John shook his head. “No. When we first met on the library steps I just wanted to make a connection with you. I didn’t know what he was until later. I didn’t warn you about him until we met in the lane behind his studio.”
“So what is he?”
“A monster.”
“That’s what he calls you.”
An anguished look crossed John’s features. “He feeds on us, Izzy. I don’t know how, but it has something to do with the way he destroys the paintings that call us over.”
“But he didn’t destroy them,” Izzy said. “The paintings he destroyed were the copies he made, not mine.”
John shrugged. “Whatever.”
“I know my own work, John. He didn’t destroy them.”
“You thought the painting fragment I showed you was your own work, too.”
“I know. But I was wrong. I just got confused because he’s so good. Naturally if he’s going to copy one of my paintings, it’d be perfect.”
“So how do you know which he burned?”
“Do you still have those dreams you told me about?”
Izzy shook her head. “Not for a few months. Now I keep dreaming about someone looking for me.”
“For you, or your paintings?”
“Me, I think,” Izzy said; then she shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“And have you done any paintings like the one of the treeskin at Rushkin’s studio where he could copy them?”
“No, but what does that prove?”
“It’s not just that we have a connection to you,” John told her. “You have a connection to us as well.
When we die, you are aware of it. You see it happen, if only in your dreams. You used to dream about Rushkin destroying your paintings. Now you’re dreaming about him looking for them.”
“How can that even be possible?” Izzy asked.
“After bringing us over from the before,” John said mildly, “you’re still arguing about what’s possible?”
“But why would Rushkin do it? I know he’s got problems, a bad temper, but he’s not evil.”
“Why is it that you can’t picture him as evil? Because he creates such beautiful works of art?”
Could that really be the reason? Izzy thought. And was it also the reason that she let him mistreat her in ways she wouldn’t take from any other person? Had her values become so twisted around that she simply couldn’t perceive of Rushkin as a monster because of his talent?
“Here’s another experiment you can try,” John said. “Since he can’t seem to find the paintings you’ve done at the professor’s greenhouse, the next time you want to call one of us over, do the painting at his studio where he won’t have any trouble finding it. Leave it there for him to ‘copy.’ Then wait for the dreams to start again.”
“What an awful thing to say! I couldn’t do something like that.”
“Why not? Is it any worse than turning a blind eye to what he does to us? We’re real, Izzy. You might call us over, but once we’re here, we’re real. I’ll grant you we’re different. We don’t need to eat and we can’t dream. We don’t age. Physically, we don’t change at all from how we’re brought across.
But we’re still real.”
“Stop it!” Izzy cried. She shook her head and turned away from him. “You’re mixing me all up until I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“You mean you don’t know what you want to believe. You’ve no problem believing that you’re like some little god who can bring whatever she wants to life with a few daubs of paint and a canvas, but not that these creations might have a life of their own beyond your influence. And heaven help anyone who suggests that perhaps you should take responsibility for what you’re doing. That perhaps your precious Rushkin presents a danger to us—a danger that you could avert simply by accepting the truth and keeping us away from him.”
It was going all wrong, Izzy realized. She’d only come here tonight to try to get John to open up to her. She hadn’t been expecting a confrontation. She’d wanted to get closer to him, but instead they were being driven apart. When she looked at him now, she saw a stranger sitting beside her on the bench.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked.
“I’m not trying to do anything except get you to face up to the responsibility of your actions.”
“You lied to me before when I asked you about the connection between my painting and yourself.
Why should I believe you now?”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you the whole—”
But Izzy didn’t let him finish.
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” she said.
She stood up from the bench, shivering from the cold that had lodged inside her—a cold that had nothing to do with the winter fields lying about them. She stuck her hands in her pockets to keep them from trembling.
“Izzy, you’re taking this all—”
“Please. Just let me go.” Her throat felt swollen and it was hard to get the words out. “Don’t ... just don’t come looking for me ... anymore ....”
Then she fled. Before he could see her tears. Before he could call after her. Before he could weave a new set of lies to replace the old ones that weren’t working anymore. Because even as she ran from him, she wanted to believe the lies. Wanted to pretend he’d never said any of those horrible things to her.
Wanted to be with him and everything to be like it had been before.
God help her. She loved him and he wasn’t even real.
Behind her John rose from the bench. He took a few steps after her, but then hesitated. He didn’t follow after her. He stood watching her go until she was no more than a tiny figure, running far down the path, a dark, distant speck against the white snow.
“I never meant to fall in love with you,” he said softly.
But she was no longer even in sight.
VI
You did what?” Kathy said. “How could you break up with him? I thought you were so happy with him.”
Izzy turned away from the window and gave her a miserable look. The sky had clouded over again on her way home and now it had started to snow once more, big fat flakes drifting down. She wished it were raining. Rain would suit her mood far better.
“I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “I just go so confused. And then he started lecturing me about my responsibility to those I brought over from this ‘before’ he keeps talking about ....”
“But you do have to be responsible towards them.”
“I know that. I just didn’t want to hear it right then. I wanted him to—I don’t know. Confide in me, I suppose. I wanted to understand, but not like that.”
“Then maybe you should have given him a copy of the script. How was he supposed to know?”
“You’re not helping, Kathy.”
“I’m sorry.” Kathy left the pillow where she was sitting and settled down beside Izzy. “It’s just all so weird. I can hardly believe any of it’s real.”
“You saw Paddyjack.”
“True. But John—he never seemed any different from the rest of us, you know? And he’s really got it in for Rushkin, doesn’t he?”
Izzy nodded. “The thing is ..... Izzy hesitated. She’d never told Kathy about the violence in Rushkin’s personality. She’d never told anyone. She knew the flaw in Rushkin, but she still couldn’t help but feel that the violence was also somehow her own fault. That if she could only be better, he wouldn’t get so mad at her.
“You just don’t see it,” Kathy finished for her.
“I guess. But John never lies.”
“Not that you know of.”
It was like talking to John about Rushkin, Izzy thought. That same confusion of, who do you believe?
“Everyone has secret landscapes inside them,” Kathy said. “There’s no way to tell how deep they go.”