24. Holden
24
HOLDEN
W e piled into the kitchen as soon as we got back to the house, the anxiety from Moon’s run-in with Lucien still thrumming in the air. Hendrix was the first to move, grabbing the coffee pot and setting it to brew like we all needed caffeine to think straight. Moon placed the rolled-up canvas on the kitchen island, her expression taut as she smoothed her hands over the fabric of her gown.
“What exactly did Lucien say to you?” I asked, my voice sharper than I intended as I leaned against the counter.
Her lips pressed into a thin line before she let out a breath. “It was more about what he did. He was holding the ledger.” Her voice was uncharacteristically serious. “The way he acted, it wasn’t casual. He knew exactly what he was looking at. And then there was his pin…”
“What pin?” Conrad asked, pulling a chair closer to the island.
“It was a crow and a key pin on the lapel of his tux,” Moon said, her fingers curling into the edge of the countertop. “I think it may have matched his cufflinks, but I couldn’t see them as clearly.”
“Anyway, Lucien didn’t say anything outright about the crow and key, but he taunted me like he wanted to make me crumble. He said he and Blanton had ‘an understanding’ and ‘an intimacy,’ implying that it gave him the right to do as he pleased. He also mocked me—said I should keep up the Kit Kat girl act and leave the grown-up games alone—or something close to that. And he clearly is involved in whatever Blanton is in. His pin directly links him to the stamp in the ledger and the symbol in James’ art.”
Hendrix cursed softly, pouring the freshly brewed coffee into mugs and sliding one toward me. “If he knows about the ledger, he might know about James’ paintings too,” he said, leaning on the counter. “He got into Blanton’s office, didn’t he? What’s stopping him from finding the studio?”
“Us,” Conrad said firmly, pulling out the canvas and spreading it across the island. “We obviously can’t get back in there tonight, but I say we go after hours tomorrow and clear the studio. Holden, what do you think?”
I nodded in agreement. “Yeah, now that he saw Moon coming from the false door, if he didn’t know it was there before, he definitely does now. I want to get all of my brother’s work out of there,” I said tersely. “I don’t really give a fuck if Blanton notices. It’s not his to keep.”
“Understandable. Tomorrow night we’ll go back to the gallery and clear out the studio,” Hendrix confirmed.
I shifted my attention to the map of Charleston which was vibrant under the warm kitchen lights, its streets winding in intricate patterns, the waterfront drawn in bold strokes. Conrad tapped one of the intersections with his finger. “Let’s start here. James didn’t do anything without a reason—there’s got to be something he wanted us to see.”
I sat down beside him, staring at the map as if the answers might suddenly materialize. Moon pulled a notebook from one of the drawers, flipping to a blank page and grabbing a pen. “We’re going to record everything,” she said, her voice steady now, purpose driving her movements. “Every detail, every mark. If there’s a pattern, we’ll find it.”
Conrad nodded, his gaze sweeping over the map. “These look like the main streets downtown,” he said, tracing the lines with his fingers. “King Street, Meeting Street, Broad—they’re all here. The Battery is down here, with White Point Garden right where you’d expect. But the way this map focuses on the peninsula is strange—look how detailed it gets around the old historic districts, but Johns Island and Shem Creek are barely sketched in.”
He moved his hand to the western edge of the map. “Here’s the Ashley River winding up toward Magnolia Cemetery. The industrial port areas, the Union Pier, Shipyard Creek. The lines are clean, almost too clean—I don’t see any of the hidden markings like we found in his other paintings.” His fingers drifted toward the coast. “Folly Beach is here, but the marshlands aren’t as detailed as I’d expect, especially near the Morris Island Lighthouse.”
Hendrix leaned in, tilting his head as he scanned the lines. “It’s like James was more focused on certain areas—look at how precise this is near the Ravenel Bridge and along the waterfront.”
Moon’s eyes flicked over the map, her expression thoughtful. “The trails up here,” she said, tapping near the Francis Marion Forest, “are drawn in faintly, like he wanted to include them but not give them much attention. It’s more like a suggestion than a guide.”
“But I’m confused that it’s just a map,” I said finally, leaning back in my chair. “No codes, no tricks—just Charleston laid out like you’d find in a guide, but it is weird that he gave more detail to some places.”
“Flip it,” Moon said. “If the map is one part of the puzzle, maybe the other side will make more sense.”
Conrad turned the canvas over to reveal the painting that been hidden beneath the frame. The shift was immediate—where the front was structured and orderly, the back was chaos. The abstract shapes and swirls seemed to pulse with energy, strange symbols woven into the layers of paint like whispers from a language long forgotten.
Hendrix leaned closer and spoke his questions aloud: “It feels like the back is the real painting. But I don’, but it feels like everything James made was so intentional—why not just start on a fresh canvas if he didn’t intend for them to be linked?”
I nodded. “I agree with Moon. I guess we need to start with what we’re even looking at on the back. I’ve never seen another of my brother’s paintings look as crazy and chaotic as this one.”
“It’s abstract, but it’s deliberate,” Conrad said, his voice thoughtful. “See these here?” He pointed to vine-like lines and continued. “The only thing that I see similar between the two is that the vines are all tangled and overlap, kind of like the streets on the map.”
I frowned, tilting my head. “But why hide this abstract one in the first place? What was he so afraid of someone finding?”
Moon looked up at me, her expression resolute. “Maybe it’s not just about what’s hidden,” she said. “Maybe it’s more about how we’re supposed to fit them together.”
“Alright,” Hendrix said, straightening and folding his arms. “So, where do we start?”
“Here,” Conrad said, tapping a section where the symbols seemed denser, more intricate. “We break it down. Figure out what symbols are next to each other so we can somehow interpret the narrative he’s telling.”
As they debated, I glanced at Moon, who was scribbling furiously in her notebook, her lips moving faintly as if she were cataloging every brushstroke in her head. For a moment, the air felt thick with possibility, like James was still here, guiding us toward something bigger than ourselves.
Whatever he’d left behind, we were getting closer to it. And if Lucien was watching, we didn’t have time to waste.
“I don’t really know how to make sense of this chaos,” Conrad admitted. “It’s like my eyes are swimming everywhere without seeing anything clearly.”
Moon perked up all of a sudden. “Do you guys have some painter’s tape? We could section it into quadrants and search each for symbols. I’ll keep track of what we identify.”
Hendrix rummaged in a hall closet and came back with a roll of tape that Moon cut into thin strips so the canvas wouldn’t be covered in thick tape lines.
Moon carefully sectioned the canvas into quadrants with painter’s tape, her hands steady as she pressed the thin strips along the surface. The symbols were difficult to make out at first, hidden among the swirling silver vines that extended outward from the large, cracked eye in the center. The fractures in the eye were jagged, like spiderwebs of broken glass, pulling everything else into their orbit.
“It’s like the eye’s watching us,” Hendrix muttered, leaning over the table. “And it’s pissed.”
“Probably judging us for not seeing what’s right in front of us,” Conrad said, frowning.
“Let’s focus,” I said. “Moon, you’re taking notes?”
“Yep. Ready.” She held up a pen and flipped to a blank page. “Let’s start in the center and work out. The eye’s too obvious to ignore.”
“It’s cracked,” Conrad said, tracing the fractures lightly with his finger. “But they’re deliberate, not random. Look how the cracks spread—they guide your eye toward everything else on the canvas and the cracks twist into vines.”
“Creepy as fuck,” Hendrix grumbled.
“And fitting,” Moon said, her gaze narrowing as she scanned the area just around the eye. “What’s this?” She pointed toward a small, intricate design close to the fractures.
“A dagger,” Conrad said after a moment, his tone thoughtful. “Small but sharp. It almost looks ceremonial.”
“Or like something you’d use to stab someone in the back,” Hendrix added darkly. “This shit is twisted.”
“And there,” Hendrix pointed to the edge of a swirling vine. “Scales of justice. Barely noticeable unless you’re looking for them. Just like in that one painting.”
Moon scribbled furiously in her notebook as we moved outward, quadrant by quadrant.
“Skulls,” I said, his voice quiet. “Woven into the vines. Jesus. Their hollow eyes look like they’re staring at us.”
“And there’s a crying child,” Moon added, pointing to a faint outline near the center. Her voice tightened as she added, “Why a child? What the hell is James trying to say?”
“Maybe this one knows,” Hendrix said, tapping another symbol—a window with a tiny shadow perched on the sill. The shadow resolved itself into a crow, its head cocked as if it were watching us.
Moon leaned closer, her brow furrowing. “That’s…unsettling.”
“Yeah, well look at this.” Conrad gestured toward a cluster of roses near the edge of the canvas. The petals were red, dripping like blood, staining the silver vines beneath them.
“Of course the flowers are bleeding,” Hendrix said dryly. “Why wouldn’t they be?”
“And there’s a caged bird over here,” Hendrix added. “Right next to…is that a golden mask?”
“It is,” Moon confirmed, jotting it down. “And here—a heart. Pierced by a needle, dripping blood.”
“Lovely,” I deadpanned, my stomach twisting as I scanned further. “What’s this one?”
“A hand,” Conrad said.
Hendrix’s finger paused near another corner. “Disembodied hands,” he said, frowning. “Pulling strings. That shit’s freaky.”
We continued working our way outward, finding more symbols woven into the chaotic swirl of vines and shapes. A sailboat with a mast shaped like a crow’s silhouette. The cables of a bridge containing faint, almost imperceptible silhouettes of people hanging as if by threads.
“Flowers,” Moon said softly, her hand hovering over a cluster. “The petals form nooses. You can’t see it unless you step back.”
“And here,” Conrad said, “a broken compass.”
Moon sat back, her pen hovering over the notebook. “They’re connected somehow—to the map, to the front. But how?”
“It’s not just what they are,” Hendrix said, his jaw tightening. “It’s where they are. Look how some are clustered together, and others are way out on their own.”
Conrad nodded. “It’s like they’re meant to be matched to something on the map. The eye…it’s the center. Everything spreads from there.”
“But matched to what?” I asked, my frustration growing. “The streets? Landmarks? What’s the point if we don’t know where to start?”
“Or if the answer’s even on the damn map,” Hendrix muttered, crossing his arms. “This is starting to feel like James was screwing with us.”
“Or warning us,” Moon countered, her tone sharp. She exhaled, her grip on the pen tightening. “We’ll figure it out. This means something—I know it does.”
We sat in silence for a moment, the symbols staring back at us like fragments of a puzzle we didn’t yet understand. The weight of James’ hidden painting settled over us, heavy and unrelenting. Whatever he was trying to tell us, we knew one thing for sure: it wasn’t meant to be simple.