Duma Key

How to Draw a Picture (VII)

Remember that “seeing is believing” puts the cart before the horse. Art is the concrete artifact of faith and expectation, the realization of a world that would otherwise be little more than a veil of pointless consciousness stretched over a gulf of mystery. And besides — if you don’t believe what you see, who will believe your art?

The trouble after the treasure all had to do with belief. Elizabeth was fiercely talented, but she was only a child — and with children, faith is a given. It’s part of the standard equipment. Nor are children, even the talented ones (especially the talented ones), in full possession of their faculties. Their reason still sleeps, and the sleep of reason breeds monsters.

Here’s a picture I never painted:

Identical twins in identical jumpers, except one is red, with an L on the front, and the other is blue, with a T . The girls are holding hands as they run along the path that leads to Shade Beach. They call it that because for most of the day it’s in the shadow of Hag’s Rock. There are tear-tracks on their pale round faces, but they will soon be gone because by now they are too terrorized to cry.

If you can believe this, you can see the rest.

A giant crow flies slowly past them, upside-down, its wings outstretched. It speaks to them in their Daddy’s voice.

Lo-Lo falls and cuts her knees on the shells. Tessie pulls her to her feet. They run on. It isn’t the upside-down talking crow they are afraid of, nor the way the sky sometimes lenses from blue to a sunset red before going back to blue; it is the thing behind them.

The big boy.

Even with its fangs it still looks a little like one of the funny frogs Libbit used to draw, but this one is ever so much bigger, and real enough to cast a shadow. Real enough to stink and shake the ground each time it jumps. They have been frightened by all sorts of things since Daddy found the treasure, and Libbit says they dassn’t come out of their room at night, or even look out their windows, but this is day, and the thing behind them is too real not to be believed, and it is gaining.

The next time it’s Tessie who falls and Lo-Lo who pulls her up, casting a terrified glance behind her at the thing chasing them. It’s surrounded by dancing bugs it sometimes licks out of the air. Lo-Lo can see Tessie in one bulging, stupid eye. She herself is in the other.

They burst onto the beach gasping and out of breath and now there’s nowhere to go but the water. Except maybe there is, because the boat is back again, the one they have seen more and more frequently in the last few weeks. Libbit says the boat isn’t what it seems, but now it’s a floating white dream of safety, and besides — there is no choice. The big boy is almost at their heels.

It came out of the swimming pool just after they finished playing Adie’s Wedding in Rampopo, the baby-house on the side lawn (today Lo-Lo got to play Adie). Sometimes Libbit can make these awful things go away by scribbling on her pad, but now Libbit is sleeping — she has had a great many troubled nights lately.

The big boy leaps off the path and onto the beach, spraying sand all around. Its bulging eyes stare. Its fragile white belly, so full of noisome guts, bulges. Its throat throbs.

The two girls, standing with their hands linked and their feet in the running boil of what Daddy calls the little surf, look at each other. Then they look at the ship, swinging at anchor with its sails furled and shining. It looks even closer, as if it has moved in to rescue them.

Lo-Lo says We have to.

Tessie says But I can’t SWIM!

You can dogpaddle!

The big boy leaps. They can hear its guts slosh when it lands. They sound like wet garbage in a barrel of water. The blue fades from the sky and then the sky bleeds red. Then, slowly, it changes back again. It’s been that kind of day. And haven’t they known this kind of day was coming? Haven’t they seen it in Libbit’s haunted eyes? Nan Melda knows; even Daddy knows, and he’s not here all the time. Today he’s in Tampa, and when they look at the greenish-white horror that’s almost upon them, they know that Tampa might as well be the far side of the moon. They are on their own.

Tessie grips Lo-Lo’s shoulder with cold fingers. What about the rip?

But Lo-Lo shakes her head. The rip is good! The rip will take us to the boat!

There’s no more time to talk. The frog-thing is getting ready to leap again. And they understand that, while it cannot be real, somehow it is. It can kill them. Better to chance the water. They turn, still holding hands, and throw themselves into the caldo. They fix their eyes on the slim white swallow swinging at anchor close to them. Surely they will be hauled aboard, and someone will use the ship-to-shore to call the Roost. “Netted us a pair of mermaids,” they’ll say. “You know anyone who wants em?”

The rip parts their hands. It is ruthless, and Lo-Lo actually drowns first because she fights harder. Tessie hears her cry out twice. First for help. Then, giving up, her sister’s name.

Meanwhile, a vagary of the rip is sweeping Tessie straight for the ship, and holding her up at the same time. For a few magical moments it’s as though she’s on a surfboard, and her weak dogpaddle seems to be propelling her like an outboard motor. Then, just before a colder current reaches up and coils around her ankles, she sees the ship change into —

Here’s a picture I did paint, not once but again and again and again:

The whiteness of the hull doesn’t exactly disappear; it is sucked inward like blood fleeing the cheek of a terrified man. The ropes fray. The brightwork dulls. The glass in the windows of the aft cabin bursts outward. A junkheap clutter appears on the decking, rolling into existence from fore to aft. Except it was there all along. Tessie just didn’t see it. Now she sees.

Now she believes.

A creature comes from belowdecks. It creeps to the railing, where it stares down at the girl. It is a slumped thing in a hooded red robe. Hair that might not be hair at all flutters dankly around a melted face. Yellow hands grip splintered, punky wood. Then, one lifts slowly.

And waves to the girl who will soon be GONE.

It says Come to me, child.

And, drowning, Tessie Eastlake thinks It’s a WOMAN!

She sinks. And does she feel still-warm hands, those of her freshly dead sister, gripping her calves and pulling her down?

Yes, of course. Of course she does.

Believing is also feeling.

Any artist will tell you so.