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"Love or art?"

Dubois was exceptionally merry on that day. He reveled in some newfound inspiration, and had been sculpturing all morning with a fervor I had not seen before.

"If you could have but one, which would you abandon?"

The question caught my by surprise. It wasn't something I had thought of. Ignoring his question, I replied

"I'll have both, thank you."

"An amiable choice, mon ami. But it's hopeless. Even for you. After you've met Colette, I rarely you in the workshop anymore."

I shrugged. He was right. So what? These days I was juggling work, writing - and spending as much time with Colette as I could.

"The day has but twenty-four hours," I said. "what would you have me do?"

"Art demands devotion. I gave up everything for art," said Dubois. "My social life, my love-life, even my family. But with every sacrifice, comes a burst of great inspiration and productivity."

"I'm not ready to make such a commitment, just yet," I replied.

But there was more truth to Dubois' words than I liked. I went to lectures in the morning, I worked for the paper every afternoon and I spent every night with Colette. I was living a charmed life in Paris, and I savored every moment. But it had come at a cost. What little writing I got done was shallow, and most works were left incomplete. My ambitions as a creator had all but withered.

"It's about getting your priorities right!" Dubois said. "You may be a passable journalist, a struggling student and an inspiring lover. But you will never be a true artist until you learn the necessity of sacrificing that, which holds you back."

---

That summer of 1926 was exceptionally sunny. Colette and I had gradually worked ourselves into a routine of balancing work and leisure. We managed to drag Dubois out of the workshop, and the three of us spent the warm days on riverside strolls, exhibitions and picnics in the botanical garden. We ate sweetened frozen cream from small paper cups and watched the Bastille day parades from Rue Montor Gueil. In short, we didn't have a single care in our lives, that whole, glorious summer.

I was promoted to journalist at the Paris Soir, but I had all but stopped writing my own stories, and I knew I would not be returning to Sorbonne the next semester.

Then, one unexpected day in July, Dubois barged in, waving an envelope around and making frustrated outbursts.

"I'm done for," he cried and slumped in his chair. I smelled alcohol on his breath as I took the letter from his hand. At first glance, it was simply an invitation to attend the annual

Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs Modernes, 1926.

But at closer look revealed, it was a personal invitation for my friend to exhibit his own sculptures at the exhibition.

"Relax! You've been invited to exhibit your sculptures, mon ami. They're not dispatching gendarmes to drag you into prison."

"They might as well put me in prison," he replied. "The exposition drew fifteen million visitors last year. This is the one chance in my life to prove my skills. But I have wasted all summer on frozen milk, and now I have nothing to show."

I tried to calm my friend down. Surely he had enough time to sculpt something suitable, but he waved me off with an unsteady hand.

"I'm all empty," he said. "Gone is the basic force. The raw and untamed inspiration. The thirst and the suffering that awakens you and makes you create. I found it all in the jungle and in the villages where the shamen hold their tribesmen in a stranglehold of superstition and fear. It filled me up with life. The life I pour into my sculptures and make them breathe. But look at me now!"

Dubois scooped up a handful of brass-knockers and threw them to the floor in disgust. He sat down by his desk and watched the kettle boil on the wood stove, without moving or speaking for the better of a quarter.

"I want you to leave," he said finally.

Slowly I grabbed my pen and notebook and stuffed them into my bag..

"Of course," I began. "If you desire a moment to yourself, you need but ask."

"I want you to leave Paris," he interrupted. "I want you to leave, and never come back..."

---

I left Dubois alone in the workshop. If he needed the time and solitude to work, so be it. Two weeks went by, which I spent mostly with Colette. Together we made enough of an income to buy an electric washing machine for her laundry. It was a recent invention, very exciting and terribly expensive, but it took a great load off of her hands. We estimated we would be able to afford another washing machine in six months, right before Christmas, and maybe another one again next June.

"Soon the shop will run all by itself," we jested.

"Maybe we should get an extra one," Colette said. "Just for washing diapers."

"Diapers?"

"Oui! Les couches. We might as well plan ahead," she said with a grin.

I didn't quite know how to reply. The thought of starting a family with Colette had brushed my mind, but until now I had brushed it aside, as if had been an intrusive bee circling our picnic basket. To my relief, Monsieur Ranon burst through the door, before I had the time to say as much as an "errr...."

Ranon was short of breath and kept stroking his gray mustache.

"That artist friend of yours is making strange and very loud noises in his workshop," Ranon said. "I think he has been drinking."

"Noises?" I asked.

"Shouting, mostly." Ranon replied. "And throwing things around."

I sighed and prepared to leave. "We're one week away from the Exposition des Arts. Dubois is probably overworked." I bade Colette and Ranon farewell and walked the short distance down the Rue to the workshop.

When I opened the door, I found the place in a terrible state.

The floor was a clutter of broken furniture, half finished sculptures and drawings. And all was smeared in paint. Dubois was on his mattress, squatting on all fours like an animal and wavering unsteadily left and right. Then he lost his balance and rolled onto his left side with a loud "Oo-off!". His eyes were bloodshot and his breath reeked of sweet absinthe. He cradled some object in his arms, as if it were an infant child. At first I thought he was clutching a wooden puppet, but as I moved closer I recognized the paintwork of the wooden Leyak.

"The drums," he rasped. "Do you hear them?"

I picked up the bottle he had been drinking from. It was empty.

"You've had enough to drink for one night, my friend" I said and tried to cover him with a blanket. But he resisted my efforts and flailed his arms, grasping a firm hold on my coattail.

"Drum!.. Drum!.. Drum!.."

He looked around wild-eyed, like a man possessed. " The drums are calling. Can you smell the fires?"

"There are no drums here... and no fire," I assured my friend, but my words left no impression. Dubois rose to his feet and staggered around, following an invisible trail, only he could see.

"They are burning cedar and magnolia bloom, again."

"Again?"

Dubois stared into the thin air, witness to some strange ceremony only he could see.

"The summoners have called on the beast. Better stay inside."

"Inside? But the weather is fine."

Dubois looked at me, confused. "Once the beast is here, it won't be raining water."

I locked the door from inside and put the key in my pocket. Then, I closed the single window that faced Rue Saint Cergues. I was clueless about what my friend was rambling on about, but I decided to stay the night to make sure his delirium didn't grow worse or made him stumble into the dark street. He kept mumbling about monsters, until he rocked himself to sleep, an hour past midnight. I lay down next to him, covering myself with my coat. Soon I too fell into an exhausted sleep.

---

"Wake up, Frere Jacques," Dubois laughed. "There is warm coffee in the kettle and much work to be done." He poured each of us a mug of black coffee, before sitting down by his desk, and forming something from a large chunk of clay.

"How's your head?" I asked, expecting him to have a headache the size of Borneo from last night's drinking. But he only laughed and dug into the clay with both hands.

"All I needed was one good night's worth of sleep," he replied. "

I checked the door. It was still locked, the way I left it. I unlocked the door to let the fresh air in, while I looked around outside. Three gendarmes, some hundred meters down the rue were covering an unmoving object with a white cloth. I was about to turn around and finish my coffee, when I noticed the whiteness of the fabric taking on a red hue from fresh blood. The Paris slasher had struck again.

"Anyone we know?" Dubois asked from his desk.

"It's Monsieur Ranon," I cried. Poor old, sweet Ranon. He must have been on his way home when the killer caught up with him."

"I'm sorry," Dubois said. "I'm so sorry."

---

That next week, Ambrose Poussin sent me on an assignment to cover the inauguration of the Exposition Internationale des Arts for the Paris Soir. Several hundred painters, glassblowers, carpenters and painters had been carefully selected and invited to share their talent with the rest of the world in a dazzling tribute to arts and imagination. Sculpturers too, of course. From the catalog, I soon found my way to the place in the venue where the statues made by Dubois were on exhibit.

I knew most of them from earlier, but surprisingly, he had created an entire series of new figures only recently. Figures I had not seen before. But they all shared a common feature. That of a pretty woman, sculpted with the closest attention to detail. Here she was, walking with a basket in one hand. Other figures showed that same woman riding horseback, dancing ballet én pointe or washing clothes in a wood basin. The fourth and last sculpture in the series struck me as dire and disturbing. It showed that same woman floating mid-air, supported only by a thin copper rod. The figure wore a long dress, yet she had no legs, and her spine protruded from her torso. Shaken by the macabre image, I moved closer and squinted my eyes to make out the details. This is when I recognized the woman.

She bore the face of Colette.

I left the exhibition and ran. I ran, as if the devil himself was tugging at my heels, all the way to Colette's laundry shop on Rue Saint Cergues. I ran till I was about to cough up a lung, and all the while I prayed that nothing evil had taken place.

But despite my prayers, I found Colette's remains on the floor, where the Paris slasher had left her. I fell to my knees with a scream, desperately trying to wake her. I grabbed an expensive looking shirt from a laundry basket, trying to stop the bleeding, but it was of no use. Colette had no blood left in her. Her eyes were glassy and her lips were cold. The Paris slasher was close. He could be anywhere. Behind me, or down the street. I ran to our workshop, where I burst through the door with a strength that almost tore the door off its hinges.

Here I found Dubois on the floor by the fireplace. Like Colette, he had been assaulted by an unseen killer, and he was dying from a grievous wound that almost tore him in half. I tried to stop the blood flow with my scarf, but it was of no help.

"Who?" I cried. Who did this?" I did not expect my friend to find the strength to speak, but if he could only speak the name of the murderer, at least we could alert the gendarmes.

"Leyak," he whispered. "The Paris slasher lives within the Leyak."

---

Of all the treasures Dubois had carried with him from Indochina, the Leyak was his most prized - and the most dangerous possession. The Leyak is an entity split into three demonic spirits. Always craving, always thirsting for blood to regrow their mangled bodies. They allow themselves to be summoned, to gift the summoner with renewed energy, good fortune or a breath of creativity. But it comes at a terrible cost. The summoner must select a victim for the demons to slaughter. Your family, your friends, your lover. Any living person will suffice, as long as you know them well enough, to form a picture in your mind.

"My mind was empty," Dubois said weakly.

"I had no ideas for the exposition, and without you around, there was no inspiration. I was empty... drained. This was my big chance to make a name for myself. He grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me up close.

"I was the one who summoned the Leyak," he rasped.

Dubois knew well the price of calling upon the Leyak for guidance and otherworldly inspiration. He had done so in Indochina, sacrificing everything he knew and everyone he loved for his career. But even in Paris, he still needed living victims for the demons to feast on. At first, finding a suitable victim was easy. Dubois visualized Babinaux, who had short-changed him when he bought tobacco. He visualized the gendarme who had fined him five Francs for trading without a license. He thought about the grocer who wouldn't lend him credit, and the greedy moneylender who charged twenty-five percent interest. Each of them were petite annoyances in his life. Random strangers who left a small imprint on his mind. Their sacrifice had been trivial, but so was the reward the Leyak bestowed upon him.

But lately, one face imposed itself on him; stronger and stronger.

The face of Colette.

"I thought of another target, but Colette would not leave my mind," he said. "Every time that other face came up, Colette was there, intruding on my thoughts. "

"You were in love with her?"

Dubois nodded. "I tried to push her aside to ignore the thoughts of her face, the smell of her hair. I could not work within all that noise."

When the Layak arrived through the damnable portal, they read his mind in an instant and traded a surge of inspiration for the life of Colette. Dubois soon realized what he had done, and he called upon the Layak again, for one final time. Only, this time he willingly blanked out his mind, and the Layak feasted themselves upon the nearest human in sight.

Their own creator.

"But who was the other target, you so wanted to erase from your life?" I asked

"I thought you had no one left to love?"

"You!" whispered Dubois.

"I was thinking of You."

---