CHAPTER NINETEEN

I am terrified that the police will remove me from the property, but Reyes and her officers leave without saying anything to me. Evelyn tries to convince me to come home with her so she can care for me, but I assure her that my injuries aren't serious and I want to be here in case Celeste comes home. That last part convinces her, so after eliciting a promise from me to call her if she returns, or if I need anything, she heads to her place.

My body aches deeply, and from time to time, a stray spasm will cause me to wince. I’m more hurt than I let on to Evelyn, but I really do want to remain here. Celeste is an emotionally troubled girl, but she’s intelligent, and I believe she has enough of her wits about her to know that she can’t wander on her own forever. She’ll come home, and when she does, I want to be here. Maybe this is a foolish hope, but I’d rather cling to a foolish hope than no hope at all.

I make myself some tea and ruminate on the position in which I find myself. As Reyes points out, I use kidnapped and missing interchangeably in our conversation. The problem is that I don’t know myself what the truth is. Victor’s behavior makes it easy to believe that he finally broke from reality and ran off somewhere after trashing his studio. Celeste ran away, but while her own mental state is troublesome, I don’t believe she’s so far gone she would harm herself. I think she acts based on fear more than dissociation.

The complicating factor is Lisa. She strikes me as very well composed. Perhaps she’s not the most pleasant person, but she doesn’t seem remotely the sort to have a mental episode and run off. It’s far easier to believe that she was forcibly removed from her home, and if she was, then it’s likely that Victor was also taken.

But by who? Marcus comes to mind, but I don’t believe he could have overpowered Victor, and I certainly don’t believe he could have done so without Evelyn hearing the struggle.

But Sean could have. Sean is younger than Victor and more powerfully built. He's also a private investigator with decades of experience sneaking into places unnoticed. He could have made his way into the house through a window or a back door without Evelyn realizing. He could have quickly overpowered Victor and moved him outside before Evelyn was able to reach the studio. It would be difficult but not impossible for him.

My lips turn down as I realize that Reyes's suspicion of me isn't entirely unreasonable from her point of view. Reyes doesn't know me or Sean. As far as she knows, we're strangers who appeared out of nowhere shortly before the master of the house went missing. Sean is my friend, and we've both been caught breaking and entering into Lisa's apartment. Of all the people in proximity to Victor recently, Sean is the one most capable of kidnapping him. Money isn't a motive for either of us, but if Reyes discovers that Annie once knew Victor, then that will be motive enough to convince her of my guilt.

I regret telling Sean to call the police. I should have let someone else discover her apartment. The door was ajar. Reyes would certainly dust for prints if she hasn’t already. Someone would have realized soon enough that the two of us were there. I just didn’t think how it would look to have the two of us the first ones there.

I have to learn what really happened. I have to find the answer quickly before Reyes learns about Annie and arrests me. I may have to do it without Sean, too, since he's now suffering legal trouble on my behalf.

That thought sends a wave of guilt through me. He warned me not to go with him, and I forced him to take me. He's experienced with this sort of thing, and I'm not. Now, he's suffering because of my own stubbornness. I have to learn what really happened for his sake as well as mine.

The tea has soothed me enough that I’m able to move with only mild soreness. I head upstairs to Victor’s studio. I’ve only had a brief look at the room, but if there’s a clue to Victor’s recent actions, it’s probably hidden somewhere in the abstract drawings that to his mind transcend reality.

The room is still taped off, but at this point, the police have had their chance to look. If entering here makes me even more a suspect, so be it.

There is a thin layer of dust over everything. Dirt and leaves have blown in through the shattered window and every now and then my eyes fall on the corpse of an insect, legs stiff and curled in the throes of death. It makes the room look like a tomb. Perhaps it is.

The paintings in immediate view are unfinished. They’re mostly of the angular pseudo-men that seem to be the subject of Victor’s most recent artistic inspirations. Some of them are only line drawings.

There are several cabinets in the room. A few of these are opened and their contents scattered on the ground. Paints, brushes, oil pens, and a few other odds and ends.

Two remain closed and undamaged. Their presence is an almost stark contrast to the state of the rest of the studio. I open these and find dozens of completed paintings placed carefully into felt slides. I pull a few of these out and look at them.

They are of a different style than the other works I’ve seen. They aren’t wholly abstract the way his current paintings are. They’re not realistic or representational either. I am no art student, but the closest analogy I can give is that they appear to be images captured through dense fog from a great distance.

Despite the blurry impressionism of the pieces, the subject matter is clear. The paintings are of bodies of water with a figure or figures in the distance. I pull more paintings out and compare them. In some of the paintings, the ocean is a wide and flat expanse. In others, a massive rock can be seen to the right of the figures.

Again, in some paintings, there is only one figure, while in others, there are two. In the paintings with one figure, the figure is male, and in the others, a female stands next to the male. The male in the figure is either Elias Blackwood or Victor himself. The female must be Annie.

What could this mean? Is it an homage to his mentor and to Annie? An homage to Victor’s own grief and an attempt to cope with the loss of two people who were very important to him? Is it a symbol of the end he sees coming for himself, perhaps the end he wishes for?

A more sobering thought occurs to me. The female could be Celeste. This could be Victor expressing the slow collapse of his own mind, his downward spiral into grief. He could have seen himself falling faster and faster toward the “vanishing point” when his sanity would fail him. He could have seen the same tendencies in Celeste and fear that she would join him in his descent into madness.

A chill runs through me. I am not a believer in prophecy, but Victor’s self-awareness has borne itself out in reality. He may not have been kidnapped after all but simply lost himself to the vanishing point. And Celeste may not have simply run from fear but instead suffered the same collapse.

But what about Lisa? She still doesn’t make sense. Unless… perhaps Victor kidnapped her?

I shake my head. Enough speculation. I must find an answer, not try to guess it.

I look at the rock. Were there an equivalent edifice on the other side, I would say it was representative of Fairy Cove, but there is only the structure on the right. Could this be yet another vanishing point?

I look through the rest of the studio, hoping to find something, some hint that might tell me exactly where to look, but these two cabinets are the only ones that hold completed works, and all of them are variations on the same painting. There is no paperwork or writing of any kind, no journal that might give me a deeper insight into Victor’s mind.

I head to Celeste’s room. She is an extremely sensitive and intuitive girl. She may have gleaned a deeper understanding of her father’s plans and recorded them somewhere. I know I’m grasping at a straw, but I feel very strongly that I’m right on the cusp of understanding this mystery, and if I could only find the one missing piece, then everything would make sense.

The search begins much as it does in Victor’s studio. There is no journal or diary anywhere to be found, and most of the paintings are incomplete sketches that don’t seem to have anything to do with a vanishing point. The glaring exceptions are the drawings of her father stepping through a ring of light. If there’s a clue to be found in that dark blue water and the halo of brighter blue light, then it’s lost on me.

I look through her closet for other drawings. I feel a touch of guilt spying on her like this, but nothing is more important than getting her home safely, and the clue to that might be here among these drawings.

I find stacks of paper that reveal nothing. The subjects range from fantasy sketches of dragons, knights and princesses to still lifes and landscapes of everything but a vanishing point. When I finish looking through everything, I release a soft cry of frustration. There has to be something ! I will not accept that they simply vanished without a trace.

I sit on the edge of Celeste’s bed and wait for my breathing to calm. Celeste has a mirror on top of the desk in her room. The reflection that stares back at me is shocking. My eyes are wild and bloodshot, and my hair is matted. Wisps hang over my forehead, a few strands even touching my lips. I don’t notice them until I see them in the mirror.

I look back at the image of Victor stepping through the blue halo above the water. For a moment, I envy the man. Wherever Victor is now, he no longer needs to worry about his walls crumbling down. They’ve already crumbled, and he can finally be free. Perhaps I’ll be so lucky one day.

I shiver at that thought. I think myself perfectly lucid, but the woman in the mirror is not a sane woman. I can’t help but wonder how close I am to falling into my own vanishing point. How much more can I endure before I close my eyes and open them to find myself surrounded by people in white coats?