Pathogenic

Pathogenic

By: Andrew Fruchtman

Henry wasn’t an art collector. He wasn’t even the sort of person who went to art fairs. He’d only gone because the weekend felt too bright to waste and because the park where the fair was being held was near a bakery that made excellent cinnamon rolls.

He told himself he’d just look, that he didn’t really need anything. He walked between the rows of tents, coffee in hand, squinting at paintings of crashing waves, city skylines, landscapes and portraits of children he didn’t know. The air was sharp with autumn, gold and red leaves already carpeting the green grass, and charcoal smoke from a food truck that was grilling something delicious.

He almost walked past the painting.

It was hung a little off-center on the canvas wall of a small tent, not the centerpiece. At first he only saw it from the corner of his eye: a muted landscape, earthy and green. But something in its quiet composition stopped him.

A path. A simple dirt path, the color of dry clay, meandering through a field of tall grass and purple flowers that looked fragile enough to rustle. The brushstrokes caught the hint of a breeze, though he couldn’t say exactly how. A few trees stood near the blue horizon, shadowy gray-green, but warm, like they’d been there forever. The path curved near the right side of the painting and disappeared behind the swell of a hill, just out of sight.

He stood there longer than he meant to, letting the coffee in his cardboard Art of Caffeine cup go cold.

The artist, a gray haired woman in an old paint-smudged Levi’s denim jacket, came over, dappled paintbrush bristles sticking out of her chest pocket like a flower.

“Do you like that one?” she asked.

He nodded, embarrassed, as though he’d been caught staring at someone in a café. “It feels…” He groped for the right word. “Inviting. Like I’d like to be there.”

She smiled a little, like she’d heard that before. “That’s the idea. It’s called Turning.” “Art is supposed to change us, so that tug you feel is just the painting do its job.” She smiled knowingly and stood with him a moment in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

He bought it before he could talk himself out of it. The price wasn’t cheap, but not impossible. The artist wrapped it in brown paper and string while he tried to imagine where in his small apartment he was going to hang it.

It ended up in the bedroom. He didn’t have much wall space, but there was a bare spot above the dresser, opposite the bed, where too many mosquitoes had met their smeary fate. The painting would, if nothing else, hide those smudges.

The first few nights, he found himself looking at it before falling asleep. The path glowed softly in the lamplight, the painted grass almost alive in its stillness. It made the room feel larger, as though it was a window opening onto that field. He found it soothing and meditative.

He started to dream about it. Not vividly—just impressions: the sound of crickets, the smell of dry hay, the feeling of standing at the edge of something. When he woke, he’d lie there looking at the painting, wondering if the path curved left or right beyond the hill.

One evening, about two weeks after hanging it, Henry noticed something odd.

He was undressing, the light dim, when he glanced at the painting and felt a prickling under his skin. He turned the lamp brighter and stepped closer, just inches from the canvas.

There—on the path.

Tiny, darker flecks on the ochre paint.

Footsteps.

Not painted with sharp detail, more suggested than drawn, just a slightly darker tone and a bit of shadow. But unmistakable: a set of footprints leading away from the foreground.

He stared for a long time.

He told himself they must have always been there, that he’d simply not noticed. The painting wasn’t photorealistic, after all—its brushwork was loose, the kind of thing that looked different depending on the light.

Still, when he turned off the lamp and slid into bed, his heart was beating a bit too fast.

The next morning he got up early, before work, and examined the painting in the daylight.

The footprints were still there.

He even took a picture with his phone and zoomed in. They were faint but clear, the shape of feet, toe to heel, just past the lower frame edge, pointing towards the hill.

When he’d first seen the painting at the fair, he was sure the path had been untouched, a pure sweep of clay winding away. He could almost remember the way he’d felt drawn to step onto it himself.

Had someone?

He told no one, at the risk of being ridiculed.

At night he kept catching himself staring at the path, at the prints, trying to see if there were more than before. He considered taking the painting down, but the idea made his chest tighten.

On the fourth night, he dreamed he was walking. The grass was waist-high and he waded through it like a deepening river, raised hands brushing the tips. The air smelled sweet, like late summer, hints of mowed grass and hibiscus. He looked down and saw footprints ahead of him—soft depressions in the dirt—and tried to match his steps to them.

He woke just before the curve in the path.

Two days later, the footprints in the painting had advanced.

Not much. Just enough to tell. They were closer to the turn now, and perhaps there were more of them, overlapping slightly as though whoever left them had slowed down.

Henry didn’t sleep well after that.

He tried to ignore it, tried to tell himself it was stress, that he’d been working too many hours. But every night he checked, and every night the footprints were a little farther along the path.

By the end of the month they had reached the curve.

One night, he dreamed again. This time he saw a figure ahead of him on the path. Too far to make out clearly, just the shape of a person walking. Their shoulders slightly hunched, as if tired.

He tried to call out, but his voice made no sound.

When he awoke, the footprints in the painting had disappeared around the bend.

The painting was unbearable now.

He thought about taking it down, but each time he reached for the frame his fingers hesitated. It was as though the path exerted a pull, something magnetic.

Instead, he found himself sitting on the edge of the bed at night, waiting.

And then, one evening—he saw them.

Not footprints this time, but the faintest suggestion of a shadow just emerging from the turn.

Someone was coming back.

He did not sleep.

In the morning, the shadow was clearer, more defined: the hint of a leg, the curve of a shoulder.

The next night, the figure stepped fully into view.

A man.

He was painted loosely, like the rest of the scene, but there was no mistaking him: a tall figure in dark clothes, head tilted as though looking toward the viewer.

Henry’s breath caught.

The face wasn’t detailed—just a pale oval with the blur of features—but it was his.

By then he had ceased lying about the pronoun. Him. It was a him. The posture that was his. The legs that were long and a little storkish. The head slightly hanging forward from years of screen time. He would have mocked that posture if seen across a street. He would have said stand up straight. “He” was standing as Henry stood when he thought no one was looking.

Henry stopped going to work. He stopped answering calls. He sat in the bedroom with the curtains closed, watching the painting as the figure drew nearer with every day that passed. He was paralyzed, unable to leave the room.

By the end of the week the painted Henry stood at the near edge of the path, one foot poised as if about to step into the room, a curl of red-brown grit lay on the dresser under the frame. Henry pinched it carefully. Scent of sun. A little smear of ochre whispered onto his fingerprints.

No one heard from him after that.

When the landlord finally unlocked the apartment, the rooms were neat, the bed unmade. The painting still hung on the wall, quiet and still, a simple country path through an empty field.

No footprints.