The Other Side Of The Painting

by Amelia Rey

  Cornelius spaced out for a short moment. He was stunned by Danielle’s beauty. She wore a delicate violet summer dress, which made her green eyes sparkle. Her radiant skin, and her slender silhouette captivated all his senses. He had seen her earlier sitting in the teachers’ lounge but not at this close proximity. He was nervous. His heart was racing, and his hands were shaking and sweaty. Cornelius cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I take a seat?”

  Danielle gestured with her hand toward a chair. “Yes, please. Go right ahead.”

  Cornelius nervously began to speak.“I know that what I am about to say will sound strange and somewhat crazy to you, but I beg you, please hear me out before jumping to any conclusions.”

  As soon as she heard the words come out of Cornelius’s mouth, Danielle immediately got up from her chair. “Please, leave my classroom.”

  Cornelius was confused by Danielle’s sudden reaction. “Please, give me a chance to explain myself,” he said.

  “I don’t care to hear any explanation from a total stranger. Please leave now, or I’ll have to call security,” she said in a firmer tone.

  Cornelius got up from his seat still begging Danielle to hear him out. “Mrs. Lancaster, I think we know each other from before. Just hear me out for a minute, and if after that you still want me to leave, I promise to leave immediately.”

  “Sir, I don’t know you, and honestly, you are giving me the creeps!”she said.

  Danielle reacted this way because she did not understand why she had such strange feelings for someone she had just met.

  “Have I offended you in any way?”he asked.

  Cornelius was not about to leave without saying what he came there to say. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Lancaster. I should have introduced myself first. My name is Cornelius. I’m the school janitor. I’m sure you have already made that observation from my uniform.”

  Danielle realized that she had overreacted and immediately apologized. “Please, forgive my rudeness. I honestly don’t know what came over me. I’m usually more polite,” she said with a soft smile.

  “There’s no need for an apology. I perfectly understand your reaction. I’m the one who should have to apologize,” he said.

  Danielle smiled and asked him to take a seat. As Cornelius slowly sat down, he looked straight into her eyes—those same sparkling eyes that had haunted him every night in his dreams for the past ten years.

  He nervously cleared his throat again, and despite the nervous feeling he had inside, he managed to begin the conversation. “Mrs. Lancaster, when I first saw you this morning sitting in the teacher’s lounge, a strange sense of déjà vu came over me. I felt as if I had known you before. Please, forgive me if my words sound in any way disrespectful to you. I can assure you that it is not my intention to do so, and quite honestly, I believe this is much too deep to really put into words.”

  He continued, “I’m almost certain that somewhere in a different period and time, our lives were somehow connected. I know this sounds crazy, and I don’t even know where all this is coming from. All I know is that we knew each other from before, but you and I definitely know that in this lifetime, we did not meet until today.”

  Danielle did not know what to say. What could she possibly say when she knew that everything Cornelius had just said made perfect sense because that’s exactly the way she felt about him? Still, she refrained from making any comments to him.

  She got up and walked toward the window where the painting was and discreetly glanced at it. She walked back to her desk where Cornelius sat nervously. Danielle found herself staring into Cornelius’s penetrating dark brown eyes. She finally realized that he was the man in the painting.

  Danielle wondered if he could possibly be the same man she saw in her dreams. Was he the man whose face she never got to see? In her dreams, when his face was about to be revealed, she woke up in anguish and with an immense heaviness in her soul. For the past ten years, Danielle had had the same vivid dream. She saw herself being dragged out of what seemed to be her home in the middle of a cold winter night by a man she profoundly loved.

  This man, instead of loving and protecting her, had violently yanked her out of her bed, and without any compassion, he had thrown her out of the comfort of her home on a bitterly cold winter night. Was it possible that the same man from her dream, who had humiliated and abandoned her without remorse, was now sitting right in front of her?

  Cornelius was anxious to know what Danielle thought about everything he had just said. But Danielle was frozen in her chair; she couldn’t say a word. She just looked at him as though she had seen a ghost.

  Cornelius got up from his seat and walked over to Danielle. “Please, don’t look at me with such terror,” he said softly. He moved closer to her and reached for her hand, but she pushed him away.

  “Please leave.”

  As he walked toward the door, he turned back and said, “I did not intend to make you uncomfortable or scare you in any way. This situation is very strange for me as well.

  I might not show it, but deep inside, I’m terrified.”

  Danielle kept her head down and made no effort whatsoever to speak to him. She acted as though she did not have the slightest interest in anything he had to say.

  Cornelius left Danielle’s classroom and resumed his work, but he couldn’t stop thinking about this weird situation he was dealing with. He found himself thinking that maybe Danielle was hiding something. What can I possibly do to get to the bottom of this nightmare I’m experiencing? he wondered. I should tell Mrs. Lancaster about my life. Maybe if she knew that I was found ten years ago wandering the streets without any memories, she would open up to me and tell me what she knows. Cornelius was under the suspicion that Danielle knew something about their past, and she did not want him to find out about it.“Hey, that’s it!”he shouted aloud.

  Mr. Smith, the math teacher, was passing through the hallway where Cornelius was mopping and talking to himself, and he rushed toward him. “Young man, why are you shouting? Are you OK?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Cornelius replied. “I just thought I saw a mouse.”

  “That’s all we need! An invasion of those dirty creatures in our school,” said Mr. Smith as he continued to walk to his classroom.

  Cornelius resumed mopping, and as he did, he thought, if I have no recollection of my life before the past ten years, then the only logical explanation is that Danielle and I met before I lost my memory. That makes sense. But if that’s the case, why doesn’t Danielle recognize me? What if she’s only pretending not to know me? Whatever the outcome may be, I need to know.

  Cornelius was determined to learn the truth, so he dropped the mop and rushed outside before the last bell rang. He waited for Danielle to come out. When Danielle finally came out of the building, she was having a hard time carrying the painting along with her bag and some books. Cornelius, who was watching her from his car, felt very tempted to walk up to her and help her. But he knew that wasn’t a good idea. When she began to drive away, he followed her.

  Chapter 5

  Danielle arrived at her house without even noticing that she had been followed. Cornelius parked his car a few houses before hers.

  As soon as Danielle was inside her home, she hung the painting on the living room wall. The nail she used was too thin for its weight, and the painting fell. She bent down to pick it up and noticed an old, faded envelope sticking out from the back of the painting.

  “This look like it’s been here for years,” she said. “Whoever inserted this envelope in the back of this painting really wanted to make sure that its existence remained concealed.”

  She carefully removed the envelope, and as she held it in her hands, she thought about whether or not she should open it and read it. “I don’t know why I’m debating with myself about this. Technically, this is my envelope because it came out of my painting,” she said. Without any further hesitation, Danielle opened the envelope.

  Inside the envelope,
she found two long double-paged letters. One was from Katherine to Cornelius, and the other one was from Cornelius to Katherine. She opened the one that was addressed to Katherine, and she noticed the date at the top of the letter was December 12, 1839. She became nervous, and her hands began to shake.

  According to the letter, Cornelius had looked for Katherine at Reverend Miller’s house, and the reverend told him about his time-traveling device, which he had kept a secret from everyone except his wife, Sarah, and Katherine, whom he loved like a sister. Reverend Miller told him that Katherine had helped him and his wife test the device many times and that she used the knowledge she acquired to send herself several years into the future. For some reason, Katherine had left the device behind, although she knew that without the device, she could never return to the year 1839. The letter stated that Cornelius asked the reverend to send him into the future to find his wife and bring her back. The reverend warned him that it would be very risky, but Cornelius’s determination persuaded him.

  Reverend Miller arranged everything, and he told Cornelius to find an artist who could paint a portrait of him while writing a letter to his wife, Katherine. He told him that he needed to pour his entire soul into that letter, so that when Katherine saw it, she would perceive all the love and the pain he felt that very moment. Reverend Miller also reminded him that they would need to have the painting with them to return to the year 1839.

  As Danielle continued reading, there were tears in her eyes. She wanted to understand why everything seemed so real to her, and she hoped she would find the answer somewhere in the letter.

  The letter also said that Cornelius’s mother, Elmirah, never liked the reverend or her daughter-in-law Katherine. One night she waited up for her son to return from a business trip. She told him that in his absence, the reverend and Katherine had had an affair. She swore to her son that she saw them together in a very suspicious and compromising position.

  Everything that she said to her son was just a cruel lie; she never saw anything of the kind. An ungodly woman like Elmirah would say and do anything that would serve her evil purposes. She had been instigating problems for Katherine since the first day she met her. Elmirah had manipulated Cornelius all his life, but everything changed when he met Katherine, who swept him off his feet. Against his mother’s will, he married her.

  Elmirah never forgave Katherine for her son’s defiance. She swore that she would not rest until Katherine was out of her son’s life. Cornelius listened to his mother’s lies, and in a jealous rage, he went up to the bedroom where his wife was sleeping and dragged her out of the house in the middle of a bitterly cold winter night. How sad it was that Elmirah’s intrigues had more power over Cornelius than the love he felt for his wife! Humiliated and shamed, Katherine stood outside her house, begging her husband to let her in.

  When Danielle finished reading the letter, she was in shock. She did not know what to make of everything she had just read. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the person who the letter was addressed to had the same name that the lady in the house had called her.

  That janitor’s name is Cornelius—the same name as the man who wrote the letter! she thought. Could it be that I’m the Katherine from the letter? If I am her, why don’t I remember it? Maybe this other letter has the answer I need.

  Danielle was about to open the second letter, the one addressed to Cornelius, when she heard a knock on the door. She got up and went to answer it. She looked through the peephole and saw that the person at the door was Cornelius. Danielle was nervous, and she anxiously wondered how the school janitor had found her address.

  Cornelius knocked once more, and since he wasn’t getting an answer from Danielle, he shouted, “I know you’re in there because I followed you home!” He continued, “I want you to know that for the past ten years, I have seen you in my dreams! I see myself dragging a woman out of her bed and violently throwing her out on the street in the middle of the night. Up until a moment ago, I did not know who the woman was because in my dreams, I was never able to see her face.

  “As I waited anxiously outside of your home, trying to gather up the courage to knock on your door, I had the dream again. This time I was awake. The dream came like a vivid memory of the past, and you were the woman I was dragging out in anger, but underneath the anger, I also felt a profound love burning inside me. I loved you immensely,” he said softly.

  After listening to his speech, Danielle opened the door. Cornelius came inside, and when he looked at her, he noticed the tears in her eyes. He, too, began to cry.

  Danielle tried to talk, but she was trembling so much that it was hard for Cornelius to understand her. “I also have had the same dream for the past ten years,” she said in broken words, still sobbing. “In my dreams, I see a man dragging me out of what seemed to be my home on a bitterly cold winter night. For some reason, I was never able to see his face. But today, when I saw you, something deep inside me made me realize that you were the man in my dream. I believe that you are also the man in the painting and the same Cornelius who wrote to Katherine, who I profoundly believe to be me.”

  “Slow down,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

  Danielle slowly bent down and picked up the painting that was still lying on the floor. She lifted it up and turned it to face him.

  Cornelius was mesmerized. He gazed at the image in the painting, which happened to be an image of himself.

  He turned to Danielle, still in shock. “Who are we, and where do we come from?”

  Danielle handed him the letter she had just read, the one he wrote to her back in 1839. “Please read it,” she said. “You will find your answer in there.”

  Cornelius sat down and began to read the letter. When he was done reading, he looked at Danielle. She was crying.“I’m so sorry,” he said softly. “I wish I could take back whatever wrong I did to you in the past. As I read this letter, I perceived that I really loved you. Whatever happened between us back then, we’ll find out when we learn more about how we got here. I know it has to do with this painting. We now know that we do not belong in this century, and we have to find the way back to our own time.”

  “We might never find our way back,” she said, “and it will be awkward from now on knowing that we shared a life together over one-hundred years ago. And worst of all, we have no memories of that life.”

  “I believe that the love between us was so strong that neither time nor space was able to change it. The proof of that is that even one hundred and fifty-one years into the future and with no memory to confirm it, our souls are still connected. Destiny has gone against the time barrier and managed to cause our lives to cross paths again.”

  Cornelius reached for Danielle’s shoulder in a desperate attempt to comfort her. At first, she tried to push him away, but as he got closer, she felt his breath caressing her neck and his arms wrapped around her waist. His touch did not feel in any way strange to her body. Driven by her repressed desires, Danielle slowly gave in to Cornelius’s touch, and she embraced him as his lips tenderly touched hers.

  Chapter 6

  Cornelius promised Danielle that they would find their way back. “To do that, we need more information about how we got here. Let me see that letter again,” he said.

  “No, let’s read the second letter instead. There might be more information there,” Danielle suggested.

  “What second letter?” he asked.

  “The one I have here,” she replied. “Go ahead and read it aloud.”

  Cornelius opened the letter and began to read it:

  My beloved Cornelius,

  When you receive this letter, I will no longer be in your life, but there are a few things I need to tell you before I’m gone forever. You have to believe me when I tell you that I love you and always will. I have never betrayed you, and I never will.

  That is why I need to tell you the truth about your family. Nathaniel is your brother. Your father and his mother were very much in love, but
your grandparents disapproved of their love because Nathaniel’s mother was of a lower class. When they found out that she was with child, they sent him away, and when he came back, she had already married Adam Miller, a kind and honest man, who her parents had chosen for her.

  When your father returned and found out that Nathaniel’s mother had married, he was persuaded by his parents to marry a sophisticated, wealthy woman, who his parents had chosen for him long before.

  Your mother knew the truth about Nathaniel all along. That’s why she always hated him. And before your father passed away, he sent Nathaniel a letter in which he revealed the truth to him. In his letter, he said he left instructions to his wife, Elmirah, to divide the fortune equally between you and Nathaniel. But your mother decided not to do as your father requested on his deathbed.

  The reason I’m telling you all this now is because when I found out the truth from Nathaniel, I confronted your mother, and she did not deny it. Instead, she threatened me. She said that if I ever told you or anyone else about that matter, she would accuse Nathaniel and his wife of practicing witchcraft.

  I told her that no one would believe those lies about the reverend and his wife. They were honest and kind, and everyone in their community loved them, especially their congregation. After that incident with your mother, I went up to my room to wait for your return.

  But I was so tired that I fell asleep, and now I know that your mother waited for you and poisoned your heart with her lies. What hurts the most is that you believed her. When you threw me out of our home, Nathaniel and Sarah received me in their home. Just like they did before when my father passed away and my mother, Annabelle, and I were left on the street.

  Cornelius, that night I was impatiently waiting for you to tell you that I was with child. You never gave me the chance to tell you. That’s why now I have to think about what is best for our unborn child and must do the right thing.