“Rusty“
Graphite, 8.0″x8.0″ wide.
Signed and numbered prints – AVAILABLE
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Tag Archive: Rusty
Jul 03
In the Company of Angels: Episode 16 – Epilogue
In the Company of Angels – Epilogue (Episode 16) Jef Murray 7/3/2015
When Evie Jonsson next planned to have Jill’s aunt, uncle, and cousins over for supper, she also suggested that Jill might like to invite Sam to join them. Jill was only too happy to ask, and although Sam remained hesitant, given that Kate would be there, he was secretly very pleased to have been included.
“Yes, I’ll come,” Sam told her. “But — you’ve got to run blocker for me with Kate. Deal?”
“Deal!” said Jill.
Her aunt and uncle drove up that evening with Kate and Rusty in the back seat of their minivan. Sam arrived soon thereafter, entering through the front door this time instead of through a painting or a mirror. The meal conversation was lively, and everyone appeared to be in a merry mood. After polishing off platters of salad, roast beef, garlic bread, and pasta with asparagus, the younger folk retired to the library to await dessert.
Jill settled Rusty and Sam into overstuffed chairs and retrieved some of her latest storybooks from the shelves to share with Kate on the sofa. Rusty, who had insisted on sitting with Sam at supper, didn’t remain long in his chair, however, but instead went off into a corner of the room by himself, much to Jill’s surprise. Kate confided that Rusty hadn’t been quite himself since their last visit, but that the change had definitely been for the better. Sam, somewhat restless after the meal, stood up and began examining all of the posters and framed paintings that Jill had hanging in the room. These had been squeezed into every nook and cranny not already occupied by bookshelves.
Jill kept an eye on Sam while she and Kate were chatting, and, occasionally, she noticed him fidget with something around his neck. She smiled when it occurred to her that he was likely examining the worlds he could see beyond the frames of the paintings, but she tried to focus most of her attention on Kate. This became more and more difficult, she soon realized, as Kate’s mind was almost constantly on Sam. At first it was amusing, but after a while, Jill realized that the thoughts she was “hearing” from her cousin were likely the very sort of thing that Father Hildebrandt had warned her about.
“I suppose I still have a lot to learn about being a proper Empath,” Jill thought to herself.
Sam, after he had examined all of the pictures in the library, quickly realized that he would either have to join the girls on the sofa or find something else to focus on. So, he wandered over to the corner occupied by Rusty and noticed that the fellow was sprawled out on the floor drawing a picture. Sam was intrigued; he squatted down to take a look. Rusty looked up at him and smiled.
Underneath Rusty’s hands, Sam saw a landscape like none he had ever seen before. Strange, organic-looking cliffs rose beside a meadow and a stream. The execution was pretty simple, but there was a lifelike quality to it that surprised Sam. He quietly reached underneath his collar and grasped his framerunning sapphire. Rusty’s sketch glowed brightly, and was tinged with blue around its edges.
“Wow! That’s quite the sketch, Rusty!” Sam said.
Rusty smiled. “You think so? I decided that, since magic is real, I really ought to draw a magical place I’d like to visit some day. And this is it! I’ve done a couple of other pictures of it back at our house. I call it ‘Tamarinth’. I don’t know if that means anything; I just like the sound of the name….”
“Tamarinth,” Sam repeated. “I like it, Rusty! Maybe you and I can travel there together someday.”
Rusty beamed.
Jill, from across the room, “heard’ the thought pass through Sam’s mind: “I’ve really got to tell Mr. Luke about his little guy….”. And she smiled, realizing that yet another adventure was likely in the making….
— The End —
————————————————————————————————————–
If you have now finished reading this first book in The Framerunners series, thank you and congratulations! This book will remain online for a few weeks, after which it will be taken down. Book two in the series, entitled The Door to Eternity, will begin posting online this September. In the meantime, I wish you all a happy and restful summer!
For those of you who would like to be notified when In the Company of Angels is available in printed and ebook forms, please contact me (you can click on the “Contact Us” button at the bottom of the homepage at www.TheFramerunners.com, or send me a note on Facebook or Google+) and I’ll be happy to add you to our Framerunners email list. Publication of the book is planned for this autumn.
Thank you again for reading, and for supporting The Framerunners!
Jan 07
Cair Paravel
Dec 26
In the Company of Angels: Episode 2.2 – Rusty’s Big Adventure (cont.)
In the Company of Angels, Episode 2.2 – Rusty’s Big Adventure (cont.)
“What do you mean, ‘fell through the painting’?” asked Jill.
“Just what I said! Rusty found a piece of jewelry on the bookshelf and said he was going to keep it. I told him that was stealing, and he needed to put it back where he found it. Then I tried to take it from him so that it wouldn’t get lost, but he pushed me away. And that’s when it happened! He fell against the picture over there…” Kate pointed again at the picture, which was a large poster-sized fairy tale scene of a castle on an island surrounded by the sea. “And then he just…he just toppled backward, as if he was falling out of a window!!!”
The three stood silently, looking at the picture.
Sam bent toward Jill and whispered into her ear “Jill, you need to get Kate out of here for a minute or two. I’ll find Rusty.”
Jill looked hard at Sam. He nodded at her and pointed his thumb at the door.
“Kate, maybe something else happened…? Maybe Rusty is hiding or something. Let’s go see if he’s somewhere else in the house…you know, maybe he managed to slip out of sight somehow and is trying to play a trick on us. It would be just like him….”
“But, I know what I saw Jill! He couldn’t have left the room without my seeing him!”
“I believe you! But even so, we don’t want to get Aunt Cathy and Uncle Chris worried unless we’re sure, right?”
“I guess not,” conceded Kate.
The two girls left the room, and Jill gave Sam a questioning look as they left, but he just shook his head.
Jill and Kate looked in the closets for Rusty, and then in the living room and under the couch. Jill tried to take as much time as she could, hoping that Sam might know something about Rusty’s whereabouts that she did not. Finally, when the girls had exhausted all the possible hiding places downstairs (other than the dining room, since they didn’t want to alarm the adults just yet), Jill heard voices coming from the library, and the two returned there.
“Look, don’t you think maybe you just hit your head…?” they heard Sam saying as they walked in.
Rusty was shaking his head violently “Did not! Did not!”
“Well then, Rusty, why don’t you tell everyone what did happen?” Sam replied.
“But you were there! You came in and got me!” Rusty yelled. Sam said nothing.
“We were both right in there!!” Rusty yelled, pointing at the painting of the castle. “He just came in and pulled me back out again! We were on the beach! And there was water, and birds, and a castle, and everything!”
Sam shrugged. “OK, but if you really fell through the painting, maybe you can show us how it happened. Try it again.” He stepped out of Rusty’s way.
Rusty walked up to the painting, reached toward it, and then stopped, startled, when he felt the Plexiglass that protected it. “But…” he said, “but it wasn’t like that! I mean, just a minute ago!”
Jill had been watching Sam closely, and she saw him slip something into his pants pocket.
“Well, Rusty, whatever happened, you’re alright now,” Jill said.
“But Jill,” Kate said in a hushed voice, “I saw him fall through the painting, too!”
“Maybe you did,” said Sam, coming over to Kate, “but is it possible it was some kind of an illusion? I mean, there’s Plexiglas covering the painting, and maybe the light caught it just right and made you think you saw him fall through…?”
“Well, I don’t know…..” said Kate, looking up at Sam.
Sam lowered his voice. “Look, Kate, we need to try to calm Rusty down. He’s very worked up….”
They all three looked at Rusty, who was now punching at the painting with his fist.
Kate looked up dreamily into Sam’s eyes and smiled. “I see what you mean, Sam. I’ll see what I can do….”
“Rusty!” she said, “Stop punching that picture!! If you don’t calm down, I’m going to tell mom, and then you won’t get any cookies for dessert! And, we’ll have to go home early and then you’ll really be in big trouble!!!”
Rusty shot her a nasty glance, but it was clear that he was getting tired. He stopped pounding the painting and slunk away into the overstuffed chair. “…did so fall in! Nobody ever believes me….”
Jill and Kate looked at each other and giggled, and Sam relaxed a bit. Just then Jill’s mother called from the living room “Jill, honey, you want to come get cookies for everyone?”
“Come on,” she said to Kate, “let’s get dessert.”
The two girls left, and Sam went over to where Rusty was sitting alone. Rusty glared at him.
“You know what happened! You jumped in after me!”
Sam bent down so that his voice wouldn’t carry. “Of course I did, Rusty. But, sometimes that’s how magic works; one minute you fall through a painting, and the next minute you can’t. But we shouldn’t talk too much about this with the girls; they wouldn’t understand. You see what I mean?”
Rusty brightened up. “You mean it’s true then? I didn’t hit my head?”
“Well, magic is true, Rusty, but sometimes we have to keep quiet about it. Otherwise…” Sam looked around them confidentially. “…otherwise, people might start to think we’re both just weird in the head.” He pointed his finger at his temple and twirled it. “You know what I mean?”
Rusty nodded. “Yeah!”
“So, falling through the painting; that’ll be our little secret, OK? And maybe someday, when you’re a little bit older, you and I can try it again together. What do you think?”
“But why can’t we try it again now?!”
“Well, you did try it, didn’t you? And it didn’t work?”
“No, it didn’t.”
“Well, that’s the way magic is sometimes. I know it might be hard, but if you’re patient, I’m sure there will come other times when we can try it again and it will work, OK?”
Rusty looked at him suspiciously. “You’re not just making this up, are you? Just to shut me up? It really did happen, and I’m not crazy, right?”
“You’re not crazy, Rusty. But, I expect if you told too many other folks, they might think you were. So, mum’s the word, OK?”
“OK!” said Rusty, beaming.
The girls returned, and Jill was astonished at the change in Rusty, who suddenly, from her perspective, was no longer sulking. Rather, he came over to the table in the center of the room and enthusiastically helped himself to three cookies at once.
“You feeling better now, Rusty?” she asked.
“Sure….,” he said, stuffing another cookie in his mouth and winking at Sam.
Sam leaned toward Jill. “I’ll explain later,” he said, “Or, better yet, I’ll have Mr. Luke explain. You should come visit him at his studio as soon as you can.”
Before Jill could answer, however, all four of them were startled by an abrupt –- and very frightening — howling sound coming from just outside the library window!
Jill jumped up. “What on earth is that?!”
Sam stood up as well. “Something I thought might happen. But, don’t worry; I can make it go away.”
The sound got louder. It was a strange and eerie sound, like dozens of wolves howling from within some deep, metallic barrel. The voices of so many creatures coming, seemingly, from just outside the house chilled everyone to the marrow.
Sam looked around the library as if searching for something. “Quick, Jill, do you have a large mirror somewhere nearby? In a bathroom, or maybe in the living room somewhere?”
“Yes, in the bathroom in the hallway. There’s a full-length mirror just behind the door. Why?”
“Take me there. Just let me step inside for a bit; I won’t lock the door. But afterwards I’ll be gone.”
“Gone?!”
“Yes, gone. I’ll explain tomorrow. But, the howling will stop once I’ve left. No time to explain now….”
Jill grabbed Sam by the hand and they hurried down the hall together. Rusty and Kate remained frozen in fear in the library. Jill heard her mom, aunt and uncle stirring in the dining room; they, too, could not but help hearing the unearthly din, and they were coming out to investigate.
“Tomorrow!” Sam said. He entered the bathroom and shut the door. Almost instantly the howling ceased.
“Jill? Are you all OK?” It was Evie. She had just stepped into the hallway. “Where are the rest of you?”
“Rusty and Kate are in the library.”
“And where is Sam?”
Jill gently opened the door to the hall bathroom and peered inside. No one was there; Sam had disappeared!
At this point Jill didn’t know exactly what to do or what to say. Should she tell her mother about Sam disappearing? Should she tell her about Rusty, and his belief that he had fallen through the picture in the library? And what about her own experience putting her hand into the painting of the Piper? She knew she couldn’t lie to her mother, but what else could she do?
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[To read Episode 3.1, click here….]
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Dec 19
In the Company of Angels: Episode 2.1 – Rusty’s Big Adventure
In the Company of Angels, Episode 2.1 – Rusty’s Big Adventure
Clasping the pendant in her hand, Jill once again stepped quietly down the hallway toward the library. As she approached the doorway, the sounds of the flute ceased. Jill hesitated, but then she took a deep breath, stepped forward, and once more peered inside the room.
Nobody was there.
The room was just as she, Mr. Luke, and Sam had left it. Sunlight continued to stream in through the window, like before, but something struck her as odd this time. There also appeared to be light coming from other sources. She stepped into the library, puzzled. What was different?
Then it dawned on her. All of her paintings — of the Shire, of the Narnian woods, of Beauty and the Beast and all the rest — they were all glowing gently. It was almost as if they were being lit from behind, and there was a slight bluish light around the edges of each one. She stepped up to her favorite picture, the one of the Piper. There was the little boy, still sitting on the ground with his flute. The ethereal figures still flitted around him. But the colors: they were so brilliant! The sky, the trees, the rocks and the water: they all appeared real enough to reach out and touch….
Without even thinking about it, Jill stretched her fingers out to the surface of the framed print. But instead of feeling the cool smooth hardness of the glass, her hand moved into the picture. She could see it right there, reaching past where the print should have been and into some space beyond the wall of the room. She was so startled that she gasped and pulled her hand back. Involuntarily, her hold on the pendant slipped, and the chain and gem clattered to the floor.
Jill stooped to picked up the jewel, and then she put it into her frock along with the business card that Mr. Luke had given her. She looked at the painting once more. The extraordinary light had faded away; now, when she reached out to it, she felt the glass of the frame just where she knew it must be.
Jill clenched her eyes shut and rubbed them. Then she looked at the painting again. No, it was just her painting, appearing as it always had.
At that moment, Hazel rubbed up against her legs; he had returned from under the living room couch, whence he had scrambled when Luke and Sam first came into the kitchen. Jill gasped and nearly jumped out of her skin, but then she caught her breath and waited a moment for her heart to stop racing.
“What do you think, Hazel? Am I going crazy?” She reached down and scratched the cat’s ears. Hazel purred loudly and flexed his front claws.
It was at this point that Jill’s mother, Evie, returned home, so Jill put away her thoughts about the paintings and the earlier events of the morning, focusing instead on helping her mother bring in the groceries and straighten up the house. They were having guests over that evening for supper: her aunt and uncle, Cathy and Chris, and their two children, Rusty and Kate. Jill rather liked Kate, but Rusty was several years younger than the two girls, and Jill couldn’t sometimes help but think of him as a bit of a pest.
Nevertheless, supper went fine, and afterward, while the adults were chatting around the dinner table, the two girls excused themselves to go to the library; Rusty soon followed.
The cousins had been in Jill’s library many times, and Kate had a special fondness for it. She and Jill settled down in an overstuffed chair and Jill began showing her a new illustrated storybook that she had gotten for Christmas; Kate wasn’t quite the lover of fairy tales that Jill was, but she always appreciated pretty things. Meanwhile, Rusty quietly started pulling books off of the book shelves and watching them drop to the floor.
“Stop that!” yelled Kate when she realized what her brother was doing.
“Stop what?” Rusty asked, nudging another book off of the shelf and watching as it bounced on the floor, landed on it’s spine, and opened at an illustration of a giant.
Just then the front doorbell rang. Jill jumped up and glared at Rusty. “I’m going to see who’s at the door. But you’d better have my books put back on the shelves when I get back!”
“He will,” assured Kate, “or I’ll tell mom and dad.”
Jill went down the hall. “I’ll get the door, mom!” she said loudly enough for her mother to hear her.
She opened the door. Sam was standing just outside.
“Hi,” he said.
“What are you doing here?!” Jill asked.
“I’m sorry to come by so late, but I think maybe I dropped something here before Mr. Luke and I left this morning…? Did you happen to notice anything we might have lost?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. Do you mean the chain and pendant with the blue gemstone?”
Sam looked relieved. “So, you did find it! Great! Can I get it back from you? I’m so sorry I didn’t phone you first, but I was so sure I’d dropped it walking back to the Gallery…I mean, to Mr. Luke’s painting studio; I never figured I might have left it here. I’ve been looking for it on the sidewalk all the way over!”
“I’m sorry, Sam, I was going to call Mr. Luke and let him know,” Jill ushered Sam into the house, “but I got so busy helping my mom. We’ve got my cousins over for supper.”
“Your cousins?! Oh no! Including Kate?”
“Yes. What’s wrong with Kate?”
Sam turned red. “Uh…nothing….”
Jill looked at Sam oddly. “Is there anything I should know about the two of you?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned!” said Sam. “Let’s just say Kate always seems to be looking for me in the hallway at school…”
“Oh ho!” said Jill. “That’s news to me. But, you’ll just have to brace yourself. She’s in the library with Rusty, and that’s just where I left your pendant.”
“Oh, great,” groaned Sam.
“Jill? Who is it, honey?” her mother called to her from the dining room.
“It’s Sam from school, mom!”
Evie came out into the hallway. “Oh, hello, Sam! Have you had your supper yet?”
“Oh, yes ma’am,” said Sam, “I just came by to pick up something I forgot earlier this morning.”
“You were here earlier?”
“Yes, mom, Sam came by with…with a friend. I forgot to tell you,” said Jill.
“Well, that’s alright. It’s good to see you, Sam! Why don’t you both run along to the library; we’ll have some chocolate chip cookies for all of you a little later — if you’d like to stay for some, Sam.”
“Thank you ma’am,” said Sam.
Jill and Sam walked down the hall and entered the library. Standing in the middle of the room was Kate, all alone. She was white and trembling.
“Kate…?” said Jill, “What’s wrong? Where’s Rusty?”
Kate looked at both of them wide eyed, then lifted her finger and pointed to one of the paintings on the opposite wall. “He…he….”
“He what, Kate?!”
“He fell…he fell through the painting!!!”
[ To read Episode 2.2, click here…. ]