As a contest entry, this story’s content is not necessarily Creative Commons-licensed – please contact the author about permission to reproduce!
The suitcase sagged on my bed, muzzled by two dull metal latches worn smooth with age. Antique yellow and brown roses curled in a delicate pattern, faded to fraying white at the corners.
It didn’t look like a trap.
I tilted my head, but nothing stirred ominously in the room or from the darkness outside my window. Alone for the weekend; my family had long since departed on the half-day trek to Matt’s swimming competition. It was just me, and the empty house. And this.
A cautious shove revealed no movement from the case. I stared at the note again, its sharp capital letters frantic and heavy.
DON’T LET IT OUT.
Only four words, punctuated by a pen-sized tear in the paper. The slanted script chilled me. Though it was [inhales] obviously a joke, a final twisted gift from my father’s late sister.
Illness took my dad’s two other siblings when he was still very young. I suppose that’s why he tried so hard to include Aunt Sarah in our family, inviting her to every holiday and birthday party without fail. When she finally deigned to show up, spindly and skittish, my aunt’s strange presence always looked straight out of a dumpster. A bird’s nest made from tangled wire coat hangers, or a painting of spaghetti noodles accented by neon sponge meatballs hot-glued to the canvas. Once she gave my brother a resin sculpture of a weasel, its face blank except for an embedded set of false human teeth grinning out from the center. My aunt thought it whimsical. Matt suffered from nightmares so vivid I slept in a chair in his room for two weeks afterwards.
Whatever stories Dad proclaimed about Sarah’s youth as a talented amateur painter, the woman I’d known served more as cautionary warning than beloved mentor for my own burgeoning interest in pencil and oil. Not exactly the kindred spirit I desperately longed for in our family of lawyers and accountants. No, with Aunt Sarah as an example, my pleas for art school inevitably met with parental demands to pursue a “real major” in college. Nearly a year of soul-crushing business classes later, and my aunt lay dead of a heart attack, one final gift remaining to taunt me from beyond the grave.
I flipped open the latches and steeled myself, but nothing sprung out as I threw back the lid. The case held a larger block of hard Styrofoam. Fit neatly into a rectangular square in its center lay a canvas painting.
I let out a sigh of relief and examined it. Bright, scarlet brushstrokes rioted starkly over a white background. No discernible pattern emerged, but glossy beads of paint scattered in shining arcs and pools like arterial blood freshly sprayed against a wall. My stomach turned a little at the thought.
The style seemed too abstract and frankly ordinary for Sarah, so I took the canvas out for a better look. It felt strangely cool and smooth against my hands, like lifting a heavy pane of glass. Up close and tilted beneath the light, the brushstrokes appeared more regular in places, with gaps where the pale background peeked through.
I scanned the image, trying to piece together my aunt’s intentions. Near the bottom of the painting, two half-moon shapes caught my eye. Their white color contrasted so vividly against the sea of red that I wondered for a moment if the canvas contained a hidden light. A larger rounded circle burned beneath them with a similar intensity.
It. Almost looked – like a face.
Something snapped into place in my mind, and the outline of a head appeared, colored darkly, nearly to black around its edges. Clawed fingers stretched above an upturned expression contorted in rage and anguish, but the rest of its vaguely human body bled away like ink into the background. Angry lines twisted around it. I leaned closer as more details revealed themselves. There weren’t lines at all, but thick, interlinking circles.
Chains.
I counted eight ropes of heavy-looking links sloping upwards, their ends sunk into the side of a cramped room. It was bare, except for the bound figure. The chamber tilted upwards in three-quarter perspective, revealing the only way out: a sturdy wooden door topped with a thickly barred window. More chains and locks dangled from it.
As my eyes traced the hallway outside the door, chaotic lines resolved into a jagged staircase. It marched upward, above the chamber, and branched into more corridors and stairs jutting up and out, overlapping like an Asha (##) drawing. A locked door stood sentry above and beneath each hallway, with a final set of horizontal bars hung near the top of the painting. Beams of light filtered through them, drawing my gaze back down to the imprisoned figure, its hate-filled eyes fixed upwards, upon that last, impossible exit.
DON’T LET IT OUT.
Goosebumps rose on my arms, and the shadows outside my window seemed suddenly a little deeper. My aunt never embodied… stability… at the best of times, but this reached entirely new heights. Was it some kind of self-portrait?
The eerie stillness shattered as my ringtone chimed loudly. I jumped in surprise and scrambled for my phone. Matt’s number lit up on the display. The sound of my brother’s familiar, excited chatter filled me with such relief that I eventually told him about Sarah’s gift. He demanded a photo and I obliged, snapped a picture with my phone, and waited nervously while my brother examined it.
The silence stretched on for a few agonizing minutes before Matt grudgingly congratulated me for tricking him so thoroughly. No matter how I protested or described the face, my brother insisted he couldn’t see it. Finally I relented and hung up, after wishing him luck with tomorrow’s event.
It bothered me Matt couldn’t see the scene. The image looked clear, but… maybe I hadn’t zoomed in enough to pick up all the detail. I tilted the painting to take another photo, and froze.
Pale, amused eyes gazed directly at me. The figure’s head tilted outward, its mouth stretched wide in a violent, eager smile. And hadn’t there been eight chains? Now I counted six. Small, twisted C-shapes littered the floor like rings ripped apart link by link.
I shoved the canvas back into the suitcase and slammed it shut. My hands shook so badly it took three tries to secure the latches. I bolted down the stairs and turned on every light in the house.
Four hours of television sitcoms later, and I felt much calmer, and even more foolish. The suitcase went firmly into the closet, and sleep descended at last, bringing dreams filled with swirling red lines and searing eyes.
Morning light barely reached the windowpane when I woke up, anxious and exhausted. Unable to resist, I hauled the suitcase onto my desk.
The cell in the painting lay empty. Piles of chains and splintered wood trailed over the floor and out onto the hallway. My heart stopped for a moment, eyes frantically following the dizzying path of broken frames and shattered locks. About halfway up the canvas, a pair of half-moon eyes glowered behind the bars of a blessedly intact door.
As the minutes ticked by, I glared back, determined to see the thing move. Finally it happened. One moment my eyes studied the woodgrain pattern on the door and the next, only smashed pieces and sawdust remained frozen in mid-flight. The burning face leered gleefully.
I jerked back from the case. Before fully realizing what I’d done, an armful of art supplies landed on the floor and hit the desk. Armed with turpentine and an old rag, I swiped viciously at the mocking empty eyes, but the cloth slid smoothly across the surface as though of a polished glass, the image beneath untouched.
I stared in disbelief and tried again, scrubbing harder. The remnants of another locked door joined the first. Panicked, I grabbed a tube of paint and squeezed a glob of cobalt blue over the canvas. To my great comfort, the oily liquid spread and sank into the surface until a large stain blotted out half the cell and part of a staircase.
Scarlet lapped hungrily at its edges, soon scorching the bright hue into rust. I triumphantly dug out a paint brush and obliterated the macabre scene with victorious, sweeping lines.
Relief flooded through me when the pale eyes disappeared under my fingers. I surveyed my handiwork. Featureless red stared back at me – no stairs or chains or sinister faces.
I stowed the painting and latched the case. Maybe it was overkill to stack the largest volumes from my bookcase over the lid, but better safe than sorry. As I toted my textbooks down to the living room, the final image of the figure refused to leave my mind. It wasn’t fear that consumed its expression, but a fierce, almost predatory joy.
The remainder of the day melted away in schoolwork and cable TV. It was nearly 6 in the evening when my mum’s number lit up on my phone display. I expected a cheerful tale of Matt’s athletic victories, but the hoarse, barely recognizable voice that answered only managed to stammer out my name before breaking into sobs.
Dread seeped into my body and stole my breath as I waited helplessly for my mother to recover. Something cool and wet touched the back of my hand. When my fingers dug into the arm of the couch I glanced over to see a small, perfectly round circle of scarlet gleaming against my skin.
My mom haltingly continued a story interrupted by choking gasps. They were at the hospital during Matt’s final lap of the competition. He suffered a seizure in the pool.
Her voice sounded very small and far away. My fingers twitched as another red dot joined the first.
Matt’s lungs looked clear, but he still struggled to breathe. The doctors didn’t know why, but they were running tests.
Steady drops now splashed over my hand. I mumbled words until my mother promised to call me if there was any change and hung up. Unwilling to look at the oily stain creeping over the ceiling, I numbly ascended the stairs to my room.
Cold, muddy liquid soaked into my socks as I crossed the threshold, gripping the doorframe tightly to keep from slipping. Paint smeared across the carpet in wide, bloody lines. It thickened near the desk, where a slow cascade of viscous red dribbled out between broken metal latches. My feet padded over the carpet, squelching wetly into the pool beneath the desk. The suitcase lay bare, the books I’d so neatly stacked over it now sprawled on the floor in masses of stained paper. The lid lifted eagerly under my fingers.
Two huge, empty eyes blazed from the painting with hellish intensity. A gaping mouth opened beneath them, so wide it seemed to stretch further than the canvas itself, engulfing the entire lower half in screaming white.
Glistening, ropey red cords ran over the edge of the case. Bits of dried paint clung to them, like clammy flecks of skin.
My eyes followed the oozing river, back to my clumsy footprints and beyond, running in crimson waves over my bookshelf to a thin pool at the top. A collection of framed pictures sat there, bottom edges slick. One photo stood out, the lower inch bathed in paint. It showed a smiling boy standing by the shoreline, clad in swim trunks and a cheerfully patterned towel. The Sun shone unhindered on the lake behind him, but the water lapped crimson at my brother’s feet.
Matt.
The thought melted through some of my shock and I stumbled over to the bookshelf. Paint drenched my sleeve as I wiped frantically at the photo, but the red tides rose still higher. I hugged the frame uselessly to my chest as despair filled me. I had killed my brother. Aunt Sarah warned me not to let it out, and now it had Matt. Distantly, I wondered if it had claimed her siblings too before she trapped it.
What did she expect from me? Painting over the scene didn’t work.
I’d need a clean canvas. Anything was worth a try at this point. I dug out a pad of thick art paper from my bookshelf and laid it on a clear part of the desk. Feverishly I tried to recreate my aunt’s prison cell in hope for cobalt blue, as the bloody tide of my brother’s photo marked the minutes.
With… aching slowness, the original image took shape, rough and simple. I managed to finish it just as Matt’s smile drowned in scarlet. I spread my crude copy over the painting and –
A ripple ran out from one corner. Where it touched, the paper smoothed flat against the canvas and the pigment bled red. The scene blurred with an odd sense of depth that set my teeth on edge. Liquid poured through the barred door at the top in jerky, stop-motion animation. I looked back and forth between canvas and framed photo, but no figure appeared in the cell. Crimson flowed over my brother’s nose. In desperation, I scraped the picture as hard as I could with the remaining turpentine, ignoring the burn against my skin.
A thin strip of glass wiped clean under my fingers.
I blinked for a moment and repeated the gesture. Another ribbon came away, revealing Matt’s face, blessedly free of malevolent red.
I nearly sobbed in relief. A glance at the painting showed a familiar figure crouched in the cell, rage plain on its upturned face.
I’d finally managed to clean the last bit of paint from the frame when my parents called. My brother had stabilized, but they would stay for a few days for observation. I reassured them I’d be fine on my own. I had work to do, anyway.
The figure broke through my obstacles quicker than Sarah’s, but I owned a lot of art paper and started another scene, taking more time with this one. Setting my alarm to go off once an hour, I painted through the evening and most of the following day. By the time my family returned, I’d managed to clean up the house.
When I quietly told my dad I switched my major to art, he only winced once and nodded.
As a contest entry, this story’s content is not necessarily Creative Commons-licensed – please contact the author about permission to reproduce!