Draw the Dark (12 page)

When I read that word—
pitchfork
—my stomach clenched. There’d been a pitchfork in my very first nightmare.

Unfortunately, that was all I got. If I wanted to read the rest of the article, I would have to pay and since a) I didn’t have a credit card and b) I didn’t have any
money
—that was kind of a nonstarter.

I searched for
Walter Brotz
but came up empty. Still, I put his name on my list. At least now I had the name of the murder victim. Maybe there was more at the town library or at the Historical Society. Sarah would know. I checked the time: almost eleven, too late to call, though I had her e-mail address from way back. Hopefully it was still good. So I wrote:

I hit Send, hoping she might check her e-mail tomorrow morning, and then maybe we could talk at school. Then I sat back and studied my list. Without more details, it seemed to me that searching for a 1945 fire was a waste of time. Here there’d been a murder in the same year, and I’d only found one news story about it. Maybe the Historical Society people would have more.

That left only one item: Mr. Witek. It hit me then that I didn’t know his first name, which made me feel stupid. But I plugged in
Witek
,
Winter
and
Wisconsin
. I paused, thought about it, and added
painter
then hit Enter.

The next second, my mouth dropped open. I clicked on the first result, and a short entry from Wikipedia opened on my screen:

I must’ve read that entry six times. An artist? And
Jewish
? As far as I knew, there were no Jews in Winter. But that last name was too unusual. This had to be
my
Witek’s father.

I did a quick calculation. Sixty-five years had passed since the murder. Mordecai Witek had been forty
then
, so he was dead for sure. Mr. Witek was, what? In his seventies? So, in 1945, he’d have been a boy....

“Papa,” I whispered. Yes, Mordecai Witek’s
son
. David.

And another mystery was solved: Mordecai Witek was the man who’d scarred up Mr. Eisenmann all those years ago.

Holy crap. No wonder Mrs. Krauss hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

I clicked on the hypertext link for
Katarina at Sunset
.

The painting that flashed onto my screen was breathtakingly beautiful, and I could see why Witek might be compared to Wyeth right away. The woman, Katarina, sprawled on a slope of forest green meadow, and I even recognized the spot because of the barn perched on a rise in the far distance to the right. To the left was a two-story farmhouse: white, with black shutters and a weather vane and two brick chimneys. The painting had been done at Eisenmann’s barn, at a point in time when the house still stood.

As with Wyeth’s
Christine’s World
, Witek’s Katarina faced away from the viewer, but that’s where the similarities ended. Instead of gazing at a house, Katarina looked up the hill toward an absent sun, its memory sketched in a sky dyed in vivid swaths of iridescent blue and a bright pink that seemed almost alien. The colors roiled across the sky in luminous bolts and splashed over the meadow and the woman lying there like unearthly water.

Katarina was also completely naked.

That’s
what popped into my head when I looked at that painting of Katarina. She was having sex—and she’d reached
that
moment—only we were supposed to imagine it. I could see why people at that time would’ve thought it was racy, especially with all that lurid color. It was a little like Rubens that way, only he splashed red against his women’s thighs instead of pink.

My eyes fixed on a small detail at the bottom right of the picture. Zooming in, I was able to magnify that portion of the painting—and there it was, that same six-sided star with the letters
MW
in the center and two numbers, one above and one below: 3 and 9.

Now, I understood: a Star of David and Mordecai Witek’s initials. For the artist, his Jewish identity had been something he’d taken pride in.

It was then that I realized something else.

I’d seen this woman before in another portrait, in Mr. Witek’s room, hanging to the right of the door.

Katarina was the woman in the silk kimono with the red chrysanthemums.

I did have IM, only I hadn’t used it for years. I’d never had any buddies, so it seemed a waste. But I logged on and then typed:

I wasn’t expecting a reply, thinking that maybe she’d already gone to bed, but she came right back:

I was about to type
No, it wasn’t like Miss S at all
, but I didn’t. Not that this wasn’t partially true. With Miss Stefancyzk, I had been furious, as volcanically angry as a seven-year-old can be. I remembered the feeling well: this deluge of emotions and thoughts that were alien to me, ones that involved knives and faces that morphed into monsters’ masks, and then I
drew
that house out of her, the one she kept locked away in a steel vault in her mind, but I found it, oh yes, I did....

But now I wondered: What if the images and emotions I’d had then weren’t mine? What if, like Stephanie and the other people at the home, a door had cracked open in my mind and Miss Stefancyzk’s deepest, darkest thoughts had leaked in? Hadn’t Dr. Rainier said that Miss Stefancyzk was manic-depressive and probably hadn’t been taking her meds? So what if she was tipping over the edge all along and then . . . ?

And then I came along, with some kind of weird ESP-ish power to channel all that rage and have it come out my fingers, the same way I tapped into Lucy’s images of herself as a younger woman and the awful instant when she had the heart attack that killed her. But I hadn’t been angry with Lucy. I liked her. So what was I
drawing
? Nightmares? Destiny?

And the way I visualized my mother and saw the sideways place where I was too frightened to go—what was it, really? Heaven? Hell? Purgatory?

And then there was Aunt Jean. What had I seen there? I couldn’t imagine my Aunt Jean—sunny, ready with a smile, always good to me—with such a pit of blackness in her soul. No, I’d killed her all right. She made me angry, and my mind had lashed out, and then I’d drawn that wretched picture. She’d taken one look, and it was like all the blood drained from her veins, and the horror in her eyes, like she’d confronted the thing that scared her most....

I shied away from that particular memory. I typed:

I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I waited. It hit me suddenly that I was having a conversation that you’d almost call friendly. Not entirely
truthful
—I wasn’t
that
crazy—but comfortable enough. I thought back to the times when Sarah and I had played on swings and climbed trees and I wondered how it was that you went from playing games to actually talking.

Sarah typed:

I was so stunned I just sat there and read the message again. Finally, I wrote:

I should have known. This wasn’t about me. I typed:

As soon as I hit Enter, I wished I hadn’t. I wanted to type something about being an asshole, but I didn’t.

A long pause. Then:

sarah13: I’m trying to be nice to you! Do you know how many people don’t like you? Do you know how many people think you’re flat-out weird?
ccage: Everybody. We’ve already had this conversation.
sarah13: God, you make it so hard for anyone to be nice to you.
ccage: Yeah? So where’ve you been for the last two years, Miss Popular?

Now I was being an asshole and I knew it. I wrote:

Sarah typed
SCREW YOU
and logged off.

To
move
.

Subtly. Stealthily. As if aware that anything more than the most minute of movements would make me run screaming from the room.

I held myself very still and thought:
Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the night the drawings come to life and just take over, draw me in....

Wasn’t this what I’d been waiting for? A way of slipping into the sideways place and finding my parents? It had been days...no, a couple of
weeks
since I worked on that charcoal of my mother, and that made me freeze up inside. I couldn’t do that, could I? If I stopped looking for her, wouldn’t she stop looking for me? Her face would just evaporate like steam or something, and all that would be left would be pictures. . . . So I should go. I should let this happen.

Right. If I really wanted that, why had I freaked and whited out the door? Maybe because I really didn’t have the guts at all. It was my bike ride home all over again when I’d thought about suicide. I was too scared to be in this world and too frightened to leave it.

I yawned. I would never fall asleep, never . . .

Papa says that he and the other men will meet at the White Lady after shul to talk about the wolves. The wolves will break the union. Mr. Eisenmann wants to break the union. Papa says Mr. Eisenmann’s using the wolves for Miss Catherine’s house....

Katarina at sunset, Katarina’s white skin and her breasts, her body. . .

I have to be quiet, can’t move, mustn’t let them see that I am there. Papa has sent me away; he thinks that I’ve gone, and Miss Catherine has given all the servants the day off, told them to leave and not return until later. There is only the butler who stands guard at the front door, and he’s easy to get around. I’ve often come by to visit Marta, and I’m nobody and small for my age, and so I creep down the back steps. I know all the ins and outs of this house because of Marta, and so long as I am quiet, which isn’t hard when Marta and I talk . . .

The air smells green from ferns and huge potted plants. Water bubbles and splashes in a tumble of stones because there’s a real brook that gurgles through the day room. Light spills through the long picture window, and jewels of color sparkle on the pale stone floor from the transom’s stained glass. Miss Catherine lies on a satin divan, and she is so beautiful; it hurts to look, and the sun fires her fine kimono from behind so you can see the shadow of her breasts and the curve of her hips. I know Papa sees her because he’s painting; his back is to me, and I’m crouched behind a trio of pots, peering through a fringe of palms. Papa tells her to move first this way and then another and his brushstrokes are so thin she glows like the alabaster lamps of the White Lady.

Neither sees me. My face burns with shame for spying. I know I shouldn’t have disobeyed Papa, but there is something I don’t like about what is happening here.

If I had only seen it sooner—if I had seen—I could’ve stopped the darkness and blood and the slash of the pitchfork.

Papa and Miss Catherine think they are alone. Miss Catherine has lips like ripe peaches, and there is color in her cheeks, and when Papa tells her to adjust her arms and to turn more to the right, she laughs and pouts and makes Papa come and move her arms for her....

No, Papa.
I am screaming this in my mind as he throws down his brush in disgust. I see that she’s playing a game, like a queen, and what I can’t understand is why Papa doesn’t see it too—unless, maybe, he doesn’t
want
to understand. Maybe he
wants
there to be something he can claim is an accident. But I scream, silently:
No, Papa, don’t, stay away, don’t!

Her gown falls open, and she guides his hand. “I know what you want,” she says, and now I know for certain that it is a game for the two of them. Papa’s hand is on her breast, and Miss Catherine is pulling him down, and he’s fallen on top of her, and her hands are in his hair, and now she is naked and her hands are under his shirt, and now they are both moaning....

I am not aware that I have screamed—out loud and for real—until they both jerk their heads around and stare. Papa’s hair is mussed, and his pants are sagging around his hips, and his eyes are shocked. Miss Catherine screams, and her hands fly to cover her breasts.

No! No, Papa, no!
I turn and I am running out of the room, flying through the doors that open with a loud BANG! The butler’s been dozing in his chair, and he startles at the sound; he is all elbows and knees, and he’s struggling out of the chair, but I’m running down the long hall for the front of the house, and there are tears in my eyes. . . .

“David!” It is Papa. He is chasing after, but I keep running. I burst out of that grand house and into the blinding day, past all the wolves who are working on the grounds and turn to stare with their yellow slit eyes, but then I’m sprinting down the hill, away from the wolves climbing all over the house, away from all of them. Papa’s cries are fainter and then they fall away, and the only sounds are my sobs and the seagulls wheeling in the blue sky over the lake, and they are screaming too, just as the horses scream and the men . . .

And now there’s blood. There’s blood on Papa’s hands, there’s blood everywhere, and the horses are screaming.... Catherine and Marta and the wolf . . . no Papa no, help me, somebody, please so scared, i want to stop seeing this, i’m so scared somebody please somebody help me help me help me