Into That Darkness by Steven Price

He had not intended to say such a thing. You don’t want to come with me, do you? he asked.
    No, the boy whispered.
    He waited but the boy said nothing more and the old man reached down and very gently, very awkwardly patted his shoulder. The boy did not stir. After a moment he straightened and turned and began to make his way up the street. The buildings felt blown-out, emptied, shells of what they had been the morning before. The red sun was nearly down and the shadows were lengthening.
    At the corner where the old pub still stood he stooped to tie his shoe and then paused with one hand on his knee and he crouched breathing like that for what seemed a long time. He was angry with himself for frightening the boy. He glanced at the sky, glanced back the way he had come. The dark streets strewn with rubble and stalled cars. Then he breathed in sharply. Someone was crouching in the shadow of the bank across the way, watching him.
    He looked at the huddled figure and said nothing and then looked at the figure again.
    Mason? he called. What are you doing? Come here son.
    He got to his feet and stood very still in the road but the boy did not approach. He watched the boy holding his eyeglasses to his face, studying him with dark eyes.
    Mason? he called again, more gently. You don’t want to walk with me?
    The boy said nothing. Mute and fierce with that blanket clutched at his shoulders.
    At last he shrugged and turned and went on. As he began to walk the boy began again also. When he would slip too far ahead the boy hurried to catch him up, then hung back until he had moved on.
    In this manner they went. The boy following. Or being led. It did not matter which.
    They went.

Sometimes I’ll hear her speaking in the next room, or calling up at me from downstairs. I don’t know. I thought for a time it was grief. It wasn’t. It was just my outliving her.
    My grandfather used to say time has a way of worrying in. I guess he meant everything is in a state of decay. Painting isn’t any different, it’s like music in that. Its element, too, is time. You move through a painting quickly, or slowly. The eye takes in nothing at a glance. There was an expression I struggled to capture for years. It wasn’t a large canvas. I dreamed it one night fifteen years ago and became obsessed with painting it. It was of a young woman sitting in a silver car in a parking lot, her face just lifted towards the windshield. And on her face was an expression of just-flourishing sadness, a kind of serenity. I saw it with terrible clarity. I’ve never forgotten it. I never could get it right. Always it was complicated by regret, by apology, by blame. A face is a fluid thing, it’s like the surface of the sea. It’s never still. Even in sleep. I don’t know, when you add the play of light across it it becomes near impossible to hold. Even photographs fail in that. I have a half-dozen photographs of Callie but none of them are her. I know it’s strange to say it.
    Not a day goes by I don’t think of her. I wonder sometimes what my grandfather would have made of her. I didn’t quit painting because of her. I don’t care what anyone says.
    A couple of years ago a woman came by to interview me for a book she was writing on Callie. I didn’t want to do it. But I sat with her for a time. She pulled out a small blue notebook and scribbled down curt notes when I spoke. I didn’t see how what I said could possibly be written down so quickly. I told her she could take a minute and get the rest of it if she wanted. I’d thought she’d smile at that but she didn’t. She asked me if Callie left me because she couldn’t complete her work with the pressures of being a wife. I suppose she wanted to know if I stifled her. I didn’t know what to say to that. I told her my grandfather had been a judge and his favourite kind of sentence was a question. She didn’t write that down in her