The Preserved Portrait

For as long as anyone could recall, the house has always stood there. Entitled ‘The House’, seldom a night went by without whispered ghost stories, and nightmares that excluded it. It stood at the outskirts of the small town of Spirit, yet there always seemed to be at least one curious passerby milling around. Never strangers.

The town was a tiny point on a map. Not so much a point, as a miniscule pinprick, as if several map makers with tuberculosis coughed, and a tiny droplet of blood had landed on a million maps. Everyone knew each other, and no one ever had visitors. 

Except one day, a boy was born. A rare occurrence, people lived and died here all their lives, and it was a diminishing town, where with every death, one more house became empty. Rarer still was that the boy was born from a hitchhiker, who later chose to move in, bringing a young girl, his wife, and causing the mother of the boy to have a heart attack and perish promptly. 

The boy grew up with the hitchhiker and his girl of a wife. He hated them, and played outside to avoid seeing her rosy cheeks, and his father’s rugged beard. 

Naturally he heard about the House, and to steer clear, the useless warning parents gave their children, but one misty autumn morning, he decided to see it for himself. 

....

The mists, enveloping the angular silhouette of the house, caused the crumbling brick outline to be even starker in the fresh gray of that morning. He saw the windows, with their faded stained glass, and their layers of dust. He saw the brass handles of the stairs leading up to the rotting wooden door, swinging on its hinges. He debated going in. It was still early. Earlier than God wakes up, he was sure no one would notice, yet the house did not seem welcoming.

Raindrops started tapping a rhythmic beat against the angled roof sliding off, instantly to be replaced by more. He thought it a sign, and moved up the stairs, giving the door a slight push that instantly sent it wobbling. 

He came into the house leaving the door open behind him, and for a minute stood in the doorway, inspecting the scene in front of him. A ballroom, preserved perfectly by cobwebs and grime. 

He walked in through the worn out furniture, a single couch that looked on the brink of collapsing, through the silvery strands glistening like a thousand diamonds, into what he assumed used to be the kitchen- but was now only a shadow of its former self. Cupboards, a table, he felt safer here than in the massive expanse of the ballroom. 

He began to explore the paintings that hung in the kitchen and in the corridor leading away from it. He creeped past them, faces of people he never knew, faces of people long gone, rows and rows of them, all on the right. It must have been a big family, he thought, and a superstitious one at that.

A gust of wind brushed past his shoulder, and he felt it chill his muscle, and wondered whether there was a broken window somewhere.

He continued deeper into the hallway, for a painting of a young girl had caught his eye. It was at the very end of the hallway, right before the stairs, but he chose to ignore them, he had no interest in anything other than the girl.

He began to examine her, the painting looked like new, whereas the others had the faded look of time that came with abandonment. No layers of dust either, yet it didn’t worry him, by now he was fully engrossed in the face before him. 

Her green eyes shone and she had a playful smile upon her pale face. Lush brown hair set out her slender neck, and a pretty dress made her beauty stand out even more. 

The boy stood without moving. Every inch of her skin was perfect, her eyes had that sense of mystery, and he couldn’t look away. Suddenly he had a strange desire to kiss her, she was the most beautiful person he ever saw. 

He leaned in closer and closer to those perfect, plump ruby lips, showing a row of impeccable white teeth, that glinted like pearls. He caressed her hair, and he was inches away from her when thunder struck the sky. 

He gasped. He couldn’t do it here. Not in this desolate house, where she had perished. He carefully took the painting and wrapped it in his coat. It was a small frame, the boy could carry it. 

He ran out of the house, ignoring the million fists beating down on him and ran towards his house with his precious girl. Nelly. He thought she looked like a Nelly. 

My darling, he whispered later, unwrapping her deep in the safety of his own home. It was late now, and his wish to kiss her had passed, he only wanted to stare at her now, marvel at her existence. He lay down and fell asleep looking at her face. 

A tap startled him awake, but there was no one in the room, except her, looking even better in the moonlight. He began to lie back down, and his last lucid thought before he fell back asleep, was that he needed to destroy the house. 

Sunlight brought him back to reality. Destroy the house. He felt that was what Nelly wanted, and he knew that he would do anything for her. He turned to her portrait and looked carefully into her eyes.

“Will you be mine if I single-handedly destroy the House?” He asked, tracing her perfect, pointed chin with his finger. It seemed to him that her eyes agreed.

He put a hammer in his rough, leather backpack, and covered his beloved with the sheet, lovingly, like his bride under a wedding veil. He went downstairs to the kitchen where his old hitchhiker father was, discussing his girlfriend's trip to her mother for two days.

"When are you leaving?" he asked politely to his stepmother, who was only a couple of years older than him. 

"Now." she smiled at him. He rarely condescended to talk to her.

He raised the corners of his lips coldly, he could not help comparing her to his Nelly. What a childish, pathetic woman she is, compared to his beloved upstairs.

"Goodbye. I'll be back tonight. " he threw over his shoulder. "Father! Don't go upstairs."

Without giving them a chance to recover, he ran to the House, and began to break everything there. He tore the wooden planks, the steps, smashed windows with his bare hands until his hands began to bleed; and still he continued to do this until it got dark, and the House, so majestic before, lay at his feet in a heap, smeared with blood. Breathing hard, he threw the hammer over the remains of the once grand building, and turned to the house, silently looking at the crowd of gawking onlookers.

Now he didn't care. His only thought was Nelly. He ran home to his beloved. Bursting into his kitchen, bloody, sweaty, he ignored the noise of his father trying to stop him and rushed towards the woman in the painting.

"I did it!" he screamed with his arms spread out at his sides.

But to his horror, Nellie was not in the room. As if in a nightmare, he began to rush around the house, trailing blood on the walls, screaming her name, and double-checking everything, when after lack of discovery, in a rage he headed towards the kitchen.

  "Where is she?!"

   "Who?"

   "You took her!"

   "No, I-"

  He listened to the old hitchhiker make excuses and he knew what he had to do.

When the noise in his ears finally stopped, he looked at the bloody knife in his hands, and went back up to his room. The portrait stood in the corner of his room where he left it, still veiled, still waiting for him, and the orphan put his head in his hands, sank to the floor, and began to weep.