All Nightmare Long by Tim Lebbon & Tim Lebbon

Author:Tim Lebbon & Tim Lebbon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Haunting, Myth
Publisher: PS Publishing
Published: 2022-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

LAND OF MANY SEASONS

He wasn’t there when I began. I wouldn’t have stayed if he was. The whole point of what I do is the loneliness and solitude, the escape from my troubled existence. I hike out to these places to be alone, and sketch and paint them so that I can take them home with me. They are my escape. From the first pencil line or brush stroke, the canvas becomes a reality where I can live alone for a few hours or days, free from the real world.

The real world isn’t very nice.

“Kes! Here!” My little collie scampers across the heathers and weaves through a stand of ferns, back to where I have set myself up for the day. He’s a good dog. Dogs are undemanding and kind, their love a simple thing. That’s why I like to bring him out here with me, because his simpleness, his dogness, doesn’t taint this place.

The figure in my painting does.

Kes nuzzles against my hand. I tickle him behind the ear, and he grumbles and tilts his head in satisfaction. There’s a warm breeze flowing across the hillside today, carrying scents of heather and wet mud, and the fresh, wild smells of the mysterious mountains. If it shifts ninety degrees and breathes at me across the town, I’ll pick up aromas from the bakery close to the river, or the building site where they’re constructing another two hundred homes. I hope that doesn’t happen. This is my fourth day coming to the same spot, and I’ve been lucky so far—the weather has been consistent, the sky cloudy but witholding its rain, the breeze wafting in from the same direction.

The painting is progressing well. Apart from him. But right now, I’m avoiding thinking about him.

Kes growls and lopes off again, and this time I let him. I watch as he springs through the high ferns like a lamb, leaping to find his bearings, running again, leaping again. He reminds me of myself, ploughing blindly through life and coming up here, or places like this, to raise my head above water.

“Go get ’em, boy,” I say under my breath. Kes barks as if he’s heard me, and several startled birds take wing.

I look at my painting and consider adding the birds in, specks in the sky that might remind me of this place and time, but my attention is drawn to the figure once again.

He’s little more than a few brush strokes right now. He appeared on my version of the hillside just an hour ago, and I surprised myself by painting him in. However much I stare at him, and then sit back and look across the hill, he’s only there in my painting.

Maybe I saw a shape in the air? A shimmer in heat haze, or a waft of mist from the damp grass? The shadow of a red kite circling high above?

I can’t fool myself. I saw nothing, yet still I felt the need to paint him into my picture.

It should not matter, and yet it does.

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