Man's Take Magazine

Fiction: Steel Echoes

Steel Echoes

By Jacob James McAndrew
Original Copyright 2001 Jacob James McAndrew

I distinctly heard the ringing of steel, like a blacksmith’s hammer striking an anvil. The sound reverberated inside my head as I turned to find the source of the disturbance. My eyes fell upon nothing unusual.

The softly illuminated walls of my study held their shape, a painting adorning the west wall, and bookcases to the east. Sunlight streamed in from the window behind my desk and cast its morning rays onto the painting. Quite a battle was depicted in this work, with knights atop horses, lances in hand. In the center of the picture, the area brushed by yellow tendrils of sunlight, were two heavily armored figures wielding swords and shields.

The knight on one side wore gleaming silver armor, and his buckler deflected the blade of his opponent, clad in darkened platemail. The gleaming figure held his blade high, ready to deliver a swift blow upon the darkened knight while the battle swelled around them.  

I had gazed upon the painting hundreds of times since I purchased it and hung it on the wall beside my desk, but I never remembered the sun striking it in quite the same way, as if pointing golden fingers at the two men battling in the center. And the sound– I still had not found a source for the metallic ring I heard prior.

 The door to my office was closed to prevent distraction from the day’s work, and I had no devices within my office capable of producing such a sound. A sword hung above the painting, not unlike the ones depicted below. Its blade was pristine steel, polished to a mirror finish. Dull wire was bound around the handle and a small ruby was set in the hilt. The edge was unmarred and as sharp as my shaving razor.

As my gaze swept the room I wondered if something struck the blade and caused it to vibrate. I saw no other possibility for the noise. The east wall was stuffed with leather-bound volumes and the only adornment was the sculpted bust of my late father. He watched me work day and night through pallid plaster eyes, but never did he speak to me. For that I was grateful. In life he was not a kind man, although not unfair or abusive. He was merely a very hard man. I guessed this was the result of a difficult upbringing and a labored childhood.

With a heavy sigh I attempted to put the strange noise out of my mind so I might return to my work. As I lowered my head, two new sounds emerged from the empty space before me. The labored grunt of one man and the scream of another man surprised by sudden agony, were uttered nearly in unison from some unseen source.

 The daylight streaming through the window behind me still pointed to the center of the painting, and it encircled the dueling knights, as a spotlight would point to a pair of performers. As I gazed back at the artwork on the wall, I had to shut my eyes momentarily to verify the image before me. The knights now held altered positions. The blade that was poised above the knight clad in his darkened platemail had been driven into his neck at an angle between his head and shoulder. He held his own blade limply, surprised and sullen eyes peering at his opponent through the eye slit in his helm. Satisfied yet contemptuous, the knight in gleaming plate stared dutifully at his fallen foe.

After scrubbing a hand down my face and through my hair, I forced myself to return to my work once again. This time I managed to lift my pen and posture it to write, but the only scrawl that marred the page was a jagged line, which I drew accidentally in a moment of panic. Just as the tip of my pen touched the paper, a shrill sound like someone expelling a horrendous shriek pierced my ears, and my hand quivered across the page, leaving a zigzag of smeared ink.

My head bolted upright as I took in the room again, still unchanged. I turned to the painting, but it still held the same image as before, one knight in darkened armor with a blade plunged into his neck. The sword gleamed above it, leather-wrapped scabbard hanging just below.

I attempted to force myself to take calm breaths rather than helplessly gulping air. I rested my forehead on my clenched fist and saw the paper with its jagged scratches of ink. Drawn distinctly across the page was an arrow pointing away from me. I directed my gaze along the path of the arrow and found it pointing directly to the sculpted statue of my late father.

My hand trembled as I sighed audibly. It must be a coincidence, I assured myself. I was allowing my mind to wander away from my duties of the day. With a quick swipe of my hand I grasped the sheet of paper from off my desk and crumpled it into a ball. I flung the wad of paper into the corner where it bounced off the edge of the trashcan and fell to the floor.

I merely shook my head and removed a clean sheet of paper to begin my work anew. It seems at this time I should have expected further interruption, but when it came so abruptly, I was most thoroughly surprised. The pen fell from my fingers and I’m embarrassed to admit I let out a rather ineffectual whimper.

A high-pitched shriek tore at my eardrums and seized hold of my concentration. The noise was sharp enough to leave a dull aching in my head where the sound sliced through. Again I looked at the painting. The image remained unaltered, but the sun no longer pointed to the figures with its luminescent fingers. Instead its golden gaze was reflected off the blade of my sword. My eyes followed the beam across the dusty height of my office, and fell upon the sculpture.

My father’s lifeless plaster eyes seemed awakened by the yellow rays. The warm light encircled his face, removing some of the paleness and replacing it with a more natural hue. Before my own eyes he was transformed from a fleshless figurine to an animated being. Color swept out from the circle of sunlight and washed across his face, painting it in a fleshy tone. It deepened as it reached his hair, oozing along each strand, leaving it oily and deep umber. His lips bloomed into a deep red grin, which seemed to carry his usual taint of his wariness.

It had been so long since I stared into my father’s eyes. He had been dead these past thirty years or more. In a way I scarcely recognized them, yet deep down I felt the familiar feeling of his presence. It was comforting in a way, but frightening in another. Oddly enough I wasn’t frightened that a sculpture had abruptly come to life before me, but rather by the genuineness of his presence.

I always felt like a child under my father’s all-encompassing gaze. Even though I usually met or exceeded the standards he set for me, it rarely seemed enough for him. Silently I stared back into those eyes. They seemed flat and dead like a painting, but not only did they follow me, they held life just beyond the irises.

His voice was startling, and further belittling. It held a compassionate tone, and the familiar reverberation of the man who once read to me from the volumes lining those office walls. Its low rolling still captivated me. He said,

“It is time my son. You must awaken now and move on.”

“Awaken? Am I asleep? Where am I to go father?”

The usual sternness in his voice was replaced with a compassionate tone unfamiliar to his tongue. “Come with me son. I will show you.”

Terror gripped me at the thought and I shouted back at the painted plaster pillar, “No! You are dead. I am not ready to die! My own son graduates from the University this year.”

When my father did not respond immediately, I considered this for a moment. I had only seen my son on a handful of occasions since he left to receive his higher education several years before. It reminded me of my relationship with my father when I attended school and how he was always too busy with his work.

“Son,” his voice was soothing and patient, just like when he counseled me after the first lady in my life left me. The memory of him sitting with me and comforting me was vivid in my mind, brought out by this rarely used tone in his voice. He paused, as if considering how to word his next utterance. My father never had difficulty speaking his mind before, so I wondered what could trouble him now. Perhaps death had changed him in ways I could not comprehend.

“Son,” he started again, flat painted plaster eyes blinking. “You yourself have been dead these last four years. Your son has long since completed his schooling, though your body passed just before he graduated.”

A spear of stark fear drove through me sharply. I refused to believe him, it was surely a trick. A treacherous trick to push me in some unknown direction. My father had been a hard, unyielding man in life, but it seemed that in death he had resorted to deceit to push me beyond my own motivation.

I addressed the foolish statue and its carnival quality trickery, shouting in defiance, “No. I do not believe you and I shall not be manipulated by you any longer. Be gone. Leave me forever.”

As soon as the words left me I struggled to take them back, but it was too late. They had apparently taken hold already.

The vitality rinsed off the statue, color streaking down to reveal the bland white shape underneath as if cleansed by a deluge of rainwater. It pooled on the lacquered mahogany base in a puddle of viscous brown slime. A thin vertical line formed between the eyes of the sculpture, now bleached white once again.

The line quickly spread down across his nose and up along his forehead. More dark lines begun forming from the spot between his eyes, and then fanned out in every direction, forming a spider web shape. A moment later the entire bust busted into a hundred tiny fragments. The dusty crumbs spilled onto the polished base, and tumbled onto the floor.

The western wall began to rumble and shake, and the picture bounced back and forth, its gilded frame slamming into the wall. After one final bounce, the entire painting, frame and all, tore in half. It was not a slow ripping, but an instantaneous slice which divided the canvas and frame all at once, in a wavy line. It wasn’t a clean cut but it did separate the painting into two equal halves, one remained affixed to the wall and the other fell to the floor face down.

I watched the sword above the halved painting tremble against the bucking wall. The knight in darkened armor occupied the new edge of the picture. His enemy’s sword still buried in his neck, but the figure himself was no longer attached to the blade. The gleaming knight had fallen off the wall with the other piece of the painting, and the dying knight now stood alone in death.

After one last bump, the sword bounded off the wall and plummeted. It pierced the upside-down half painting on the floor and drove itself into the wooden plank underneath. All remained still and quiet as I gazed at the swaying sword sticking upright from the floor. The sun’s rays still penetrated the window and one traced a golden path to the hilt of the sword. It fed into the ruby affixed to the hilt and made it glow an eerie red. The moment I let my vision slip past the glowing ruby, everything I imagine as reality proved me wrong as it suddenly ceased to exist.

A blanket of blackness blasted my vision, sucking the contents of the room into a narrowing vortex of anti-light. The light dwindled to a pinpoint, and once that too faded I was left immersed in a black tunnel of the void.  The cold loneliness sunk in at once and I began screaming. I shouted for my father, pleading that he not abandon me again. It seemed his work was done though, simply shattering my illusions about being alive. Perhaps he never existed at all. In either case, as much as I would have welcomed it, I never heard his voice again. 

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