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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Young Vincent: Why are you hurting them, father?
Father: Honestly son, what harm can really be done to
the dead? Do you think those children alive? You’ve so
much to learn, my little apprentice. There’s no life in those
little corpses. They’re merely the freshest cadavers this
Deadworld has to offer, nothing else. You see, my art is very
much like blood magic, in so much that it draws its strength
from the most vital sources that can be had. And here, where
people are only plastic and dead, the youngest corpses are
the most useful corpses, as they are the only things likely to
furnish even a speck of vitality. The dust of their dreams is
what gives my paints, clays, and canvases their true colors—
not the dull, lifeless combinations of earthly constituents.
Young Vincent: But they cry for me to save them. How
could they be dead?
Father: They have no idea they’re dead, son. They woke
up in the middle of their sweet dreams, spilling out cold and
lifeless into this land of unloving, shuffling strangers. They—
we—are all at best, only ghosts. At worst, corpses. I pray we
are the former, for that means there’s still a chance that life—
and by life, I mean dream—can again dawn upon us all. But
for that to happen, I must play god, which is the purpose of
any artist worth a bucket of paint. I must reconstitute life
from loam. The only thing those little creatures can try to
save is their skin—the webbing that constricts their dreams,
anchoring them to this alien graveyard. What you hear is

248 | Mark Anzalone