The Wake

The museum was quiet. The rooms echoed softly with the wandering steps of the last patrons. It was closing time, but there were always a few stubborn people, who waited to leave until the last possible moment, a few who wanted their money’s worth. The security guards checked their watches, waiting until it would be appropriate to be pushy. Coffee had stopped dripping in the café, and the ticket takers lazily tapped their feet against the floor.

But when the stranger came, he came fast. The doors flew inward with the force of his entry, and an air of mad, desperate energy flowed in behind him.

He looked normal, is what they said. They didn’t know what else to say. The image of his face slipped away from them, just beyond their grasp. What did he look like? He was…I don’t know, just normal, like you could just walk right by him without noticing. Was he tall? No, but he wasn’t short. Was he fat? Skinny? No. No. How was he dressed? Um… What color was his hair? It was… maybe kind of dark. Or it could have been light. I don’t remember.

That’s what they said, after it was over. They didn’t remember. Except for his eyes. Nobody had trouble remembering the eyes. That was the one thing about him that wasn’t normal, they all said. His eyes, they were gray. Not gray like light blue, or pale green, or faded brown. Gray. Like smoke or fog, steel or stone. Gray. They remembered that.

He slid recklessly across the smooth wooden floor, madly skidding as he changed direction. His limbs swung wide for balance, but his eyes were focused, and a smile stretched across his lips. That was the other thing they remembered, in a hazy, distant way. They couldn’t picture his face, but from the time he entered to the time he left, they said, he never stopped smiling.

If they had been given a moment, the staff behind the reception desk would have regained their composure, and politely asked the frantic stranger to leave. If the ticket-takers, standing on either side of the lobby’s glass doors, had seen him coming, they might have stood in his way. But it was too late for that. He was there and gone, his body already propelled into the museum just as everyone thought, Who is this guy? They paused a beat. The echo of the lobby’s smooth wooden floor died out, the echo on the gallery’s cool stone picked up, and then with one voice, the staff began to shout.

It was too late. He was gone. As the stunted crackle of walky-talkies sprang up behind him, he rocketed towards his destination. He didn’t mount the stairs so much as collide with them. A couple, coming down the steps to leave, was thrown aside, split apart. They joined in the yelling of the staff.

All over the museum, the guards perked up their ears, raised their radios to their lips to respond to the anxious warnings of the lobby staff. They began to walk briskly towards the stairwell. Their faces wore dutiful looks of concern. Each guard went to their respective landing, to cut him off. But they were also a step too slow, and the guards on the second floor, just as they arrived, reported the sound of running footsteps in the gallery, fading. They turned and pursued, as the other guards came clattering down to join them.

Paintings rose and fell on either side of him, muted white pedestals stood in his way. He dodged them, barely slowing, and ran on. All around him were faces, gazing down from the curled madness of their frames. Some were dead, and some had never lived, and their expressions, captured in frozen, riotous paint seemed to change at his approach. Some had been cast in sadness, some in anger, some in bliss. But were they really? Had this vast array of human emotion been one emotion all along? Maybe, as legions of faithful had stepped before them, looked and left, there had been some trick of the light that masked this new expression. Some stood, or sat, posed. Some were locked in struggle, some twisted in pain. They lay slack with depression, writhed in ecstasy, brimmed with victory and defeat. But now, as they looked down on the stranger, they seemed different. What was it that had lain behind their eyes so long, unnoticed? Satisfaction? And what, despite the surface posturing of their faces, was that enigmatic expression that tinged their lips? Was it a smile?

He ran through the rooms, through the thinned crowds. He passed two janitors, sitting idly with their mops, and as he passed them he waved. They caught the fleeting image of deep gray eyes and a smile, surprisingly they waved back.

The guards split up and spread through every gallery, roaming in teams. The remaining museum-goers regarded them quizzically as they searched, surprised at how many of guards suddenly seemed to be there. Had there been that many before? They were an angry, faceless army, rustling their red jackets and buzzing their black radios as they impotently searched. They were sure they had him cornered, checked every nook, every hole, every possible hiding place. They asked the patrons if they had seen him. Yes, he went that way, and each guard who followed a pointing finger strode headfirst into another who had done the same. Where was he? They had covered the stairs. They had filled every room on the floor. Where was he?

Then the guards in the most isolated corner heard a clang. They peered into a secluded hallway, at a door marked Emergency Exit. Shouting, much louder than they needed to, they used their walky-talkies to relay the news to their peers and went barreling through the door.

The pounding of the stranger’s steps was multiplied beneath him by the rushing feet of his pursuers. The dust of the disused staircase flowed behind him as he ran. The narrow shaft of the stairwell snatched his rhythmic steps from the air, vibrated them, echoed them against the walls. For a moment, as the stranger approached the end of this climb, and his pursuers began theirs, the noise took on a terrible physical force, a violent, shaking solidification between their ears, a space without thought or feeling or anything but noise. They clutched at their heads.

Then the stranger was through the door and the noise was just footsteps. The guards, panting, struggled up the stairs after him, and the stranger was another level higher.

The people on the third floor had heard the commotion below them, had paused and cocked their heads to the side. The stranger’s arrival broke in on their listening and wondering, and startled them, but he ignored their stares. Their heads swiveled on frozen bodies as they watched his frantic, smiling progress through the room and past them into an empty gallery and out of sight. When, seconds later, both stairways erupted with red uniformed bodies, the patrons pointed them in the right direction. But the first room branched off into others, which branched into others in turn, and the stranger was speeding through the maze ahead of them.

There were relics all around him. Relics form every forgotten age, from every corner of the earth. The gilded, impotent wealth of the dead rested with tired poise at every turn. The objects, the weapons and tools and luxuries of the past, shared a common gleam, a capturing of the golden lights that shone down on them. It gave them a strange sheen of similarity, as if the times and cultures of their origin didn’t exist, as if, beneath the surface, they were separate parts of the same unknowable whole. Why did they quiver, as the stranger ran past? Were his footfalls so heavy? And what was that peculiar trick of the light, as it shone from their shaking surfaces? What gave them that air of dark and quiet anticipation?

The guards followed after, arms pumping and heads bobbing. They began as one group, more numerous then it seemed they were a moment ago, more than it seemed one museum would need. And at every turn and junction, they branched out like an angry red flood. The size of each split group seemed no smaller than the original whole, dividing but not diminishing. There were no more stairs on this floor, other than the ones they came from themselves. There were no more exits or escapes. They knew it was only a matter of time before he was cornered and they had him. They kept running.

Every room was searched, cleared, sterilized, one by one. After each room was found empty of all but tired, curious spectators, the guards flew more zealously to the next. Soon there was only one left. The red tide slid in form three directions and stopped, just in time to avoid the glittering field of glass that had been scattered across the floor from the broken window. And while they bellowed into their radios, while they left a group at the window to guard against his return, while the rest stamped quickly back toward the stairwells, there was no longer any doubt of his destination. They knew that he was up there. They recognized him now. And they worried that it was almost too late.

Web Editor’s Note: To see the second installment of “The Exhibit,” please .