by D I Russell
And she too had rationalised it, studied it, attempted to replicate it. Yet here it was.
Terror lived in the realisation.
Dread lived in-between, those sweet and bloody seconds before the next wave of realisation hit, hope scattered, the surf hitting the rocks.
Her mind cascaded.
Had she been appended by hooks? Her mind blocking out the agony of their cold embrace?
Samara tried to look down, expecting steel points, glistening with blood, to be poking from her chest. Perhaps her legs were nothing more than stumps, ragged with sawn meat, dripping on the floor, sounding like a rainy day.
Locked in place, she could but watch her tormentor drift back from the darkness and attend to some unseen task. The sound of Samara’s suffering failed to materialise, motionless lungs unable to birth her screams.
The girl turned around and waded back through the clinging night. She brushed hair from her eyes and pressed her lips together in concentration: a gesture Samara had done countless times before. She raised her hand, returning it to Samara’s left cheek. The small paintbrush she held resumed its delicate work.
The soft, precise touch consumed Samara, focussed and refined by the lack of all other physical sensation. Her psyche seemed to sigh in relief with this contact with the world, no matter how slight. She strained to close her eyes and be swept away by the touch, to escape the yet unknown ravages performed upon her. Her eyelids had fallen under the same paralysing spell that had conquered every muscle and tendon. She could only stare down at the girl who continued her painstaking work.
She’s painting me, thought Samara.
13.
Samara hacked and coughed, drooping to her side and pressing her hands against the filthy cobbles. The image of the girl touching up her face with a detailed brush strokes lingered in the shadows. She sucked in a deep breath to clear her head of both the haunting scene and alcohol haze.
Her back heaved, pressure building between her shoulder blades. A knot of snakes seethed in her stomach, burning her insides with acidic venom.
The outline of the girl, featureless before the glowing light from the street, had shifted deeper into the alley. Her fingertips still brushed the walls either side as she slowly approached. Silent footsteps negotiated the stinking used fat leaking from the skip bin.
“You!” Samara wailed, flinching from the sound of her own voice. “What…do you want?” Saliva dripped from her bottom lip. She spat. “It was…a waste.”
The ground seemed to float: the square and rounded stones easing her upwards. Samara held on tight, now on all fours, and snarling at the advancing figure.
“No one understands,” she screamed. “This should’ve… It should’ve let me in! Kept you out.”
Samara retched.
***
The artist had once again turned her back on Samara, perhaps to reapply fresh paint to her brush.
Caught in her silent cry, Samara stared at her, helpless against the surge rising up her throat. The horrors that had lurked within her had come crawling out into the world for all to see. She felt them squirming around the back of her throat like plump, black, chocking maggots. Others nipped and scratched around her teeth and gums, pricking the insides of her cheeks with barbs, scraping along her tongue. How she longed to spray them, to spit each tiny monstrosity out like bullets, uncaring who became caught in the crossfire.
Locked in place, Samara could only endure the suffering. Her attempt to rid her body of the demonic troupe, to present the pain that ate away at the inside, had failed. She exposed her heart, tearing out great chunks of flesh just to show them, holding thin ribbons of skin like loose stitching plucked from a ragdoll. Still the horrors remained, cavorting around her, safe inside the darkness.
Ignorant to her ordeal, the girl turned, now brandishing a different brush in her left hand. The fine detailing brush had been replaced with a sibling more square and crude. Thick, coarse bristles dripped in pure white paint.
Samara tried to shrink back, but the canvas held her perfectly. She watched as the girl considered her face for a moment, before lifting the wide brush closer. Her long sleeves hid the scars Samara knew festered beneath, running up her forearm in a tally of woe. In the girl’s right hand, a glint of metal poked free, catching the only source of light in the abysmal hell.
It will come, thought Samara. The do over. It was my choice. It’s always been my choice. I reveal, little by little, until it comes time to hide it all away again. And then we start again, don’t we? Show a little more. Let them inside a little deeper. The cycle repeats.
The girl ungraciously swept the thick brush across Samara’s eyes, blanking out her own focussed face. The thick layer suffocated, like tight cellophane pressed over her nose and mouth. The creatures that longed to escape over her lips and teeth became trapped, squirming beneath the whitewash.
It would soon be over, one way or another. The reinvention. The fresh cycle.
The artist began to cut, and beneath the dripping paint, Samara screamed into the blinding white abyss.
***
Her misery echoed in the narrow alley.
A chill rain had begun, tentative at first, dotting the puddles left over from the last shower. Its soft beat began around the cowering figure, who dropped the art knife to wrap her arms around her shivering body. The tool clattered to the ground between her knees.
Thin lines streaked across Samara’s eyes. She blinked them away, distorting the phenomena into fuzzy bars of static. It seemed the lines marked the journey of the blade. Her face burned, still feeling the tip slide through skin and separate the firm muscle beneath, transforming her into something…better? Her addled mind now struggled with the concepts. Something…truer?
The rain notched up a gear, from a gentle patter to a forceful hum. Water gurgled down the drainpipe beside Samara, splashing onto the cobbles beneath. An empty crisp packet set sail down the alley, carried by the sudden torrent like a paper boat.
Samara’s hair clung to her face and neck like oil. She wiped running mascara from her eyes and looked up.
The girl stared back, inches away now, mirroring Samara’s position. Hunched over and on their knees, the two considered each other for a few seconds. The girl outside had brought the void with her. Darkness seeped from her slight figure, dispersing into the alley in an ever-moving cloud of ink. It hid the weathered brick on the far side of the narrow passage, swallowed the debris and dank pools that littered the cobbles. To look into its depths for too long was to invite it within, to enter the bleak landscape. Samara had been lucky to find her way back and had no desire to return. Not yet.
Instead she concentrated on the face presented amid the swirling curls of dark hair, the one she had watched in awe countless times, the spectre she had worshipped through her small television screen. Even now, more streaks of VHS distortion split her face until some unseen force altered her tracking, restoring the hideous mien.
Samara, helpless to the temperamental weather, grinned through the droplets cascading down her face. “Why must you…” She licked her lips, tasting the rain. “The painting. It’s what you wanted. It was supposed to make everything better.”
The girl returned Samara’s grin. Her jaw hung down to her breastbone, and thin teeth popped out from between dark lips. Samara felt no threat from the apparition. She simply…was. Terrible and beautiful. Never far away.
“It was meant to keep you out,” Samara continued, refusing to turn away, determined to face her own beleaguering ghost, “and let me in. In with…” Even alone in the alleyway, her confession could not be forced out. The words were insubstantial to the feeling they tried to convey. That emotion was too alien to comprehend. Samara focussed once more, the blurring image of her persecutor snapping back. “I can’t cope with this anymore. You’re a fucking curse. I’ll never accept this. Never.”
How Woe was supposed to recoil at her eventual defiance, to shrink back while the well-orchestrated finale br
ought her demise. The heroine faces her fear…and refuses it. Her antagonist is destroyed. Isn’t that the screenplay for a happy ending?
The girl remained, her smile locked on her face, appearing somewhat amused by Samara’s eventual defiance. A lover who knew Samara better than she knew herself. The girl would wait, watching from over her shoulder, haunting Samara in that space between her and the rest of the world. Until the cycle turned once more, perhaps a little longer next time, but certainly a little deeper. Boring a hole, down, down, into that dark world. Samara could join the girl there with all her other phantoms.
Samara, shivering from the battering rain, rolled up her sleeves. The skin of her forearms contained a score of admittance: the times she had realised that it wasn’t the world at fault. Not the popular girls in her art class. Not boys given an easy ride. Not family who couldn’t accept deviation from their narrow views. Not friends who had their own lives to live, just as meaningful as her own.
Admittance that the girl had never been outside but was an unwanted tenant long due eviction. Was the history etched into her skin an attempt to release that dark presence? To drive her out with pain?
“I can’t accept this,” she said. “I can’t accept you.”
She snatched the art knife from between her knees.
The girl shifted forwards, drawn to Samara’s intent, and watched as she brought the blade to her left wrist. Her purpose finally realised. The final reel. The movie would soon be over with no rewind. No replay.
Samara rested her left forearm along the top of her thigh for support, her upturned hand hanging off her knee. Positioning the tip of the blade at the centre of her wrist, amid the cluster of light blue veins visible beneath her cold, pale skin, she pressed downwards. Her flesh resisted for a moment before the point of the knife punctured through. The sweet caress of pain. Samara closed her eyes and sighed, the hard work over, the decision made.
***
“It doesn’t make any sense why she’d do something like this,” said Samara’s father, staring at the damage wrought by his daughter’s hand.
Her mother wiped away a tear. “I…I never thought she’d… I mean, the signs were there. I just thought she didn’t have it in her.”
Samara looked down at them, her right eye the only part of her face not ripped and torn. Her nose, mouth, and cheeks had come under the relentless attack of her knife and hung in loose strips. Suspended once more, she gazed out from the canvas and across the exhibition hall. The show concluded, parents helped their art student children to carefully remove the treasured pieces from the partitions and safely pack them away. Miss Jones and the other examiners would need them to determine a final grade. Down the aisle, proceedings had stopped while Vicki posed with Miss Jones beside her painting, clutching her brand new Varden Gleave prize, while her parents snapped photographs.
No celebration here. Just a semi-circle of confused faces peering up at the destroyed painting. Her sister remained quiet, her lips and tongue carved from her head, eyeless sockets staring from a skinned face. Her parents stood either side, both frowning at the picture, oblivious to their hacked throats. Even Lily and Dale had stayed.
“Was this part of it?” asked her father. “You hear of these artists doing mad things.”
“She didn’t say she had anything planned,” said Lily, stepping closer and running a finger along the edge of a slash. Samara felt her touch.
“Could it be because she lost?” Trust her mother. “She always had tantrums when she didn’t get her way. She’s been…” She took in a deep breath. “She’s been a mess this week. Ah Lily, love. If only you knew what’s been going on with her.”
“She didn’t want us here today,” added her father. “She made that clear. The way she looked at us when we sat down…”
Done with her inspection, Lily lowered her hand.
“It got weird.” Dale pushed his glasses further up his nose and squinted at the painting. “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t think we can get it,” Lily replied, never looking away from the torn face of the picture. “I think that might be the point. She laid herself bare. Shouldn’t that be enough? This was never about the damn award. I think…” Lily studied the detail of the exposed heart, colour rising in her cheeks. The grim pallor of death had eased from her skin, and she scratched the side of her throat, now whole and perfect. She peered in closer, taking in all the intimate details of the terrors lurking in the dark recesses of the painting. They lurked in the shadows between ribs, peeked around veins and arteries. “I think she just wanted us to see the real her.”
She reached forward and pressed a hand against the canvas.
***
Samara gasped from the touch and opened her eyes, immediately squinting against the downpour. Her wrist throbbed just below the ball of her hand; blade still embedded. As her blood emerged from the small incision, it washed down her forearm in a diluted stream. She jerked the art knife free and dropped it to the ground. Another tally. Another marker for the depth of the spiral.
Hair plastered to her face, she peered up at her counterpart.
The girl had floated so close that Samara could lean in and kiss those elongated lips the colour of bruises. Outside. Inside. An obsession. A confession. Most of all, an admission.
The girl snaked her hands up Samara’s arms, the black, hooked nails lightly scratching over the scars.
Samara closed her eyes once more, weeping into the rain. She pressed her forehead against that of the girl, arms reaching around her, embracing the void, clutching it tightly.
The girl did the same. Her sharp talons slid over Samara’s drenched back, pulling her closer.
Shivering in the dark, the girl outside fell to the cobbles, alone in the filthy alley.
Epilogue
Outside, as often was the case in this part of the world, the wind held a frosty nip. It carved agitated troughs across the grey sea; the waves reflecting weighted clouds of the overcast sky. The water crashed onto the beach with a surge of foam and eased back towards the depths: an icy hand trying to reclaim the weathered-smooth pebbles.
Despite the chill, a man and boy played on the stony beach, daring the unsure footing to linger on the edge of the reaching sea. Covered head to toe in boots, jeans, thick coats, and woollen hats and scarves, they plucked wide pebbles from the beach and threw them into the water.
Samara had been chewing the end of her paintbrush and realised that the scene had once again distracted her from her work. The cottage stood on the slopes leading down to the beach, and the window of her studio offered an exquisite, bleak view. She enjoyed sitting in here late into the evening, with Caiden asleep after a bedtime story, and Lee catching up on his own reading, feet up in his favourite armchair. With the house silent, the rhythmic lull of the waves relaxed Samara, cleared her mind of the constant buzz and cycle of thoughts. If she could bear the cold, an open window provided a fresh salt breeze, with the dank, mineral underlie of the pebbled shoreline. A pure and simple existence.
A third figure had appeared outside, standing on a short, grassy hillock a little way up from the beach. A woman, judging from her wild dark hair that blew about her head, caught in the wind. She faced away from the cottage. Samara peered through the glass, fixated on the lonely figure that watched her son and husband frolic at the edge of the water. Not many people ventured down this far. Usually the family had this stretch of isolated paradise to themselves.
Samara turned away from the window, scolding herself. They’d lived here long enough that even the tiny fragment of Scottish coastline felt like it belonged to her. People could come and go as they pleased. She had the cottage, which was sanctuary enough.
“I shouldn’t be so…” Samara sighed and shook her head. “Isn’t that right?”
Woe neither agreed nor disagreed. The creature stared back at her from the canvas, a hint of the terrifying beauty looming over the New York City skyline. Not quite how Samara would have designed the image
, personally. The studio wanted a retro aesthetic for the reboot; thus her particular skills had been employed rather than some digital knock-up job. Relinquishing a slice of artistic freedom was a fair price to work on the project. It had been a genuine thrill to open the express package and slide out the glossy stills. The test make up shots of the new Woe were currently pinned up around the canvas. Another benefit of living away from civilisation: Samara could leave the photographs on display on her studio, confidentiality agreement be damned. The studio wanted to keep the reimagined design of the cult favourite under wraps until the movie release. Thus Samara’s current project: the skyline, about to hit by an imposing storm that had taken on the vague form of a face. The challenge had been to capture the youth of the new actress within the clouds. The box art for the original Fright Night and Return of the Living Dead were also pinned up by the canvas for inspiration. Times had changed, and while Samara would never see her dream realised, of having her artwork splashed across video cases and posters in Blockbuster Video, her employment for the media campaign was close.
A glance out of the window showed that the woman had ventured closer still to Samara’s family. She had wandered down onto the pebbles.
The pair, apparently grown tired of flinging the round stones into the waves, turned and headed up the beach, back towards the cottage. Lee playfully tugged the child’s woollen hat down over his eyes, and Caiden grinned, righting it.
The woman stood motionless, the only movement her hair still whipped into a frenzy.
Samara watched on as darkness seeped from her, bulging out from between her knees, a solid mass of shadow escaping from the confines of her long coat. Samara recognised the shape and smiled. A black dog, perhaps not even a year old, was testing the limits of its leash. The woman bent to give the canine a rough stroke on the back and let it run free. The excited dog immediately dashed away and bounded along the beach, occasionally pausing to sniff something of interest amid the pebbles.
