Aftersight by Brian Mercer Page B

and it was becoming harder to keep it a secret. Lately, I'd been trying to distract myself with my artwork. I was painting now, art supplies provided by Dad, who had starting to treat me like a caged lab rat. He didn't know yet that I wasn't quite all there when I was sketching or painting, but I'm sure he suspected.
    My artwork was doing more to keep me sane than all the meds and psychotherapy combined. I didn't like the way the antipsychotics made me feel, and I wasn't completely honest with my therapist, who would surely take the increased number of disembodied voices that I was hearing as a sign that I was losing my grip. Only Gwen knew I was having conversations with more than just Jenny, but she had sworn an oath of silence. I didn't like lying to everyone but if it was enough to keep me out of the crazy patch, I'd do what I needed to do.
    My first paintings were a little neurotic. They were all of Jenny — Jenny sitting for a portrait, Jenny petting a grey bunny, Jenny standing near a bright white window. The styles varied widely. Some were abstract. Some were so realistic they looked like photographs. I didn't really understand that painting so many pictures of Jenny might be a problem until Gwen looked over my collection one day and told me to cool it. "Are you trying to get busted with OCD? Paint something else."
    I didn't have the heart to tell her I didn't pick the subjects of my artwork. They picked me.
    My latest — thankfully not of Jenny — was an oil on canvas that I'd completed Halloween night. It looked to be of some kind of courtroom scene from a time period I couldn't identify. The Renaissance? Medieval times, maybe? In it four young women sat behind a carved wooden table, wearing coarse dresses in drab browns and greys.
    The girls' heads had all recently been shaved bald, and if you looked closely enough, you could see stubble on their pale skulls. All four of them looked bony, sick, and miserable. Their sad expressions drew attention to the uniform position of their hands; four pairs of palms resting flat on the table in front of them like children forced to show their parents that they'd washed up for dinner.
    Perhaps the creepiest part of the painting had been the old man in the foreground, a man dressed entirely in black — black robe, stockings, pointy shoes, and round, brimless cap. His long, wispy white locks parted to reveal a white complexion of clefts and wrinkles. His face was shaped in an open-mouthed grimace, his right hand pointed upward, as if calling on a higher order for justice.
    The painting had been unlike anything I'd painted before. Realistic but without dimension, it was full of contrasting shades of light and darkness. The girls behind the table were so radiant they seemed to glow with faint gold auras. I called the piece Inn o cence Accused. When I showed it to Gwen, she told me to go back to painting Jenny . No one else but she had seen it.
    "Here it is, on the right," Gwen said. "The address is one forty-two."
    The car slowed in front of a white, sixties-style bungalow with a flat, stacked-stone exterior. The porch lamp was on, the windows brightly lit, and cars were lined up here and across the street, as if there was a gathering in progress within. Mom cut the engine and coasted to the side of the road a few houses down, where there was an empty space. She put the car in park and shut off the headlights.
    "Are you sure about this?" Mom asked, looking in the rearview mirror at Gwen.
    Gwen nodded. "I'm sure. It'll be okay."
    I felt suddenly like a child, with grownups spelling to keep the meaning of their conversation hidden. But I was, frankly, beyond caring. Again, I thought longingly of home.
    We got out of the car and moved down the street in the dark There weren't any sidewalks or streetlamps here. The only light came from the windows of houses on either side of the road. The cold autumn wind was laced with the smell of fireplace smoke and the sickly-sweet