Paintings and Hunting Dogs

Two weeks passed in the measure of time while Alphonse did his job for Grandpa Eric. He bought newspapers mostly and once he went down to the supermarket at the corner, a place called Windays, but mostly it was just newspapers.

Frank did was not happy with the job his son had gotten, but he was not dead set against it either. He admitted that he had been worried about Al getting bored and that the jobs that Dr. Brightman offered did help alleviate some of that worry.

And it was fun. Al would wake up whenever, and he would head over to the old man’s house. Eric would talk to him about aspects of his life in Connecticut and other old stories.

Around the second week, he began to show Alphonse around the house; before they had just sat on the first floor when Al came in. While the house was very sparsely furnished, it was not empty. Eric had a number of small folding chairs that served his needs and a card table that was the dinner table.

Upstairs his bed consisted of an inflatable mattress and a comforter. Other than that, the house really had only a few minor knickknacks to its name.

On Monday morning of the third week, Al had just returned from buying the newspaper for Dr. Brightman. As he returned to the house and knocked on the door, Grandpa Eric opened it and, as usual, quickly ushered him inside.

“Good work, Al” he said as he paid Al the usual ten dollars. “And…anything else?” this was always how he asked whether or not Al had seen any signs of the Chasers.

“No, nothing there” Al said. He had not seen any sign of Eric’s pursuers in the weeks he had been watching for them. He did see dead plants, but they were an everyday sight and so did not bother him. There were no odd patterns etched in lawns and grassy places, and people would surely notice that.

“Good,” Eric said and he began to walk back into the dining room. “Al, I need you to help me with a little extra job today.”

“What’s that?” Al asked.

“I need help putting up some artwork around the house. I know it seems like an odd thing, but I have several good paintings that I have collected, and it would be good to have someone help me put them up. Besides,” he said with a merry twinkle in his eye, “I can tell you a bit more about the family.”

“Okay, sure!” Al said. “When do we begin?”

“Well right now” Eric answered, going over to a pile of boxes that was sitting in the middle of the floor. “I was just unpacking them when you came back with my newspaper. Here, I’ll show you a few.”

The two of them walked toward the boxes and Grandpa Eric took out a large square object wrapped in gray paper. He unwrapped it and placed it up against a wall. Al was impressed.

The artist, whoever it had been, had marvelous talent and a good eye. The painting was of a field of green grass that gleamed in the sunset of deepest purple and gold. The interesting thing was that there were two suns in this scene; one gave the sunset gold tint and the other giving the purple.

“It’s a beauty” Al said as he watched Grandpa Eric hammer it into the wall. The frame was made of dark wood that glowed with health. “Where did you buy a thing like this?”

“I didn’t buy it, I stole it” Eric said after a few minutes pause. “And after I stole it I fled. Does that answer your question?”

“Oh” Al said, a bit chastened. “I’m sorry.”

“No, never mind” Grandpa Eric said. “It is I that should be sorry; I had no right to talk to you that way. This has been a stressful past week for me. Certain things have—”

“It’s the Chasers, isn’t it?” Alphonse demanded. “But I haven’t seen anything that even says they’re around! I’ve seen a few dead trees, but that’s it! And there’s dead stuff all around. So I don’t—”

“Ah, but I have felt their presence, and in a way that you can not” Eric said. “They are not near by, but they…they…” abruptly the hammer he was using to nail the frame to the wall fell from his gnarled hand with a clattering noise that sounded apocalyptic in the silent house.

“Grandpa Eric?” Alphonse demanded, suddenly even more afraid than he had been when the old man had clutched his chest and babbled about icy feelings in the heart.

Grandpa Eric did not move and Al darted around to the old man’s front and gasped when he beheld his grandfather’s face.

Eric’s face was contorted in what looked like a mixture of horror and concentration. It writhed and twitched as if he were experiencing a terrible seizure. His fists clenched and unclenched, the nails biting deeply into the palms. But that was not the worst part of it. Not by far.

It was his eyes.

Grandpa Eric’s blue eyes, eyes which had always seemed lit from within by some blue radiance, were now glowing. The small silvery flash that sometimes crossed his vision was now glaring from the irises of his eyes like a searchlight. The light flashed then dimmed, flashed then dimmed.

Alphonse Brightman felt weak with fear, fear for his grandfather and fear of this power which was manifested in this display. “Grandpa…” he whispered.

“They draw north…” Eric whispered. His lips moved and flapped loosely in his trance. “They draw north. They may yet pass me by. I must be the white hare in the snow. Gods willing, they will not take notice…” and then he said something that Al did not understand at all. “All things flow to the Pathways, and gravitate toward the City.”

“The City?” Al asked. “What’s the City?” suddenly Grandpa Eric’s hands shot out and gripped his shoulders. Alphonse cried out; the grip was not hard at all, but it was cold and firm. It was like being grabbed by a monster that had crawled from a moonlit grave.

Abruptly Al heard a sound in the middle of his head. It sounded like a great bass drum. He then heard the sound of hooves pounding on something. Was it wood? No, more like something metallic. He had a sudden vision in the space behind his eyes of a great soaring ceiling over a place where lines of metal train tracks danced and squiggled.

Eric’s eyes cleared. The silver light faded from them and they returned to their normal, if strange, blue. His face had also stopped its strange spasms. Now it just looked frightened and weary. Even in his state of agitation, Alphonse still had time to think that he had never seen a man as tired looking as Eric Brightman.

“W…wow…” Al whispered, hardly daring to raise his voice. “What was that? What happened?”

“Nothing you need to worry about” Eric said. He looked pale and Al noticed that his hands were shaking as he bent down to pick up the hammer he had dropped. “My friends the Chasers are...angry, we could say. As much as creatures like them are able to feel emotions like ours, they are angry. They cannot find me, and yet they are close by. Their rage created a kind of wave in the pattern of psychic energy and it kind of hit me at once…knocked me for a loop!” he tried a laugh, but it only came out as an ancient wheeze.

“What’s the City?” Alphonse asked.

Eric’s head came up abruptly, his black and white hair shining in the sunlight. “I spoke of the Silver City?” he asked sharply. “What else did I say?” when Al didn’t answer right away, he shouted, “What else?”

“Nothing!” Al shouted back. He felt almost on the verge of tears and was appalled. This was not a time to be blubbering, it was a time to stand up and think straight.

“Pass me the box of nails, Alphonse” Eric said as if nothing had happened. “Don’t worry; it most likely won’t happen again. I was listening for them a little too hard.”

“Grandpa Eric…are the Chasers…I don’t know…” he could not find the words to articulate what he was saying. If he had, the word supernatural would have come to his lips.

“No, not at all” Eric said, waving away the suggestion. “But they are crafty and know the tricks of tracking, and they will most certainly be around soon. All I can do is hope that they do not notice me.”

“But then you’ll have to move on?”

“Yes, I’ll have to move on” Eric said. “Let’s not talk about it anymore, alright? Besides, there isn’t any guarantee that they will come to Springwood. Just a guess.”

Alphonse nodded that they would not talk about it and continued to unpack the artwork. There was a surprising amount of it and all of it looked quite valuable. In fact, some of it looked as if it would be worth a small fortune.

One of the wood-framed paintings was of what appeared to be a rather large lounge. Its floor, decorated with Turkish carpeting, was so detailed that Alphonse thought he could see the little tufts of lint in it. Comfy looking chairs and couches were placed everywhere. Bookshelves were built into the large walls, some so high that their tops were not shown. Small tables with gently glowing lamps sat. There were even paintings on the walls of this strange room, which could have been the library of some country club, if not for its enormous size. One of them looked like the Mona Lisa. Men and women were sitting around the library, some were reading, others were just sitting and staring at nothing. They appeared to be of every race and religion.

The caption, lettered into the wood at the bottom of the frame said, Kan-Lack—Hunting Dogs at work. “What does this mean?” Alphonse asked as he handed this peculiar painting to Grandpa Eric.

The old man just shook his head. “I suppose that the artist just felt that was a good enough name for the painting.” He looked at Alphonse, and suddenly the boy did not like that look. It was a measuring, calculating look. The look said can he handle the truth? Can he? “Do you know what hunting dogs do?” he asked.

Al remembered this question from earlier before. “Yeah, you asked me once. You said that they sniff out the animal so the hunter

(or huntress, he said huntress)

can find it and kill it.”

Eric nodded. “Yes I did say that. Very good, Alphonse! You have an amazing memory.”

Al lowered his head, an embarrassed smile spreading reluctantly across his face. “Well, I guess I do.”

“I already said that the psychics I was with were made to find things, right” he said. “Well, what I was trying to avoid was…we found people.”

“Hunting dogs” Al said. The next question slipped out before he could stop himself. “What happened to the people you found?”

Once again that cold, measuring look: can he handle the truth. And this time, it seemed, the judgment found him wanting. “I don’t know. I never really bothered to find out what happened when we searched for people. It doesn’t matter anyway. I just had finally had enough, so I left.”

But that’s a lie Al thought. You do know what happened to those people, or else you never would have run away. But he said nothing more on that subject and instead asked, “Where do you want this to go?”

“I’ll take it upstairs, alright? I think I’ll keep that one in my room. I’ve been decorating the downstairs, but the upstairs deserves a shot at looking decent too, right?”

“Right” Al said and dug around for the last few bits of artwork. He came up with another one. This painting was one that took his breath away, more than the first one. It filled him with a feeling of awe, terror and a strange kind of desire. The painting was of what looked like the hall of a great palace. It was a huge circular room with a floor of polished black granite. The floor continued up to form the walls, rising in tortured curves like dark waves frozen in time. At any moment they could crash down and engulf the room in blackness.

The “waves” swept upward to a high domed ceiling. Three thrones sat elevated ten feet from the ground by marble stairs leading up to them. The artist had painted golden gates that opened from the black walls to be accessible to whoever sat on these chairs. From the center of the hall rose a far larger platform that curled upward from the floor. This one had to be (from the painting’s scale anyway) at least nineteen feet off the ground, compared to the other’s ten feet. Upon this platform was the subject of Al’s feelings.

The throne on the platform was made of skulls, human skulls. They had been drenched in melted gold, the way a baseball will be bronzed. The job had been a bit overdone, and large stalagmites of melted gold hung down from what were supposed to be the armrests. It was eleven feet high, that throne, and sandwiched between the levels of skulls that made it up, were round bronze plates to prevent the grisly thing from collapsing.

Sitting on that throne was a person. It was a girl, a girl who looked about thirteen. She was clad in a vibrant dress of deepest blood-red, with silver piping on the sleeves. The dress was made from silk that clung to her form and drifted around her legs. Her hair was white as snow and her eyes were dark sapphire blue. On her head was a crown the same blood color as her dress. The head ornament was all pointy ends with a single sharp one higher than the rest in the middle. Under this one, was a jewel so dark crimson that it was almost black. She was resting her head on one small fist, and on her face was a smile.

Al didn’t like that smile. Her face was beautiful, but that smile spoke of a deep seated meanness. It was the smile a child gave after drowning another in the kiddie-pool. The smile a brother gave after killing another. A smile that—

“Grandpa” Al said, shaking himself out of his daze. “Where should I put this picture?” he felt dazed and fuzzy headed, as if he had taken a long nap. Looking into the blue eyes of the red-dressed girl in the picture had made him feel this way. The frame of this picture was of pure gold and it was studded with tiny jewels. Reading it, he saw that the captain said Rah Pizloon-Princess Jazzmin, the Throne of Bone.

“What…” Eric started to ask, but then he saw what Alphonse was holding and he stepped across the room—hell, leaped across and tore the painting from his grandson’s hands. “No!” he said loudly. “No, never look at the Al, never do it. Put it at the bottom of the pile. Gods, I don’t know why I stole that one!” he stopped muttering to himself and turned to Al. “I think it’s time for you to go, Al. When I see you again, I’ll pay you for this effort, but you must leave.”

“Okay, Grandpa” he said. “Feel better!” he backed to the door and before he left, what he saw was Eric bending over the painting of the girl in the red dress and shaking it.