Wicked Forest (DeBeers 2)

"So this is where you do some of your work. It's a nice room, but you'll have a bigger and better place for all this soon. Linden, a real studio again."

I saw his shoulders lift, deepening the crease in the back of his neck for a moment. I ventured farther into the room until I was nearly beside him.

"It's really a very nice day, not too hot or humid, with a beautiful breeze. You should go out, go fishing for that inspiration you talked about." I reminded him.

It was an analogy he had made when I had first arrived and he was eager to tell me about himself. He said he was like a fisherman cashing his creative line and waiting for some vision, some inspiration to take hold and be pulled into his mind.

He turned slowly toward me, so slowly it actually started my heart pounding.

"I can't go out there while they're whispering," he said, and turned back to the window,

"What? What did you say, Linden?" I stepped up so he would have to look at me. "Who's

whispering? Who are you talking about?"

I actually gazed out the window myself, searching the beach for signs of someone. There was no one.

'There's no one out there. Linden," I said. No one is whispering." I thought he must be speaking about the Eatons. "And anyway, they have no right to whisper about you or anyone else."

"Yes," he said. "Yes, they do."

I pulled a stool closer and sat. At least I had him talking to me. I thought, even if it didn't make much sense yet. He held his gaze fixed on something he was certain he saw on that deserted beach,

"What are they whispering then. Linden? What do they say that bothers you?"

"They are angry," he replied. "They are angry with me."

"Why?" I asked. He was silent. "Why. Linden? Why would they be angry at you? What right do any of them have to be any with you?"

He turned again, slowly, his eyes dark and tired, looking at me but giving me the feeling he was not seeing me. It was almost like someone talking to a ghost or a shadow.

"Because I put them in my paintings," he said. "They never wanted to be seen. They never wanted anyone to know they were there.

I realized immediately that he didn't mean the Eatons or anyone alive, for that matter. It was chilling.

"That's silly, Linden. They would be happy you put them in your pictures. Your paintings are wonderful and very interesting. You have them in galleries, don't you?"

His eyes widened and he reached out and seized my hand, squeezing hard enough to make me wince,

"The galleries, I forgot that. We've got to get them back. You must help me do that!"

Why?

"We've got to get them back." he repeated with more insistence. "They will never stop until all the paintings are back."

I could see from the way the veins in his temples bulged and the muscles in his neck strained that he was very disturbed about it. He held on to inc.

"Okay. Linden. Okay. If that's what you want, that's what we will do,"

"Promise," he demanded. "Promise."

"I promise. We'll do it together tomorrow, okay?"

"Yes," he said, relaxing his hold on me and lowering his shoulders, "Yes, tomorrow. We'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow," he repeated, gazing out the window as though telling that to the spirits he saw.

How bizarre, how twisted and bizarre for him to think he had violated some trust by painting the images of what he envisioned when he was on the beach, Poor Linden. I thought. How would he ever be reimbursed for all that shadowed his eyes and darkened his heart? His injury and the aftermath had left him still falling through one tunnel of nightmares after another.

Maybe by tomorrow he would forget this whole horrible idea. Perhaps after a night's sleep and the start of a new day, it would be gone, whisked away like so many cobwebs. I watched him for a while. He barely blinked, but his lips moved ever so slightly, just like someone listening to voices and repeating what they told him,