked at Katie again. “They found her back in here, years later, after Mr Finnsch had died. She was painting the walls. Institution came to get her, but she died on the doorstep. Still haunts the place, so don’t sleep downstairs.”
Katie stared into the pictures, realizing that it wasn’t to paint the sun and sky that she’d come here. Forget redemption. She’d brought her demons with her.
Confrontation, then. She would need more art supplies.
“So I guess you won’t be staying?” Earle said.
“Are you kidding?” Katie said. “I’m going to sleep in here.”
________________________
©2010 Sean Monaghan
Sean Monaghan’s paintings of Arizona are singularly bleak. His stories have appeared before in Flashes in the Dark, as well as in Bewildering Stories, The New Flesh and MicroHorror, amongst others. More information at his website, www.venusvulture.com
Tags: Sean Monaghan
November 29th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Yowza! You leave us in suspense, Sean. I want more. Even in the sunniest places, darkness finds its shadows to hide. Katie knows this now. We all do. (all I can think of is, “I see a white door and I want it painted black…”)
November 29th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Thanks Jodi. I guess I’ll have to work on that sequel…
November 30th, 2010 at 10:38 am
That last line was an unexpected punch! She girds for battle but I wonder if she’ll succeed. Great story, Sean!
November 30th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Thanks Laura - yes, I wonder too. I suspect she will.