PAINTED

by Kirsten McKenzie

  Logic struggled with fear but the battle was won when she dragged a wooden chair from the corner and thrust it under the door handle. Only then could she relax. Crawling into bed fully dressed, she pulled the covers over her. The marks of her tears still visible, tiny hiccups emanating from under the blankets until sleep stole her.

  And on the door, her blood dried. Seeping into the old paint. It wasn’t the first time bloody handprints had decorated the door, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  And upstairs the artist stood by the easel, his dark eyes clouded with something undefinable. Was it anger? Or concern? His slender fingers held his paintbrush above the canvas as he considered his next stroke. On the window seat, the little girl slid her gaze from the tumbling snowflakes to the man behind the easel. She knew that look and it didn’t make her happy. Unfolding herself she cast her eye over the painting.

  “There,” she said, pointing to the unfinished eyes.

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  With the careful stroke of his sable brush, he pulled them downwards. Removing all trace of happiness he’d applied the night before.

  Chapter 13

  A morning disguised with papery snow, the horizon wiped from sight with the ocean no more visible than the Tooth Fairy. Crystallised snowflakes blanketed the earth, their geometric shapes merging with their neighbours. White clumps turned trees into shapeless blobs on the landscape. Every windowsill half obscured by snowdrifts trying to force their way inside.

  Walking downstairs was like stepping into Narnia through the wardrobe. Anita’s breath hung in the air and she fancied ice crumpled under her feet as she made her way down the hall. In contrast, the kitchen was warm — retaining a measure of heat from the night before and it didn’t take long to get the kettle going.

  She sat at the table and nursed her temples, a headache threatening. An Alan Gates sized headache. She had to push past it. Gods willing, her team would be here tomorrow and she still had most of the upstairs to do.

  The kettle wailed, its strident scream reminiscent of a child’s scream. Lifting it off the stovetop did nothing to lessen the wailing. Confused, Anita turned back to the oven. She had turned it off so why could she still hear a panicked scream? She peered out the windows trying to locate the source, the wailing louder now.

  Alan appeared in the doorway and the screaming stopped. As if a closing door cut it off, the way a bullet strikes down a raging bull.

  “Did you hear that?” Anita asked.

  “Hear what? Is that coffee you’re making? Excellent, I had an appalling sleep, legs kept me awake the whole night. It could be an infection. I should really see a doctor.”

  “The screaming? You didn’t hear it when you walked in the room?”

  “I only heard the sound of that ancient kettle. Bloody thing, I’d finally dozed off and that antique woke me, though I’m more than happy to have a cup of coffee and eggs with a couple of strips of bacon if you don’t mind.”

  Alan settled himself into a chair, groaning as he lifted his legs. It was then she noticed he was wearing a pair of gaudy Bermuda shorts, more at home on a geriatric cruise out of Florida than in the middle of winter. His shorts revealed legs covered in thick black hair, his thighs showing angry red welts from the scalding he’d received. Perhaps the theatrics were genuine. His thighs weren’t as disturbing as the screams had been and Anita felt her anxiety rising. For once it wasn’t caused by a man.

  With much clashing of plates and grinding of teeth, Anita made the man his breakfast, studiously ignoring him as he mopped up his eggs with his toast, shuddering at his open-mouthed chewing. She escaped from the kitchen as soon as she’d eaten her own breakfast.

  Back at work in the dining room, she couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder. What she expected to see, she couldn’t have told anyone. She tried to rationalise the feeling something was awry; she was thrown off kilter being so near to a man. Following the deep breathing techniques her counsellor had taught her and mixed with the soothing repetitiveness of her work, her headache tapered off. It came crashing back when Alan stormed into the room, his injured legs all but forgotten.

  “What the hell are you playing at?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You were here to catalogue the art, not to paint it. You fancy yourself an artist, huh? God knows what sort of damage you’ve done mucking about upstairs. What if that was an unfinished Matisse or Picasso? It’s not as if you’d know, you incompetent girl.”

  “I… what are you going on about? I’ve got no idea-”

  “You enjoyed playing lady of the manor before I got here didn’t you? It’s just as well I checked on you. Should I check your car to see if you’ve spirited away anything valuable which you haven’t catalogued, hmm?”

  Anita stood up to battle the dinosaur in the room.

  “What you are talking about? I’m just doing my job,” she said, the words sticking in her throat.

  “Oh, all high and mighty now are we? Trying to gloss over a serious breach of protocol, it won’t wash with me missy. You city girls think you can get away with everything. Throw peroxide through your hair and slap on some war paint and bluff your way through? Not on my watch.”

  Anita shook her head. He was a lunatic or maybe he was high on drugs? Nothing he said made sense. Calming exercises forgotten, her breathing quickened, threatening a panic attack. Her eyes widened, hands fluttering like a sparrow trapped inside, struggling to escape. She sought the closest exit but before she could force herself to move Alan grabbed her arm and he pulled her from the dining room out to the foyer and up the hollow stairs.

  Shocked, screams filled her head but never made it past her lips, such was her total paralysis. She shut down, a form of self preservation. She stumbled behind Alan upstairs, along the corridor to the door at the end of the hall. And up another staircase, the winding wooden turret stairwell. She bounced off the metal handrail, Alan too ensnared in his indignant righteousness to worry about her well being. Her logical self had never really considered him a threat; he was just a bully and hadn’t shown signs of being violent. But now there was a strength hidden behind his pudgy belligerent self. And it terrified her.

  No one would cheat Alan Gates Junior out of what was his. And certainly not this painted harlot. He’d get an apology from her and an admission. He’d not have it said anyone pulled one over on him. She was nothing but a pretty face. Everyone knew you could buy degrees on the internet. She’d probably used that worthless bit of paper to wheedle her way into Nickleby’s. A ploy to steal from the collections she was handling during her work.

  Undoubtedly she had valuable antiques and artwork stashed away in a storage locker. But this, what she’d done here, was inexcusable. Probably planned to palm it off to someone less knowledgeable than him as a priceless piece of art. She hadn’t counted on his turning up. Hah, but now he had her.

  Alan thrust Anita towards the easel. Hands on her shoulders, he held her in front of the canvas.

  “There,” he said, his pronouncement all encompassing, brooking no further discussion.

  Anita slipped into a safe place in her mind. She was looking at the painting but couldn’t see anything. Inside she was still screaming, flashbacks of the rape flashed in her brain, each image building on top of the preceding one, a shaky tower of the worst kind, where demons scrambled over each other, tormenting her again and again. The face on the canvas never registered with her and she crumpled to the floor.

  Chapter 14

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Alan attempted to lift the unconscious Anita from the floor. He hauled her onto the window seat. Typical female, weak, taking the easy way out of the conflict.

  The fragile cold against Anita’s face forced her eyes to open and the scream she’d been holding in escaped. She skittered backwards, fleeing from the threat posed by the man shrouded in the shadows of the snow. Had he come back to rape her again?

  Alan couldn’t understand why she was screaming. It was irrational. />
  “For the love of all things you’ll wake the dead with that noise. I’m asking you about the bloody painting.”

  Anita curled into a ball, hands clasped over her mouth stifling the scream which had torn at her throat. Her eyes flickered between the lawyer and the art. She couldn’t focus and thoughts slipped wraith-like through her brain. The lawyer’s words tried to force their way through to her traumatised mind, but nothing made sense. Her arms ached from where Alan had manhandled her, his naked legs standing over her. She retreated to a safe place in her mind.

  Her eyes flicked back to the art on the easel and comprehension settled. Someone had mucked around with the unfinished portrait. Mucked around wasn’t fair, the changes were beautiful; eyes mournful yet sharp. Eyes capable of seeing through subterfuge or any effort to doctor the truth. The brow was high, hair lightly sketched in around the woman’s crown. There’d been an attempt on a jawline, but the artist had abandoned their efforts, leaving the face half formed. She tried gathering her thoughts. To consider the feasibility that the lawyer was an artist of some talent.

  “What did you do to the portrait?” Anita asked, fear tempered by curiosity.

  “What did I do? It’s you missy who ruined this piece of art. You’re not the next Van Gogh are you? This could have been worth thousands and now you’ve ruined it. A child can paint better than what you’ve slapped on this paper.”

  “Canvas.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s not paper, its canvas.” Anita mumbled. Art she knew and focusing on it calmed her. The adrenaline which held her captive, ebbed away.

  “I don’t care if it’s the Turin Shroud. You shouldn’t have taken it into your little head to daub it with your own incompetent efforts.”

  “I didn’t,” Anita replied. “You must-”

  Their conversation interrupted by the sound of screaming thrust through the windows by hurling winds, stopping Alan Gates in his tracks.

  “What was that?”

  Anita shook her head, too afraid to take her eyes off of him to look. The screams sounded childlike, like those she’d heard from the kitchen, but had put out of her mind.

  Alan prowled around the turret, cleaning the foggy windows with his sleeve, peering through the snowy curtain. His bare legs incongruous in the cold.

  “An old bit of pipe loose rubbing against something in the wind I’d say,” Alan decided.

  “But what if it’s a child? Maybe it's a farmer’s child?” Anita countered.

  “A child? Out there? Don’t be daft. Look at the snow, how am I meant to drive home in this?”

  Anita took her chance and ran from the room. No way was the screaming from a loose pipe. It was the scream of a child. She had no children herself, but a primal urge forced her downstairs to save a stranger’s child.

  Running to her room, she grabbed her coat, struggling into it as she flew downstairs. The screaming more muffled here, but intensifying as she ran towards the kitchen.

  She had no gloves and her shoes weren’t designed for snow, but she didn’t hesitate. Zipping up her jacket and tightening the hood over her head, Anita wrenched open the back door and plunged into the icy wind. It grabbed at her, pummelling her from all directions, relentless. The high pitched wailing continued. She had no trouble following the sound. Apart from the crunching of snow underfoot and the blowing wind, the screaming was the only other sound.

  There was no sign of the cattle she’d seen when she first arrived. Any half decent farmer would have moved them to shelter after hearing the weather report or smelling the snow. She’d once read about a farmer who swore he could smell snow and how this skill had saved his herd many times.

  Anita stumbled, her city shoes no match for powdery snow disguising every root and raised garden bed. White virginal traps for the unwary. She glimpsed the summer house. The child must have taken shelter there.

  “Hey it’s okay, I’m coming,” Anita yelled through numb lips and chattering teeth. She buried her hands deep under her armpits keeping them as warm as she could. She stumbled. The ground sloped and she reached out too late to grab a handful of shrub to stop her falling, landing heavily. She carried on, having trouble gripping the sheer surface, but pushed forward by the sound of sobbing. With renewed determination, she struck out faster, breaking into a run.

  The cracking of glass filled the air. It was the cracking of the thin layer of ice covering the pond she was flailing across. Anita was oblivious to the risk, not realising the snow disguised a pond. A thinly iced over pond. Her only thought was of the child. To save the child.

  And then the ice gave way.

  Chapter 15

  The cold was all-encompassing driving every thought from her mind other than self preservation. The cold even stole away her ability to scream.

  Her jeans pulled her downwards; jacket morphing into an unwieldy straitjacket, obstructing every effort to move her arms.

  She panicked, using all her energy to claw her way out. She was a competent swimmer but nothing could have prepared her for this. She kicked off her shoes which joined the flotsam and jetsam at the bottom of the pond - old-rimmed reading glasses, a serving spoon, and three pairs of old-fashioned leather shoes decaying on the silty bottom; their soles barely worn, the craftsmanship identical. One broken strap flapped from the disturbance above. A tiny wave.

  The cold filled Anita’s lungs. Snowflakes bounced against her face, as if they were enjoying her struggle, viewing it as a winter game.

  She tried calling out for help, her voice losing the stridency it had had only moments before. She needed to take her coat off before its waterlogged fabric pulled her under but she couldn’t get her fingers to grasp the zipper. Not that she was sure she knew how to work a zip now. Maybe she’d slip off her jeans instead.

  Anita’s head slipped under the water as she tried to undo the button on her jeans. It was quieter underneath the water, warmer too. Her jeans were fine, she didn’t need them off, she’d float here a while.

  She sank, her long hair marking her passage. Peace settling on her shoulders like a fur cape. Then her world exploded.

  Hands like pincers ripped her from her watery cocoon, flinging her onto the snowy shore. Voices wavered over her, like terriers fighting over the newspaper. Angry yaps extolling her to wake up and snap out of it. Then she was flying, arms dangling behind her. Her snow covered world fading to black.

  The muffled muttering of men’s voices woke Anita. She tried to move but her arms felt pinned to her damp chest. She panicked. Clawing at the heavy blanket around her as she realised someone had removed her jeans.

  No, no, no.

  Who was in the room with her? What was going on? Too afraid to look and too terrified not to.

  “She’s awake.”

  “Course she is. Pulled that stunt because she got caught defacing valuable art,” whined Alan.

  “You be quiet. You’ve no idea what you’re talking about. As I told the young lady, you’d both be better out of this house. Now she’s awake, I’ll be going. Keep her warm and get a mug of hot tea into her. This weather won’t ease off for a day or two, so you’re stuck here till then.”

  Anita watched the exchange, her memory coming back. They must have pulled her from the water, but someone had taken off her jeans and jacket. The thought that the men had undressed her filled her mouth with bile and her veins with adrenaline. Fear froze her.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  The other man in the room stomped over, leaning above her. His face a map of weathered lines and worried creases. It was the farmer whose tractor Alan had run off the road.

  “Are you okay?”

  Anita nodded, pulling the woollen blanket tighter around her shivering body, the scratchy fibres rasping at her goose prickled skin. Her fingers strayed to her ears, checking her studs were still there.

  “You rescued me?”

  “Yep, was out doing a final roundup of my stock, saw the lawyer dancing about lik
e a headless chook. Didn’t need to be a genius to figure something was up. You’re not the first person to go into that pond, but not so many come out. Lucky someone saw you go in.”

  “Thank you. But the child, did you rescue them too? From the summer house?”

  “What child?”

  “There was! I heard her screaming.” Anita sat up, “You’ve to go back out there.”

  “There’s no child. I’ve told you that. They should have drained that pond years ago. There’s no way anyone can get across to that place without a boat. No bridge, hasn’t been for years. Forget it.”

  Anita sank back against the cushions, defeated by the tone in the farmer’s voice. She knew she’d heard screaming, but she had no energy to go back herself. The farmer wasn’t going to, and Alan was too chicken to risk his own neck. Tears filled her eyes. There was a child who needed help and no one cared. Maybe a runaway had taken shelter in the summer house?

  She barely knew the farmer had been talking to her until he mentioned the other people who’d died in the pond.

  “Who drowned?” Anita asked.

  “Long time ago now. My parents used to tell us stories about it, to scare us kids from going anywhere near that place. Should have only been a foot deep but they dug too far down. Even a grown man can’t touch the bottom-”

  Alan interrupted, “Well it doesn’t matter now does it? The new owners will fill it in, or put in a proper swimming pool since the hard work of digging has been done for them. Now I’d kill for a cup of coffee. God, I miss my espresso machine. Can’t abide instant coffee, but it’s the only thing here. May as well live in the dark ages, not even a damn electric kettle.”