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CHAPTER TWELVE

There’s more to an artist than this world can ever satisfy.
Thus, an artist is ultimately born inherently incomplete. I
suppose it wouldn’t be too much different than realizing—
through a dream, more than likely—that one’s eyes held
the power to see in the dark, but regrettably, there was only
sunlight. How terrible would it feel to know such sights
existed but could never be glimpsed? This is the exquisite
torment of the artist—to know something has been omitted
from reality, or worse yet, never created in the first place.
In either case, the artist finds the world wanting. The only
reasonable resolution to this conundrum, of course, is to
create—to change the universe.
It was my mother who taught me what an artist truly is. I
refuse to believe that such lessons, and the time and energy
required to properly impart them, would have been wasted
on anyone less than her own son. But what I learned from
the madman’s dream couldn’t be minimized, no matter how
hard I tried to keep my mind upon the many wonders of Tom
Hush. On that score, it had become altogether obvious to me
that Tom Hush had successfully hidden himself away in a
tidy cluster of what appeared to be random occult murders,
all of which were most likely perpetrated by unwilling
dupes. I didn’t know if Joshua Link was one of many such
enablers, or the sole vehicle through which Tom worked.
I was torn between tasks. On the one hand, I wanted
desperately to speak with Marvin the monster, and on the

170 | Mark Anzalone