Favors and Promises

I refuse to give her more power over me than she already has by admitting she was the one who drove me crazy. I had always been insane and had always been bound to lose all sense of reality the way a wet painting or an uncapped marker were bound to go dry. She just happened to be the one who wrenched it out of me to present to the whole world, like a magician showing his audience - which really wasn’t all that surprised - the dove he had just pulled out of his hat. 

…

I wanted the job because I loved art above everything else and I got the job for that same reason. I had always had a deep affection for it (my mother liked to tell and retell the story when I asked to have my birthday party at The Metropolitan Museum of Art instead of the zoo or arcade like the other boys my age had wanted). I liked to lose all sense of the world by looking at it alone. When I was with another person they always interrupted my train of thought with a stupid comment “I think Van Gogh was nearsighted because stars don’t look like that.” or question, “I’m hungry, are you hungry?” Even when I wasn’t with someone, other people in the museum, talking or laughing too loud, aggravated me. So when I was given the chance to be the night watch of the old Victorian Museum after the former guy on the job quit all the sudden of course I took the position, excited by the idea of gazing, undistracted except by the wind, at masterpieces under the lonely blanket of night, for hours,

At first when I wasn’t aware of the critical danger I was constantly in at the place, the museum never scared me, it just put me in a sort of nervous unease. A kind all too similar to when I would play ghosts in the graveyard with my brother during the moment right before he jumped out from behind the couch or from under the table screaming, “Boo!” and “Ha! Got yu’ Archie!” It was just that sort of place though, one simply expected something to pop out of the corner and to be chased throughout the cold dry air of the seemingly-endless halls while the paintings watched you with unwavering, uncaring eyes. Nothing ever did pop out of course, but that was a petty terror compared to the truth.

I had been working as night security for a couple months before something worth mentioning happened. I was walking down the hall, clearing my throat every so often as to warn any monsters that lurked within the walls not to come out or else… (or else what, I’d hit them with my little flashlight or delicate radio?) when I heard a sound in front of me a bit similar to cloth rubbing together or maybe even a whisper. I stopped and listened hard but the sound didn’t come again and I continued moving. As if the universe had noticed me not paying attention to it, instantly there was a crash and then a man’s yell. I began to run towards it, ignoring my fear.  

When I got there, someone was in the room with the dinosaur bones, attempting to make his way to the exit. I called for him to stop, and surprisingly, he did. For half a second, I marveled at this new power I had just by wearing a name tag that read Archie - Security and then shook off the feeling and tried to pretend I wasn’t flabbergasted at all. He turned around very slowly and I saw him relax when he saw me as if he was expecting something else. I approached him, and realized how much bigger I was compared to him. I almost smiled. He looked like he was about to dart so I grabbed his shoulder as soon as I could reach it and drowned in the feeling of authority that was now mine, then I noticed the painting in his hands and he rushed to hide it from view. 

I had seen the painting he was holding before, something made by Alfred Stevens of a little Victorian girl in a nightgown. It was a beautiful piece, and anyone in their right mind would know it from the plumpness of the girl's lips, the shadows and highlights on her dress, a beautiful flush of childish red on her ears and arms and the scarlet of her little red necktie but the only problem was her horrific eyes that ruined the entire picture. One was as perfect as the rest of the painting, an endless brown I was sure the visitors found themselves drowning in constantly, but the other was all wrong. It looked like she was suffering from a kind of chronic pink eye or some other illness that made one of her eyes too big and bright red. Other than that and despite her almost pitch-black background she looked like a rich man’s kid who would be flaunted around a party and introduced to all the guests as, “Hello, this is my little girl Mari Williams!” Stevens had probably simply been too lazy to paint the rest of the party.

I held out my other hand, feeling awfully plestent in my jurisdiction over him, “Why don’t you give that back sir.” 

He cowered, reminding me of the painting on the second floor of the golem-like creature. “Just let me take it.” His eyes darted widely at the surroundings, differing greatly from the ever-still eyes of the paintings in the other rooms, like either of us should've been afraid of a couple canvases with only well-layered paint to distinguish them from one another. He lowered his voice to a whisper and calmed his timid-rabbit eyes long enough for them to meet mine. “I promise I’m doing you a favor.” 

My arm was getting tired from holding it in the same place for so long but I refused to show it and gingerly took the painting from his hands. He didn’t protest but still looked like he was about to vomit. “Yeah right, this is gonna stay right here,” I said, gesturing to the girl but I wasn’t as sure of that as my voice sounded. 

…

After I put the painting back in its place on the wall with the others I stepped back to look at it. From afar it seemed like she was caught right at the moment when she reached up to play with her necktie but if you looked closely you realized that it wasn’t a tie she was holding, but a knife too deep in her chest to be seen from behind her pale hand. The thing upon her chest was too red to be an innocent tie as Alfred had intended it to be. I stepped forward to get a better look and it became a necktie like before. I shook myself and looked at it and it became blood again. I stepped back and it became a tie all over again but I didn’t bother to continue with this routine of stepping, now I knew Stevens, and knew the tie was just something he used to conceal onlookers from the horrific truth. Maybe that was also why that one eye was red, she was too astonished at the subject of death that was coming presently for her to hide it in both eyes. This was probably also why one noticed a little cornflower behind her back, a simple but crucial part of the piece that couldn’t mean anything less except that she was preparing for her own funeral. 

My eyes moved up to her face and I realized that her cheeks and ears were red, not from life - something that was leaving at least one of her eyes all too quickly - but from being forced to do something. I squinted and raised my flashlight, half-expecting her to flinch away from the glare, but instead she stared forward right into it. To the left of her was a sliver of orange-ish light, likely from a crack between a door and a doorway and at the left side of the canvas, incongruent to the black room behind her, there was a blotch of barely visible green-yellow gleam. It reminded me of when, as children, my mother, inside of the house, looked at my brother and I playing in the backyard and sometimes even smiled. 

Understandment hit me like a bullet train, Steven had forced this poor little girl into a dark room, (hence the bit of orange light escaping from the place where the guests at the party hadn’t yet noticed her absence) given her a knife and simple instructions, and went outside to sketch her while looking through the window into the room where she was standing, scared as death. I could almost see it, Steven all professional-like sitting in a chair, ever-green trees behind him, glancing up every so often through the glass to get the lines of the face, the round flawless arm, the poof of the dress, and, most importantly the specific color of red, on the dying girl.

It made me hate Stevens, how could he sit down and paint the near-dead girl rather than helping her? But how was I any better, staring at this now-dead girl like an animal at the zoo, while she couldn’t do anything more than stare back at me before I got bored and moved on. 

…

Following the night the man broke into the museum, I became infatuated with the painting. I spent hours at a time not doing my job and just looking at it, and even when I was looking and looking at it and getting lost inside all of its terrifying beauty, I still wished I was drowning in its depths as if I wasn’t really looking at it at all. I was obsessed with it and repeatedly found myself asking Stevens unanswered questions; “Was that bit of brown behind her head just her hair, or a rope binding her to the ground?”, “Did you make her eye like that on purpose or was it a mistake and I was overthinking it all?” , “Was the flower in her hand dying with her, a bit like I was?” 

Sometimes I would be so attentive in the painting that I would think I was hearing things. It was always nothing more than one echoing giggle or childish whisper, but nevertheless it always left my heart racing and me rushing to get out of the room as if she had anything to do with the noise. After a couple of days of doing not much more than looking at the painting or wishing I was looking at it, I became accustomed to the oddities of the piece and even the noises I heard while looking at it. 

One clear breathless night, I was falling into its abyss and forgetting myself to another idea of the truth about the painting that was worse than the one before which was worse than the one before that one. On that specific night, I, or she, or the universe decided she must look outstandingly gorgeous for no good reason at all, but not anything like the angel I had once imagined her as - no, alluring in the way the devil was imagined to be - forbiddingly so. For the first time I saw the dreadful eye for what it was, not a virus-ridden thing that I was sad to know would eventually take over her whole body, but as the only demon part of her that she couldn’t manage to cover up with her innocent-girl costume because of how evil it was. My mother had once said the eye is the window into the soul and I am still haunted by the soul I found on that ink-black night behind her right eye.

On that specific night she was awfully pale in the full moon’s light which was pushing its way through the massive windows behind me and it made every feature on her, from her lips to the tips of her fingers, seem blue and cold. It caused the painting to look as if the little demon-girl was caught inside some kind of ice cage and the glare in the left was not from the trees she was looking at through a window at, but a reflection of the plants on her frozen cell. Something told me she was meant to be stuck there for the rest of forever and it caused me to dread the moment she might escape from her frozen world, into mine. 

As always the giggle that tormented me during the last couple days came back but not from in front of me as per usual, but behind me. I ignored it and didn’t break my gaze on the painting, until it came again, louder and I turned around, not sure what I was expecting.

There was nothing there.

The laugh came a second time from where I had been facing before. I whirled around, fear beginning to rise from its resting place in the pit of my stomach.

There was nothing there.

The laugh came again from where I had just turned from, I turned as the terror, drowsy from sleep, crawled up into my throat. There was nothing there and over and over again the laugh came from the direction I had just turned from as if an invisible someone was making circles around me like a stalking tiger. Over time the laugh grew more and more shrill and jubilant as if the invisible figure found immense pleasure in disturbing me.

The laugh rang out into the emptiness for the last time, louder than ever and I turned back to the wall where the painting hung very slowly this time.

There was someone there.

My shadow blocked the moonlight, preventing me from being able to see the features on her face but even in the darkness I could tell that she was a little girl in a white dress. I gaped at her, too surprised to raise my flashlight and see her face. When my adrenaline had calmed from telling myself it was just a simple girl and I had nothing to worry about, I spoke. “W-What are you doing here,” I glanced behind me, just to make sure she wasn’t distracting me from a terrible something. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

She didn’t say anything, she didn’t have to, she just raised a pale hand that had once held a knife to the painting I had been too obsessed with for too long - a mistake I will regret for the rest of my short eternity - and pointed.

That was when I ran and ran because I was afraid for my life and everything else in the world there was to be afraid of. 

…

When she raised her hand the painting was empty, not completely empty, there was still the light in the left and the right the dust from old age, but it was missing the one, crucial, horrific, concept - the girl. Who of which I never did find out was either a murderer unto herself, a demon or just a normal girl, and in her place an impossible darkness that terrified even the monsters who lurked whiten it. 

I quit immediately after that night and only came back to the museum once to finish the job that I hadn’t had to sign any contracts or be a part of any interview to become involved in. I brought only two things, my notebook of useless papers that I had once used to write my ideas of what paintings ment in, and a lighter. I could do it right after I got out of the museum. Hell - I’d do it in the place and burn the rest of the paintings just for being anywhere near that terrible, terrible girl. And as all their dreadful, unyielding eyes crumbled into ash and all their pale faces turned a charred black in the ocean of red and orange and yellow she could be burnt alive before she could escape from her icy captivity ever again.

They had already hired a new night watch but I knew the place well enough to be able to stay quiet. I made my way through the dark, my heart beating so hard I was afraid he might be able to hear it over the museum's silence. When I got to its place, I gingerly took the painting in my hands without daring to look at it ever again. I was so, so close to the exit, when I saw the new night watch standing in front of me as if he had appeared there just as she did a couple nights before. He held out his hand and I shrunk from the looming figure. I tried to move but he caught me by the shoulder. “Why don’t you give that back.” He said it in the way I knew it wasn’t a question at all so I resorted to begging, in futile attempts to try to save him from the fate I and so many others before me had endured. 

“Just let me take it.” I tried to escape him but his grip tightened on my shoulder, my heart screamed to get away but to no avail. I looked up into his unmoving eyes and felt a pang of pity for the man. “I promise I’m doing you a favor."