The Second Gallery
Jason could see no cameras in the lobby, not even a good hiding place for one. It was a closed, hushed space unto itself, like a bank vault, or a bathysphere. The carpet was soft and deep, whispering of wealth, an elegant crosshatch pattern which snuggled the base of the damasked walls. The walls formed a trapezoid, narrowing towards the dark doors of the gallery entrance. The recessed lights left corners dim and cast a sheen across the glass of the ticket booth. It was too much a cinema lobby to have been designed as anything else, but the populist reds and golds of a movie house had been replaced by luxurious browns and tans.
"This is a museum?" asked Jason in a low voice. "It feels like some Wall Street executive's office."
"It's not a museum," smirked Carl. "It's a collection."
Jason looked around at the other patrons waiting for the ticket office to open. They seemed a mismatched lot. There was a Goth couple, replete with piercings and expensive tattoos. A woman with her silver hair tied up in a gypsy scarf thumbed a pamphlet. A young woman and her three male companions chatted and smiled, their studied scruffiness marking them to Jason's practiced eye as art students. A handful of tourists rounded out the scene, some of them clutching the guidebooks they had followed to this place.
"I don't think these turistas know where they are," muttered Carl. "If Giger says this is freaky, I don't think Mr. Connecticut over there is going to be too pleased. He'll be taking his cute little sweater and his pert little wife back to the hotel in about five minutes."
"More like twenty," Jason said. "The box office doesn't open for fifteen minutes. Let's go smoke a cigarette. This lobby makes me nervous. I keep thinking I'm going to scuff or scratch something I can't afford to replace."
Carl nodded. "Well tended joint, I'll give 'em that."
Outside they smoked with their elbows tucked close to their bodies against the chill. Jason eyed the polished brass plaque which read "Latter Collection", and took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. The plaque was mounted below eye level, next to the entrance, the only feature in a blank, gray facade. The double doors were heavy, dark wood balanced on stout hinges.
Jason shook his head, lips pursed.
"Look," he said. "If you thought bringing me here was going to convince me this is a good idea, you were wrong. I'm less convinced now than I was before."
Carl let a frustrated sigh escape his nose.
"Keep your voice down," he said. "What's the problem?"
Jason waved his curled hand and cigarette at the plaque and doors.
"Look at this place. There's real money behind this. Big money. They don't announce their presence, they're only open four hours a day, four days a week. No concern for profit. Everything is so squeaky clean and perfect it makes my eyes hurt. All things considered, the fact that I haven't seen any security convinces me they must have the walls stuffed with five different top of the line laser, infrared, computerized fuck me up the ass systems, which will catch us if we even fart suspiciously in the direction of the front door. This idea leads straight to prison."
Carl pursed his lips, sucking smoke hard through the filter. His deep-set eyes held smirking triumph. He milked the pause for a moment, then blew a fan of smoke into the air between them.
"It is impossible to hide security systems in the walls," he said. "They're solid stone."
"Bullshit!"
Carl chuckled.
"I'm telling you," he said. "This place is built like a medieval fortress. Solid blocks of granite and marble. I've seen the plans."
"Not in this city," scoffed Jason. "It would sink into the mud in ten years."
Carl began to spout facts in a bored voice.
"Built by Isaac Latter at enormous expense, completed in 1935. Heavy equipment used to create skyscraper foundations was shipped down from New York to drive what were, at that time, the deepest piles in the United States outside of Manhattan. Loads of stone came in on barges from Indiana and Arkansas. Stonemasons from Germany and Italy supervised the construction."
"I don't believe it. Why would anyone build a theater out of stone? It's impossible. Ridiculous. This is just another local myth."
"If it's a myth," said Carl. "The Historical Collection has an awful lot of paperwork and photographs to back it up."
He ground his cigarette out with the ball of his foot.
"And this was never a theater. Latter made his fortune with a chain of movie palaces. The design of the lobby is a loving tribute to the source of his wealth. C'mon, the ticket office is open."
Jason flipped the glowing remnant of his own smoke into the street and followed Carl. He was surprised by the barrage of information. Carl was intelligent by any measure, but his brain always seemed focused on the pursuit of money, women, and the perfect buzz. Bartending suited his dance club vampire persona, but the part time job at the Historical Collection had puzzled Jason.
But then, most people found Jason puzzling. This is what had drawn them together. Each of them had heard the other struggling to explain why a person such as themselves, of such obvious talent and ability, was wasting life by serving drinks for a living. Each had seen scores of collegian co-workers graduate from the darkened world of bars to various respectable professions. Two brainy washouts staring at the approaching headlights of their thirtieth birthdays; their association seemed inevitable.
Carl swung one of the massive, silent doors open.
"These are serious locks," he said, his voice low. "But I already have bump keys for them."
"Well then, what do you need me for?" asked Jason. He felt a warning apprehension creep up his spine. The plan seemed feasible.
Carl's eyes, hooded as always by his brow ridge, flashed annoyance.
"I need your hands, for one thing. And I need an art freak who can tell me what we should carry out of here."
Jason smiled. The Great Carl needed help?
"I would have thought the scion of a family of antique dealers could make those decisions on his own," he purred.
"My dad specialized in antique, cast metal toys," responded Carl. "Would you like to needle me a bit more, or shall we buy our tickets?"
The guide corralled them together in the lobby. He was a tall, fit man in his sixties. A thick, discolored scar ran from his hairline to the corner of his jaw. The scar and the set of his face made Jason uneasy. The man seemed dangerous, a murderous Heidelberg fencing master. Then he smiled, and dispelled the impression. He had one of those warm smiles welcome anywhere: a big, spreading grin and a mouth full of piano key teeth.
"Good afternoon, and welcome to the Latter Collection. My name is Philip, and I am your guide today. I'll save you some awkward questions by telling you that this scar," he pointed to the jagged stream running down his face, "is a souvenir from the day I ejected from my F-105 and the canopy failed to open. Instead of sailing freely through the air I was shoved through bulletproof glass by a rocket propelled chair."
The silence produced by this brief tale was blasted away by another sunshine smile.
"Now let's talk about E.J. "Sonny" Schmitt."
He turned, pushed open the ebon doors to the gallery, and led the tour group from the chocolate and tobacco tones of the lobby into a spacious antechamber of khaki and cream. The carpet ended here. Shoe soles clicked and squeaked on the polished floor. The floor looked like marble, and had a curious, inlaid brass design running completely around the edge. Squint as he might, Jason couldn't quite catch the details of the pattern. Were those sinuous lines letters? Numbers? Hieroglyphs? The lighting was set so as to illuminate only the blown up photos on the wall.
Phil the guide was talking.
"In 1895 his father moved out of the house completely..."
Phil pointed to a photo of a staring woman and four children in front of a pretty shotgun house. The abandoned wife and kids. Still, they looked prosperous enough. Not completely abandoned, then.
Next was a photo of the eldest boy with his father and a beautiful black woman. Daddy's mistress. Phil dropped dark hints about her rumored voodoo powers. Jason pursed his lips in disappointment. If they had to resort to stories like that to keep up the value of his paintings, this guy Schmitt couldn't have been any good. Elegant as this place was, it was starting to smell like a spook show for tourists.
The next photo showed a young man standing in the sun in a busy piazza. He had his father's sharp nose and receding hairline. Phil sang the praises of some generous uncle who had paid for young Schmitt to study in Rome, then Paris. "Sonny" got himself expelled from everywhere, despite his prodigious talent, and along the way acquired a reputation for debauchery even the Parisians found disturbing.
Jason looked over at Carl, arching one elfin eyebrow in contempt for the artist as a young man. A spoiled boy with bad taste in friends who threw away the best art education the western world could offer. How could such a fuck-up produce paintings of any real value?
The next photo showed Schmitt, older and uglier, on the porch of a raised cabin. Spanish moss hung in the foreground. Two men stood beside him, one an Indian, the other a bearded white man. They had fierce eyes and hard faces.
"At first these forays into the swamps yielded realistic portraits of Native Americans and wildlife, which proved popular with the local upper crust, enabling him to purchase a studio and support himself in comfort," said Phil.
Phil told how all that had changed when Sonny went nuts, and started painted portraits of things out of his nightmares. He spent most of his time in the swamps, trying to drink himself to death. That would have been the end, if not for Isaac Latter.
Latter loved Schmitt's nightmare paintings as much as everyone else hated them. He bought every canvas Schmitt had, even the old naturalist stuff lying around the studio. The money kept the artist alive long enough to produce a few more paintings for Latter, and then his body was found, robbed and knifed, in an alley behind a whorehouse.
Phil looked sad and respectful as he finished the tale. He turned and pointed to the last photo, of a short, plump, bald, smiling man in an immaculate suit, circa 1930.
"This handsome fellow is Isaac Latter. His confidence in the genius and lasting value of Schmitt's work led him to spend the bulk of his fortune building this museum, and establishing a generous trust for the maintenance of the collection."
Jason could not restrain a derisive snort, which drew annoyance from Carl. This extravagant aboveground crypt was a monument to a deranged fantasy artist, built by a wealthy fool. Latter was born too soon. He would have been happy as a Dungeons and Dragons nerd, his walls papered with Boris Vallejo posters.
The group passed into the first gallery, a wide, high room. Scarface Phil led the way, his voice echoing as he went on about European methods of landscape painting, as adapted to the representation of Louisiana swampland. Jason began to wander, with an attentive Carl trailing him.
He always felt so good in a museum: peaceful, but alert and alive. He drifted on his feet, sifting through the canvasses with his eyes, feeling for one that would draw him in.
He saw herons taking flight, alligators in the sun, a boar in the brush. Phil had said Schmitt had been promoted early on as the modern Audubon. Jason saw why the handle hadn't stuck. Schmitt's work had none of Audubon's clinical observation of animal form. These creatures were moving, or half obscured, imbedded in the dripping scenery, which seemed the true object of fascination. The swamp was always treated with loving care, lavished with layers of shifting green paint. It breathed and moved under Jason's gaze, overwhelming the animals.
"What do you think?"
Carl was at his side, casting a shadow.
"Anything in this room worth taking?" he asked. "The next room has all the famous stuff, but if we're shopping..."
"Get out of my light, you fucking beanpole," Jason grumbled, grateful that Carl was smart enough to keep his voice down.
"Sure thing, midget," said Carl, trying to look offended. "What's the matter? Art not to your liking?"
"Actually, this guy's pretty damn good," Jason had to confess. "I just wish there were some variation of subject matter."
"Variation is in the next room," said Carl. "Waiting for you."
The entrance to the next gallery was a large, elliptical arch framed by the same sort of brass inlay which ran around the edge of the floor. Symbols reminiscent of Sanskrit or Arabic jostled each other in a foot-wide ribbon of spidery, dully golden lines. No paintings were visible through the arch, but Jason could see more gleaming streaks of brass crisscrossing the floor, liberated from the edge to form swooping curves and polygons.
There was a guard on either side of the arch, each as grey and weathered as Phil, but larger. Phil took a position in the middle, standing under the keystone with his hands clasped in front of him. He waited there until everyone had seen their fill of Schmitt's animals and plants. He cleared his throat to elicit silence, and beckoned with his hands to gather them together.
"Before we go into the next room I must go over some rules we have found necessary to establish," he said. He looked the group over, his eyes hard. "Any person who causes a scene, any person who tries to touch the paintings, any person who cannot control their emotions will be escorted from the building."
Jason noticed that each of the guards was wearing a large stun gun at his hip. What theater! It was a shame the audience was so small.
"Now, if everyone's ready," said Phil. "We can go in."
He stepped back, and to the side. Jason and Carl were the first through the arch; Carl with his usual loping swagger, Jason moving with light steps and craning neck to see around the corner.
This room was long and tall, barrel vaulted, with eight tall, shallow alcoves set into the walls. The wall at the end of the room was shrouded by long, black velvet curtains. Jason stepped up to the first alcove to the left and took an eager look at the full size portrait hanging there.
It was a nasty shock.
"My God," he said. "It's as though it's right here in the room with us. You can feel its presence."
"Yeah," said Carl, distant. "I think I can hear it breathing."
Jason feasted his eyes on the details. The teeth, the claws, the sinewy energy of the thing were palpable, like a memory of something he had touched with his fingertips.
"You only get this sensation from a truly great artist," said Jason with hushed respect. "It's as though Rembrandt went to Hell, and painted what he found there."
Carl shivered, and Jason wondered if he realized he had done so. The thing in the picture seemed about to reach the clawed appendage that passed for it's hand out to them. It was hungry, starving, its reptilian, yellow-green eyes lit with covetous drive. Jason felt real fear all of a sudden; felt that the thing wanted to eat him, specifically. The pupils of its eyes were contracting, focusing on him. He thought he heard the sucking sound of wet muck as it shifted its bulk, he smelled the stinging stench of rotting vegetation.
He broke free from his reverie and stepped back, away from the painting.
"Wow," he said. "This canvas is big, at least seven feet. We'll have to cut it out and roll it to carry it out of here."
"Uhm..." said Carl, at an uncharacteristic loss for words.
The Goth couple snapped first. A scream rang off the stone walls, startling everyone but the guards. Jason and Carl spun around at the sound. The girl had covered her face with her hands. Her left pinky fingernail was snagged on an eyebrow ring. Her boyfriend had his arms around her and was leaning down, trying to comfort her. He looked up at the approaching guards and shouted at them, pointing at the painting opposite Jason and Carl.
"That thing shouldn't be shown in public! What gives you the right to do this to people?"
His face was red, the flush extending into a shaved patch of scalp on the side of his head.
"Sir, I have to ask you and you're companion to leave the building," said the larger of the guards in a deep, calm voice.
"I'll go! I'll go!" sputtered the Goth, spittle bejeweling his braided beard. "But this isn't the last you've heard of me! I'll sue you people straight into the ground!"
"If you'll come with me into the lobby," soothed the guard. "I'll give you our lawyer's business card."
When they had left, trailing threats and assurances, Jason looked around to see if anyone else showed signs of emotional overload. Everybody seemed a little rattled, but no one was close to hysteria.
"Our first casualty," said Phil, with his easy smile. Yeah, folks, it's creepy, that smile said, but not that creepy.
"Let's take a look at what upset her so much," said Jason, turning his back on the hungry monster reaching out for him. The odor of green rot lingered in his nostrils.
"This guy was a genius," he said. "This work is so evocative!"
Carl just nodded. His hooded eyes were fixed on the painting which had shaken the Goths.
This was a different creature entirely, though the setting and pose were similar. This thing was more mammalian, warm and quick. Bristles and whiskers seemed to stand up off of the canvas. Blue veins rolled under pale skin. It was like a Velazquez portrait of a devil, painted from life.
The eyes were filled with a sickening, predatory sexual lust. The creature's urgent intent was made clear by the extended and engorged state of its baroque penis. Jason felt stirrings of panic within himself. This thing wouldn't eat him. It would keep him alive, for entertainment.
"Okay, that is rough," said Jason, stepping back and averting his gaze. "That's hard to look at."
"None of these are easy to look at. I don't think anyone in here is really enjoying themselves," said Carl.
He was right. Anyone standing in front of a painting seemed fascinated, but there was no pleasure in their faces. A few looked like they wanted to leave.
Then there was Scarface Phil, quiet, watching like a lifeguard for who would be the next to crack. Jason's sense of self was outraged.
Fuck that, he thought. I'm an artist. A failed one perhaps, but I can take anything any other artist can dish out. Bring it on, Schmitt. You won't break me in front of this rent-a-cop.
"You know, I'm not so sure I want one of these in my house," said Carl. His vampiric panache had vanished.
Jason had no trouble transferring his disdain for his own emotions to Carl's.
"They're oil and canvas," he sneered. "Think of the money. Didn't you say these guys had turned down an offer from Marilyn Manson of two million dollars for just one of these?"
"Yeah... yeah, they did."
"Come on, then. Your expert wants to look over the merchandise."
Jason now moved with purpose, slipping his slight frame behind and in between people, so he could examine each painting in detail. Each was a portrait of a different obscene, bipedal horror. Each was possessed of the same mind bending sense of physical presence and immediate danger. Jason choked down his irrational reactions, concentrating on the comforting qualities of brushstroke and pigment. He felt a minor sense of triumph when he realized Carl was no longer looking at the unnamable, impossible things in the alcoves.
The art school girl began to cry, her soft, hitching sobs bouncing shivery echoes off the walls.
"I'll take care of her," said one of her friends to the approaching guards. They backed away, and he led her to the exit.
Jason's nose wrinkled at a subtle, acrid, animal smell. After a moment, he realized the smell emanated from himself, and the people around him, sweating out their desire for flight. The only ones who retained their composure were Mr. and Mrs. Connecticut, and the woman with the gypsy scarf in her hair. Her eyes were eager steel.
"She's got the right frame of mind," thought Jason, and he tried to mentally conjure some of that steel into his spine.
"The last part of the tour is the painting behind this curtain," said Phil, his voice clear. Jason turned, and saw Phil was standing next to the black curtains at the end of the room with his hand poised to grasp a braided, gold rope. Everyone gathered round in a semi-circle. It was then that Jason realized that no one had spoken in some time. Even their movements were hushed, as though they were hiding from predators.
"This is the last work of Sonnie Schmitt," said Phil. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you... Azathoth."
He pulled on the rope, and the curtains drew away to either side. Somebody shrieked and the smell of frightened sweat intensified.
This was the worst. The painting was much larger than the rest, at least ten feet tall; a masterpiece of hyperreality. The teeth were enormous needles. The eye sockets were empty, but not blind. Something burned within them which saw Jason, understood him, and wanted to exterminate him. Death embodied might look like this, but Jason did not think that Death would hold such hatred for the living. He had to look away, down at brass designs on the floor.
"Put it away," someone pleaded. "Cover it up again."
Phil pulled the rope again, and the curtains drew shut.
"Let's... uh... let's go get a drink," said Carl.
* * * *
The glass of Irish whiskey twitched as Carl lifted it to his lips. Jason would have snickered, but his own hands were none too steady.
"All right," began Jason. "You have the bump keys, and my van can transport anything we haul out of there. What else do we need?"
Carl looked annoyed.
"Maybe we don't need anything. You said yourself it was a bad idea."
"That was before I knew we were stealing genuine masterpieces."
Jason tipped his half empty glass at him like a pointing finger.
"You don't get many chances to steal a work of genius," he said. "And most people fuck it up. Those guys who stole Faberge eggs in New York were idiots, they didn't even know what they had. They pried off some gems and threw the eggs in a pond. That Italian who stole the Mona Lisa was a looney; he kept it hidden in his house. Very few people pull something like this off and profit from it. In this case, we know we can get the merchandise, and you said you have a buyer waiting."
"I do, I do," said Carl, his lips tight against his teeth. His eyes glittered with an unhealthy resolve.
"You need practice opening locks with the keys," he said. "And we'll need my pistol. Those guards were pretty big."
"That's the spirit," said Jason, and knocked back a fiery mouthful of whiskey. The look in Carl's eyes was disquieting. It seemed a reflection of the compulsion he felt within himself.
* * * *
The bump key was cold in Jason's hand as he felt for the screwdriver in his jacket pocket.
"Jesus," he hissed. "We're right out in the open."
"No, I'm out in the open," said Carl, a study in slouching boredom. "You're hidden behind me."
"Not exactly hidden," grumbled Jason. "I'm not that small."
He had the screwdriver out now. He inserted the bump key all the way, then gently pulled it out until he felt the first pin drop. Then he put his finger on the key, exerting the slightest turning pressure. He gave it a sharp rap with the handle of the screwdriver. Nothing happened.
"Shit," he said.
He repeated the process. The lock wouldn't turn.
"Try the other one," urged Carl.
"Some locksmith," Jason complained, fishing in his pocket for the second key. "He couldn't get it right the first time?"
"They don't stock blanks for those locks at Wal-mart," said Carl. "They're fifty years old, and we had to guess at how deep to cut. One day I'll tell you what I had to go through to get those keys."
Jason switched keys in the lock, pocketed the first, and tried again.
"With all this racket, we may open the door to find them waiting for us," said Jason.
"That's why I brought my friend with me," said Carl, shifting his hand to touch the comforting mass of his .45.
Jason turned the key, and the bolt rolled back with a ponderous click.
"C'mon, let's go, get off the street," said Carl, pushing him through the door. Jason caught the dark gleam of the pistol out of the corner of his eye. The door closed behind them, and they were in absolute darkness.
"Damn," whispered Carl. "I didn't think of bringing a flashlight."
"Hold on, I have one on my keychain," said Jason. In a moment he was flashing a blue LED beam around the lobby.
"We're lucky there's no one in here. They could've cold cocked us, and we'd never have seen them."
Jason ignored this obvious statement. He felt hunger for the paintings, a pull in the pit of his stomach.
"Those doors are your job," he said, pointing, his voice soft.
Carl tucked the gun in the back of his waistband and pulled out a ring of hand filed keys. The locks on the antechamber doors were modern deadbolts. He had them open in seconds.
They heard voices, low, overlapping echoes, as soon as they opened the doors. Carl pulled the gun from his waistband.
They moved in as quietly as they could, Jason flicking the flashlight on and off for quick peeks at where they were going. The darkness was not so absolute here. Dim light bled in from somewhere. The edges of frames and the surface of the floor were just visible. Jason left the light off when he realized this, and tapped Carl's arm.
"Wait here, let our eyes adjust," he whispered.
Their vision adapted in gradual stages. The outline of the room faded into view. The voices murmured on, a rhythmic flow of sound. Carl lost patience and crept forward, the pistol jutting from his fist.
The first gallery was unoccupied, but the entrance to the second gallery was alive with light and sound. A pale glow filled the arch and shone out across the broad floor in front of them. The voices were clearer, throbbing out a weird, jittery chant. The hair stood up on the back of Jason's neck.
They eased across the floor, closer to the light. Jason was distracted for a heartbeat by the glint of the floor's brass inlay. The fine lines seemed to reflect more light than the archway's glow could account for. Jason felt feverish, a sense of dream reality which grew stronger the nearer they came to those chanting voices.
Carl turned to look at Jason. His face was half lit, the muscles taut in a mask of primate fear. His lips were drawn back, his teeth glimmered.
"We have to rush them!" he cried.
Abandoning stealth, he charged forward. His long legs took him across the distance to the doorway in a flash. Jason followed as fast as he could, cursing under his breath. He passed under the arch, turned the corner, and stopped, frozen by incomprehension.
Phil was there, and the two guards, and two men Jason had never seen before. Phil stood with his back to Jason and the end of the room, arms stretched upward before the undraped painting of Azathoth. He held his hands and fingers in a triangle. Suspended between the edges of his fingers was a plum sized shard of crystal, which seemed lit from within. Each of the other men was kneeling before a pair of the other paintings. Each had an object on the floor in front of him. Each object lay in a circle of brass tracery. Jason saw a peculiar knife in front of one man, a black figurine in front of another. He couldn't focus on details; the world had become difficult to understand too quickly for him to adjust.
The room hummed with the men's voices. The curved, translucent ceiling poured down pallid light, which splashed off of the brass inlay, lighting a web of golden fire across the floor.
Carl was walking across the room, pointing the .45 at first one man, then another.
"Stay on your knees!" he shouted, taking steady steps towards Phil. "And stop that goddamned noise! You, with the crystal! On your knees with the rest of them!"
"You're in great danger!" one of the guards shouted. "Get out of here!"
"I said get down!" screamed Carl. His face was ivory in the pale light. He swung the pistol in a backhand arc across Phil's skull. Phil crumpled. The crystal skittered free, sliding to the middle of the room.
"You idiot! You don't know what you're doing!" another man shouted. The others' voices wobbled, struggling to sustain the chant.
Carl turned to Jason, teeth bared.
"Come on, do something!" he exhorted. "It's too late to lose your stomach for this now!"
He thought the horrified expression on Jason's face was due to the savagery of his behavior, but he was wrong. Behind him, inside the towering gilt frame, Azathoth was moving.
The mass of the monster moved like a swelling ocean wave. The huge, eyeless head pushed forward through the frame as though it were a doorway. Legs like pillars pulled free from the mud. One colossal, clawed foot pushed through the frame, into the room. It came down hard on the floor, ringing the stone like a gong.
Carl wheeled about, both hands on the gun. He never got a shot off. Jason saw the barrel tremble, smelled fresh urine when Carl's bladder let go. A mottled arm reached out into the room, horribly long. Fingers like plantains curled and gripped Carl's waist. Then the awful head and mouth came down, and the jaws closed. Jason saw a tooth break through the back of Carl's head like a toothpick piercing a cherry cordial. Cranial juices ran down Carl's back and splashed on the floor. Then Azathoth began to chew.
Somehow, through the crippling haze of fear and surreality, Jason was aware that someone was shouting at him.
"Snap out of it, you fool! Pick up the crystal!"
"Pick up the crystal!" someone else shouted.
The urgency in the voices moved something automatic within him. He looked around, confused. What crystal? A shivering bit of light on the floor caught his eye, and he remembered the slice of glass Phil the tour guide had been holding. There it was, a few short steps away.
"Pick it up!" insisted the kneeling man closest to him. "Before he stops eating!"
Before he stops eating. The words jarred Jason into action. He lunged for the crystal, and scooped it up with both hands. He now saw that the nightmare creatures in the other paintings were also moving. They bulged halfway out of their imprisoning frames, writhing and clawing, restrained by light and chant.
"Hold it up, like you saw! Push him back into the painting!" the man closest to him instructed, then resumed chanting in a deep, insistent voice.
Jason held his arms high, the crystal suspended in his hands. He choked down the bile of terror in his throat, and turned to face down madness and death.
Carl's remains fell to the floor with a splat. Azathoth turned his head side to side, looking around the room. One shaggy leg was still inside the painting, hidden by the wall. He turned his gaze to Jason, the sentient darkness in his eye sockets hungering for universal oblivion. How beautiful it would be if all was destroyed, that darkness said, singing inside Jason's head as clearly as speech; how pure and perfect if everything was dead.
The crystal caught cold fire, amplifying the light from the ceiling. Jason felt a shock go through his body. Underneath his fear a righteous anger was rising, that hatred of death which all living things feel. He held the crystal up high, and walked straight at the horror.
Azathoth let out a howl like a tornado. He snapped his jaws and tried to pull himself entirely into the room, but the leg inside the frame wouldn't budge. Jason pushed forward. He was beginning to pick out some of the words of the chant, although he couldn't understand them, and he tried to sing them along with the others.
"Al-al-nath kahm-ay-el," he intoned. "Ooth-va don-blas." The words were comfortable on his tongue.
Azathoth seemed to lose color, and a groan leaked out between his teeth. Jason closed the distance between them, his hands and arms steady, the crystal bright. Azathoth drew back into the frame, a motion more akin to a deflating balloon the action of a body moved by muscle. He faded back farther and farther into the frame by degrees until, with a crackling sound, the surface of the painting reformed, and he was a two dimensional obscenity once more.
"Well done," croaked a voice off to his right. He looked in that direction and saw Phil was sitting up, one hand on the floor, the other on his bloodied head.
"Just stay right there, if you would," said Phil. "Keep him penned up. I can support the chant, but I don't feel quite up to standing at the moment."
Jason tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. He nodded, centering himself before the painting. He tried hard to imagine that the slippery mess on the floor beside him had not been his friend just minutes before.
Afterwards, he could not remember how long he had stood there, arms aching, the pulse of sonorous voices buttressing his exhausted psyche. He did remember his relieved collapse when one of the men said: "That's it, then, it's passed for now," and the chanting stopped.
"Time to deal with the thief," growled the square shouldered man to his left. At once, Jason wondered why he had not fled when he had the chance. He would go to prison now. He would become the family member no one mentions at Thanksgiving. Large hands gripped his shoulders and arms.
"Hold on there, fellas," said Phil, with obvious effort.
"Stay quiet now, Phil. We need to get you to a hospital," said the man holding Jason's right arm. His head was shaved clean, and he had a thoughtful face.
"Yes, yes, but wait a minute. Let's talk about what we should do with this young man."
It occurred to Jason that he had not been referred to as a young man since childhood.
"We knock him around the room for a while, then call the cops. That's what we do to him," said the man holding Jason's left arm. He was built like a linebacker, and his coppery, seamed face wore malice like a shroud.
Phil shook his head.
"You know we can't call the police, Lou. This mess, and this boy's story require too much explanation. No, we have three choices. We can let him go..."
"Not bloody likely," said a hulking black man with a Caribbean accent.
"We can kill him..."
"That's my vote," said Lou, tightening his grip on Jason's arm.
"...or we can offer him a job."
No one spoke for a moment.
"I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly," said the fourth man. He was the tallest of them, with a taste of Eastern Europe in his voice.
"We give a thief who attacked you a job, was that it?" he asked.
Phil held up his hands in a placating gesture.
"He didn't attack me, his partner did. Just hear me out, would you? He was able to wield the Uxmal crystal against Azathoth without any instruction or practice. He probably has some education, common criminals rarely become art thieves. And I must point out once again that we are not getting any younger..."
"Here we go again," said Lou. The others groaned.
"That's right," Phil persisted. "No matter how hale and healthy we are, we're mortal, and getting older. We need apprentices, and it seems one has fallen into our lap."
The men looked at each other, shifted their feet and muttered to themselves.
"If he doesn't behave himself, he goes out back in a Hefty bag," said Lou.
"Done!" said Phil, his smile lighting up. He stepped up close to Jason, a little unsteady, and leaned in to look into his face.
"Well, how 'bout it son, what'll it be?" he asked. "The Hefty bag or the job?"
Jason thought it odd that, after years of drifting from job to job without any idea of what to do with his life, he had at long last acquired a career.
Jennifer says:
Well done. Honestly, the only thing that tripped me up about this story was the way you break your paragraphs up and the word "splat" in reference to Carl's remains. I enjoyed this.
Plot - 23
Characters - 22
Mechanics - 22.5
Enjoyment - 23
TOTAL - 90.5
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