“Well, let’s go to my place and take a look at the roster from last session,” Gus offers. “Maybe we can get it returned to him somehow. I think I know who you mean.” I’m carrying the expensive-looking watch I found this morning outside one of the cabins that have been shut up for the winter season. We trudge our way down the mucky path to his cabin, the air unseasonably mild, the temporary snowmelt conjuring swatches of fog in various surprising locations.
“Stork, maybe? From Pittsburgh?” I offer as we get to his door. “Or Heron?”
He lets us in, and as he does, he points to the new lens he just got sitting out on his workbench. I stay on the welcome mat and turn to look at it while Gus slides his muddy boots off.
“It’s a beaut, huh?” he says. He creaks forward a step or two, and then he goes suddenly still. I look up, setting down the lens where I found it.
“Alright, Gus?” And then the reason for his silence becomes clear. His enormous wall collage of camper photos faces us. There are easily forty-dozen up there. At an average of sixty campers a year, that’s about eight years’ worth. He has previous years’ pictures archived elsewhere. I’ve seen the wall countless times. We all have, whenever we come in to visit with Gus.
But something is terribly wrong with it.
All of the eyes in each and every photo have been scratched out to white, blank nothingness. Four hundred and eighty faces, blinded.
And they’re not in their usual grid. They spell something out. I have to let my eyes settle across the massive breadth of it.
ART OUTLASTS ALL
My stomach plummets to my feet.
Gus drops into a crouch, hand over his mouth.
“Why?” he croaks. ”Who?” His voice is tremulous.
But I know who. Of course I do.
I’m half sitting on the stool in front of my easel. I’ve been sitting here with a paintbrush in my hand, stymied and distracted so long that the smears and scrapes of paint on my palette are starting to dry out.
I can’t stop thinking about the photos in Old Gus’s cabin.
I can’t believe I didn’t tell him what I suspected—what I know. Even when he called us all to the communal bonfire in the commons via the dinner bell and described, heartbroken, what had taken place. Even when he begged plaintively for someone to come forward if they knew anything. Even when he asked the group why this had been done to him, tears in his eyes. I stayed quiet. Because I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear what might happen to Coral if anyone found out. What I’ve done is keep my distance. And pretend there’s nothing to be said.
I swallow and set down my paintbrush and palette. I rub my face and eye sockets hard and deep, trying desperately to chase the tension away. I look at the pathetic canvas before me. Unbroken expanses of white with insecure swipes of black here and there. I sigh and get up, crack the window for some bracing air.
Two figures are emerging from the forest at the far side of the commons. From the direction of Coral’s Clearing. I squint.
It’s Moss.
And Mantis.
They keep walking, not talking to each other. Moss’s eyes and face are cast down. Mantis faces forward, confident. What the fuck is Mantis doing here? What are they doing together? Are they coming from the clearing? My gut clenches. The Holy Trinity hasn’t been down to Coral’s Clearing since the night of the Autumn Francis story. Since the night that seemed to change everything.
When they’re almost halfway through the commons, I suddenly break from my trance, from the feeling that I’m watching something on a TV screen, separate from me.
I stumble down my front steps in my moccasins onto the muddy pathway.
“Hey!” I cry. “Hey!” The two men pause and turn to look at me. Moss looks both nervous and relieved, somehow. Mantis looks agitated. I watch Mantis clap Moss on the shoulder, hard. Moss flinches under his touch. And then Mantis starts striding toward the parking lot like he doesn’t even see me. “Mantis,” I call, heading toward him, but his longer stride outpaces me easily. I start to trot after him, not sure what I’m even doing. Why I’m chasing after a man who on some deep, elemental level now terrifies me.
I slip a few times on the embankment down to the lot, and by the time I get there, he’s already in his truck and starting it up. ”Mantis,” I say again over the noise of the engine, breathing hard. He looks at me now, hands on the wheel, and there’s something like pity in his eyes. Like he finds me pathetic. “Where’s Coral?” is all I can think of to say. His features turn stony. Unwelcoming. I wrap my arms around my body, shivering. It can’t be more than forty degrees.
“Go ask Moss,” he finally says. A small smile curls his lips. Icy, dislocated panic floods me. Then he yanks his truck into gear and speeds down the driveway. Gone.
I stalk off toward Moss’s cabin at a half jog. My breath comes in quick, nervous bursts. When I get to his door, I rap on it hard three times. Silence greets me. I knock again. Then again. “Moss! I know you’re in there!” Then I start slamming the side of my fist ceaselessly against the door.
The door flies open.
“Christ, June. Fucking give it a rest,” Moss snarls. He rubs his forehead like a headache is splitting it wide open. He looks pale. And cold.
“What the fuck was Mantis doing here?” I bark, trembling. Moss just shakes his head and turns away from me. He sinks to sit on his bed like he can’t hold himself up.
“Where’s Coral?” I demand.
“Not here,” he replies, voice impossibly weary—unlike I’ve ever heard it.
“Where is she, Moss? I’m serious.”
“June, please.” It’s a plea. The desperation in him makes me pause.
My eyes flicker around his face, which is wrought.
“Moss. Talk to me. Tell me right now. Where is she? Where is she?” I’m begging. Almost crying.
“She’s not here anymore, okay?” he shouts, finally locking his red, watery eyes on me. He looks exhausted. Like he’s been chased by the devil. His skin looks anemically white. I’m so startled by his appearance that I lose my words for a moment.
“Where is she?” I ask, nerves making my voice tremble. “Moss.” I breathe. “Where is Coral?” Moss swallows and shakes his head. “Moss,” I whisper, a terrified tear creeping from my eye down onto my cheek. I wipe it away.
“She’s where she wants to be.” His voice cracks, and that one small vocal imperfection sends a shudder of deep, nebulous terror through me.
I don’t remember turning away from him or leaving his cabin. I don’t remember rushing into the woods. I don’t remember slipping and mudding my way down the path to Coral’s Clearing. But eventually I get there, dirty, cold, trembling. I push my way past the trunks of trees, until I make it into the center of Coral’s favorite place.
And in the heart of it, a shock of lemon yellow. A shock of blond against slate gray, arctic white, pearwood brown. The cragged rhinoceros boulders, the elegant arc of ballerina birch trees. Soil and bark. Mud and snow.
And Coral in the limbs. Where a bird should be. Weightless, and free, high above the ground, unburdened—
Or too terribly earthly, much heavier than air, gravity pulling her down, down.
I can’t tell which.
A rope gone taut. Her body gone slack.
I shake my head no in disbelief, big and naive, like the motion might serve as an eraser.
Then I scream.
Her Dark Things by Audra Colfax
Piece #10: See You Later
Oil and mixed media on canvas. 36″ x 36″.
[Close-up of a frayed rope, coiled, rough, animal-like. Found objects incorporated throughout by layering.]
Note on water-stained, linen-woven stationery found in the landscaped stone wall outside the Dunn residence.
It’s all set
EVELINE is still with my parents she is
SAFE
Brady is off living his life
I think he knows I think he
understands
I have made the deal with M with M
M took my wish
Saw my deepest heart
and provided a narrowness
something I could not back out of
a girl who could not go on knowing
a kind of courage
and M will make me
forever forever his goldenbright girl
M slipped me a note it said
MEET ME IN THE PLACE YOU SHOWED ME UNDER
THE STARS
and so I will (and I kept the note—special place with EE)
mom and dad, I’m SORRY
everyone, everybody, even Brady I’m sorry
Eveline Audra
I do LOVE you I want you to
know that
I tried so HARD
I want you to
know that
—March89. CD.