Calm down. He’s here.
I released the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Steve almost certainly was here. The place smelled like Apple Air-Wicks and had an inhabited feeling. He was probably just passed out somewhere I couldn’t easily see.
Still, I crept slowly through the house until I reached the living room, relieved to see it was almost as tidy as I’d left it. I was also relieved to find Steve there, his body large and boneless on the old couch, my mom’s afghan reaching all the way up to his chin. The purple fringe draped along his smoothly shaven jawline, and his dark, flawless skin, glowing faintly blue in the reflection from the TV, made him almost look like royalty, though his slackly open mouth and the line of drool glistening at the corner ruined that effect. Still, he looked peaceful, I thought. Happy, kind of.
It was nice.
The kitchen had dishes out on the counter, so I stopped there, taking the five minutes needed to quietly clear every surface and load the dishwasher. Each dish I put away made me feel better, but I knew I was stalling. Still, the routine of cleaning things and tucking them into their proper place inevery room I passed, had its purpose. It reminded me that I had some control over my surroundings. Control over Steve, even, who seemed more childlike when he woke to a clean space, and whose breathy snores I could now hear in quiet counterpoint to the sound of running water, clinking plates. Control over myself.
But eventually everything was cleaned and put away. I couldn’t run the vacuum, because that definitely would wake up Steve. I had other stuff I needed to handle, anyway. Now that Steve was back onsite, it was time.
I jogged up the stairs lightly, gaining speed as I went. The duplex had two bedrooms and one bath, and Steve’s bedroom door stood open. His room was spotless, the bed untouched, and I withstood the urge to go in and mess something up ever so slightly, just so it looked lived-in. Steve had occupation issues when it came to bedrooms. I had no idea what’d happened to him in one, but it’d been bad.
That was why he didn’t sleep in Mom’s old room. I was pretty sure.
It didn’t bother me that he’d moved to the couch after the first week. He said he preferred it, so, okay. We didn’t talk about it. Things had been strange with me at night for several months now, so I was glad for the space. Besides, Steve drank hard, partied hard—was almost certainly into some sketchy stuff, but he’d never smelled wrong to me. So far as I could tell, he had two hobbies: playing the newest and loudest online video games with an ever-rotating circle of friends, and collecting the drink coasters of the clubs, bars, and breweries he frequented, probably comforting reminders of drinks gone by, only to leave them scattered around the apartment. The coasters were attached to wildly disparate drinking establishments with names like Whiskey Run, Soul Crypt, Hoppies Brewhouse, and The Descent—but if having them around made him happy, I didn’t mind picking them up on the daily.
Still, I could sense there was a fragility to Steve, like something was breaking down his defenses, stripping away his control. Booze and whatever else he was doing could take a lot out of a person, I supposed, so a first-floor couch made sense as a place for him to crash.
I reached my own room and held my breath as I unlocked the door. Steve never really poked around in here, so far as I knew, but having the locks changed out ensured me that he never would. I slipped inside, then shut the door behind me with a quick, decisive click. I locked it once more from the inside and threw the deadbolt for good measure.
Only then did I turn on the light.
Jesus.What I saw on the walls around me was way worse than usual.
Worse and different.
The sheets I’d strung up against the walls had been ripped to the side—some of them actually ripped for real, but most of them simply yanked down and shoved out of the way. The stark white walls were now crisscrossed with black and red paint, all of it dried, thank God, but still stinking to high heaven. The cans themselves were sealed shut, standing in a mini tower by my bed.
I grimaced as I glanced at them. Even after all these years, I still felt bad about the cans.
The first time I’d woken up to graffiti-covered walls, I’d had no idea where the paint had come from. I’d searched everywhere, finally making it out to the back deck where Mom and I had never hung out, no matter what the weather was. There, all lined up along the bottom of the banister separating us from the Soos next door, were fifteen cans of paint, identical in brand to the now-empty ones in my bedroom.
Since that first night, I’d spent probably five bucks a week replacing cans of the Soos’ craft paint. Clearly, I’d have to buy a few more.
I blew out a long sigh. As usual, I’d left the fans going all day with the windows open, never mind the drain on electricity. Nevertheless, seeing the words again in the harsh fluorescent light ramped up my anxiety. Worse, this time, I hadn’t stopped at words.
Along with the foul litany I’d transcribed onto two of the walls, Iris’s demon had made its presence known on the third. In the center of the graffiti-thon, I’d painted a huge, disgusting depiction of a fat, half-human, half-goat creature with a giant penis and snakes for fingers. It was rolling around in a pit filled with what might be money, except my artwork was never the best when I worked in the middle of the night.
“Goddamned freak,” I muttered.
Nothing on those three walls was all that unexpected, of course. Curse words, threats, attacks—even horribly grotesque artwork—that, I understood. I had faced down evil, and as soon as my febrile little mind unkinked enough to give it an opening, evil had wanted to claw back.
But the fourth wall…
Grimacing, I turned and forced myself to look at it.
Here, I’d painted a masterpiece.
The figure stretched across nearly the entire wall, rendered in sweeping strokes of black and deep crimson that seemed to shimmer even in the harsh light. It was a man—or something that had once been a man—caught in a moment of exquisite anguish. His head was thrown back, dark hair flowing like liquid shadow, arms spread wide as if embracing the void itself. But it was his face that stole my breath: beautiful beyond reason, with sharp cheekbones and full lips parted in what could have been ecstasy or agony. His eyes were open wide, fixed on somedark truth I could only guess at, but they stared up with infinite longing, ancient and desperate…and utterly alone. Massive wings unfurled behind him, not the leathery appendages of nightmares, but something magnificent and terrible, feathers that caught light like oil on water.
He was falling—or maybe rising—through a landscape of stars and shadows, his expression one of such profound isolation that my chest tightened with unexpected sympathy.
I’d painted this. Or something inside me had.
But what?
My subconscious? My hidden artistic talent surfacing during a fugue state?
