The Sixth Form by Tom Dolby

Author:Tom Dolby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)
Published: 2008-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

The stretch of time between January and March was always the longest at Berkley. Ethan had heard about this period—the winter doldrums, the endemic seasonal affective disorder, the insomnia and depression that afflicted many students—but it wasn’t until he had experienced it himself that he truly understood. Starting at the beginning of February, the entire campus was blanketed with five feet of snow for several weeks. It was the first time Ethan had ever been faced with this type of weather on a daily basis. While beautiful, the omnipresent whiteness made Berkley seem darker than ever.

Thankfully, his special project was consuming him. Because painting outside would be impossible in the cold, he had snapped photographs of the locations he wanted to include in the series. He decided to include a cemetery scene, and wondered how it could relate to the story. What about the other children the witch had killed, before her run-in with Hansel and Gretel? Maybe she had eaten them, but where had she buried their bones? He would call the image “The Boneyard of Forgotten Children.”

One afternoon, he walked along the sloping edge of the cemetery, where the fence that enclosed the plots met a cluster of trees. Down at the opposite end from where Louisa Berkley’s statue stood was a fresh headstone, positioned apart from an older grouping. The new marker was solid polished granite, inscribed simply with the name of a student who had been killed the previous year by a drunk driver. As Ethan took photographs from various angles, some including it in the frame, others leaving it out, he was faced with a feeling of profound uselessness. Art, he had always thought, was supposed to unlock mysteries: for the artist, for the viewer. Yet there was no answer here. There was no reason why a girl—a nice girl, a girl who had never hurt anyone, by all accounts he had heard—should be killed by a drunk driver.

Ethan had always fantasized that while he was working, there would be a brilliant moment when all mysteries would be revealed to him. But on days like this, he merely plodded along. He would reach the end: the painting would be finished, critiqued, analyzed. He and Ms. Hedge would examine what worked, what didn’t. There might be some answers then. But now, nothing.

This painting, he feared, would be silly, melodramatic, macabre. What did he know about boneyards? What did he know about death? The two children might encounter this graveyard on their journey to the witch’s house, as a foreshadowing of what was to come; they might rest for a moment, take stock of their weary limbs, their stash of bread crumbs. But it wouldn’t help them; it would only whisper back to them with the quiet scratchings of underbrush against headstones, barren branches swaying against trunks, footfalls in the snow. The graveyard might be a warning for the viewer, but it would carry no significance for the children. It would beckon them farther along the path toward the house.

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