The Mezzotint Chapter 9 The Mezzotint

Creest woke up in a white world.  His ears registered a bleeping noise like a satellite beaming signals back to earth.  ‘Maybe I’m beyond space.  Is this the afterlife?’ he thought.  Slowly he came to realise that he was in a hospital ward bed encased by curtains.  He turned his head toward the sound.  A cold steel machine stood next to the bed eking wires which ran to various positions on his chest.  He attempted to haul himself into a seating position but gave up.  He felt too weak to manipulate the medicinal spaghetti so lay back down and waited.

Then he remembered the pain; the pain and the painting.  What he had seen was the most disturbing manifestation of all.  A sharp wrench streaked down his side.  He breathed deep and hard, calming himself and the pang dissolved like sugar in hot coffee.  ‘I must get home’ he sighed.

 

As Creest was considering an exit strategy a hand drew back the curtains and a mischievous looking nurse stared him straight in the eye.  ‘Are we off somewhere?’ she stated without the nuance of a question mark. 

‘I feel fine’ Creest said defensively.

‘Well you’re not.  You’re as pale as a ghost.  Like Van Gogh’s Scream’

‘Munch’ Creest corrected her. 

‘Know a bit about it then?’

‘I’m an authority of sorts’

‘Well let’s do a deal.  I won’t tell you about art -you don’t tell me about your heart’

She propped him up, stacking the pillows behind his back and made no attempt to hide the smirk as she carolled her little verse.

Creest acknowledged the deceit.  ‘I hope my heart attack wasn’t as bad as your poetry’

‘The doctor will be along shortly to explain.  You sit tight and watch you don’t disturb these’ she pointed to the wires.

‘That sounds very ominous’ 

Seeing his doleful face she pitied him and whispered.  ‘You have Microvascular Agina.  It can be controlled, but don’t let on I told you’

‘Munch’s the word’ Creest replied.  ‘Where am I?’

‘University Hospital; you were taken to our A and E this morning.  Rest now’ she said, smiling, and then carried on with her other duties.

 

The day before, Creest’s relief had been achieved through a combination of luck and opportune timing.  A chambermaid had turned up late for work at the Russell the previous day, and not for the first time.  She had managed to offset the threat of dismissal by offering to come in earlier in the following morning and part cover the end of a night shift.  Luckily enough an important party had been advised to catch an earlier flight from Heathrow allowing extra time for their rooms to be made up.  Those rooms happened to be adjacent to Creest’s own.  Normally she would not have been on this floor at all. 

Nevertheless the chambermaid had completed the task and would have passed Creest’s room as the professor was dressing however she was waylaid by a rather obese guest who had been checking out and had inadvertently left not only an item of hand luggage, but his door key inside the room and required the chambermaid to open up for him.  The delay, as she checked his credentials before letting him in, was crucial.  As she walked back towards the lift Creest was leaning over the painting, his heart booming through the restricted blood being supplied to it and his legs unable to sustain even the paltry weight of his wiry frame.  She heard a thump as he hit the floor and put her ear to the door.  She called out for an answer but received no response, so she pummelled the door and raised her voice but Creest’s ears were already closed to her world.  She quickly let herself in and found Creest’s unconscious body curled almost foetal at the side of his bed.  She summoned the maître d who, after ensuring the professor was breathing, put him into the recovery position and phoned the emergency services.

 

The doctor saw him around an hour or so later, explained what had happened and why and assured him that with a proper recuperative period and an eye on diet and light exercise the condition was manageable.  Creest confessed he’d been having some domestic issues and hadn’t been sleeping well.  The doctor told him he could sleep as long and as often as he wanted.  They wouldn’t discharge him for at least a week.

 

The latter discomfited him but then he suddenly brightened like a sliver of light across a cold dark lake.  Creest realised that he’d just enjoyed the best sleep he’d had in days and he knew why.   He hadn’t dreamed of Hope, hooded figures or had been emasculated.  Something had changed, he could feel it. 

‘Where are my things?’ he enquired.

‘The hotel has your suitcase I believe, and your valuables, wallet etcetera’ said the doctor

‘What about the clothes I was wearing?’

‘We’ve had them folded in the drawers next to your bed’ There were three and he drew out each one. ‘Trousers and shirt here; underwear…socks here and shoes in the bottom’

‘Thank you doctor, you’ve been very kind’

He leant back into his pillow as the doctor left him and smiled as broadly, something he’d hadn’t managed in a very long time.  Despite the attack a measure of control over the lunacy he had experienced had returned.  As enervated as he felt, he dismissed concern over his heart.  His focus was other things now.  All these shenanigans would have stressed younger men than me.  I’ll get over it; now that I know.  Now that fiend has finally revealed itself to me.  I can destroy it before it destroys me.  I have a purpose now.  It’s not too late’   He opened the drawer where his trousers lay and felt into the back pocket.  ‘Still there’ he murmured.  He always folded up two twenty pound notes and tucked them there for an emergency before going on a trip, just in case he mislaid or had his wallet stolen.  He could feel his teeth grinding as he generated a plan in his head.  ‘Tonight, when it’s dark’

 

*

 

Creest waited until about eight that night.  Earlier he had surreptitiously taken his clothes to the toilet and hidden them behind a cistern.  As visitor’s hour ended he mingled with those leaving, dashed into the lavatory, changed and left inconspicuously.   He walked slowly to Kings Cross and booked a single train journey to Lincoln on the 21:35 with enough to pay for a taxi back to Greeven.

It was nearly one o’clock when the taxi dropped him at his cottage in Greeven.   As it returned down the narrow lane and its headlights faded, Creest was suffocated by darkness.  This part of the village was less populated its appeal when he chose the cottage.  Now the isolation that gave him solace was a threat. 

He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light so he could pick out the shapes of the house, the gate and the pathway and then proceeded slowly toward the front door.  Halfway there he thought he heard a giggle, like a child laughing, and imagined that behind him somewhere on the lawn the fiend was glowering at him.

A rustle alerted his ears.  Was that its cloak unravelling?  What instrument did it have underneath to welcome Creest home with?  He was at the door now and could barely hold the key to the lock for shaking.  The presence of something behind him was overwhelming.  He stole a glance behind him and saw a light hovering down by his gate.  He shuddered and inhaled deeply to control his juddering hands then slipped the key into the lock, turned the handle and ran inside slamming the door solidly behind him.

 

*

Across the lane a figure holding a small torch moved within the blackness.  It was the vicar.  He hadn’t slept well and had wandered out for a stroll.  He had heard a car door slam but was too far away to recognize Creest, especially in the blackness.  He stood still and turned off his torch.  He saw a shape and it was going into Creest’s cottage.  He dismissed the notion that it would be the professor, not at this ungodly time of night, and assumed it was a burglar.  He turned back toward the church but turned his torch on a little too early so that it shone toward the cottage.  In an instant he turned it off again, worried that he may have alerted the thief, and walked as quickly as he could for at least 50 yards before he felt comfortable in using the torch for a guide.  It took him less than five to get to the church and call the authorities.

 

*

       Creest pushed at the hallway light but nothing happened; the cottage refusing to yield to the power of those that would eradicate him.  The professor walked into the kitchen.  He peered into the black canvas of his garden.  The mysterious light had disappeared but he thought he saw something move down by the privet.  To Creest now any shadow cast by a shaft of moonlight appeared as a phantom from some dark corner of Hell.

     He fiddled about in a drawer and found a small torch and switched it on.  The light danced about the kitchen walls creating goblins and trolls out of the silhouettes of pots and pans hanging from the oven range.  He quickly directed its light to the floor and followed it out into the hallway.  He aimed it at the top of the stairs.  Three quarters of the way there was a dog leg to the left.  He considered how a simple wooden construction could exhibit such fearfulness looked at in a certain kind of light.  He began to climb.

Creest’s old staircase creaked and groaned with every footfall but tonight each tweak was amplified as he made his way to the upper floor.  The balustrade felt icy cold to the touch.  As he reached the juncture he felt exhausted and stopped to take a rest.  As he exhaled his breath became visible and he was suddenly aware that the temperature within the cottage had dropped substantially.  ‘They’re here’ he thought.

He pressed on, his lungs grateful for the plane of the landing.  The door to his bedroom was closed.  That was how he had left it.  He gripped the handle and walked in.  Light flooded into his irises and blinded him for a moment.  He shielded his eyes looking down at the floor.  There were tiles where there should have been floorboards.  Toys were skewed across the floor and a small doll’s house sat in the corner.  There was a single bed where his double should have been.   Above it was the painting with his tormentor as clear as ever looking at him, displaying the one thing he knew would destroy Creest. 

He glanced to his left.  His desk was untouched and there above it his laptop.  ‘It’s still there, they’re too late’ he whispered then sat down and flipped the lid back and logged on.  Behind him he could hear a pathetic whimpering.  He looked down to his left.  It was coming from beneath the bed:  a scared cry of someone in mortal terror.  Creest cried ‘I know who and what you are now but it’s too late; you’ve lost’

In front of him the computer booted up.  His desktop sprang to life.  He manoeuvred the mouse over his documents and clicked.  Another file opened up.  He clicked again: another… and another.  Deeper and deeper Creest delved into the recesses of both his and the laptop’s memories; looking for secrets.  The moaning beneath the bed stopped but Creest dared not.  He didn’t hear the creak of the bedroom window opening up behind him.  He was nearly there.  ‘I’ll finish it’ he declared.

The lights went out again.  Creest looked around his bedroom was as it should be.  Then a kaleidoscope of flashing blues and reds filtered in from outside, followed by the scrunch of rubber on gravel but Creest ignored it.  ‘I’m winning.  It’ll be all over soon’. Finally the file he was looking for was presented to him.  He selected the entire contents and eyed the delete button with relish.  He took one final victorious look around him and cried aloud ‘Screw you Harriet’ and moved his finger forward but it never connected.

An arm had appeared from the dark corner to his right.  It was cloaked and held his hand above the delete button with an iron grip from which he could not extract.  He took a final look across at the figure the arm belonged to.  It was the fiend from the garden.  Its face appeared from beneath the hood: that of a beautiful deep blue-eyed child.  She was smiling at him.

 

END