The Night the Heads Came by Sleator William

Author:Sleator, William [Sleator, William]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781504019071
Publisher: Open Road Media Teen & Tween
Published: 2015-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

“This is a special one,” Tim says. “What do you think?”

I stare at it for a long time. This picture is even harder to make anything out of than the ones I looked at in the car, a mass of jagged lines in many subtly different colors. I know there must be something recognizable in here, but I can’t seem to focus in on it.

“Try changing the distance from your eyes and the angle,” Tim instructs me.

I move it back and forth; I shift the angle; I let my eyes blur a little. And then I see it. “Oh, no,” I murmur. I feel very dizzy and have to shut my eyes. When I open them and look at the drawing again, my reaction is the same as if I’ve been slapped across the face. I feel it all over my body. It’s painful, but at the same time I can’t take my eyes away.

“Well? What do you think?” Tim presses me.

Partly it’s the feeling of space that’s so alarming. I’m staring directly down into a bottomless abyss; if I took one step I’d be falling down into it myself. The landscape around the abyss is eroded and defoliated, as though some great catastrophe has occurred here. Within the walls of the abyss are the awesome ruins of what was once a great civilization. It’s so complex and detailed that you could go on looking at it for hours and still find more blackened, crumbling passageways, more bizarre alien artifacts strewn around. The streets that are not obstructed by collapsed buildings are clogged with rusting vehicles.

But most horrible of all are the creatures that are frolicking here. They are headless, toadlike things, with exposed veins and terrible, huge faces on their backs. They play in this wasteland with the same pleasure and excitement as monkeys swinging through a jungle. Somehow, Tim’s drawing technique makes them more disgustingly realistic than any special effects.

“It’s great, Tim. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s sensational. But why do all your drawings have to be so … horrible?”

He doesn’t answer my question. “You really think it’s sensational?” he asks me, basking in my praise.

“You didn’t actually see this, did you?”

“It was a hologram broadcast. We saw lots of wonderful things on holograms.”

I hand the drawing back to him, shaking my head. “I think you’ve changed more than physically, Tim. I mean, sure, you were always self-involved when it came to your artwork. But you were never bloodthirsty. You have any drawings at all that don’t have something gruesome in them?”

“People like gruesome things,” Tim says. “All intelligent creatures do.”

“Yeah, but every once in a while, just for a break, your audience might want to see something that isn’t just like a horror film.”

He looks down shyly, leafing through his portfolio. “Well, I do have some different ones. But … they’re kind of personal.”

“What do you mean, personal? What are you hiding?”

He looks away, holding a picture in his hand that he seems reluctant to show me.

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