The Artist of Axeholme

Elanor stood before the painting trying to understand what felt so different about it. What made it so…. She shook her head, whatever the difference was, for the moment it escaped her. It was not by one of the greats, full of technique and talent. In fact, it was almost childlike in its simplicity yet it… spoke to her. That was it. In some way, somehow, it spoke to her.

She tapped her lips with a finger, trying to coax from the composition what it was that so enchanted her. To capture its essence. From the centre of the painting to the middle foreground a crystal-clear river ran between banks of lush verdancy. Waters so translucent the rounded stones and pebbles at the bottom were visible, with small brown shapes which might be sticklebacks amongst them.

On the left of the river, a strip of grass bordered by a dark forest of straight trunked trees, filling the picture to its edge, diminishing in height into the distance. On the right, green sward ran in gentle swales into the midground. Beyond, low hills, blended into higher ground purpled by distance. Snow-capped peaks rose behind them. All this beneath a cloudless sky of eggshell blue.

Elanor could almost taste and smell that air. Silly really, how could oil and canvas smell of anything else? Yet, she knew with certainty, the air would be clean with a fresh tangy taste scented with pine from the forest. She moved closer to the painting. Breathing in through her nose brought the unmistakable smells of pine and grass. Impossible! She should only be able to smell oil paint, varnish, the wood of the frame. 

It was not that which made her step back quickly, her hand lifting to her face, eyes wide with surprise, shock and yes, she realised, fear. For as she breathed in the scents of the forest, within its depths, a pair of glowing amber orbs had appeared beside the bole of a tree. Those first pair were swiftly followed by others until it seemed sets of glowing eyes peered from behind every trunk in the forest, which were themselves barely discernible in the gloom cast by their canopy.

She briefly closed her eyes, trying to slow her breathing and her heart from its current gallop. When she opened them, there was no sign of the eyes. She shook her head and chuckled ruefully. It must have been her imagination running wild. She looked around to see if her discomfiture had been witnessed and was both pleased and surprised to find the gallery empty. Her legs were a little unsteady as she moved to the next picture.

The small label beneath the picture informed her it was by the same artist.  Landscape:  Axeholme Cove by The Artist of Axeholme

The previous landscape had borne the title: Landscape: Axeholme Vale by The Artist of Axeholme. Eleanor approached with not a little trepidation at what it might show her. Focusing on the painting, a similar size to the first one, some forty-eight inches square, which depicted a seascape.

The sky, the same clear azure as before, met the sea at a horizon of sparkling light. Small whitecaps showed as the sea approached the foreground. White foam swirled where it met the rocky arms enclosing the cove. Small waves broke gently on golden sands which ran to the bottom edge of the canvas.

Atop the tall cliffs bounding the cove, yellow flowers drooped over the edges of the same verdant sward. In the cliff face on the left of the cove, could be seen a number of small dark openings, presumably caves. At the foot of the cliffs a larger one opened onto the sand.

Eleanor eyed the picture askance, but when she noticed the dark blobs of what looked like seal’s heads seeming to bob amongst the waves, she looked closer. Like the other painting, its style was again, simple, straightforward, but with no obvious brush strokes. Both paintings were almost like photographs in that respect. Perhaps it was that which made them appeal to her so much.

Stepping closer to look at the seals, amber eyes opened and began watching her from within the darkness of the openings. Her hands came up to her mouth to stifle the scream she felt rising in her throat. As the eyes multiplied, there was movement in the picture. The seals heads disappeared one by one and in their place, long, golden, scaled, bifurcated tails waved lazily in the air before disappearing below the waves.

Once again Elanor stepped back from the painting but kept her eyes open. One by one the pairs of glowing eyes winked out until there was no evidence of their existence. The cove was empty of all life, all movement. Just a canvas covered in paint and varnish in a framework of brown wood.

Stepping backwards Elanor bumped against a bench in the centre of the gallery. She let her legs fold beneath her, sitting down with a thump. Her heart pit pattered in her chest and pressing a hand to the base of her throat, she took deep breaths in through her nose in an attempt to calm herself.

She sat on the brown leather of the padded bench, eyes flitting between both paintings looking for confirmation of what she’d seen, but finding none. Nothing in them suggested they were anything more than canvas and paint. Which meant….

She shook her head, she didn’t think she was going mad, but then again wasn’t that what every madman thought? What was the old saying? ‘All the world’s mad save thee and me… and I’m not so sure about thee”’

Once her heart beat had settled back to a normal rhythm and her heart itself was back in its normal place and not in her throat, she gingerly got to her feet. She looked to her left and as she both expected and feared, there were at least two more paintings by the ‘Artist of Axeholme’. From where she stood, she could not really see any detail but even so the style looked similar. Shutting her eyes once more, taking a deep breath, on reluctant feet, Eleanor moved to the next painting.  

As she stood before the next painting, she was dimly aware of someone else entering the gallery but paid them no heed. Her attention focused on what the label announced was Landscape: Axeholme Fens by The Artist of Axeholme.

Unlike the previous paintings, the skies on this canvas were dark, filled with forbidding purple-black clouds lowering over a flat dismal landscape. On the horizon the setting sun was a fiery orb, the top bisected by clouds whose bases were a lurid admixture of red, orange and black.

Mid canvas, silhouetted against the sun, a blackened skeletal tree with bare twigless limbs rose from a crimson and ebony pool of oily looking water bounded by clumps of low spiked foliage of some undetermined type filling the foreground to the edges of the canvas.

The trunk, the tops of the branches with their broken and splintered ends, the ragged, chewed looking, tips and edges of the foliage were limned in a corrosive red.

Eleanor stared at the scene with a growing feeling of dread. The contrast between this canvas and the previous ones was astonishing. It was clearly by the same artist, the same lack of discernible brush strokes, the same use of simple colours skilfully blended. This canvas, instead of speaking to her as those before. stirred an abhorrence she had never previously felt from a painting. As she stared at the painting, feeling… she wasn’t sure what she felt. Sick, horror, disgust, she saw a series of ripples spreading out from the foot of the tree towards her. She didn’t wait to see what had caused the ripples but turned away and moved to the last canvas.

A night scene greeted her gaze as she stopped before the fourth painting. Landscape: Axeholme Fastness by The Artist of Axeholme read the label.

Pale grey clouds at the top of the canvas, through which portions of a large looming moon showed silver tinged with a hint of red at the visible edges. Dark peaks thrust saw like edges towards the clouds, while on the right an argent cascade fell from between two cliffs into a pool at their feet.

In the centre of the canvas, its dark stones somehow distinguishable from the faces of the peaks and cliffs rose a massive building. Eleanor didn’t know what to call it, fortress, citadel, castle? She looked at the label again, Axeholme Fastness, it seemed apt. As she understood the word, it meant strength, immovability, impregnability and this edifice met all of those and more.

Each massive stone of the outer and inner curtain walls seemed to grow from those below, blending into rounded towers and angled bastions. A tall square central keep soared into the dark sky and from a single window near its top emitted a golden glow.

The only other light came from the barbican’s, either side of a raised drawbridge, narrow windows. Moonlight glimmered on the water in the moat and the bare ground before the fastness was coloured by red edged silver. Eleanor was stunned by the painting’s solidity. The feeling it gave of immense sleeping strength, tempered with a brooding sense of malevolence.

“It has presence does it not?”

When the voice spoke in her ear, she started, stifling with both hands a scream.

“Forgive me, I did not mean to frighten you,” the voice was deep, melodious, with a slight accent she could not place.

Eleanor laughed nervously before replying, “it’s okay, you surprised me, I hadn’t realised any one else was in the gallery and I was engrossed in these paintings,” she smiled at the man watching her.

He was tall, six inches or more over six foot she guessed as she looked up at him. Impeccably dressed in an expensive three-piece suit, no tie, collar open to reveal slightly tanned skin. Dark hair, a brown bordering on black, eyebrows and beard to match. Brown eyes, set wide apart above a Roman nose, generous mouth, firm jaw. Under his scrutiny, Eleanor unconsciously smoothed her hair as she felt her cheeks warming.

“What do you think of the paintings?” he asked with a small smile.

“I’m not sure what to think,” Eleanor replied as she looked again at Axeholme Fastness. “They… fascinate me, while at the same time, they… repulse,” she said honestly, looking at him.

“They are… ‘unique’ and it is true they have a certain… ‘je ne sais crois’ do they not?” he glanced at the painting, still with that small smile on his lips.

“I suppose so, Mr…?” Eleanor hesitated, not wanting to commit herself one way or the other before knowing more about this man. Like his name for a start.

Ignoring the implied question, he regarded her impassively. Eleanor licked her lips, nervous under his scrutiny.

“Do you know the artist?” she inquired, trying to dispel the silence between them.

“I do indeed know the… ‘Artist of Axeholme’” replied the man, his smile widening.

 From the corner of her eye, she caught movement and turning her head to see more clearly, her eyes widened in an admixture of horror and surprise.

The movement was the slow downward progress of the drawbridge, illuminated by a widening band of golden light crisscrossed by the bars of a portcullis. As the drawbridge neared the bottom of its arc, the portcullis began to rise. There was no sign of anyone or anything operating the mechanisms controlling the entrance to the Fastness and no sound until the drawbridge slotted home with a thump she felt as much as heard.

In a daze Eleanor felt a hand firmly grasp her elbow and guide her forwards. She instinctively resisted, why she couldn’t have explained. Then that melodious voice spoke in her ear again.

“Come, come, Eleanor, step closer. Look deeper into the painting, let yourself see the grandeur, the might, the world that is Axeholme.”

Eleanor frowned as she felt herself moving closer to the painting. Had she told this man her name? She didn’t think so. Why would she? So how could he know it? Her thoughts tumbled over each other, even as she was led reluctantly forward.

Focusing on the painting, the golden light from the entrance to the Fastness filled her vision to the exclusion of everything else. The light seemed to reach out from the canvas and caress her skin in pulses of luminosity. It drew her forward, closer to the entrance, forward into Axeholme.

Donald enjoyed his work as a docent looking after the upper galleries of the Museum of Art. It was quiet this late on a week-day afternoon. In fact, he had not seen anyone in the second-floor galleries. Climbing the broad marble steps to the third floor, he heard the murmur of voices coming from the last gallery on the right. A man and a woman he surmised from the timbre of the voices. Not talking loudly, but sounds, even whispers, often carried in certain areas of the museum.

At the top of the stairs, he turned left and wandered down to the far end checking each gallery room as he passed. All were empty and he turned onto the landing running along the front of the building. The large windows full of late afternoon light as he passed turning the corner to the galleries on the right.

He paused in the doorway of the first gallery, expecting to see the couple he’d heard but was surprised to find the room empty. Frowning he looked around but they were not headed to the stairwell, nor had they done so while he was on the far side of the stairwell. He would have seen them as they left. Entering the gallery, he made his way down the left then back up the right. The room was empty, no one crouching or lying behind a bench. Not that he’d expected there to be.

He shrugged, either he was imagining things or the museum acoustics were up to more tricks than usual. He eyed the paintings as he passed them. The paintings in this gallery, mainly by minor artists, were among his least favourites. Those ones, those by the Artist of Axeholme, always made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

He couldn’t have said why they were innocuous enough, but… something about them felt… wrong. That last one, the one with the massive citadel in the mountains, with its closed off unwelcoming look, just those few lights…. It gave him the Heebie Jeebies and that was a fact! He shrugged, looked at his watch and then around once more. Not long until closing, ten minutes or so. Wouldn’t take long to chivvy the few visitors out today. In fact, he might as well start shutting down up here now. Save coming up all them stairs again.

He flicked the light switches as he left and the gallery filled with dusk. In the Axeholme Fastness, the single light in the tower had been joined by another below it, while the lights in the barbicans illuminated the closed drawbridge.