Chapter Twenty-Three

Umbra’s Miskenupik

The sound of footsteps awakened Cleveland Umbra from a dreary sleep. He arose from the concrete floor, stiff legged, and massaged feeling into his butt. He glanced around the stone basement for the source of the disturbance. The wind howled through the decrepit lighthouse above, drawing his attention to the stairwell. Just cormorants. He wiped sleep from his eyes and climbed the stairs.

The smell of bird shit overwhelmed him. He bolted outside into the wan light of morning. He wondered if he would discover he was not really at Pilot Island, but one look at the recognizable lighthouse informed him otherwise. It had not been a dream. He had crossed through a gateway to this lifeless place. The paintings in his hand were real. He tucked them inside his shirt pocket and surveyed the island.

For some reason he thought of a quote of unknown authorship. “And we shall have mastery over life and tyranny over death.” Tyranny… The word made him smile. It had negative connotations but only for those who were not the tyrants. He chuckled.

He walked the rocky beach toward the cave’s entrance. He kept close to the water’s edge, where there was far less bird shit. The paintings felt unnaturally cold, even through the fabric of his shirt. They beckoned him. Cleve stopped walking and sat upon a large, clean boulder to face the cave. Its blackness seemed solid, resistant to the feeble light of a terrified sun. He studied the first of three antique treasures, leaving the other two in his pocket.

The back side was painted blue with myriad gold stars of various sizes and shapes. A white wolf stared at Umbra with glazed eyes. The pigment was more black than red to suggest congealed blood over the slain creature’s throat. A slaughtered wolf. The image caused Umbra to shudder involuntarily. He flipped the card over.

The half-man, half-buffalo demonic figure at the center of this painting had a triangular white head with two ivory horns protruding above each tufted ear. His human body was drawn with strength and masculinity. Thick tufts of black and white fur covered his groin and upper thighs. The demon held a torch in his left hand with the flame end held down.

The fiery light of the torch illuminated a huge jagged boulder upon which the beast was perched. The demon and his two prisoners were at the bottom of a green sea. Sharply angled boulders rested upon the sea floor.

The prisoners wore chains of black iron held slack around their necks. The man and woman wore simple headdresses of ivory feathers but were otherwise nude. They were so loosely bound they might simply have swum away to safety. Yet they remained.

Umbra placed the card upon his thigh and retrieved the second one. A warrior, with a headband of blood red feathers and a vest of faded brown leather, paddled a canoe toward a looming stone tower whose dome was set to flame. Behind him, seated at the stern, was a prisoner, a woman in a flowing robe the color of honey. She sat facing the warrior whose back was to her. Her eyes were covered by a white headband, and her hands were bound loosely by fragile strips of white linen. Three columns of wooden staffs flanked her on the port and starboard sides of the canoe. Like the first painting’s humans, this prisoner was poorly bound and guarded.

The sky above the canoe was gray and foreboding. A single black raven sat perched upon a boulder at the right corner of the painting. It watched the two boaters with evil intent.

Umbra placed the card on top of the first and reached for the third and final piece of parchment. A bolt of electricity ran from his fingers up his arm when he held the parchment in a pincer grasp. The jolt caused him to involuntarily fling it onto the beach. He tried in vain to rub away the pain from his forearm and bicep. He climbed up from his sitting position and retrieved the piece, this time exercising caution.

He lifted it gingerly and once again the flow of electricity ran from his fingers into his hand and up his arm. He held tight nonetheless and although the feeling did not disappear it did dissipate. He ignored the uninvited stimuli and stared at the diminutive masterpiece.

A dark and leafless tree presided over a scene of terrifying importance. The rough-barked black walnut was divided against itself along its bole. Each division of the aged wood gave rise to smaller branches. The effect was of two outstretched wings. A bulbous knot projected from the center of the two pinions causing that part of the tree to resemble a human face. Numerous slender boughs lifted upward, threateningly, toward the gray heavens.

The tree angel, drawn with masculine features, cast his attention toward three children in the foreground. The children, each of indeterminate sex, were painted an unnatural blue gray, their pallor the color of recent death. They knelt upon a funeral pyre set in the hollow of three canoes which, in turn, floated upon a great sea. The canoes were close to shore, and the children faced the commanding presence with outstretched arms.

Several deer skulls littered the base of the hill upon which the mighty tree stood. The posture of the three children, with heads lifted and arms raised, suggested a moment of triumph over the grave. The mighty angel had the power to free the pallid children from both their deaths and their surrender to the limitless green sea. Cleve began to chortle a muted and baleful laugh when he recognized the truth.

The angel was not granting the children freedom. His extended wings were creating the wind that would send their charred corpses out to sea. The children were not rejoicing. They were pleading with the barren walnut to grant them mercy. The artist had made clear through the myriad details defining this sinister work that mercy would not be granted.

Cleve studied the picture of the beast until he became consumed by it. Something stirred within his soul at the recognition of the pattern. The lines of the painting formed a fractured sunset to those with eyes to see. The unmarked dots of the painting connected to frame the outline of a fish aligned vertically. The mouth and body were blurred and looked like a distorted sunset as seen through a cloudburst. The fish’s tail became the sun’s many fractured paths cast upon the water, none of which led back to the center.

Cleve locked eyes with the tree angel in the painting. He saw the doomed children through its black and merciless eyes. The angel’s thirst for tyranny swallowed him. The tree’s dark power filled his soul.