Wanker! Sam thought, once Michael closed the door.
He turned back to the painting above the hearth. It was big, nearly as wide as the board chimney breast. Sam would struggle to put his arms around it, and he was five feet ten. Not that he wanted to hug a chimney or anything, but he’d only ever seen paintings that big in places like the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Modern. His mum loved dragging him around those places. He loved it too. Only, thinking about it hurt right in the middle of his chest. A knot of pressure tightened if he lingered on good memories too long, and even more if he remembered other things. It was best to focus on the present: that painting was weird.
He tilted his head at the abstract picture. Dark, aggressive daubs of oil paint, like brooding storm clouds, given depth by hints of white and purple, dominated the top. It seemed like heavy rain was sheeting down one side of the scene in dirty greys, and beneath in the background was a squall of foaming sea. At first, Sam thought there were more waves in the foreground rendered in sort of sickly browns, but then he realised they must have been a beach or dunes. The thing that he couldn’t work out was the angular tangle of brushstrokes, some the colour of bone, others greenish greys, like tattered rags. The tangle had a sense of movement looming on the sand at the edge of the downpour. It was rearing up above a small, vertical, red glob of paint. What those two things were supposed to be, he couldn’t tell. Maybe that was the point. Paint like a child afflicted with Tourette’s tics, call it art, and the rich dickhead who buys it can say it’s whatever they want it to be. Still, there was something about the painting that was unnerving, the way the colours jarred with each other, and how the shapes had a sense of depth and movement in their dark marks. A child couldn’t do that. Why would anyone buy such an ugly painting? Sam shrugged and turned away.
Rich people are bougy-as-fuck.
The knot in his chest tightened because he knew what his mum would have said to that. People are people. Don’t judge. Money doesn’t make them better and being poor doesn’t make you lesser.
She had a bunch of phrases like that, or at least until she got too sick.
He sighed and started to look around. It was a cool trick how the outside looked pretty much like any other beach house, not that Sam had seen any other beach houses except on TV and movies. This one, though, was bigger on the inside, partly because it stretched back a long way, which you couldn’t tell from the front. The ceiling vaulted to the rafters, making the inside feel cavernous, except at the back where the mezzanine level cut across. A balcony or walkway lay in front of two doors. Sam couldn’t see how to get up there and started to wander and explore.
The place smelled of polished wooded and salt, with a musty undertone, a kind of unlived-in staleness, and yet it wasn’t dusty or damp. He found the kitchen. The cupboards were bare. The units, like the rest of the house, were so from another era they looked like they were coming back into fashion. Their age showed in worn edges and scuffs and the way grout between the tiles faded and chipped. A light blinked on in the empty fridge-freezer, which despite its age had an icemaker. The appliance hummed a little too loudly.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
There were four expansive double bedrooms on the ground floor, all neatly turned down, dressed with blankets thrown across the bottom of the beds and over the backs of chairs, set at jaunty but deliberate angles. Abstract photographs in black and white, artworks and sculptures, gave the place the air of a long-forgotten upmarket hotel. The Airbnb that time forgot.
He ambled over to where Michael had attempted to reach civilisation. The telephone in the nook was ancient and so was the TV, boxy and covered in wooden veneer, like the panelling around the three walls. Below it was a VHS player. At least there were remotes, but he wasn’t interested in watching TV. The prospect of finding an old movie, however, piqued his interest, but there were no old tapes to be seen.
For a minute, Sam let himself lean back in the easy chair. Without his phone functioning, he was bored and tired. He hadn’t slept well for weeks and when he did, dreams replayed contorted versions of his waking nightmare. His life had tumbled around him like a slow-moving avalanche, sweeping everything away and depositing him in a new place unfamiliar to his previous life.
The chair was comfy. Maybe he could take a nap here while Michael tried to do whatever it is that rich guys do. Buy and sell houses, by the looks of things, and for more money than he and his mum had ever dreamed of in their crappy little council flat. Where was daddy dearest then?
He closed his eyes, and he was back there, sitting on his bed. Movie posters on his walls – Casablanca, Psycho, Pizzi’s Honor – because Scarface was well predictable – John Carpenter’s The Thing, Full Metal Jacket – which was predictable, but Kubric was Kubric – True Romance, and Aliens – because no matter what anyone said the character arc was better than Alien, especially in the director’s cut. A school blazer and West Ham scarf hung on the back of his door. The scarf matched the bedclothes – sky blue and maroon with two golden hammers. A box of Lego he was too old for lay under his bed but which he loved to take out on rainy weekends when mum had to work overtime, and he’d make sets for mini stop motion movies on his phone and tablet. Everything was where it should be, including him. The autopilot of sleep kicked in and took control.
Weightlessly, Sam drifted from the bed. His door opened without him wanting it too. His room was safe, the place he wanted to stay forever. But the autopilot had other ideas, directing him up the cramped corridor to his mother’s bedroom. In reality, it was a few steps away, and yet the corridor stretched out like that scene in The Shining: Little Danny on his tricycle riding and riding down those long corridors in the Overlook Hotel with the chilling violins on the musical score playing over the top, like nails dragging remorselessly down a chalk board. That was their go-to pyjama day, rainy day, New Year's Eve wanna hang out together movie. Eyes still shut, Sam flinched. No. He didn’t want that memory to be part of this, but it was, dragged from his subconscious. Without even a hand to push it, his mother’s bedroom door started to swing noiselessly open.
