Free The Messengers by Edward Hogan Page A

needed. But Peter wanted to go in, and I followed him through the door of the cubist room. Straight in front of us was a painting called
Female Nude
, all blocks and shapes.
    “So this is the kind of thing that a recipient sees when we show them the message?” I said.
    “Apparently. Maybe even more coded and scrambled.”
    Peter read from the information board on the wall. “‘Instead of showing objects from one viewpoint, the cubist artist depicts the subject from many viewpoints to represent it in greater context.’”
    “Blah, blah, blah,” I said.
    The futurism room was scarier, angrier. Crooked cities, melting bodies. There was a sculpture of a man who looked as if he were in the process of exploding.
    Again, Peter studied the board. “These futurist guys were mixed up in some nasty stuff,” he said. He read aloud: “‘The love of danger, violence, patriotism, and war.’”
    I spun around, taking in all the distorted shapes and drooping faces. I was becoming dizzy. I kept thinking some violent scene was suddenly going to emerge from the paint. “What’s wrong?” Peter said.
    “Nothing. Let’s go.”
    As we walked away, I caught sight of a single quote from Pablo Picasso, stenciled onto the wall:

    We bought noodles and sat on the bench, watching seagulls peel out of the clouds and perch on the big letters of HELMSTOWN PIER . They looked proud and full of vitality, and they gave me a bit of hope. I looked down at our hands. They had stamped us: OCEAN LIFE . It was an almost perfect afternoon. Or, at least it would have been, had it ended there.

Peter went back to the beach hut and put on a checked shirt. He collected his guitar and an art gallery brochure, and we walked to the bus stop on the grass above the cliffs. He smoked and we talked. I told him about my father and about Johnny being on the run, and he listened. It was the first time I’d really talked to anyone about Johnny’s situation.
    He told me that when he was nine, his father had gone into hospital for major surgery. There had been complications and a second operation. He’d spent six weeks in intensive care, and it seemed that he wouldn’t make it, but somehow he fought back from the brink. The family couldn’t believe it — they’d started to accept his death. The doctors had told Peter that his daddy was a miracle man. A week after he came out of hospital, Peter’s father slipped and fell down the cellar steps. Peter found the body. He had his first blackout the day after the funeral. “It taught me that there’s no meaning in life,” he said. “And there is nothing you can do to stop death. It’s inevitable. People think they’re in control of their lives, but they’re not. Better get used to it.”
    It occurred to me that we’d both had these God-awful traumatic experiences before our first blackouts — Peter had found his dead father, and I’d watched my brother being beaten to within an inch of his life in front of a crowd of lunatics. I wondered if that was a coincidence.
    All I knew was this: the feeling I got, waiting to get on the bus and go to the Windmill View Retirement Home, was not one I planned to get used to. It was sickening.
    Peter rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. The bus came and we went up to the top deck. There was nothing but green fields out one window, nothing but blue sea out the other. His leg was next to mine. I could feel the heat of it and wondered if he could feel the heat of mine too. I gripped the seat in front of us.
    We got off outside a big old white building that looked like a hospital. “You know where we are?” he said.
    I could see the windmill behind the retirement home. “Yes,” I said.
    “Are you OK?”
    I looked at him. “No,” I said.
    “You will be.”
    I looked at the windows of the retirement home and saw a shadow pass. “I don’t think so,” I said. I turned away, but Peter took me by the arm. He was strong. I felt my foot lift off the ground.
    “This has to