Mount Terminus by David Grand

progression of events he had observed in the prints, he drew into the gardens and the groves life-affirming idylls. He set his mother in the company of children hanging from limbs of trees. She sat with women who ground acorn into meal. She presided over a feast held under a moonlit sky. And as he had witnessed his father do when he set out to perfect his topiary, the boy tended to these Arcadian hymns to his mother with the same fastidious and loving care. Bloom refined each line of each composition until the ink he pressed onto paper with a fountain pen resembled the heavy strokes of his mother’s brush; and only when he was satisfied that they reflected in their totality what he had envisaged, in the instance the phantasmagorias were born, did he present the drawings to his father, who, upon receiving the very first one, and upon receiving many more thereafter, appeared elevated in spirit.
    With each presentation of his handiwork, Bloom could see color flush his father’s face. He took great pleasure watching him handle the paper’s edges before studying the complexities, looking on the figments of his imagination as if he might discover within the details of the drawings’ configurations a hidden map to free him from his present condition. Jacob sent the drawings to town with Meralda, to have them framed, and when they returned, he hung them in the parlor, on the cracked wall facing the chair in which he reclined at night to drink and smoke. Orderly rows formed, and by flickering gaslight, he stared at them, meditated over them, at times spoke to them under his breath.
    Having witnessed the revival of his father’s spirit, Bloom grew determined to further animate it. He was convinced if he continued to provide him more and more of what he saw in the stillness of his days, the elder Rosenbloom would begin to live in the world. Bloom, therefore, withdrew from the activities that provided him solace. He withdrew from his books. He withdrew from taking his daily sojourns to Mount Terminus’s peak. Instead, in the estate’s quietest corners, sometimes with Roya, sometimes without, he dutifully daydreamed and drew what he saw in the shadows. He didn’t quite understand why, but the more absorbed his father became by his drawings, Bloom was visited again and again by the image of the serpentine trail formed by the missionaries and their soldiers. Again and again, he envisioned the events that followed their arrival, and as hard as he tried to resist the impulse to draw his mother into the violent, ghastly scenes they perpetrated, he couldn’t stop himself. Not unlike the prints his silent companion had left for him at his bedside, his narrative devolved. His once sunny idylls darkened into subterranean spectacle. He thought to hide these images from his father, but, perhaps to better understand the reason he couldn’t release them from his mind, when his father asked one morning over breakfast if he had more drawings to share with him, Bloom handed them over, and when he did, he watched his father’s face change. His expression grew disturbed, and in an injured voice, he said, No, no, my dear, these won’t do. No, we mustn’t allow this to happen to you. Not to you, too.
    He didn’t send these drawings to the framer. Rather, he quietly hid them away. They disappeared to some secret place. Out of sight. When Bloom asked where they had gone, his father shook his head and said, It was wrong of me to encourage you. Jacob didn’t admonish the boy. He didn’t punish him. On the contrary, his tone was kind and contrite. But it was admonishment enough for Bloom to see, in the wake of this expression of regret, his father’s features return to their fragile, disconsolate shape. It was punishment enough to see his fascination wane, to watch it turn limpid and resigned. Once again the idle glaze to which Bloom had grown accustomed frosted his father’s eyes, and once