PAINTED

by Kirsten McKenzie

  She’d left the youngest girl till last. The surviving child, unless there was another gravestone inscribed with her name on. Her painting disturbed Anita the most. She knew the little girl hadn’t moved or changed where she looked, but Anita swore that the girl had not been looking out of the frame, that she’d been looking off towards her brothers and sister hanging on the wall next to her. Anita persuaded herself it was a trick of the light. Exacerbated because of her tiredness from the drive and coupled with hunger and the unease of being here alone. This was the longest time she’d spent alone in years, she used to enjoy living on her own, the solitude and the lack of anyone else’s negative vibes, but then that changed.

  Two years ago Anita moved into a small flat, cheap due to its proximity to the train line. Trains didn’t bother her, for as long as she could remember she’d had a love affair with large locomotives, choosing them over flying whenever possible. Their clackety clack over the tracks more soothing than the constant wash of waves upon the seashore. As a child her parents indulged her with vintage Hornby train sets, now packed away in the attic at home.

  Her new flat had been perfect. Perfect size. Perfect location. Safe, until the night it wasn’t.

  Anita remembered going to bed. The humidity too high for sheets, the fan on high, windows open. She never made that mistake again.

  She remembered waking with a start, a man standing in her bedroom doorway, she first asked if there was a fire, was that why he was in her room? Then as he’d sidled up to her bed, reality dawned and before she could scream he was on her, hands reeking of oil covered her mouth, the fumes making her dizzy. His knee between her thighs, his other hand… she tried not to think about it.

  The train going past her flat had disguised the sound of him clambering in through her window. Of everything that happened that night, the ruination of her love of trains the hardest to accept, their sound now a horrific trigger to unsettling flashbacks.

  She moved home to the safety of her parent’s house and her second floor bedroom. Her windows never open, even at the height of summer.

  Her parents had never wanted her to move out. They’d even refused to pay for her to attend a better college because it would have meant her moving away, so her degree was from a lower tier college nearer to home.

  Relieved to have her back under their roof, despite the circumstances, she not only suffered debilitating nightmares, but the unspoken I told you so’s from her mother, who’d warned her about moving out and cosseted her like a broken doll. Through counselling she’d been able to sleep through the night and get on with life. Apart from going to work, she sheltered at home never far from her mother’s reach. She hadn’t realised how stifling it was until stepping out of the car upon arriving here.

  Shaking those thoughts from her head, she went back to the art, a tangible solid combination of pigments on canvas, not an unknown stranger reeking of oil. It was just art.

  Anita adjusted her headset and examined the fourth painting. The youngest of the four children, she was five or six in the portrait, maybe a year either side of that. Painted wearing her hair loose, in a white cotton dress identical to her sister’s. A child-sized artist’s palette held in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. The cleft in her chin more than marked her as a sibling despite the contrasting eye colour. She didn’t have the same anxious expression as the others though. Hers was more of a smirk, as if she knew something they didn’t. And that bothered Anita the most.

  She turned the frame over, looking for a name. My Ruth.

  Chapter 8

  Ruth. A biblical name for an innocent child. Anita added her details into the spreadsheet. The child’s eyes following her as she did. She would not achieve much with her on the table. Stacking Ruth on top of the other portraits, she piled them on the floor by the empty hearth, well away from where she was sitting. She fancied Ruth’s eyes were on her, pure fantasy, but not having Ruth in her line of sight was better. Now she could concentrate on the calming landscapes.

  The first proved to be anything but soothing. The long frame held a hunting scene featuring red-coated riders on sweat-slicked horses tearing after their hounds and on the far edge of the painting, a hound had caught the hapless fox and was ripping into it, blood oozing from its powerful jaws. The other hounds appeared poised to join in, to finish the unfortunate beast. Anita wondered who in their right mind would have such a bloodthirsty scene hanging on their wall?

  The words The Hunt were engraved on a plate screwed to the frame. More likely The Massacre Anita thought. The picture lacked any signature and was only memorable for its subject. It’s style would only appeal to a narrow segment of the art market.

  She stacked it to the side and moved on to the next one. Lush hills, misty moorland in the foreground, a pleasing palette, no dismembered animal carcasses anywhere in sight. Signed in the bottom right-hand corner, the unmistakable left-slanting signature of Ivan Shishkin, a Russian landscape artist. What a coup. There’d been a recent boom in Russian art, with the sales of Russian masters in the millions of dollars every year. The commission on this piece alone would feed her for a year if it sold. She worked with a great team, but it wasn’t always straightforward who’d get the lion’s share of the finder’s fee in the commission structure. The exquisite realism of Shishkin’s work was so sublime, that finding words to describe it was easy. In the back of her mind she couldn’t help but think that if there was one, there might be another.

  Bright eyed and bushy tailed, she slipped into a fugue. She hadn’t found another Shishkin, but located two pieces by John Absolon, from his Switzerland series. The mountains had aspects of the majestic Swiss Alps to them. The rest were of a lesser quality. Something you’d buy from a community art collective, done by ladies in twinsets who painted together then drowned their elderly sorrows in tea and scones. Unsigned, they’d decorate spare rooms and bathrooms around the world.

  Hours flew by in a blur. Engrossed in her work, it was only her stomach grumbling which forced her to the kitchen. She wandered down the hall, swinging her arms like a champion shot-putter prepping for competition. Her windmilling arms slowed to a halt as she paused in front of one of the woebegone houseplants she’d watered earlier. Except they weren’t so sorrowful, they were glorious. Lush green fronds cascaded over the rim of the copper planter. The plant hummed with vitality. Weird. She carried on to the kitchen puzzling over it’s resurrection.

  The kitchen provided the perfect distraction. Rummaging through the fridge, she tried to find something other than pie. She couldn’t face another night of congealing meat. She discovered a packet of bacon which passed the sniff test and paired that with more of the eggs from breakfast. If she kept eating this way she’d be able to call herself Paleo in no time. Her poor maligned body was more used to regular infusions of fast food and leftovers. She couldn’t recall ever being this healthy before and the psychological pull of unrequited sugar cravings was relentless, but there was nothing here to sate them. Although there was sugar in wine.

  Pouring herself a glass from the bottle she’d found the night before, she sipped it at the formica table and in the short time it took for the bacon to fry, the sky had blackened, colouring everything beyond the windows an inky black. She gazed at her reflection in the window and saw average. It suited her, as long as her work wasn’t average.

  Anita slipped into bed, grateful for the empty walls. Naked rectangles adorned the wallpaper where the paintings had previously hung. Abandoned hooks reached out for their stolen wards. Turning her back on them, her eyes drawn to the windows where she’d left the curtains open, secure in her second-floor room. Clouds struggled against the racing wind, the moon probing its way through clouds flushed with rain. It was a lulling battle to watch. Moon and stars darting in and out of sight, like Christmas lights blinking on and off around harried shoppers flooding through the festive season.

  She was drifting off, lulled by the wind, when the baying of hounds filtered in through the poorly
fitted windows. Somewhere out there a pack of dogs were howling at the disguised moon. Anita shuddered, pulling the covers up higher. She pitied whatever creature had caught their attention and tried not to imagine what was happening, drifting off to an uneasy sleep with visions of rabid animals tearing at the flesh of a hapless hare filling her mind.

  She slept, her brow furrowed as her dreams took her to places she never went in her waking hours. Flashbacks of what had happened years ago blended with visions of running through barren fields. Dogs hunting her, baying for her blood, before morphing into a gang of faceless men chasing her through the dark.

  Click

  The handle of Anita’s bedroom door turned with a languid calmness, in direct contrast to the thrashing about of the woman in bed. The door opened silently on its ancient hinges and a shadow filled the doorway, two shadows. The little girl looked up at the man standing beside her, her small hand in his. Looking down, he smiled. Dropping the girl’s hand he stepped into the room, moving closer to the bed. The woman looked so different from the night before, where she’d slept well, face calm, her breath gentle against the soft pillow. He’d watched her then, taking in every detail. Tonight she was different. Her face showed anguish, deep lines marring her complexion. Which woman was she? The calm, self assured one or the one he saw before him now?

  Somewhere in the house a door slammed. The girl turned towards the noise, he hesitated. The woman’s breathing changed, the slamming door wrenching her from her nightmares. He only had seconds, he vanished.

  Anita screamed, a heart-rending, ear splitting scream of absolute terror few experience. On the cusp of sleep and awake, her consciousness lost to her night terrors, she was in that indefinable place where you’re not awake, yet not asleep. That moment where reality is unattainable. Heart racing, she flung her arms up, as if warding off someone or something. And then the sobbing began.

  Whimpering, her throat sore, she hadn’t had a nightmare that vivid for months. Waking with the vision of a man leering above her, the man from her nightmares who still roamed free. As in her earlier nightmares she would have sworn that he was standing over her and, like the other times, the nightmare fading like a Polaroid photograph in reverse. She was shaking, the after-effects of the adrenaline coursing through her veins. The only thing to counter it was to fill a mug of tea with a pound of sugar.

  Swinging her legs out of bed, Anita stood unsteady on her feet. As she reached for her dressing gown, her hand froze mid air as she spied the open door. Paralysed with fear, she looked like a plaster devotional statue beseeching Christ for salvation. The door was open. The door she’d shut.

  She lowered her arm, unsure of what to do now. Her throat ached, a band of pain had snaked its way further around her head, gripping it vice-like. The pain throbbing in tandem with her heart rate. She repeated the mantras she’d learnt from her counsellor. “This too will pass,” she whispered, shrugging on her robe. “I’m stronger than I know. Breathe,” she muttered, tying the cord around her waist, eyes on the doorway, lips barely moving.

  Shoulders hunched, she argued with herself for and against going downstairs for tea. She was in the house alone. It was only a nightmare. It was an old house, it made sense that the doors wouldn’t stay shut. It was fine. Eyes darting like a thief in the night, she peered into the empty hallway, the blackness complete. She retreated into her room and picked up her cellphone, the torch function a lifesaver for someone suffering from a fear of the dark. With the illumination from her phone, she braved the corridor. Shadows cast by the potted plants spidery fingers inching towards her on the walls, another reason not to bother with house plants. It was easy to ignore the known, it was the unknown which made her mouth dry and her pulse race.

  The kitchen filled with light at the flick of a switch and the appliances calmed her with the stovetop flame chasing away the last of the nightmare. The kettle whistled, bringing reality crashing into the room. Anita busied herself with opening cupboards and drawers, pulling out a mug, a tea bag, teaspoon, milk and sugar; uniting them was as soothing a mother’s quiet words. She tried ignoring the mounting pile of dishes as she sipped the scalding hot drink. Doing dishes was preferable to going back to bed, but later, after her tea. Rearranging the crocheted cushions, she curled up on a chair and pondered the family who’d once lived here. The outcome of the artist’s death might have been different if those children hadn’t died, if they were related to him. It was conceivable he was no relation to them at all. And what had happened to Ruth? No! She would not think about the children.

  Swallowing the dregs of her tea she got up, the sugar hitting her bloodstream. She threw the dishes into the cavernous sink and filled it with hot soapy water. The routine of doing the mundane exactly what she needed. Immersed in clanging crockery she had no idea what was happening in the turret high above her.

  Chapter 9

  He stood over the unfinished portrait on the easel. It had been an ill-defined outline of a woman’s face, the eyes still empty. Just the almond outline and eyebrows done, waiting for the artist to capture the hardest part of any woman. He pondered the direction he should take. Sleeping or awake. The calmness of sleep or the terror he’d seen swathing her face. This was the point of no return, he could always paint over if his viewpoint changed but he wanted to record her essence, if he could define what that was. He needed more time.

  His shadow watched him prepare his brushes, her tiny feet curled underneath her as she perched on the window seat, the howling storm framing her young face.

  His sable brush danced over the canvas, creating cheeks flushed with youth, lips open. Wisps of hair appearing like magic, blown by an unseen wind. Strand after strand appeared on the stretched canvas, his brush mixing an auburn hint in the hair as it peaked on her brow.

  Selecting a finer brush he dabbed it into a darker hue — an indescribable grey and worked on the neck, before defining the shoulders. With a damp cloth he smudged the oil — giving the illusion of the subject being caught mid turn, casting a glance backwards. The smudged paint ethereal in the twilight of the room.

  The little girl reached out and swirled one of her fingers through the mass on the palette. With her finger she smeared the paint across the canvas, the colours in stark contrast to the grey tones of the artist’s deft strokes.

  Together they admired their efforts.

  “Not long, two nights,” he said, stroking her hair. Loosed from its white ribbon it spilled past her shoulders like the fairy ferns in the hallway, vibrant and alive. His own smile fading as a familiar pain pulsed in his knuckles.

  Her smile played around her mouth, never quite making it to her mirthless eyes. Her gaze returned to the painting. Two nights were two nights too long and she didn’t want to wait.

  Chapter 10

  It was Anita’s third morning and still the rain fell. She would need an ark if this continued. After her disrupted sleep it felt as if grit filled her eyes and her mouth was an arid desert.

  Despite her normal fastidiousness, she needed sustenance more than a bath. She didn’t bother dressing; she threw her robe on, her feet encased in old bed socks. At some stage in her life, her mother had given her a pair of woven purple socks, thicker than her heaviest winter jumper, they’d seen her through a dozen winters and negated the need for slippers.

  Her throat ached from her nightmare and she wandered downstairs absorbed in the half-remembered fears from the night.

  “Good morning.”

  Anita screamed, slipping on the edge of the stairs before coming to a crumpled halt at the foot of the staircase.

  The lawyer looked on, raking her tangled legs with his piggy eyes.

  “Thought I’d pop in to see how you’re going. Wondered if the old pile could withstand this weather.”

  Struggling to understand what was happening, Anita couldn’t respond. The sneer on his face enough to turn the stomach of a butcher.

  “How did you get in?” she whispered, her throat still raw. Standing
up, her legs jittery like a newborn foal. She tried to compose herself, fully aware of her state of undress. The last thing she’d expected today was company. She didn’t want to remember the last time she’d been this vulnerable.

  Gates checked his ostentatious watch with faux seriousness.

  “Sorry to get you out of bed at such an early hour. Ten o’clock is early isn’t it?” he mocked.

  “Ten o’clock?”

  Anita didn’t wear a watch, her cellphone the only timepiece she ever referred to. She hadn’t checked it when she woke. No point since there was no coverage anywhere other than in the study. She wasn’t even sure it was still charged.

  Gates waved his arm over the paper carry bags.

  “I brought morning tea with me, thought you’d relish the company, being alone… in this house. I also assumed you’d be hard at work, but… then again?” head tilted, he raised his eyebrows.

  Before Anita could rebut his ridiculous query, he said, “Have you already done these paintings? Odd they’re still on the wall then.”

  Anita had had enough, his appraising gaze as unnerving as the house last night. She recognised his sort, a misogynistic, small town mentality, where women were possessions and a woman with brains was dangerous, worthy only of being given a good beating behind closed doors.

  “Can you take the bags to the kitchen and I’ll…”

  “What? Get changed into something a little more comfortable?” Gates laughed.

  Anita clenched her jaw as she limped upstairs, she wasn’t sure what was more bruised, her ego or tailbone. She felt irrationally uncomfortable that the lawyer was here. It wasn’t so much that she was undressed, it was more that his presence disturbed the whole atmosphere in the house. She fancied she could sense a subtle change in the surrounding air. Mad she knew, but it was virtually palpable and it niggled at her.