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Vignette #2
by Cindy Rae
But What of April 11th?
She was beautiful, Vincent thought, in his dream. Older, yet somehow
ageless. Auburn hair, with touches of blonde. Blue eyes in a color only
redheads have. Human. She seemed tall, but such a thing was
inconsequential to a dream, so he was not sure. The thought flitted to
him and flitted away.
In the way that dreams sometimes happen, he held the view from above, as
he looked down into his own room. He was asleep at his writing table.
That was true enough. Vincent knew he actually was just that.
The almost incandescent woman approached him as he slept in the desk
chair, his form slumped over the table, his journal open to one side,
near his arm. He'd fallen asleep with his lonely musings. Again.
Yet another page full of his work, his life, and his loneliness sat
before him, the restlessness of his solitary heart free to pour itself
here, as it was free to do so no other place. She spoke to him, and in
his dream, he awoke.
"Vincent." The beautiful woman put a hand forward but did not touch him,
though she wanted to. They both knew she couldn't. Those were the rules.
"Mother," his mind greeted her, astonished, yet calm. He knew who she
was.
He had imagined her many, many times, back in his youth. But not for a
long time now. And not like this. In his fantasies, she was more like
him in appearance. This fairy creature was entirely human. There was so
much he wanted to ask her, but it was she who steered the conversation
onward.
"I can only stay a bit. But it was so important, I had to come," she
said.
"I miss you," he said it simply. A tear slid down his cheek. And hers.
"Ah, my sweet son. And I you. It has been so long."
"Forever," he agreed.
"Many years, at least. I wish I could be with you more."
"Can you not?" he asked, the lump in his throat huge.
She shook her head sadly. "Alas. I am not Kristopher."
"Who?" Vincent asked, confused.
"Nevermind. You'll meet him, one day. He is coming, not too long from
now. But it is tomorrow I must speak to you about. Tomorrow. This is so
important, my son."
His voice was resigned. "Tomorrow. Just a day like any other. I am
so…lonely, Mother. I try to fill the days, give them purpose and
meaning. Make my life mean more than my limits say it can. But
sometimes…it overwhelms me, Mother. It does."
"I know, my baby. I know. Something that will make the loneliness…less.
Something that may banish it forever, in time."
"Something I must do? Anything." Vincent breathed the last word out on a
desperate sigh, feeling the last word, 'anything,' carry his pain
outward.
"Good, anything." The figure shimmered, and seemed to see a distant
point. "Anything will get you everything. Everything is Everything,
Vincent." She spoke in riddles. "Tomorrow the work will be long, and
very hard. You will be tired. You will take dinner with Jacob, and he
will set up the chess board for you, as he usually does."
"He is good to me. He saved me, Mother."
"I know."
Her voice was so gentle, like a caress. How he wished she could touch
him.
"But you must not play, you mustn't. You will be too tired, and go to
bed after, if you do. Or if you do go out, after, you will likely be too
late. Too late, my son, will be as if you did not go at all, for what
comfort would you take from a corpse?"
Her words alarmed him.
"Time is so important tomorrow, Vincent. You cannot be too early. You
cannot be too late. But you must be there."
He nodded, indicating he understood, even though he wasn't sure he did.
"You will be tired. Very tired, my sweet one. But you must not rest. Not
for a while. All will continue as it has been, if you do. You will fall
into despair."
"Why did you leave me?" he asked it. The question that had burdened his
heart for forever.
"Vincent." Her voice was sad. "I cannot speak of the past now. This is
about the future, the future only. The rarest glimpse of possibilities.
Even Narcissa does not know this. You must listen, my son. You must. You
will not remember me when you wake."
"Then why bother to tell me what I will not remember?" He was agitated,
confused. The figure prone on the table moaned in his sleep.
"Because visions are remembered as dreams, and that is what I need you
to do, Vincent, to remember what you need to do. You will not recall me.
You never will and never can. It is all but forbidden for me to be here.
I come so I can tell you one thing."
"I love you," he told her, thinking to hear it from her lips.
"You must go for a walk." Her voice was urgent.
For some reason, he knew her time was growing terribly short, and she
would risk losing the endearment to tell him the thing she just had. Not
'I love you.'
'You must go for a walk.'
That was what she had to tell him? Really? He shook his head. "Father
does not like it when I go above. He is mindful of the danger."
"You must refuse his game, and excuse yourself. You must, Vincent," her
voice insisted. Uncompromisingly.
"But you said I would be tired. Would I not simply come here? Simply go
to bed?"
"You would." She became agitated.
The aura of calm that had originally permeated her, being stirred,
shifted, and he knew this was important to her, important to him.
"You must not. You must not, my son. No matter what. No matter what your
impulse, or your distraction. Tomorrow. You must go above for a while.
Go for a walk across the park. A walk near the road."
"I almost never go that way. The road is too close. Headlights from the
cars illuminate the area. I can be seen."
"Tomorrow there will be a mist. I will make it happen. If I have the
strength, after tonight. It is all I can do for you, my son. Raise a
mist. Such a little thing."
She looked over her shoulder. Sensation. Being called back.
"If you take no impression from this night, my own, take this: Tomorrow
night, you must go for a walk. No matter how tired. No matter how
sore or heartsick or lonely. Go for a walk in the mist, Vincent. Find
your destiny."
"My destiny, in a walk?"
"Like Heathcliff on the moors. I do like that book. I love you, my
child." There. She got it out before she began to fractionalize before
him. She was fading.
"You liked Bronte?" he wanted to ask, knew he was just saying something
to try and keep her there. She was vanishing to nothingness.
Her voice became a sigh on the wind at the end: "Like Heathcliff. Fate
is sending you a Catherine."
And she was gone.
----
When morning came, he awoke from the position he'd fallen asleep in,
sprawled across his open journal. He tiredly flipped it shut, knowing
what the words said both because he had put them there, and because they
were the same words on many of the pages now.
Pages of loneliness, tiredness. A weariness in his soul that sometimes
threatened to loom too large. He looked at his tattered calendar. April
12, 1987. Nothing special about that. He did not feel rested, owing to
the hardness of the chair and the table. He had a crick in his neck.
Perhaps he could finish with work early, and turn in.
He shrugged, working the kinks out of his shoulder, looking longingly at
the bed he should have slept in. "One should not be wishing for bed when
one has done nothing to earn it." He changed clothes and shouldered into
his vest, determined to get on with the day.
Breakfast and greetings, and even the children could tell their favorite
teacher was somewhat less than chipper this morning. Mouse made him
smile, briefly, but then Mouse often did that. Arthur, however, had
Father scolding as usual; "No pets at the dining table, Mouse!"
It was a common complaint that both Mouse and the raccoon ignored, for
the most part.
Bert, Cullen, and a few others collected their tools. Repairs today, and
not of an easy kind. I should have slept in the bed, Vincent
thought. His back was about to make him pay for his lack of care. Oh,
well. No help for it now. Perhaps a long soak in the
Slept uncomfortably. Something about that, something he could not quite
shake. Like mist that eluded the grasp of his fingers. Mist. Something
about mist, too, but the instinct to the word was as insubstantial as
the word itself. He hefted a pickaxe and joined his fellows. It would be
a long day.
Work. Labor and sweat, and grunting and no small amount of swearing from
Bert and Cullen. Rock pounded out, rock moved away. A leak in a pipe
repaired, a band placed on for support. The muscles in his shoulders,
cracking against the weight of the pipe. Hold it, hold…just a little
longer. There. Done. And his great arms came dropping down, cramped,
sore, fatigued.
Lunch from the packs, then finish up. Rock to be carried, lest it block
the path. Break the large pieces into smaller ones, load into a tarp,
dragged by all. Pitch it over the side of the abyss. Good. There were
often heavier loads than that one, sometimes.
Go back, back to the hub, back to his chambers. A nap, maybe? A nap
before dinner? Somehow he knew if he did that at this late hour, he
would sleep through dinner, perhaps rise close to midnight. No. Press
on. The worst of the day was behind him. An early dinner, perhaps a
quick game of chess with Father, then bed. He was too tired to do more
than wash up quickly from his basin. Tomorrow, the
Dinner and conversation, and pots of tea, reviving him. A bowl of stew
and a roll and the day draining off of him, eating with Father in
Jacob's chambers.
"Shall we have a game, Vincent?" Father asked, as he cleared the bowls
from the table. "Considering how tired you look, I rather like my
chances." Father nudged him toward the board with a look.
"At least you are admitting you need me fatigued to beat me, Father."
Vincent sat. He hoped this would not take long, and moved his opening
pawn. Father had even allowed him to play white.
"Father." It was Jamie's voice from the doorway. She was on sentry duty.
"There's mist on the ground; it's getting foggy. Robert says the
cushions in the music chamber are getting damp, the ones under the
opening. Is it all right if I just move them back a bit, or do you want
me to take them out completely?"
Mist? Mist on the ground. Something about the mist. Vincent's tired mind
turned back to the morning. Something he should do? He had no idea.
"Just move them back a bit, Jamie, and thank you," Jacob told her. April
nights could be mercurial. "If it starts to rain, have Robert and Brooke
move them farther back, all right?"
Jacob countered Vincent's opening move with his own pawn, predictably.
Opening gambits were dull, for the most part. Concentration would come
later.
Vincent touched a finger to his queen, thinking of making an aggressive
move, something to make it go faster. The white queen. Something tugged
at him. Someone. Someone fair, whose face was utterly unknown and
unclear to him. For whatever reason, he knew he could not sit here,
could not play chess with Jacob tonight.
"Father, I find I must excuse myself. I am not up to our game. Perhaps
tomorrow? I will concede defeat for this one, if you like." Vincent rose
from the chair.
"Very well, son. Perhaps we'll play tomorrow. Here." He snagged a book
from the shelf. "Something for a misty night."
Vincent took the book without checking the title, anxious to make his
way back to his chambers. His body was tired, his muscles, sore. Bed
would be welcome.
He knew he wouldn't write in his journal tonight. Passing near the
tunnel that led to the area under the bandstand, he heard Jamie and
Robert as they pulled the larger cushions back against the walls. He
could smell the mist in the air. He did not turn around. He continued to
his rooms.
Sanctuary at last, the welcome end to a long day after a restless night.
Restless. Had he been restless? Part of his brain insisted he had not
been, that he had slept so deeply he did not remember his dreams. But
part of him felt otherwise: a disquiet. A stirring inside him. That
sensation of having forgotten something you were supposed to have done.
He reviewed his day as he sat on the bed, meaning to remove his boots.
Nothing. He could think of nothing that required his attention. He set
Father's book on top of a stack of those on his night stand.
A pile of books lived on his bedside table, always. Poetry, prose, old
favorites and new friends. Kipling, Keats, Shelley, Baum. He would read
himself to sleep by the candle light. He was almost too tired to even do
that. He traced the familiar spines with a loving finger.
Something for a misty night in April. Poe, perhaps; no, not Poe. He was
better in October. He looked at Father's suggestion for a misty night.
Bronte.
“
Walk. There it was. The something he must do.
Mind jumping, the rightness of the impulse felt like something he should
not ignore. It would be wrong to say he felt compelled. It would also be
wrong to say it felt like a choice. Shoving his boots back on, he took
up his cape and had it on before he even cleared the doorway.
A walk. A walk out at night, in the mist. The mist would cover him, make
the lights in the park all ghostly and diffuse. Ghostly. Something in
that word, that feeling. The sheltering mist. Something. Something
outside.
The impulse to go neither strong nor weak, considering his fatigue, it
simply 'was'. He followed it, feeling stronger as he went. Second wind.
Feeling better now, better for finally having found the thing that felt
like it needed doing. Booted feet through the tunnels, out into the
night, across the soft grass.
Sweet, spring nighttime, heavy with damp air. He breathed it in, deeply.
No fellow travelers with him, this night. The air was too damp for the
casual strollers. Even the unsavory seemed at home this evening. No moon
to light his way. Overcast. The air pregnant with the promise of a late
night rain.
'They should move the
cushions further back,'
Vincent thought, about to veer to the right, to the line of trees that
looped around the edge near the drain. It was the safest way. The way
his feet usually took him.
But the area was truly deserted tonight. The hour grew later, and the
mist thicker. The rain, if it would come, closer. It was chilly. A woman
would need a coat, a man something heavy as well. The London Fog company
made its trade on nights like this.
Vincent tugged his hood lower, feeling the darkness of the night envelop
him the way the hood enveloped him. He did not go right. He went left,
this being one of the rare nights it felt completely safe to do that.
Left. Left across the open grass a ways, across the April lawn to the
copse of trees that divided the park from where the road swung closest
to it. He almost never came this way. The change felt good. He was
leaving footprints in the wet grass. No matter. They would be gone by
morning, one way or another. And there was no one to track him anyway.
Pines, here, a stand of them. Tall and black against the night. Some of
the ends already starting to drip. Soft sound.
A car passed. Then another. He stayed still as the lights illuminated
the fog as it thickened, the mist too dense for those lights to be able
to pierce much more than the edge of the road. The cars hugged the
curve, the field before them just down a hill from the asphalt.
Cars and trucks moved on, leaving him with the dark and the cover and
the moonless, starless sky, and his thoughts. Then, even the traffic
became thin.
It felt good to be out. Good to be walking on his 'moors.' He was
feeling the night on his clothes. He would have liked to pull back his
hood, to feel the mist on his face and in his hair. He was not sure why
he was there, not sure what had compelled him to leave dry shelter. But
he was glad that he had come out. That much he knew.
He should have brought the book and tried to find a street light close
enough to read by, there being no moon. No. Not possible. No place to do
that, here, in the deep shadows. Maybe if he could find a place closer
to the road? Someplace where the trees thinned and a street lamp
might…no.
He would have to return on a night with a better moon. For the first
time, he realized just how dark this area was, how absent of man-made
light. Too far from the park paths for the lights of the park, and the
bend in the road having only reflectors on the paint to show the curve,
it was a good place for trouble to happen, if trouble was bent on doing
that.
Sound. Another car sound, approaching. He stayed near the trees, nearly
ready to be done for the evening, here. Not a car. Bigger. But not as
big as a truck, his ears told him, as the headlights came closer. A van.
A van, going fast, too fast for this weather. The driver hit the brakes
in time to avoid a crash as the white body of the vehicle swung around
for the curve.
As if it was all in one motion, the van slowed only a little more, the
door opened, and a body wrapped in black was tossed out as the van
bolted away.
The van and its accompanying sound raced off into the night as the body
rolled down the hill. Whoever drove it was not stopping, not caring for
the fate of the female form they'd just discarded. She was so much
refuse. Vincent knew it was a 'she.' And dreaded what he would find when
he reached her.
Her head was covered. Her black dress wrapped around her legs as she'd
rolled. Fair skin. Young. White. She was injured, obviously, and
unmoving.
He knew, even obscured by the night, it was a young woman. The smell of
blood assailed him. The bag over her head looked black, but it wasn't.
It was her lifeblood, staining it crimson. He sensed her heartbeat.
Sensed it? Not possible. But he did. She was alive.
He confirmed with his fingertips what he already knew. That her heart
beat in a thready, fear-filled rhythm. Her dress was cut. He knew her
face was beyond that.
He would be exposed to the next random passing car. And she would be
dead if he couldn't stop the bleeding.
As gently yet as quickly as he could, he scooped her, lifted her. She
was wet from blood and the dew on the grass. Her coat was open, her
clothes disheveled and stained. She'd clearly been attacked. Beaten.
Savagely.
Decisions were made as he ran. He could not leave her on the path for
someone else to find. The mist had kept them all indoors. The mist made
her his responsibility.
"Hold on," he whispered to the unconscious form. "Stay with me." His
body knew no fatigue, now, as he raced the night across the open to
reach the tunnels. It was the shortest way, though not the safest, for
him. Damn safety. She would bleed to death if he could not get her to
help, could not get her to Father. She was cold. Either from shock, or
blood loss, or the elements, she was cold, in her once fine gown.
Her heart still beat inside her chest. He should not be able to feel it
through her clothes, or through his, but he did. He felt it. Felt her
with him. Her hand stirred. 'Help me.' The words came to his brain. But
he hadn't heard them with his ears, for she had not spoken. But he had
heard her, all the same.
Drain. Doorway. Tunnels. A mad race through the circular halls to
Father's chamber.
Blood. Wounds. Horrible wounds. Blood and bandages, and the knowledge
there was no way to staunch the wounds without stitches. Sewing her.
Holding her face while Father worked. Praying for her. Don't die.
Don't die, he begged. Stay. Stay with me. I will care for you.
Wrap her. Bandage her with care. Clean clothes. A tunnel gown, warm for
her chilled skin. Mary to dress her. Father to give her a shot.
Antibiotics. Precious medicine, here. Saved for dire emergencies. Like
her.
Her coat, stained. Ruined. Black dress sliced at the breast. An evening
clutch in the pocket of the coat. Velvet. A wealthy woman's trinket.
Jacob opened it. Some cash. She had not been robbed. A credit card. Door
key. Driver's license. He held the picture aloft, extending it to
Vincent. "She was a beauty, before they did this to her," Jacob opined.
Vincent held her license. Her address was not far. Her name…Her name!
"Father." Vincent's voice was awestruck.
"Her name…is Catherine."
The End…of the beginning…
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