The Painting (3 page)

Everything was so still—so silent—in there. The creaking of the house was just about audible outside the door, but it was as if he’d stepped inside a soundproof room—a portal to a new dimension—as he took a piss, the torch standing upwards on the back of the toilet.

When he stopped pissing, he realised it wasn’t quite as silent as he first thought.

A scratching—like the scratching from his dream—somewhere in the dark recesses of the bathroom. His stomach sank. He clumsily zipped his fly up and lunged for the torch, swinging round and shining it at the freestanding bath. The once white surface was engulfed in a green mould, chunks of filth congregating around the plughole.

Scratch. Scratch.

He shuddered as he stepped closer to the bath. He could hear it coming from behind it, like chalk against a whiteboard.

Scratch
.

He crouched down and prepared to aim the torch underneath the bath, his knees dampening from the puddled floor.

Just take a look, Donny. Just take a fucking look.

He counted to three and stared down at the darkness underneath the bath, into the abyss. The scratching had stopped. His hands shook as they propped his body up.

Just take a look.

He aimed his torch and swallowed the lump in his throat.

Ready, steady…

“Fuck!”

He jumped back as he aimed the light under the bath and a group of mice came sprinting and squeaking towards him. He tumbled backwards as they disappeared underneath the bathroom door and regrouped.

“Fucking hell.”

He shook his head and let out a laugh.
Just mice. Just fucking mice.
He took a few deep breaths and pulled himself up from the floor, the dampness covering his body. One thing was for sure —he’d be cleaner like this than if he sat in that bathtub for any amount of time.

He disappeared out of the bathroom and back into the comfort of the bedroom.
Woman goes mad due to mice infestation.
Somehow, he didn’t think he was on to anything there. He placed the torch by the bed again and slipped out of his clothes. He could already smell the stagnant water seeping into the fabric. At least he’d brought some old gear along to laze around in. Anything to avoid taking a bath in that tub.

When he got back into bed, he aimed the torch over at the painting. At first, he thought it was his eyes playing tricks—the shock of the mice incident messing with his perception. He rubbed his eyes and squinted. How hadn’t he noticed it before? He stepped up out of bed and walked over to the painting, moving his hand across the glass pane underneath the trees.

Six figures, completely silhouetted in black. He pressed his hand against the glass. They couldn’t have been there before, could they? They stood in a row, perfectly aligned with the gaps between the six trees, around an inch in height. Maybe it was just one of those optical illusions where you had to really focus to see the picture in two ways.

They must’ve been there before. The gaps in the trees—that was it. Subtle and brilliant. A little sinister, but very nice indeed.

He stepped back and scanned the painting as a niggling sensation worked its way up the back of his neck. He could feel the pieces of a puzzle falling out of the sky and directly into place.
Woman goes mad… when she sees figures in painting.
The excitement built up in his stomach, his hands shaking with a mixture of adrenaline and delayed shock from the run in with the family of mice. The figures in the painting, the creepy house, and the mad woman. It was perfect.

Donny leaned over to the painting and planted his lips on the glass. “Thank you,” he said. “You absolute beauty, thank you.”

Then, he sat on his knees at the side of the bed and pulled his notepad off the bedside cabinet, noticing his clock: twenty-five to three. Inspiration had a cruel way of picking its times but that’s just how it had to go. A writer couldn’t sit around all day waiting for inspiration to strike and then just sleep on it. No—he had to work. He had to get a plan down at the very least.

He turned to look at the painting; the hooded, faceless figures staring back at him from between the autumnal trees.

Then, he wrote.

He didn’t stop writing until the light was peering through the window and engulfing the dimly lit room in its soft glow.

Donny stretched his arms out and blinked, re-immersing himself into his surroundings. How long had he been writing? He looked at his watch: six AM. Shit—a good three hours. He’d not written that long for months, maybe years.

What startled him more was the volume of writing in front of him.

He flicked through his notepad—page after page of black ink. Ideas, character sketches, and—the Holy fucking Grail—actual first draft words. He rubbed at the residue in the corner of his eyes with his shaking hand and let a little giggle escape his belly.
Shit
. All because of a painting. All because of a beautiful little painting.

As he stood up, he massaged his weary eyes again and yawned. He might not have had so much sleep but sleep wasn’t always a necessity. They said some of the best, most respected, political figures worked on a few hours’ sleep. Plus, he was buzzing from the adrenaline.
Fuck—you might actually do this.

He walked over to the door, his body floaty with the enthusiasm pouring through his bloodstream, and winked at the painting. In the light of day, he could see how he managed to miss the figures the first time round, especially when he hadn’t been looking closely. In his story, that was a part of the woman’s madness. The painting, the figures—were they real? Who were they and where did they come from? He couldn’t stop himself from grinning as he walked out of the room and into the landing area.

When he stepped out onto the landing area, he froze when saw the body.

“Little fucker.” He reached down to examine the corpse of the mouse. It was lying on its side, little pink hands curled into a fist. Must’ve died of shock last night. Truth be told, he’d be a little uptight if somebody wandered into his house and shined a huge light in his face. One down, anyway. He brushed it aside into the bathroom and made a mental note to himself to dispose of it later. His stomach rumbled—there was only one thing on his mind right now, and it was sitting between two delicious slices of wholemeal bread.

As he stepped downstairs, brushing his fingers through his greasy hair, he didn’t think much of the tapping at first. He knew about the window in the kitchen and how it rattled against the windowsill so it wasn’t really an issue. Sara, of course, might’ve got all touchy about it being creepy, but that sort of thing didn’t faze him. It’d been his call to come here for inspiration. Judging by his notepad, it was the right call. A creepy haunted house tale.
A welcome reinjection of life into the genre.
He pictured Sara’s proud face as he signed copies in a bookstore, posing for autograph shots with loving fans.

He walked into the kitchen, the musty smell less pungent than the previous day. Perhaps his nostrils were acclimatising to it. Before he knew it, he’d be rolling around in the bathtub and rubbing his skin with dirt. He placed his notepad and rucksack on the table next to Manny Bates’ opened letters and walked over towards the rattling window to see if he could do anything about it.

It was when he pressed the cold surface of the window that he realised it wasn’t the window tapping at all.

The tapping came from somewhere outside. He rolled up his sleeves and leaned into the glass. The back garden was overgrown, the withered grass waist-high. At the bottom of the small garden, green conifers guarded the house from view of the nearby meadows and fields.

Tap, tap, tap.

It was probably nothing. Some drainage problem or just the wind blowing something around out there. He wasn’t even sure why he was getting himself in such a state about it. What was the problem? Sometimes the window made a tapping sound, sometimes something rattled outside. It was an old house, that’s just the way it was.

He turned back to the table and dusted the wooden seat before sitting down. It’d only taken a night for another mountain of dust to coat the chair again. He reached into his rucksack and pulled out a slightly squashed sandwich wrapped in cellophane, yawning as his shaking fingers unwrapped it. Jesus—he used to be able to stay up pretty much all night when Sara was around, now he was feeling the effects after a couple of hours sleep loss. It was worth it though. His publishers would be thankful, seeing as he might actually have something tangible to hand them.

And Sara. Maybe she’d stop with the pitiful looks. Maybe they could move into that house on Crow Lane. There was a school just up the street, so if they did have kids, it’d be within walking distance. He smiled at the thought.
Soppy bastard.

He bit into the sandwich, the rich juiciness of the ham coating his mouth, and closed his eyes as he chewed.
Much better than Walkers fucking crisps.
He took another bite, still not quite managing to swallow the previous one, and opened his eyes again.

He dropped the sandwich towards the floor and stumbled out of his chair as he stared at the window.

A dark-haired boy, no older than five, maybe six, was tapping on the glass.
Tap tap tap
, and then he was gone.

Donny stumbled back to his feet and rushed over to the window. There was an indentation in the tall grass, and a shuffling in the trees.

Then the eyes.

Glowing blue eyes, staring out at him.

And then gone.

He stepped back and rubbed his face, his breathing stuttering. Why was a kid lurking around in the garden? He moved back over to the dusty window and peered outside—nothing.

It’s just a kid. You’re just tired and it’s just a kid messing around.
He wasn’t aware of any local houses around here. It was reasonable to assume that kids might play around in the woods but how’d he get into the garden? Was he responsible for the tapping?

And the eyes. The glowing eyes.

No
. The eyes were just his mind fucking with him. He was tired and hungry and he needed some rest.

He scooped the remains of the sandwich from the floor with his shaking hand and cringed; a thin layer of brown dust coated the outside of the bread. “Damn it.” If only he had a back door key, he could go out there, find the kid, and tell him off for messing around on somebody else’s property. He was an adult and therefore he had every right to be a bit of a hypocrite. The kid, on the other hand, had ruined his sandwich.

It was when he looked up at the window again that he saw them both.

The boy from before and now another boy, taller and freckled, peering in at him.

“Goofy little fuck,” Donny muttered, tensing his fist.

The boys disappeared again.

Not this time.

He rushed over to the back door and rattled the handle. To his amazement, the door opened and a breeze carried its way into the house. Donny stared at the half-open door. It had definitely been locked yesterday. He’d tried to open it several times and it wouldn’t budge. The rust still lined the floor below where it had crumbled in his hand with the previous attempt.

He shook his head and ran outside, the damp air coating his skin. Donny stepped onto the grass and into the indentation. The area was completely silent, especially so for a forest. No birds singing, no breeze against the trees, no nothing. As he walked through the indentation in the grass and towards the bottom of the garden, he tried to listen beyond his own footsteps. Surely little kids would be shouting, or at least making some sort of noise?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

When he reached the bottom of the garden, he tried to crawl into the bushes but it was too dense to go any further. There were no signs of light on the other side. The kids were small but there was practically no evidence of a getaway. Masters of disguise. Serial sandwich killers. He sighed and tensed backwards. Whoever they were, they were gone. There was nothing standing out here in the cold was going to do about that.

When he turned back round to face the house, he saw them.

Two little boys.
Tap tap tap.

They had their fists raised, tapping the thin air in front of them. Their eyes—their eyes.

Wide. Focused.

Tap tap tap.

Donny blinked and they were gone.

“He—hello? Kids?”

They were there. They were right in front of him and they were… they were there.

He held his neck backwards as he crept over towards the spot in front of the house where they had stood. Two boys, both of them dressed in combat shorts and white T-shirts. They were there; there was no doubt about it. He tensed his jaw and took a final look around the garden. The grass was completely still. Somewhere in the distance, a blackbird sang. He stepped back inside and closed the door.

Just kids
. There was nothing they could do.

But he placed a chair in front of the back door just for good measure.

Donny sat with his head in his hands on the table, this time facing the window. He’d seen them, he was sure of it. They were right in front of him, tapping thin air, and then they were gone.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket with his sweating hand—no signal. He just wanted to check in with Sara; see how she was doing. The tension mounted in his chest.
I want to go home.
But no—the book. Last night had been majorly productive, the most productive writing session he’d had in years. If he could just stay for the day, maybe then he’d make sure he had a clear plan and then head back in the evening. If things got too creepy, he’d walk to the nearby pub just up the road, contact Sara, and leave. He was safe. It wasn’t like he was in the middle of nowhere, not completely anyway.

A yawn jumped out of his chest. He could murder a coffee right now.

Fatigue
. Of course—fatigue. Why hadn’t he even considered it? He hadn’t slept much the night before. Come to think of it, he’d been sleeping shittily for a few weeks now. Sometimes fatigue made you see things, messed with your senses. It wouldn’t be the first time.