The Painting
Stu Albrecht, according to his wife Sydney, never had a good sense of interior decor. She had decorated their apartments for as long as they had been living together and that control was something she rarely relinquished. It was for the better. Stu was not only aware of the fact but in full agreement. He would always fall in love with the strangest paintings and photographs. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that Stu Albrecht would be the one to find the painting.
It was a blistering July afternoon and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. An old local man had passed away the previous week and his family was holding an estate sale. And what the family meant by 'passed away' was that he had been declared legally dead after disappearing from his decrepit old house the previous year. The family was holding the estate sale to essentially liquidize what little assets they hadn't previously gotten their hands on before the old man had been legally declared dead.
Stu and Sydney happened to live just down the street and around the corner. They went for a walk to escape the heat of their second-story apartment. The A.C. was broken and the damn landlord just wouldn't get back to them. They strolled easily down the block and saw the sprawling, weedy lawn of the missing old man covered in miscellaneous items. Furniture, boxes of records, lamps, clothes, several guitars and some other strange knick-knacks.
They didn't need to say anything, the decision was somehow unanimous. They couldn't turn an opportunity like this up. They walked over to the estate sale. Stu checked his wallet. He only had $27 in cash but he had a feeling he would be able to find something or a few somethings.
Syd and Stu split up when they walked into the sale, each taking their own paths through the strange merchandise. Sydney didn't find much. She found a stack of novels, none of them she really recognized- one or two maybe, but only the author. After that, she thumbed through an old milk carton full of old, shabby jazz records. She found a Milt Jackson record and slid the vinyl out to check the condition. That was when Stu had called her over.
He had found something almost immediately. It was a large oil painting in a thin wooden frame. His mind had honed in on it the second he saw it. Something about it had caught his attention-- hook, line, sinker. Everything else on the lawn might as well have not been there. He walked over to it with slow, almost hypnotic steps. When he reached it he picked it up with both hands.
It was beautiful-- a sprawling tall grass field with an amazing purple sunset behind it. Silhouetted by the beautiful setting sun was a lion, with a large flowing mane. It was standing on a rock. Trees stood out here and there. It amazed Stu so much he turned the painting around to see who had made such a painting and there wasn't any sort of maker's mark. There was only a name. Savannah Sunrise. Under the name on a little green sticker was a price. $27.
"Sydney!" Stu called, excited and somehow a little scared. He wasn't sure why so he did his best to ignore it. It worked.
Sydney put the record she had been checking back in its sleeve and walked over to Stu. He was holding an old, somewhat shabby oil painting and looking at it like it was a baby or a puppy or something. He had a look in his eyes, one that Sydney knew. He found some ‘niche’ or ‘unique’ decoration that he just couldn’t live without. One that she was almost guaranteed not to like. She walked over to him and dread filled her heart. She knew what he was going to say and she really wished that he wouldn't.
"Syd, check this painting out!" He held it out so she could see. After a silent moment he pulled it back. "It’s so neat, huh?"
"Yeah, Stu, neat." She looked around, there wasn't much to see in this part of the sale. An old, lopsided desk and a lamp with a moth-eaten cotton shade.
"I think I wanna get it. Would you be alright with that?" Stu looked at his wife and the spark in his eyes made her stomach drop. She had been afraid he was going to ask.
"Where do you even want to hang it up?" Sydney was desperate. She didn’t want this shabby oil painting on any of their walls. She was grasping at straws.
"I was thinking about the living room, or maybe the office?"
"Stu, I’m not so sure," Sydney dug her heels in the dirt just a bit. She really didn’t want this painting. If they did end up getting it, she wasn’t going down without a fight. “I mean, Stu, look at the thing.” She touched the side of the scuffed wooden frame and looked at him for a long moment.
Stu glanced down at the oil painting held up in his hands. If anything, it made him want it more. Syd saw that in the way he tightened his grip slightly, the way he looked at her. Another thing, real hurt. Stu wanted this thing bad.
“Syd, please?” Stu looked like he was on the verge of tears. “Don’t make me beg,” he said.
“Fine, fine,” Syd said like she was waving a little white flag. It was almost worth the stupid grin that cracked across Stu’s bespectacled face.
Stu never thought twice about it. Sydney didn't really want anything. Most of the junk that passed as merchandise seemed to be broken or damaged in one way or another. Her gaze was continually drawn to the painting over and over again, but not in the same way Stu's had been drawn. Something about that painting repulsed her, and it did it on a level that was somehow primitive-- like it was just the pure reaction of her nerve endings, tapping into hundreds of thousands of years of instinct.
It was a feeling she only felt when her gaze wandered back to the painting. The feeling hit her with a burning intensity, yet she had little understanding of just what was causing it. It was quiet fear that hung in her chest, radiating outwards. It made her want to curl her toes, to ball up her hands and snarl. She felt like prey, being stalked by a predator. Her skin was riveted with goosebumps despite the eighty degree weather.
They ended up bringing their planned walk around the neighborhood to a close despite the broken AC in their aging apartment complex. Stu was too excited and encumbered to walk the seven blocks they had originally planned. They walked straight home from the estate sale. When they got home Stu immediately hung the painting up in the living room, using two smaller nails to hold up both corners of the canvas. He stood back and stared at the painting for what felt like three, maybe five minutes.
When Sydney came out into the living room to see if he was coming to bed, Stu was staring at the painting. He hadn't moved an inch since he hung the thing up.
Stu didn't notice, despite the fact that he was staring at the damn painting so much, that something had begun to happen. At first, when it started, Sydney was just as unaware as Stu seemed to be. That horrible realization came one August afternoon.
Sydney had just gotten home from work and was going through an informal yet inexorable ritual. She swung her purse onto the couch, tossed her coat onto the armchair and walked into the kitchen for a glass of something cold. That's when she had a strange urge to look over her shoulder. It was as if someone had stepped on a branch and snapped it but in her own living room. She whipped around; and when her gaze settled, it was on that painting. Goosebumps ran up her arms in cold waves. Her chest was suddenly heavy.
The lion was different somehow. It's a painting, Syd, she thought.
She walked closer to it, pretty sure that she was making it up. How could a painting move? It couldn't. That was the answer. Sydney felt she knew that. Her certainty was almost enough to outweigh it. “Almost” was the keyword. She had a glaring image in front of her that contradicted her every desperate, squirming thought.
The lion had been silhouetted against the setting sun, perfectly centered on a large jutting rock. Now, she could still see the lion, but it was off-center. It had moved to the left. Sydney blinked. The lion’s tail had moved. Pure incomprehension hit her, then slowly gave way to dawning horror. It hit her in a powerful wave, and she scrambled backward. She hit the chair and toppled over the left arm of the lazy boy.
Sydney lay on the hardwood floor, looking up at her flat ceiling and letting the human brain do what it did best- deny it all. That tail didn't move, she thought. Paintings can't move. After a while she sat up. Then, after some time sitting on the floor, she stood. She made sure her back was facing the painting-- not because she was afraid, but because she just didn't want to look at it. At least that's what she was telling herself.
With her back still to that awful painting, she carefully edged her way into the kitchen. When she was in, she walked straight to the fridge and pulled it open, looking for something that would take the edge off. There wasn't anything. Sydney let out a frustrated hiss of air between her teeth.
She needed to forget about this. She slammed the fridge closed and had a flash of brilliance so bright she just stood there, slack jawed.
She would try and throw the painting away. It was so profoundly simple that she cursed herself for not thinking of it earlier. She wouldn't wait for Stu to get home and argue it out with her. She would just do it and hope for forgiveness. She took out some of the large, black garbage bags that they had kept for emergencies and began walking back towards the living room. She kept her eyes on the hardwood floor. She wouldn't look at it until absolutely necessary.
When she got into the living room she couldn't help but peek. When she did she froze. The un-opened bags plopped onto the floor and a gasp of horror contorted Sydney's face. The lion was gone. Not just moved but completely gone from the painting altogether. Sydney acted on pure instinct, turning, grabbing her coat and bolting out of the apartment. She slammed the door behind her and ran down the hallway a few steps before she stopped.
A thought had occurred to her as she fled and she ran back to the door. When she got to it, she tried the doorknob and it rattled defiantly in her trembling hands. Locked. Out of pure habit, she shook the door a bit in its frame to check the deadbolt. The door was locked and she didn’t have her keys. A small groan escaped her as she turned to run again.
When Stu pulled into the parking lot Sydney was sitting on the hood of her car, shoeless. Her fists were laced together in her lap and she was concentrating on them with rapt attention.
She was pale, most of the color drained from her face. Stu was naturally worried.
"Syd, what's going on?" He emerged from his car and walked over to his wife. She practically jumped off the hood of the car and ran over to him. When she reached him, she hugged him so tight he thought his ribs would crack.
"Stu, it was horrible," She said hugging him and not realizing tears were rolling down her cheeks. "I-I... The painting… It moved! And.. and then I got locked and... I can't explain. I'm sorry! You'll just have to see."
Despite Stu's confused protests, she led him back into the apartment complex, up the stairwell to the left of the door and over to the apartment entrance. She told Stu about the locked door as they walked Stu didn’t say anything. He just looked at her with mounting concern. Then they got to the apartment door.
Logically, she knew that she could walk up and open the door. Something deeper, maybe her nerve endings, felt the other way. Her hand stopped just short of the doorknob and quivered there. She stepped back, and Stu shuffled around her and tried to open the door.
"Syd, it's not even locked," Stu said, the knob giving in his grip. He pushed the door open. He walked in and tossed his jacket onto their armchair.
Not even locked, Sydney thought. Her hands seemed to shake with the feeling of the deadbolt knocking against the wood of the doorframe earlier. She had a powerful wave of vertigo as she walked in the door and lay her coat onto Stu's. She looked anywhere but the painting. Stu walked over to Sydney, took her in his arms, and started to rub her back. This normally would have done the trick-- calmed her down. At the moment she was not so easily calmed.
"Stu, look at the painting," She said. She hugged him back but kept her eyes on the floor.
"I did, and I don't see anything. Just the painting."
"You… don’t?" Sydney looked up at him, backing out of the embrace. Without thinking about it, she looked over at the painting. The lion was back in its normal spot, silhouetted by the setting sun on its large rock. Sydney felt cold fear in her chest, like a block of ice had settled on her heart. She also felt a strange, awful sort of relief. The two feelings fought for supremacy, but logic was on the side of relief. It had all been some horrible hallucination, she thought. She felt her forehead and armed off the clammy sweat that clung to her cold flesh.
She told Stu everything. By the time she had finished the cold feeling had faded and it had all begun to seem like a bad dream. They laughed it off and Sydney began to work on the surprisingly easy job of forgetting all about it. It was easy, in her day-to-day life. When the dead of night rolled around, when she was lying in bed, her mind was occupied by one thing.
Sometimes it was in her dreams, sometimes it was in the mental stew of the subconscious. She thought of how it felt when she shook the door and the deadbolt held it in place. She thought about cold fear.
As August faded into September and eventually then October, Sydney's memory of the incident with the painting began to fade. Like a bad dream it seemed harder and harder to recall. And when she did it came back in warped flashes. It was something like looking through thick, colored glass at the memory and trying to mentally recreate what you saw.
This was good, at least to her. Subconsciously, she didn't want to remember what it was that she had seen, what she had experienced. It was something relegated to the worst of her nightmares. A rattling door frame, the smell of dry grass in a large field being combed by a hearty gust of wind. The lion. All faded, at least, in her conscious mind.
It all came back, however, one dark October evening. Stu and Sydney had gone to a friend’s house for dinner-- pumpkin carving, and possibly a few beers. They only lived a block away and had walked. It was a smart decision; what had possibly been a few beers turned out to be a few six-packs. Nonetheless, they got home alright.
Following Albrecht tradition, the coats went on the chair. Stu went about making himself a sandwich. Sydney went about taking off her makeup, which wasn't on heavily but still there. Her mind went into a sort of auto-pilot, which fell into a miasma of idle thought. While she went through her routine, Stu finished up his sandwich and walked into the living room and took the inaugural bite.
He stood in front of that fantastic painting he had found at the estate sale. He hadn't ever seen it move as Sydney described. That had probably been some crazy daydream she had in the middle of a cold, flu or something. At least, he hadn't seen a movement that he had noticed. He stared at it for a long time, taking brief moments here and there to take a large bite of his sandwich.
Stu began to wander through in his head. He stood staring at the painting and thinking about random things: the first record he had listened to in the new year, the amount of gas in his car, the next bite of the sandwich-- Simple stones along a well-trodden path of mild and distracting thought. The type one experiences standing in line at the bank or the ticket counter at the movies. He found he was trying to remember something and he squinted with the effort. He brought his hand up to his brow, not sure why, but it seemed a helpful gesture. It covered his view of the painting.
When he moved his hand and found himself looking at the painting, his mind went blank. Whatever it was he had been trying to remember was gone. The only thing that mattered was that the painting had moved. Stu could swear it. Before the lion in the painting had been looking off to the side of the canvas, but now, it looked as if the silhouette had turned to look at him. He leaned a bit closer to the painting and noticed that it wasn't only the lion that had moved.
The grass had moved as if the great field had been swaying with the movement of the wind. He backed up. He felt strangely cold. A deep shock had set over him. It allowed him to think in a numb sort of clarity. He realized something. Without really thinking about it, he brought his hand up to cover his eyes. He lowered his hand and felt no sense of surprise to find that it had moved again. This time, however, a lot more.
Now only the hind legs and the tail of the lion could be seen as it lowered itself off of the large rock and into the tall grass. Stu sniffed and found that it smelled incredible and horrible at the same time. It smelled like a fresh rainfall had just cleared-- the earthy scent rising from the freshly beaten dirt, accompanied by the smell of tall grass, gardenia flowers, wild basil and wet fur. He was amazed, horrified and somehow completely in shock all at the same time.
He backed away until he hit the couch and sat down with a sigh of air from the cushion. He didn't know what to think, for some reason. The thinking was hard. His brain was moving at the pace of a sick elderly snail. He got up and didn't realize he was walking back towards the painting until he tried not to. He couldn't help it. It was like trying to blatantly ignore gravity.
Sweat beaded on his forehead in heavy droplets and trickled down his face. Several drops made their way into his eyes and he blinked them away fiercely. The lion was gone. Now the painting was a colorful sunset overlooking a peaceful field of grass and a tall rock.
Ominous dread mingled with a fascination so base, so simple, it could've been considered childish. He felt that ominous dread coil up in his stomach like a rattler. The rattle of this dread-snake was muffled by the child-like curiosity of this magical painting. He took a step or two forward, getting face to face with the painting. The curiosity won over the ominous dread.
He reached out and gripped both sides of the simple wooden frame and gazed deep into the painting. A bead of sweat trickled from his brow, rolling into his right eye. He swore, squeezing his eyes tight to subdue the burning pain. He brought his right arm up to swipe the sweat from his eyes. The instant his eyes closed, there was a harsh rustling sound and then a monstrous roar. Stu let out a ghastly cry as the head of a lion shot out of the frame and bit deep into his right forearm.
The teeth sank into his flesh and his bones cracked from the pressure of the bite. Blood gushed from the mouth of the lion and quickly began to stain the blue sweater Stu had been wearing.
The lion then retreated into the painting. Its jaws were still locked onto Stu, and he was easily swept off of his feet, one of his loafers slipping right off. Suddenly, all that remained of Stu Albrecht was the blood on his hardwood apartment floor and the shoe that had come off.
Why not shower? Sydney thought while she was removing her makeup. She leaned her head out of the bathroom to let Stu know. When she saw him she debated not even telling him. He was staring at the painting again. When he got like that most things just went in one ear and out of the other. She decided she ought to anyway.
"Stu, I'm going to take a shower," She said staring at him to see if there might be a reaction. As always there was none. "Stu, the house is on fire. The house is on fire and I'm pregnant.” Again, no reaction.
She chuckled as she pulled a fresh towel out of the cabinet and hung it on the towel rack. Without any thought, she shucked off her clothes and got the hot water flowing. She stepped in and turned the water as hot as she could stand. Steam billowed from behind the curtain, lapping over the top to obscure the bathroom like London fog.
The water pressure in their shower was nothing short of incredible. It was almost like one of those infomercial massage showerheads with only four easy payments of $19.99. The sound of the roaring water spattering against her and the porcelain enameled steel was almost overwhelming.
She got most of her makeup off and finished washing up. She got out of the shower, grabbed the towel and began to pat herself dry. Suddenly, it struck her how utterly quiet the apartment was. It’s not like the apartment was a madhouse on any given night, but Stu was usually in the habit of throwing on a record or even a T.V. show. She wrapped the towel around herself and peeked her head out of the door.
Stu wasn't staring at the painting anymore. In fact, Stu was nowhere to be seen. Sydney had the strange sense that she was completely alone.
"Stu, you there?" She took a step out of the bathroom. The question seemed to hang in the air. A silence, powerful to the point of feeling oppressive, seemed to hang in the air in answer to her question.
Sydney walked about the apartment wrapped in her towel looking for Stu. She checked the spare bedroom. She checked the living room. Then the kitchen. Their bedroom was empty, but she took the time to get dressed in some pajamas and then wrap the towel around her hair. Their bedroom window overlooked the complex's parking lot. Their car was still parked in their assigned spot.
Maybe he took a walk, she thought walking back out into the living room. Another voice, one she didn't much care for, answered her: After dark? While he's drunk? Yeah right. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and her nerves screamed in sudden terror. She didn't know why, and that might have been the worst part about it. She turned and found that she was face to face with the painting.
Sudden tears of fright welled in her eyes and her breath caught in her throat. The lion was nowhere to be seen. Just a sun setting on a savanna and the rock. She didn't see the other detail, the obvious one, because her mind willed her not to. At first. Then she saw the blood-- splatters of it on the wooden frame of the canvas, the floor and... Oh my god! she thought. His loafer.
Without thinking, she moved forward towards the shoe. It lay crooked on the hardwood floor. Syd picked it up. She took a closer look at Stu’s loafer. There was a large spatter of blood on the toe. It had smeared somehow. Her thumb had dragged through the crimson while she picked it up.
It had taken Stu. She fought the idea like a person trapped in a nylon stocking. The more she resisted the harder the reality would snap back against her brain. She didn't stop to think of what to do with the shoe, acting purely on her fear and on her anger. She threw the thing as hard as she could at the painting. The leather shoe slammed into the wooden frame of the painting. Both the thinly clad canvas and the old leather shoe clattered to the floor.
It lay on the floor, the canvas face down. Sydney walked over to it, picked it up and kept it facing away from her. What the hell do I do with this thing? she thought. She walked into the kitchen, not for any other reason than she had simply felt the urge to do so. She would find something to do with it, she told herself. She set the painting down on the edge of the wooden dining table. The second she walked away it tumbled off. It landed canvas side up.
She didn’t know what to do. For a moment she just stood looking at the painting lying on the floor. She was stuck like a deer in headlights. Like prey cornered by a predator. She needed to do something, and fast. She just didn’t know what. She wished more than anything that Stu was there. He would have known what to do, if there was anything to do at all.
Blindly, she fumbled through the many drawers and cupboards of the kitchen. She came up empty handed and felt her gut twist. She cursed and began to pat around above the fridge. Then she stopped. Her plan from that long-past August afternoon came back to her. She could throw the thing away. She looked through the cupboard, shaken to the point of having trouble finding things in her own home. She pulled out at least four of the thin, unfolded plastic bags.
She set the bags on the table, where she had meant to set the painting. She turned back and went for an old bottle of brandy Stu had stashed away. She picked it up, uncapped it and took a swallow. She set the bottle on the table, not bothering to replace the cap. Then she walked over to pick up the painting. She grabbed the frame with her right hand and saw the blood still on her hand. She froze, blinking at the sight of it. In that brief flash, the lion emerged from the canvas. It's large, powerful head rippled with anger and fearsome malice as it flashed out at Sydney. She dropped the painting and it went for the only thing it could.
It's hateful jaws clamped around her right hand and yanked as the painting fell. Sydney instinctually leaned against the yank and her hand ripped clean off. The joints popped, there was a strange sound like the tearing of fabric and the suction of liquid mingled into one. At first there was no pain. Then, a warm, wet, tingling sensation. The shock had numbed the pain down to mere pins and needles. She closed her eyes and groped around for the kitchen towel that they kept wrapped around the handle of the stove. It was clumsy. She wasn't left-handed before now.
Finally, she got it. She clumsily wrapped it around the stump of her right wrist tightly. Blood, warm and dark, began to quickly seep through it, but she paid no attention. She tucked the towel wrapped stump in the crux of her left armpit and slowly stood. She tried to steady herself, grabbing at the wooden dining table. She was able to stand for a moment, but the blood loss had made her dizzy. She began to black out but fought it with all she had.
She knew now that there was no throwing this thing away. There was no getting rid of it and moving on. It had taken Stu. It had taken her right hand. The cold fear that had been in her minutes ago had given way to terror. Now that terror gave way to a deep, void like sadness. She had lost everything to a painting.
She slowly reached for the table, driven by a new idea. If she couldn’t fix anything, she could end everything. She grabbed the bottle of brandy by its thin glass neck, and upended it over the canvas. As the amber splashed against the canvas, she saw it migle with her blood, fresh and wet. Tears made her vision swim in liquid obscurity. She felt the empty brandy bottle slip form her tired hand. It shattered on the floor.
She stumbled back to the counter. She fumbled with her left hand in the cabinet above their stove. Small appliances flew out as her inexperienced hand searched desperately for matches. Then her hand closed on the long cardboard box of matches. As she brought her left arm back down she was vaguely aware of a warm and moist feeling spreading in her left armpit and down the left side of her body. She slid the cardboard matchbox open and fumbled to get a match out. She spilled the box on the counter and grabbed at a few. She used her right elbow to secure the box of matches and tried to strike with her left hand.
It took a few tries, but eventually the bundle of matches she had clutched in her left hand all ignited. She tossed them onto the brandy-soaked painting. They lay for a second burning. Then the brandy slowly went up in a blue and white flame. It spread, encompassing the painting and then the brandy-soaked floor around it. The painting began to pop and sizzle. A high keening sound came from the painting, almost like a cry of pain. The frame itself had caught and now the fire spread.
Sydney watched and only turned away when the painting began to make noises of inhuman pain. It was a thin, screeching whine that began to exude from the canvas in undulating waves.
She stumbled out of the kitchen. Her left arm hung limply at her side, her still bleeding stump stuffed in her armpit. It had finally begun to hurt now. The heat that was there had grown intense and radiated up her whole arm. Her face was contorted in a look of sheer pain. Her pallor skin was speckled with her own blood. The towel had fallen away from her wet hair at some point.
She left the apartment, not bothering to close the door behind her. The fire had begun to spread, making a low roaring, crackling sound. It was the sound of burning. She walked out into the parking lot and only stopped when she was next to their car. She sat on the asphalt, leaning against the rear bumper of her car.
When the fire-trucks eventually made their way to the apartment complex, Syd and Stu Albrecht's apartment was burned completely to its bare bones. Not much damage occurred to the other units in the building. It was relatively contained. They found Sydney Albrecht, but it was too late for her. She had passed out due to exsanguination, and within minutes of finding her, she had died from the loss of her blood.
They never found the remains of Stu Albrecht. Nor the painting.
