A Portal in Paint

Alright, I guess I’ve got time. But, before I start, let me tell you that though I read a lot of books I am not making a word of this up, you hear me? Not. A. Word. All true. Yeah, I know you’ll believe me, but only up until it gets really weird and then you’ll think I’ve gone mad with grief. I tell you, that’s not it. That’s not it at all. I know exactly what I saw.

Anyway, that aside….

It was about four months ago now that Harold first spoke about the idea. I was one of his editors, so I was eager for him to get writing so I could see what fantastic world he could come up with this time. On the back of the critically-acclaimed steampunk Western “The Husk of Henry Ashwood” – which he wrote, under his pseudonym Ronald Daniels – he decided he’d try his hand at high fantasy. The dude was incredible, I had no doubt that he’d be able to write another masterpiece. Over time, the idea unfurled into…well, an immense epic, his “most ambitious work yet” as he and no doubt some of his fans had begun to describe it.

I cannot begin to describe the detail and the lengths to which he went to plan and re-plan, with meticulous detail, every single inch of this new story. That entire world inside his mind was built piece by piece…even the dust, I’m sure, was layered on with remarkable care. I think if you were to read it yourself, you’d understand. The pages are overflowing with his care and affection; the time and effort he put into it I think is obvious. It was a labour of love for him, though…well, the extent to which only became quite so apparent to me after it started to go off the rails.

Harold had a tendency to isolate himself when he reached parts of his books that he had already written in his head – he just wanted to ignore the outside world and focus on letting the words flow out his head and onto paper. I’ve seen him in that hyper-focussed state before, and it’s a real marvel – nothing short of stopping his hand from writing or typing could snap him out of it. Hell, you could even put your hand in front of his face, and he would just bore straight through it, staring at the page behind it, never making a handwriting slip or spelling mistake. This sounds impressive, but let me say that he entered this state not long after he began writing this new tale. And he didn’t stop.

In the past he’d spent perhaps two, three days like that. It was two weeks before I began to think it quite so strange, and had to ask a mutual friend of ours to go over and visit him to see if he was still alright. I would’ve gone myself, but my schedule didn’t allow it. By some miracle, she had caught him in one of his few self-imposed breaks that he took whilst mumbling to himself about the plot as he half-heartedly slammed a piece of vacuum-packed ham between two pieces of bread. She had to take a few moments to rouse his attention even when he opened the door with the flimsy meal he had made for himself hanging from his mouth.

I was relieved to hear he was fine, though she said he was unkempt and looked nothing short of exhausted. My friend wondered if he’d washed or shaved any time since he went silent. She managed to coax about five minutes of distracted conversation out of him before he insisted he return to his work and that “he’ll be done soon”. Of course, we were both sceptical, and if this kept up we were seriously beginning to consider using force to remove him from the house to give him some time to sort himself out before he carried on, even if he’d hate it…and us, by extension, for parting him from his beloved book.

The gravity of the book that I had managed to envision from what Harold described to me made me sure that there was no way he was anywhere near done. And yet, four days later, I received a copy of the manuscript, a file so big it nearly crashed my word processor. Somehow he had finished it; a work somewhere just over four-hundred thousand words in length. I crunched some numbers and worked out that the maniac had been writing over twenty thousand a day. I knew he was capable of some stunning feats of diligence and efficiency but this terrified me! He had managed to almost completely zone out of reality, and thinking about it again, I wondered how on earth he managed to work up the will to even turn away from the screen, let alone go through the motions of making himself food. I was glad though, since it meant he still knew he existed and had needs, I guess.

He was ecstatic…almost literally over the moon when I saw him the following day, and we went out for a celebratory drink in the evening. The guy was a wreck during the days before he’d finished but he’d fixed himself up by the time he pushed open the door to the bar and greeted me with the same smile and wave he always did after he finished a big project. He looked a little worse for wear, big bags under his eyes and all that…but otherwise, right as rain. I told him never to do that again, and he laughed, saying that he’d do his best. I knew he was lying, but I would’ve wagered he’d meant it in a jokey way.

I saw him every afternoon in the days that followed, working my own much slower way through his text; suggesting minor improvements here and there to some of the wording, small grammar fixes and so on. For a work of this length, and considering how many more such tweaks I suggested for The Husk I was shocked by how precise and fluid his writing was…well, for having been written in such a state. As I read it, I enjoyed every line. He spun an incredible tale within the bounds of those pages, and now that it’s on sale, I would recommend with no restraint that you go read it, though…I can understand if you might think twice from now, since now’s where it stops making sense….

As the days went by after the completion of his book, he got more and more…melancholy? I mean, obviously the buzz from having finished would fade after a while, but this was a sink into actual depression – I noticed the onset of it more and more as each day passed. It was five days after he’d finished when I tried to talk to him about it, but he said he was “fine”, and that he just had “something unrelated on his mind”. I assumed it was private, or else otherwise he would’ve told me. In hindsight, I kinda see why he didn’t.

The next day, he didn’t show up to our meeting. No call, no text, no indication of absence whatsoever.

I was worried, as you can imagine, so I called at his house. No answer. I asked neighbours if they had seen him leave, and they hadn’t, so I called his family and other friends that I knew, and they’d heard nothing from him either. It was like he’d disappeared off the face of the planet. Harold had done this once before, and after a couple of days he reappeared safe and sound…otherwise I assure you I would have called the police right then and there. A week passed of silence before I mustered up the courage to actually do something about my fears that something had happened to him.
I rang up that mutual friend I mentioned and we went around to his house. As a suggestion for if he got that way again, I asked him to put a key to the front door under the flowerpot on his front windowsill, so that I could let myself in to make sure he was fine if he himself wasn’t willing to get up from his toils to open the door for us. I was relieved to find that he had followed my advice. Otherwise, I would’ve had to get unrelated parties involved…much less the cops...and I think it better that he’d had us there to witness his work, for lack of a better word, before they came in and… desecrated it.

I will point out at this point that Harold could not paint. He couldn’t even draw that well, be it characters or landscapes or whatever. He’d give it a go, show me his attempts, and then scrap them and ask for a proper artist to do them. This’ll become relevant in a moment, I assure you –

We had to give the door a pretty hard push to make the pile of post on the doormat buckle and fold away far enough for us to squeeze in. The house just seemed off. It felt like no-one was home. We wandered by the kitchen as we searched for Harold, and we saw that none of the dishes had been done. There was dried tomato soup on the floor, which had begun to stain the tiling. Our search continued upstairs, but if he was upstairs, then we thought there was only one place he was going to be…in his studio. And we were right.

The door was closed, so we opened it slowly, calling out to Harold as we did so. We could see the windowed side of the room first; the blinds weren’t fully closed, so the eerie evening light that poured through the gaps cast a strange glow in the room. Even before we saw…well, the wall, it looked like the room now didn’t belong. Like, in the house, in this world…I can’t really explain it! And yes…then we saw Harold, and what he had been up to.

Harold was slumped over his desk, a printed copy of his manuscript open on a page somewhere near the end with what looked like a blue splodge of paint on it next to his head. In one hand, he clutched a piece of paper, and in the other, an empty pill bottle. It didn’t take either of us long to figure out what he’d done. Some dried blood from his overdosing had spilled onto the desk underneath his mouth and nose. I reached for the letter when my friend pointed to the wall he was facing. I’m shocked myself that I didn’t notice it sooner.

It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my entire life.

It was a mural, of sorts – a painting that spanned the entire length and height of the big interior wall of the studio. Cans of paint sat in the far corner of the room, most open, and planks of wood used as makeshift palettes sat next to them. On the wall, his entire epic was expressed, every important bit in almost life-like detail. Cathedrals, castles and citadels, cast in marble and obsidian, were painted there, and seemed almost as foreboding as they would do if they existed in real life. Families were fleeing from a burning town as a giant spirit of flames wrought its vengeance upon them…that part of the painting almost felt warm to the touch. The entire thing was wreathed in a window of thorny vines wrapped and coiled around strange stone, like a window through the wall and into a realm beyond.

I had never seen anything like it, and I maintain that I never will as long as these eyes of mine are open. That painting was a masterpiece that equalled what he had written. I would say surpassed, purely for its detail and gravity, but knowing how much he cared about that book…that wouldn’t be right. And, as I mentioned…Harold could not paint. He tried before, and failed. As one of his best friends, I knew almost everything he did on the creative front, and never once had I seen any evidence that he had something even remotely close to this in him. At least not in any form other than writing, that’s for sure….

After I had spent a good five minutes just marvelling at the wall, I reached for the note and unfurled it.

If you are reading this, then you are aware of my demise. Do not worry, for I am in an ideal world now, one that I have made, and in which I will continue to live in happiness forever more. There will be no more dreaming about a world that could not be. There will be no more longing for things I cannot have. My dreams have become my reality, through the medium of eternal slumber. Even if I could be woken, I would not want to. To those I leave behind, I apologise, but this is a step towards what I have sought ever since I took up a pen and began crafting worlds I thought I would never be able to visit. Now I can.

Once again, apologies. I hope that maybe, if this gateway will allow it, and you see things the way I did, that you will be able to join me. I would love for nothing more than to show you the real depth of what I envisioned.

Love,
Harold H Ronald Daniels

The sight of it all got to us at that point and we both had to hold on to each other. I had some trouble shedding tears, for a reason I’m still not sure of, but I managed it when I noticed the real focus of the painting – right in front of Harold, facing him, was a beautiful woman, arm outstretched, a wonderful smile on her face, a forlorn depth to her eyes…looking out of the wall and into the studio. I reckoned if you stood in the right place, it would look as if she was staring right at you, trying to take your hand and pull you in to her world. Around her, the painting transitioned into the events of the book, no more unnaturally like a river flows into the sea. I recognised the painted woman as one of the main female characters in the book, and the romantic interest of one of the protagonists. Now that I look back, I thought the character from the book and Harold seemed awfully alike in certain regards….

I liked her as a character, but his words treated her with a special loving care, almost to the point of lurid obsession, but never quite – the right level of affection to express how he truly felt, but never so much as to betray a sense of oppressive focus. And now, I imagined, he was with her, forever more.

We called the police afterwards, and waited outside whilst they arrived. About thirty minutes had passed by the time they had arrived and under their supervision we had entered the flat to investigate once more. Harold was nowhere to be found.

But the painting…something about it had changed….