The Painting

by Ryan Casey

  He sat down at the kitchen table and pulled his writing pad out of his pocket. Despite the rise of technology, he’d always been a traditionalist in the writing sense. Truth was, he hated computers and they hated him. When they weren’t deleting his work, they were freezing when he was sending off important emails. Sara always told him he gave off a ‘negative energy’ but he wasn’t having any of that new-age bullshit. No—all he needed was his pad and his pen. That’s all a writer ever needed.

  He pulled the chair under the table and scratched the ball of the pen against the paper—nothing.

  Maybe it wasn’t only technology that had it in for him after all.

  He tossed the pen to one side, hearing the clinking of glass as it collided with something. He looked down at where it hit and saw the corner of it staring back at him.

  He could have stayed in that chair. He could have pulled another pen out of his pocket and started writing, but something made him stand up. Something compelled him to stand up and walk over to that rectangular object propped up against the wall.

  He pulled the green cover aside to see what hid behind. When he did, his eyes widened.

  It was a beautiful painting. About four feet wide and one foot tall, free from the dust that coated the rest of the kitchen. Donny pulled it from its green plastic cover and slid it across the floor so it was fully in view, being careful not to scratch the edges. He rubbed his finger across the glass panel, a speck of ink where the pen had hit it. On the painting, a forest, autumnal leaves falling from a perfectly aligned row of trees and towards the ground. Yellowing grass built up to the trees—a perfect colour compliment. In the foreground, some sort of a fence. The attention to detail was crisp and immaculate. He could see a depth behind the row of six trees, the forest preparing to reveal itself as it shed its armour of leaves. He looked at the bottom corner for a name or a date—nothing. Shame—he’d always enjoyed collecting art, especially landscape work. He had no time for any of this abstract stuff. Although he was an artist of sorts himself, it helped when things had real clear meaning.

  He covered the painting and stood up, walking back over to the table. He’d take it upstairs later—something to look at in the bedroom. It wasn’t such a bad room but it would benefit from a bit of a personality injection. If he was going to live here, he needed something to look at, and with the internet and Sara out of the question, women would have to be put on a temporary hold.

  He sat at the table and pulled a spare pen out of his pocket. As he scribbled on the top corner of the pad, a rush of jet-black ink seeped onto the page. At least this one worked. He looked at his watch. It was ten past five. Write until seven, grab a bite to eat, then write some more. Focus, focus.

  In the top corner, he jotted down his project note: Manny Bates, 2011. Then, he opened the pad and wrote.

  Plan: woman goes mad in old house.

  Would it be better if he took another look around and got a feel for the place before writing about it?

  No. Character, motivation, three-act arc—that’s all he needed.

  He put pen to paper and let the words flow.

  By seven PM, he’d barely reached the one-page mark.

  He held his head in his hands and stretched across the table. The top quarter of the page was filled with words—ideas, mostly abstract—but nothing concrete. He just couldn’t seem to capture that one idea that he needed to progress. When he was younger, he used to be able to pull an idea out of thin air and map out entire storylines in his head. Now, his brain was muddled, completely drowned out by the white noise of bills he had to pay and social commitments he had to carry out.

  It’d be much better if you just got a normal job like the rest of the kids, Mum used to tell him. Just get a nice job, a nice girl, and you can be happy.

  He couldn’t be happy, not now he had this chance. Publishers didn’t come looking for new talent every day. He had an opportunity to make it big. His first book—he could put that behind him and focus on the future.

  He just needed that one idea. One idea.

  He rubbed his eyes and looked around the kitchen. The room was gloomy as the sun descended, stacked plates coated in cobwebs barely visible over by the sink. The loosely attached window rattled as the wind pushed it against the frame, tap-tap-tapping repeatedly. Great—something to keep him awake at night. He sighed and scooped his notepad up, slipping it into his coat pocket, and walking over to the kitchen door.

  He’d completely forgotten about the painting until he saw it resting on its side.

  He reached down for it and picked it up by the string at the back, being careful not to snap it. It was impossible to imagine just how long it had been down here, fatiguing away with nobody to admire it. It was a shame how art became irrelevant. Not the Da Vincis or Picassos of the world—they were timeless—but the art that belonged to old women and abandoned office blocks. What often looked like a mere visual distraction was something quite beautiful. He eased it under his arm and carried it up the creaking staircase, squinting to find his way.

  When he stepped into the bedroom, he turned back to look down the corridor. A cloud of dust had crept its way up the stairs behind him, rising like a spectre. Sara would’ve hated that. She was obsessed with the idea of the supernatural. Even the suggestion of a ghost in their flat would be enough for her to pack her bags and move out. He missed her, but it was a good job she wasn’t here.

  He shut the screeching wooden door and turned back into the room, the comfort of his surroundings resembling a safe room on a video game. He’d eat, rest, and then see what he could come up with. But first, he’d put the painting up. Sometimes, staring at art was a great inspiration. Not the sort of art with character—Donny always found that somewhat forced—but landscape art and mood art. A mood writer. Not a bad label.

  He stepped over to the wall at the foot of his bed and noticed a metal nail sticking out. The wallpaper underneath had curled with the disturbance, a crack working its way down to the patterned, red carpet below. He lifted the painting onto the nail and supported it, being sure that it didn’t bring the wall crashing to the floor with it. The last thing he needed right now was a caved-in wall—now that would affect the ambience somewhat. He was already breaking some laws by being here, but it was only for a few days so it didn’t really matter. Anyway, nobody came down here. He was safe.

  He walked back towards his bed and brushed his hands. The painting looked right at home on the wall. In the path of the torch he’d brought with him, the orange autumn leaves glowed as they fell from the row of trees towards the ground. There was a vibrancy to the painting; a certain realism about the green-grey sky. Pity he couldn’t find the name of the artist. Maybe he’d take it back with him and have it inspected.

  But for now, he only had one thing on his mind—Walkers Crisps.

  After eating five bags and a prawn cocktail tang lingering in the back of his throat, he was suitably relieved of his hunger.

  Sara had packed him twenty bags, along with eight bottles of Evian and three sandwiches. Make sure you eat the sandwiches first or they’ll be off in a few days, she’d told him. That was the intention, but sometimes crisps were just so damn appealing.

  He leaned back against the pillow of the bed and stared up at the ceiling. He had that niggling voice in the back of his head, that sense of inevitability gnawing away inside. You’re not going to get anything written tonight. Was that such a bad thing? Maybe he could just spend tonight settling in; close his eyes and see what he came up with.

  Woman goes insane after losing a child.

  No—covered a million times. Too safe.

  Woman goes insane after murdering child.

  Wait—this was supposed to be his breakthrough book. He needed something that would resonate, not something that would scare readers off. He needed something golden.

  He held his breath as fragments of ideas slipped into his mind then sighed as they flew away. He could get up early and attempt to come up with s
omething in the morning.

  He reached over to flick the switch of his heavyweight torch.

  The last thing he saw before the room was swallowed with darkness was the six trees in the painting, shedding their dead leaves.

  Scratch, scratch, scratch.

  Tapping at the window. One, two, three.

  Their eyes on his skin and dripping across his flesh.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  He shot up, gasping for air in the pitch black. He fumbled around for the torch. When his shaking hands found it, he flicked it on and leaned forward. Just another nightmare. Deep breaths—stay calm. He wiped the sweat from his head and checked the clock on his phone: 2:13 AM. Shit. He’d only been sleeping for a few hours. He had the whole night ahead of him yet. Nightmares were something he’d always suffered with right from an early age. His dad used to tell him they were a gateway to a ‘world of infinite stories’.

  Donny just thought they were fucking terrifying.

  He stood up and headed towards the bathroom, taking the torch with him. He could hear the wind outside and the tapping of the kitchen window against the window ledge. Somewhere in the house, the slight creaking of a door as the foundation was battered by the breeze. Welcome to the Ritz.

  He pushed the bathroom door open, dust glowing in the aim of the torchlight. He tried to keep his eyes off the rest of the corridor and clenched his jaw as he stepped into the bathroom, keeping the door ajar. As he walked over to the toilet, the coldness of stagnant water seeped through his socks and between his toes. This place really could do with a cleanup.

  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. Sa
ra, 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.