Like Oil
“I don’t know what makes this art? What makes this so important? We went all the way up into the woods to this little cabin of a museum to stare at this all afternoon, and I just don’t get it,” Brandon said. He was short, thin, with black skin and a thin jaw. He had big, square glasses, which magnified his brown eyes that were skeptically squinting like a beam out of a gloomy lighthouse. There was a solitary picture on a large, wood wall with dust in the corners. The painting was of a streetlight beaming in a blanket of shadow. It was a simple string of metal, curled over like an eyelash, with a pimple of orange light spawning a wide ray into the walls of darkness. Brandon could have painted it in his sleep. It was simple oil on canvas. He’d been taught this technique his freshman year in painting class.
“This is just the first museum we will be stopping at on our way to Duluth. Highway 35 is full of them. I think you should soak in as much as you can, Brandon. These pictures might look simplistic, but you need to consider what was happening when they were made,” Dorothy said. She was short, with curly brown hair and a red flannel dress. She looked as old as the students, but she was their art history instructor. She had red eyes and some green stitches on her left wrist. She rarely hid the fact that she had ancestry from the Reanimated. Most people were progressive enough not to care.
“Can you imagine living while the Drum was going? Many people who captured those scenes had nothing to work with. They couldn’t charge their phones or cameras. They had to paint, sculpt, and draw what was happening,” she said, walking up to the portrait.
“They couldn’t just take pictures with their phones?” Brandon said. He pulled his smartphone out from his pocket. He didn’t even know why he grabbed it. It was like a part of his muscle memory when he heard the word phone.
“The Unnamed destroyed most technology and were proficient at avoiding photography. Besides, none of those digital images really captured the emotion of the moment. I mean look at this streetlight, can’t you feel the fear of seeing that turn on when the Drum was at full strength? I imagine the artist felt just like that streetlight hiding from the Unnamed every single day. A solitary piece of light surrounded by darkness,” Dorothy said.
“I get it, but how long ago did it happen?”
“You know there are still Unnamed around today, and pieces of the Russian Federation still have a working Drum. No humans go within a hundred miles of its green walls.”
“Of course, I know that I’m a kid and kids love monsters.”
“Right, of course, I had no idea. Anyways, don’t you think it is cool? Think of their position, like in the diaries, think about running between houses like mice trying to stay away from a ghostly cat.”
Brandon walked away without replying. The entire museum felt like a cabin they should be camping in. Instead, there were oil paintings hanging on the walls, windows to the past that couldn’t be closed. There was the smell of dust and wood, and some light jazz playing in the background. Brandon couldn’t even believe what he was looking at. Each painting was of something simple. A caved-in school with lines of ivy and flowers crawling over it. Random crushed cars sitting in the road like dead fish with green bones instead of white. It was just scenery of devastation, nothing beyond that. Sure, they were painted well, but other than that it was meaningless.
“I’m done. I’m going outside. I need a break,” Brandon said, walking towards a glass door in the middle of the building.
He was outside before Dorothy could say anything.
It was a late summer day just outside Duluth, Minnesota. The air had a subtle crispness to it. The leaves were braced to change colors and split from their beams in twirling requiems of fire. The museum was on a bit of a hill in the forest with a small brown path that led down to the parking lot, plus another trail through the woods to a vantage point to stare at Lake Superior. It took fifty years for the weather in Duluth to somewhat normalize after the Drum was burned down. Brandon walked past the parking lot without looking up and down into the forest. He needed a break from looking at all the devilries. Learning about the Drum, Unnamed, and everything else was interesting, but school had just started, and Brandon had spent summer being home alone while his parents worked. Socializing was the toughest curriculum to get adjusted to.
The forest was quiet, deep, and bustling about in jade waves. There were small slivers of autumn creeping onto the foliage in bright yellow patterns. Brandon pawed his phone in his right hand while balancing the notebook he was supposed to be using in his left. He wasn’t getting a good signal where they were, and he needed to check on anything that would distract him from the natural world around him. He kept walking and walking, but the small bars of service refused to expand on his digital screen. He stopped and sat down next to a stump just off the path. The air smelled so sweet with flowers and sap it felt artificial. Something stirred across the path from him.
It was tall, flowing, and as wide as a truck. It stood up slowly over him, shedding leaves, dirt, dust, insects, and birds. There was an aching sound as it moved, as if the earth was being forced open beneath his feet. In a few moments, the figure was free of the ground. It was the Unnamed. It was trembling in and out of Brandon’s vision. There were gold claws, ribs, and horns, plus a cloak weaved of leaves and thorns. There was no face, just an outline of a head from the hanging hood. Brandon held up his phone to take a picture. It hissed and dropped back into the trees. Brandon screamed and sprinted uphill towards the museum. The Unnamed weren’t violent unless provoked. There were still many around but were hidden throughout the undergrowth and terrain of post-Drum America.
When Dorothy heard the scream, she laughed as Brandon came running back to the front door. This hadn’t been the first time an art student had been spooked by a nearby Unnamed. Scientists discovered they had complex personalities.
The ones by the museum certainly had a sense of humor.
Some more Greenland Diaries fiction. This story is many years after the destruction of the Drum. It is meant to inject a little complexity into the Unnamed. If you want to learn more about the series, hit it here. Thank you for reading my work.
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