by N. M. Howell
Something Mrs. Hemingway said to me came back to me. She’d said that it would be better to stay in the painting and never age. Is that what would happen to these people? Would they never age? Would the young beatnik still look the same all these years later? I sighed and moved on to the next. I had no chance of knowing many of these people. Many looked like they had been put into the frames before I was even born, let alone moved to Brimstone Bay.
I heard a knock on the door and Bailey stuck her head around the door.
“Any luck?” she asked.
“No. You?”
“I don’t know any of the people in my room.”
“Some of these pictures are so old. I think this is an impossible task.”
“Nothing is impossible,” Bailey trilled, looking at the portrait closest to her – A man with sunglasses and a walkman. Bailey could always be counted on to show a positive outlook even when the situation was dire.
“How did it go with Brett?” With all the excitement of the paintings, I’d forgotten to ask her about her night in Boston. Immediately her eyes lit up.
“The sushi was divine.” She grinned at me. So she wanted to play coy with me huh?
“And the rest?” I urged her on.
“Oh, it was so great!” She jumped up and down on the spot in excitement. “Brett was a perfect gentleman, except when I didn’t want him to be if you know what I mean.” She winked and I laughed.
“Brett was really great with me earlier on.”
“Oh?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
“JoAnne brought me to the restaurant. Well, you already know that Jordan wasn’t there and Brett took care of me. I saw a side of him I’d not seen before.”
“In what way?”
“Dare I say it? He was sweet to me. I was trapped in my own head and at first his gruffness made it worse, but he was saying all this sweet stuff, about how everything was going to be ok. He made me feel calm.”
Bailey ran over and hugged me. “I told you! He is sweet.”
“Yeah. I guess I just read him wrong when I first met him. I’m not usually wrong but I guess there is a first time for everything.” She laughed at my quip. It was so nice to see her happy.
A noise made us turn our attention back to the portraits.
“Ahem.”
The portrait I’d not yet looked at properly spoke. It was faint, but loud enough that both Bailey and I heard it.
“Yes?”
“I hate to break up this girly thing you’ve got going on, but aren’t you supposed to be finding out where our bodies are?” The man was older than the other painting occupants in the room but looked the most modern. He was athletic in his late sixties and had a grey mustache.
“Yes, we are. Sorry.” I replied in what I hoped was a suitably apologetic tone. “Oh wow!”
“What? Asked Bailey and the old man at the same time.”
I addressed the old man. “I was trapped in a frame just like you. When I was, my conscious mind could travel between my body and soul. When I was inhabiting my body, everything was fuzzy, but I could make out some details. Do you think you can go back to your body and then come back and tell us where you are?”
“I suppose I could try. The last time I did, I could barely think, let alone see, but I suppose it won’t hurt.”
“Before you go, what’s your name?”
He wiggled his mustache before answering. “John Barnes.”
“Ok, John Barnes. Just close your eyes and concentrate.”
“I have done this before. I know what I’m doing!” he replied huffily, but closed his eyes all the same.
“What do we do now?” asked Bailey excitedly.
“I guess we just sit and wait.” I sat my ass down on the bed and watched the painting. It was strange. He’d not moved at all, but since he’d left, his features seemed more absent. After five minutes, Bailey began to fidget.
“Why isn’t he back yet? Is it possible he got stuck there?”
I thought back to how I travelled when I was trapped. I’d followed the sound of voices in my own head.
“John!” I stood up and moved over to the picture. “John. Can you hear me?”
Bailey took my lead and joined me in calling his name.
“What’s going on?” Rory put her head around the door.
“Shhh,” I replied beckoning her over to join us. After a good five minutes of calling his name, John opened his eyes.
“Ok, I can hear you. There’s no need to shout. I’m not deaf.”
I tried to ignore his rudeness and had to bite back a retort about how we were the only people that would be able to help him.
“What did you see?”
“It was dark and blurry I couldn’t see anything helpful.”
Bailey sagged and I sighed. So much for that Idea.
“I did hear my wife’s voice though. She was talking to me.”
So that’s why he took so long coming back. He missed his wife.
“How long have you been trapped John? Do you know?”
“About six months or so. I was driving in a storm and my car broke down. My phone was out of battery so I left my wife in the car while I went to this big house to ask to borrow their phone. The rest is fuzzy but when I opened my eyes, I was hanging on a wall.”
“What’s your address?” I asked, pulling my notebook and pen out of my back pocket. He gave me an address a couple of towns over. I picked his portrait up and carried it past Bailey and Rory.
“Where are you going?” asked Rory, who seemed confused as to what was going on.
“I think it will be easier to get the painting to him, rather than have his body come to the painting. We are going on a drive. Are you coming?”
After I told Mrs. Brody that I suspected John was at his home address with his wife, we all bundled into Rory’s car.
A two hour drive later and we all pulled up at an innocuous looking house in a bland street where all the houses were the same. Every house had a garden that was trimmed neatly. All except John’s. John’s garden was overgrown with clumps of weeds dotted around.
“She’s let the roses go wild!” remarked John as we carried his portrait up the path to the front door. We had decided that only Mrs. Brody and I would speak to Mrs. Barnes as we didn’t want to overwhelm her. For all she knew. Her husband was sick and we were total strangers bringing a portrait of her husband to her. Goodness only knew how she would react. Rory, Bailey and Jane waited in the car as Mrs. Brody rang the doorbell.
“Hello.” A sad frail looking woman opened the door. She looked nervous to see the pair of us on her doorstep but when she saw the portrait, her eyes grew wide.
“What have you done to the garden woman? It’s going to take weeks to get it under control!” I could hear John speaking, but I knew his wife wouldn’t, not if she wasn’t a witch, and judging by her energy, she was just a normal mortal.
“What’s going on?” She asked in a small voice.
We’d concocted a story on the journey over. It was ridiculous, but then again so was the truth.
“Your husband commissioned this painting a number of months ago. It was a birthday present for his wife.”
“I’m his wife.” She looked bewildered and yet I could see a small grin appear on her lips. I had the feeling that John didn’t give presents very often.
“I’m sorry if we’ve spoiled the surprise, but he has to sign for it and it’s been in our warehouse for quite a few months now.”
“I’m afraid he’s not up to visitors. I’ll have to sign for it.”
“No!” I shouted out a little too loudly. “I’m sorry, but Mr Barnes has to sign for it himself. He only needs to put a cross on this receipt.” I hastily pulled out a scrap of paper from my back pocket.
“He really can’t sign for it.”
“Ok, then.” I turned and began to carry the painting down the path back to the car.
“What are you doing?” hissed John in my ear. “Make her take
me in!”
I had a feeling Mrs. Barnes was probably better off if we kept her husband in the painting, but that wasn’t really my decision to make. “She’ll shout me back,” I whispered to the painting. “You really should buy your wife more presents you know.” I added.
Mrs. Barnes called out before John had chance to say anything back to me.
“Please bring it back. I can try to get him to sign.”
I knew it. She really was too good for the old codger. I carried John’s picture back and between Mrs. Brody and myself, we managed to get it into the house.
We followed Mrs. Barnes along a corridor to a door. She knocked and entered, followed by the rest of us.
There in bed, was John. He looked vacant, but I could tell he’d been well cared for these past few months.
“I really could do with a cup of coffee!” I said, placing the painting down next to the bed. “Would you mind getting me one?”
The last thing I wanted was for Mrs. Barns to see what Mrs. Brody was going to do.
“I can make you one if you like.” I could see her wavering between leaving her beloved husband alone with this total stranger and not wanting to be rude. I followed her to a neat kitchen while Mrs. Brody performed the spell.
Mrs. Barns chatted as she made the coffee. Mainly about how difficult it had been the past few months and how she couldn’t keep up with the garden as well as look after John full time. My heart went out to her. A noise in the other room made us both dash back, the coffee unfinished.
John was sitting up in bed with a smile on his face, the canvas now empty.
“John?”
“Alice!” He answered, and with tears in her eyes, she flung herself at him and sobbed.
“What happened?” she asked Mrs. Brody a few minutes later when her composure had returned.
“I don’t know. I tried to get him to sign for the painting and then he woke up and started barking orders at me.” She winked.
“The painting! It’s gone!” We turned our attention to the blank canvas.
“Yes it has,” I scrabbled around wildly in my brain to come up with a plausible reason. “That’s why we had to deliver it. It was painted in disappearing ink.”
Ok, not so plausible, but it was the only thing I could think of. It was better than telling her that we were witches and her husband had been trapped in the frame for the past few months.
“But I loved it.”
“We’ll get another done for your birthday,” John said and wiggled his mustache. “And this time we’ll have us both painted on it.”
“But it’s not my birthday for months!”
“I think I need to make up for all those birthdays where I forgot to buy you something. Maybe we could take a vacation too.”
Mrs. Brody and I left as Mrs. Barnes hugged her husband tighter. I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe he wasn’t such a grouch after all. I’d probably be grouchy after spending six months in a frame in a dark house.
“What happened?” asked Bailey as we hopped back into the car.
“Let’s just say, I think we’ve saved their marriage and John has learnt a lesson.” I replied grinning.
“What about the others?”
The sky was already darkening and we still had a couple of hour’s drive back to Brimstone Bay.
“I think we’ll have to do the same for all of them.”
“That’s going to take an awfully long time,” remarked Jane, who so far had been silent the whole journey. “There are twenty eight portraits. That’s twenty eight people to find.”
“Twenty seven,” I corrected her. “We’ve already found one. It’s still going to take a long time. I suggest we have a good night’s sleep and begin nice and early tomorrow. I don’t know about you lot, but I’ve had the most exhausting day.”
I let Soot and Pippin back into the house under strict instructions not to scratch the paintings. I didn’t know if they would listen to me – did cats ever pay attention to anyone ever, but I hoped me being a witch would have some sway with them. They both jumped up on my bed and snuggled down for the night.
Chapter 13
The next morning, we were all up bright an early and after feeding Soot and Pippin, I once again threw them both out for the day. I felt bad about it, but it was better than the alternative.
“Did anyone recognise anyone in the paintings yesterday?” I brought my notebook out. I’d neglected to write anything in it.
A sea of blank faces looked at me.
“Nope,” said Jane, Rory and Bailey.
“I recognised Frank and a couple of others,” said Mrs. Brody.
“That’s great!” I poised my pen, ready to write down any information she could give me.
“Not really. It was a very long time ago. One of the girls was a housekeeper for Agnes. I don’t think she had any family. She lived with her and Frank. The other picture was a distant relative of Agnes’s. Her nephew I think. I don’t know, I didn’t know him well. As far as I remember, he had no one else. He lived with them too. I forget his name now.”
“So we have Frank, a woman and a man who all lived with Mrs. Hemingway. How long ago was this?” I wrote the information in the notebook.
“I’ve not seen any of them for about twenty years.”
“So for all we know, they could all still be living with her? She told me that the windows were boarded up because she had sensitive skin, but what if it was because she didn’t want anyone to see in through the windows? She kept the lights off when I was there too and now I come to think about it, I did feel other presences in the house. I knew they weren’t ghosts. What if it was just the bodies of these people, moving aimlessly around in the dark?”
“She was a sun worshipper in her day, so her story of sensitive skin is a load of baloney. I’ll take the three portraits up to the house and rescue them. Rory can you take me?”
“Sure!” replied Rory, tucking into her breakfast cereal.
“Would you like the rest of us to go? What about Mrs. Hemingway?” asked Bailey, her voice full of concern.
“Don’t you worry about her. She’ll probably not even notice we are there.”
“What exactly did you do to her?” asked Bailey.
Mrs. Brody just smiled a wry smile and touched her nose.
“The rest of us can talk to the other portraits and try and figure out where they all are,” said Jane, picking up her, now empty bowl and rinsing it in the sink, before placing it in the dishwasher.
When Mrs. Brody and Rory left with the three portraits, the rest of us chatted to the remaining portraits. There were twenty four left. Some of them looked ancient. This was not going to be an easy task.
In the kitchen was the portrait of the woman playing cards that I’d seen in Mrs. Hemingway’s house. Two other frames held pictures of couples. One looked to be from the nineteen thirties, the other was much more modern, with the couple wearing jeans. The man was wearing a tshirt with a logo of a tv show that had only been on the screens for a couple of years. The last portrait in the kitchen was also the smallest. A scrappy looking dog with a black patch round its right eye sat on his hind legs as if he was begging for a treat.
“How are we going to find you?” I whispered to him. He replied with a bark.
I pulled my notebook and pen out of my pocket and started what I should have started the day before.
Does anyone have any post it notes?
“I might,” replied Jane. She left the room, returning a few minutes later with an unopened pack of neon pink sticky notes. I pulled them out of their wrapper and wrote the numbers one to twenty four on separate notes. I ran through the house slapping them on each of the frames. Then I wrote the same down in my notebook, one number per page and headed back to the kitchen where Jane and Bailey were still sitting.
Number one was the dog, so I moved on to the second page, the girl playing cards.
“Hello.” I said to her portrait. She was an attractive lady dressed in some ve
ry expensive clothing. The problem was the clothing was from the nineteenth century. Just how old was Mrs. Hemingway? I sighed. Witches lived a very long time. If we did find this woman, she would be completely overwhelmed in the world as it was now. I tried to imagine how I would feel if I’d never seen a car or a plane or cell phone or one of the millions of things that had changed in the past hundred years.
“Hi,” she replied. “I was wondering when you were going to talk to me. This isn’t what it looks like!”
What, what looked like? It was then that I noticed a couple of aces just peeking out of her long sleeve.
“You cheating at cards has nothing to do with us. We will still help you.” She burst out laughing, leaving me completely surprised.
“Not that silly! These are a prop. I was at a fancy dress party. I don’t normally dress like this.”
“So what era are you from?”asked Jane.
“I was born in nineteen ninety.” She giggled again. If she was born when she said she was, she’d be twenty seven, roughly the age she looked like in the portrait. I heaved a sigh of relief. Finding out where her body had been roaming for the last hundred and so years would have been a near possible task. Of course there were other portraits that looked extremely old, and I couldn’t hope that they were all at a fancy dress party...not unless...
“Where was this party? Was it at Mrs. Hemingway’s house? Were there others?”
“Urgh. No. I wouldn’t want to go to that old place for a party. I was on my way to the party and got lost. I stopped by the house to ask for directions. The old lady got me. Yuck!”
“Who do you live with?”
“I live with my boyfriend. Can you get me back to him?”
I took down her address and promised her I’d try. I only hoped her boyfriend was as dutiful as John’s wife had been. How long would anyone look after someone who couldn’t communicate with them? Some of them would have had partners who might have died by now. Then what would happen? I didn’t want to think about it. The whole thing was horrific.