She was standing in front of a rack filled with canvases. Something about the top one caught her eye. Not understanding, she began to flip rapidly through the paintings in the rack. The signature in the righthand corner. Not bold and scrawling like Erich’s but delicately lettered with fine brushstrokes, a signature more in keeping with the peaceful themes in the paintings: Caroline Bonardi. Every one of them.
She began to study the paintings on the wall. Those that were framed were signed Erich Krueger. The unframed ones, Caroline Bonardi.
But Erich had said that Caroline had very little talent…
Her eyes raced back and forth between a framed painting with Erich’s signature, an unframed one signed by Caroline. The same use of diffused light, the same signature pine tree in the background, the same blending of color. Erich was copying Caroline’s work.
No.
The framed canvases. Those were the ones he’d planned to exhibit next. Those were the ones he’d signed. He hadn’t painted them. The same artist had done all of these. Erich was forging his name to Caroline’s art. That was why he’d been so flustered when she pointed out that the elm in one of his supposedly new paintings had been cut down months before.
A charcoal sketch caught her eye. It was called Self-Portrait. It was a miniature of Memory of Caroline, probably the preliminary sketch Caroline had done before she started the painting that was her masterpiece.
Oh, God. Everything. Every emotion that she had attributed to Erich through his work was a lie.
Then why was he here so much? What did he do here? She saw the staircase, rushed up it. The loft sloped with the pitch of the roof and she had to bend forward at the top stair before she stepped into the room.
As she straightened up, a nightmarish blaze of color from the back wall assaulted her vision. Shocked, she stared at her own image. A mirror?
No. The painted face did not move as she approached it. The dusky light from the slitlike window played on the canvas, shading it in streaks, like a ghostly finger pointing.
A collage of scenes: violent scenes painted in violent colors. The center figure, herself, her mouth twisted in grief, staring down at puppetlike bodies. Beth and Tina slumped together on the floor, their blue jumpers tangled, their eyes bulging, their tongues protruding, blue corduroy belts wound around their throats. Far up on the wall behind her image, a window with a dark blue curtain. Peering through the opening in the curtain Erich’s face, triumphant, sadistic. And all through the canvas in shades of green and black, a slithery figure, half-woman, half-snake, a woman with Caroline’s face, the cape wrapped around her like the scaly skin of the snake. Caroline’s figure bending over a surrealistic bassinette, a bassinette suspended from a hole in the sky, the woman’s hands, grotesque, outsized like whale flippers covering the baby’s face, the baby’s hands thrust over his head, the fingers starlike, spread on the pillow.
The Caroline figure in the maroon coat, reflected in the windshield of a car; another face beside hers. Kevin’s face, exaggerated, staring, grotesque, frightened, his bruised temple swelling into the windshield. The Caroline figure, her cape flung around her, holding the hooves of a wild horse, guiding them to descend on the sandy-haired figure on the ground. Joe. Joe cringing away from the hooves.
Jenny heard the sound from her throat, the keening wail, the screams of protest. It wasn’t Caroline who was half-woman, half-snake. It was Erich’s face peering out from the tangled dark hair, Erich’s eyes wildly staring at her from the canvas.
No. No. No. These twisted, tortured revelations, this art-evil incarnate, brilliance beside which the pastel elegance of Caroline’s talent faded into insignificance.
Erich had not painted the canvases he claimed as his own. But those he had painted were the genius of a twisted mind. They were shocking, awesome in their power, evil-and insane!
Jenny stared at her own image, at the faces of her children, their pleading eyes as the cord tightened around the small white throats.
At last she forced herself to wrench the canvas from the wall, her unwilling fingers grasping it as though they were closing around the fires of hell.
Somehow she managed to snap on her skis, start back through the woods. Night was descending, darkness spreading. The canvas caught the wind like a sail, whipped her from her own vague path, bruised her against trees. The wind mocked the constant screams for help that she heard screeching from her throat. Help me. Help me. Help me.
She lost the path, turned around in the darkness, saw again the outline of the cabin. No. No.
She would freeze out here, freeze and die out here, before she could find anyone to stop Erich if it weren’t already too late. She lost track of time, not knowing how long she stumbled and fell and picked herself up and began again; how long she clutched the damning canvas to her, how long she screamed. She only knew that her voice was breaking into hoarse sobs when somehow she saw a glint through a clump of trees and realized she was at the edge of the woods.
The glint she had seen was the reflection of the moon on the granite stone of Caroline’s grave.
With a last terrible effort she skied across the open fields. The house was totally dark; only the faint light of the crescent moon revealed its outlines. But the windows of the office were bright. She headed there, the canvas flapping more wildly without the trees to break the sharp wind.
She could no longer scream; there were no sounds left except the guttural moans she heard in her throat; her lips still formed the words help me, help me.
At the door of the office she tried to turn the handle with her frozen hands, tried to kick off her skis, but could not force the binders to release. Finally she banged at the door with her ski pole until it was flung open, and she fell forward into Mark’s arms.
“Jenny!” His voice broke. “Jenny!”
“Steady, Mrs. Krueger.” Someone was pulling the skis off her feet. She knew that burly body, that thick, blunt profile. It was Sheriff Gunderson.
Mark was trying to pry her fingers loose from the canvas. “Jenny, let me see that.” And then his awed voice. “Oh, my God.”
Her own voice was a witch’s croak: “Erich. Erich painted it. He killed my baby. He dresses like Caroline. Beth. Tina… Maybe he’s killed them too.”
“Erich painted this?” This sheriff’s voice, incredulous.
She whirled on him. “Have you found my girls? Why are you here? Are my girls dead?”
“Jenny.” Mark was holding her tightly, his hand stopping the flow of words from her mouth. “Jenny, I called the sheriff because I couldn’t reach you. Jenny, where did you find this?”
“In the cabin… So many paintings. But not his. Caroline painted them.”
“Mrs. Krueger…”
On him she could vent her pain. She mimicked his heavy voice. “Anything you want to tell me, Mrs. Krueger? Anything you suddenly remembered?” She began to sob.
“Jenny,” Mark implored, “it’s not the sheriff’s fault. I should have realized. Dad had begun to suspect…”
The sheriff was studying the canvas, his face suddenly deflated, the skin folding into limp creases. His eyes were riveted on the upper-right-hand corner of the painting, with the bassinette suspended from a hole in the sky and the grotesque Caroline-like figure bending over it. “Mrs. Krueger, Erich came to me. He said he understood that there’d been talk about the baby’s death. He urged me to request an autopsy.”
The door swung open. Erich, Jenny thought. Oh, my God, Erich. But it was Clyde who rushed in, his expression frightened and disapproving. “What in hell is going on around here?” He looked at the canvas. Jenny watched as his leathery face drained to the color of white suede.