No story is new. No great work of art is an original. Recurring themes in Literature and Art are constantly being recycled through ancestral knowledge. This knowledge is passed through ages, heedless of the constraints of time or space. This is what my Father taught me. My friend and mentor. I miss him terribly. I miss him now, as I hold this pillow to his withered face. As I listen to his dying breaths, and feel him struggle feebly under the white linen.
Long ago, when my Father first started his studies, before he adopted me, he had a wife named Margaret. He would talk of her often. A brilliant woman with a natural talent for storytelling, art, and all things creative. She was a student of my Father, much like myself. My Father told me in secret one day that he never truly had to teach her anything. Her work was inspired by a relentless muse. She would spend days on end locked in her room working on a painting. When it was completed, she would bring it out to display with pride.
The only problem was, each work she would produce would turn out to be a duplicate. A duplicate of a work she had never seen before. My Father, knowing much about art history, would hang her fresh painting on the wall, then bring out a dusty piece of artwork hundreds of years old that matched it exactly. The details would be different, but the forgery was clear. The only problem was, Margaret had never seen it before that moment.
Ashamed and confused about her gift for forgery, Margaret became a recluse. She left my Father to live on a small island in a lake. My Father corresponded with her through letters. Recently, the letters had stopped coming. My Father started to worry, and decided we would take a journey to check up on her. He thought it was time I was introduced to her, and perhaps inspired by her.
Our journey took us through landscapes that all looked familiar to me. I realized they were all famous paintings. Turners, Corots, landscapes from the Hudson River School. Arriving at her island (which looked suspiciously like a Turner), we were greeted roughly by her manservant. I could tell something was upsetting him, and he rudely kept trying to send us away. Upon closer inspection, we noticed that the house looked run down. The servant would not send down a ladder, and scuttled away to hide from us. After much difficulty, we made our way on shore, and docked our small boat.
We were greeted with violence. Out of nowhere, the servant lunged at my Father with a knife. His eyes were wild, and he was babbling nonstop about old stories and mythology. In a panic, I tried to pull the man off of my Father, and wrestle the knife from his hands. He turned his violent attention on me, and we toppled backwards onto the boat. He loomed over me, and I reached behind me to grab something to defend myself with. I grabbed the boat hook, and swung it in his direction right as he fell on me. I felt the hook sink into him, and heard him scream in pain. He stood up, looked at the gore falling out of his belly, and stumbled away. As my Father lifted me out of the boat, we watched the servant helplessly crawl back into the cottage with his entrails dragging behind him. My Father set off for shore to get help while I followed the servant into the run down cottage.
The cottage was worse on the inside. The stench of old decaying death was the first thing I noticed. The stench that could only mean one thing. My fears were answered when I entered the bedroom and found the servant crying over Margaret's bed. In the bed, wrapped in Margaret's night gown, were the remains of what must have once been the poor woman. They were in a badly decomposed state. The servant was clinging to one skeletal hand, and weeping madly. I could tell he was dying fast, and as soon as he began talking, I realized the extent of his senility. While I stayed with him, trying to staunch the bleeding, He told me a fantastic tale. The story of the ghost of Nicholas Twist.
Nicholas Twist is a Muse. He is the messenger who brings ideas to those in need. He is the ghost of the world's oldest ideas and stories. The keeper of all ancestral knowledge and mythology. But he is also a businessman. He does not give ideas away for free. For each new story he brings to you, he takes one of your memories in exchange. For each inspired image he brings you, he takes your memory of a place you have been. This is the way he has been gathering ancestral knowledge throughout history. This is how he collects and transmits stories across continents and across generations.
The man was clearly senile, but this is how he explained his senility. As you grow old, your memories are taken one by one by the ghost of Nicholas Twist. The world grows rich with your inspired work, Nicholas Twist grows fat with your memories, and you are left with nothing. Margaret's servant had felt the touch of Nicholas Twist for too many years. He knew the pain and confusion of senility, and could not bear to see Margaret go through the same thing. So he killed her before Nicholas Twist could get to her. Margaret's life of limitless inspiration would be too much to repay to Nicholas Twist. Killing her was the only way her servant could save her.
I remember this story now, as I stand in my Father's bedroom. I remember all the greatness he gave to me, to Margaret, to the world. It was too much for him too. Nicholas Twist started to make off with his memories long ago. Now, there was nothing left but an empty husk. A vegetable that could not even recognize his own son. I remember the story as I lift the pillow from his slack and lifeless face. As I switch off the light and go downstairs to call the doctor.
I am not so young as I used to be. I make my living selling my ideas to the world, selling my memories to Nicholas Twist. As I lean against the phone trying to remember the doctor's phone number, I wonder how long it will be before Nicholas Twist takes his next victim.
