Over the Darkened Landscape - By Derryl Murphy Page 0,30

paintings of cats in human situations had become hugely popular, and Wain could turn out literally hundreds of drawings and paintings every year.

But he was not a very good businessman; when he sold his paintings he relinquished the rights as well, and when his work began to fall out of favour, due to many imitators and to changing public tastes, he sank into poverty. After the Great War he had begun his long descent into madness and extreme paranoia, finally being institutionalized in 1923.

Wain dabbed a small amount of paint on his brush and stabbed at the canvas with it, then continued. “I also wanted to tell, tell you that I’m going to be . . . to be having my own, own, show.”

“By God!” announced MacDonald. “That’s fabulous, Wain. Where shall it be?”

Wain cringed a bit at this booming outburst, but continued. “At, at the Twenty-One Gallery. This, this, this October, I think. Or so they tell me . . .” This sentence didn’t so much end as it trailed off.

Wells smiled. “That’s excellent news, Louis. You must be very proud.”

The artist smiled back, very briefly, and then dropped his gaze down to the floor. “Thank you for, for coming.”

Both men responded with farewells and then turned to leave, but Wells, behind MacDonald, felt Wain’s hand fall briefly and lightly on his arm.

“Please stay for one more moment?” Wain asked in a small, scared voice.

Wells nodded, then stuck his head out the door. “I’ll be out in a moment. He seems to want to speak to me privately.” Ignoring the irritated look that crossed MacDonald’s face, he ducked back in and slowly walked back to near where Wain was standing, hearing the lock on the door click behind him. There he stood quietly, waiting for the artist to speak.

“They’re back, Wells,” he said eventually. “They’re back.” His face looked pale and haunted now.

Wells, fully understanding the depths of the paranoia that gripped this poor man, did his best to sound sympathetic. “Who are back, Louis?”

Wain pointed to the canvas. What had been a random collection of colours just minutes ago had now taken shape as a group of cats, although Wells could swear that Wain had only touched the canvas one or two brief times.

He stared at the painting, trying to fathom what was happening here. There were three cats in the painting, and while the style was recognizably Wain’s, the cats were not posed in the jolly fashion Wells was accustomed to seeing in Wain’s work. Instead, the three cats, while posed as humans on their hind legs, seemed to be maliciously toying with something that had yet to be finished, that appeared so far as only a pale yellow blob.

“This certainly isn’t what we’ve grown accustomed to expect from you, Louis,” said Wells. The madness must have really taken its toll.

Wain shuddered, as if he were holding in a great sob. Then he staggered over to the cot and sat at the end of it, paints and brush still in his hands. “It isn’t, it isn’t what I, what I want,” he said. His voice was breaking, and Wells was sure he would begin to cry like a child at any moment. “I try to leave them out of it, but they keep, keep, keep coming back.”

Wain looked back at the painting, and the look of stark terror that crossed his face transfixed Wells for the moment. Then he said, “I’m sorry, H.G. So very sorry,” in a voice that was almost less than a whisper. “The cats, oh, the cats . . .” His voice trailed off again and he gradually tilted over until gravity won out over his muscles and his face fell to the mattress.

Wells turned to go back to summon the doctor, but his eyes tracked quickly past the canvas with the cats on it and then snapped back. There was now a figure, seemingly human rather than feline, lying in a foetal position beneath the three cats, obviously the object of their tortures.

But that was impossible! Wain had sat down, had not been near the canvas!

Wells’ eyes cast about the room, feverishly looking for another, logical explanation for the anomaly in the painting. He could find none. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but it was still there. Was this form of madness contagious?

He looked back to Wain, hoping to find an answer there, but the man had his face buried in the covers and was mumbling to himself; a long