PAINTED

by Kirsten McKenzie

  Emptying the glove box she hunted for anything she could use as a weapon. She found a pair of blunt nosed scissors in the first aid kit. Not the most lethal of weapons but they’d do. Anita held them in her fist and turned to check on Callaghan’s location. He’d backed away from her car and was examining something in the snow. As she strained to see what he was picking up, her car beeped, and all four door locks popped up. Callaghan turned around smiling, dangling her car keys in front of him, like a pendulum. Anita dived across the car to wrench open the passenger door.

  Click

  The doors locked again.

  As Callaghan slowly approached her, she could hear him whistling. Whistling and smiling.

  Chapter 54

  The artist returned to his easel, choosing a brush as natural as breathing. His fingers fumbled and the slender sable brush tumbled to the floor, the ping of wood against wood echoing in the turret. Bending to retrieve the brush was beyond him.

  He massaged his useless paw. Every stroke more painful than the last. His fingers refused to straighten now, leaving him with birdlike talons. His hands a ghost of their artistic tapered past. The girl forced him to paint but he’d lost the will. Today would be his last day. He missed the light. It was better painting in summer, when the weather was warmer, the sun bolder, filling the room with an abundance of light. Enough light to chase most shadows from the corners; there was never enough to chase them all away.

  Stabbing his swollen finger into the puddle of paint on the palette, he raised his hand to the canvas, the shaking more noticeable now. How he missed his youth, if only he could paint that back. Catching his spotted wrist with his other hand, he guided this stranger’s hand, pausing, as he struggled to remember what came next. Ruth should be here to tell him, like he’d been able to guide her back in those glorious summers they’d had together. Tutor and student. Master and prodigy.

  He struggled with the colour. The hue too dark, it needed to be lightened; it needed a smudge of white. He squeezed the tube of paint and a coil of oily white manifested on the palette, silvery in the lamp light. Swirling it together with the dirty green, he lifted his paint soaked finger to the canvas, but it wasn’t fine enough to convey the fear in her eyes. To capture her fear he needed the nimble hand of a child, and the thinnest of brushes.

  Fear was the easiest emotion to paint but now fear had taken hold of him. If he couldn’t paint, what use was he?

  Ruth reappeared at the top of the stairs, a new treasure clasped in her hand — a diamond earring.

  “This one… I can’t finish. You must finish it for me.”

  Ruth picked up the paintbrush, checking for permission, before she rolled the bristles in the paint on the palette. The artist hadn’t got the colour right for her eyes. She’d seen her, mucking around in her bedroom, silly woman, so remembered what colour her eyes were — a yucky green, not pretty at all. Squeezing out more brown, she mixed it carefully — you had to be careful otherwise everything ended up the colour of mud. The artist taught her well.

  Art the one lesson she’d been happy to take. Not like practising her writing and reading, or playing the stupid piano. Those things bored her. Art was different. Mummy had been so happy when she’d told her she wanted to become an artist, so no one cared when she ran off to the playroom to draw, or went down to the pond to sketch. A shame they’d always been too busy to look at her drawings though.

  Ruth giggled, imagining how the silly lady felt now. She tried to see out the window but was too short, so climbed up onto the seat to peer into the darkness. The lights of the car kept flashing as the big man pointed at it, some magic she didn’t understand. Every time the lights flashed, the lights inside the car turned on and the lady’s face lit up like a candle. She was too far away for Ruth to see her eyes properly but those little glances were enough to jolt her memory.

  Memories of her sister’s eyes slipped through. Tabitha had been mean, so mean, and deserved to disappear. Ruth stomped that memory away. She didn’t think about her brothers, or Tabby, or her mother because she didn’t need them, she had the artist. The artist didn’t seem that old but his fingers did. They were all strange shapes, with knuckles bigger than plums. She wondered if they were squishy. She needed to touch them to check. They’d be good to paint. Chewing on the end of the paint brush she gave it some thought.

  Jolted from her daydreams by the sound of a scream outside, she jumped back onto the seat, pushing her face against the glass. The lady had fallen out of the car and was trying to run down the driveway with the man chasing her. This was more exciting than when everyone was searching for her brothers and sister in the pond. She’d told them all they’d been swimming and that she’d wanted to draw so hadn’t gone in. She’d been a bit vague about what happened next but no one minded that she didn’t exactly know what had happened. Daddy and some of the others dived into the water but it was so murky and deep that they couldn’t find Tabby, or Cole, or Saul. Silly billys, she knew where they were; they were in her sketch pad. And after they’d gone, she’d had Tabby’s doll all to herself, and the Meccano, and the playroom, and Mummy and Daddy.

  Now she only had her real father.

  Chapter 55

  Tumbling from the car, Anita sprinted away.

  A yell behind her as Callaghan realised he’d left the door unlocked a fraction of a second too long.

  Scissors in hand, she ran faster than she’d ever sprinted at school, faster than running for the bus when she was late for work, faster even than when the ice cream van turned into her quiet childhood street. Anita ran for her life.

  She could hear him jogging behind her, the crunching of his feet against the snowy gravel. Pain shot through her fingers and toes. She dropped the scissors and skidded to a halt, wanting to pick them up. But he was too close, her fingers too sore. She took off again, slower this time, too hard to run, her legs were so sore. Pain came in waves up through her feet. Unbearable pain.

  Crying and screaming and sobbing and running, the raw air stung like a thousand bees. She couldn’t breathe. Callaghan was so close, she forced herself to go on, one foot in front of the other. Now he was whistling behind her, she chanced a glance backwards; he wasn’t even running, just walking. How could she still be so close to the car? She thought she’d run all the way to the road. She couldn’t still be in the driveway? The whistling pierced holes in her mind. Her vision narrowed, dark shadows pressing in on her from both sides.

  “Help me,” she screamed, or thought she’d screamed, but only whimpers fell from her mouth. Her mouth wouldn’t form the words and she tried moistening her lips, but the signals from her brain weren’t getting through. Like a main street mime she carried on running, in slow motion, as Callaghan’s whistles came closer and closer.

  Pain squeezed her ribs. Her cheekbones became razor blades. The darkness outside faded to a blacker black than the back of the deepest cupboard. Her legs gave way. Anita tumbled to the ground. And disappeared.

  Chapter 56

  The girl stepped back, smiling, a gap-toothed, full face kind of smile, the smile of childish innocence.

  “What do you think?” she asked, the slender brush still in her hand.

  The artist smiled at his student. A smile which twitched at the corners of his mouth, but got no further.

  “You’ve captured her well,” he said, acknowledging her skill, massaging his hands, barely able to flex his fingers now. Too tired to play these games, it had been going on so long that to stop required more energy than he had.

  “Just the man left to finish,” she said, hopping from one foot to the other, excitement all over her face.

  “You’ll need something for the frame,” the artist said.

  Ruth’s face fell. He was right. They needed something of the man’s for the frame. She hopped off the stool and took off down the stairs, like a rabbit let loose from a cage.

  As she disappeared downstairs, the artist lowered himself onto the stool. Too long he’d been here
but now he was too tired, his hands dysfunctional. Picking up a brush, he rolled it between his fingers. It felt clumsy in his hands, as if his fingers weren’t even his own, making it difficult to control the brush.

  Lifting the brush to the canvas, he sketched a loose outline of a face, smudging the paint on the chin, making it as broad as it had once been. A touch of vanity but all he had left. Pain marred his face with every stroke of the brush.

  A dark figure appeared at his shoulder.

  “Hello Abraham,” the artist said, concentrating on the shape of the ears under his brush. No need to be perfect, he’d disguise any mistakes later when he added the hair.

  “We need to talk about Ruth,” Abraham said, looking at the face forming under the artist’s brush.

  “We do,” the artist replied, squeezing more paint onto the palette using the stained palette brush to mix it.

  “This has to stop,” Abraham said.

  The artist nodded.

  “You have to stop her,” Abraham said, his voice sounding hollow to the artist’s ears.

  The artist took a deep breath, requiring more energy than he’d expected to fill his lungs. He’d been here before, when the decision had been taken from his hands. This time no one would make the decision for him he’d chosen his own path.

  Choosing a thicker brush, he shaded the hair, blending it with the edge of his thumb. He stopped, puzzled, looking at his thumb — he’d felt nothing. He rubbed it harder against the canvas, smearing dark paint down over the brow but felt nothing. Forehead furrowing, he turned his hands over, examining his palms. They existed but he felt nothing. Ruth must be in the nursery, they were too late.

  Looking up at Abraham, the artist opened his palms. Fingers splayed wide, he looked at Abraham, beseechingly.

  “You’ll be next,” the artist said.

  “But you’ll be first,” Abraham replied, appearing unmoved by the man’s plea for help.

  “She’ll be downstairs, in the nursery, your daughter,” the artist said.

  “Not my daughter,” Abraham replied.

  “Ruth was always your daughter. Never mine,” the artist said.

  Abraham blinked, hands fluttering by his side.

  “The baby was mine, the boy, but never Ruth. Oh I wished she were mine. So alike we were, but…”

  “You made me think she was yours. You made us all believe,” said Abraham.

  The artist shrugged. “Only the boy was mine. Only Leo. And he stopped all this when he was old enough, he did what he had to. But Ruth, Ruth will carry on exactly where she left off.”

  Abraham turned towards the door.

  “Ruth can’t be stopped, Abraham.”

  Abraham paused in the doorframe and pulled a star-shaped brooch from his pocket and slipped it into the artist’s palm.

  “You can stop her, George,” Abraham said, before he too disappeared down the stairs.

  The artist sat there, weighing up his choices, turning the brooch over in his hands. He remembered when Abraham had given her this piece, even though he must have suspected he wasn’t the father of the babe. She’d been happy with the deception, it kept her family life perfect, kept everything the way it should be. It wasn’t perfect for him though. It was his babe in her belly, his Leo. Things should have changed.

  Helping Ruth tidy away the people obstructing his own happiness had been easy. He had no love for the other children, so they were first. After the baby came, she’d shown him less affection than the household staff, pretending that nothing had happened, playing at happy families. And that was unforgivable.

  Before she vanished, she’d named the baby Leonard, the closest name to Lawrence she’d dared. Maybe that’s when Abraham suspected the boy wasn’t his? He’d been bereft when she’d disappeared, when they all thought she’d thrown herself off the cliffs, spiralling into depression after losing her children and the birth of the new babe. Painting her portrait had torn his heart in two, but she had wronged him, and needed punishing. He’d intended to restore her to his side but that never happened. Ruth happened. And Ruth always got what she wanted. It was only when Leonard returned as an adult that Ruth was put in her place, up on the wall with the others.

  Leonard had done so well with his art lessons, captivating the world with his exquisite portraiture. He’d come back to the house when he’d asked him, like a good son, although he couldn’t trust him any more than he could Ruth. But Leonard had been careful, as only an adult can be, and George was proud of his son. And now he would join him.

  Let Abraham deal with his daughter.

  The artist pinned the star brooch to his chest, over his heart. A heart forever lost to a woman he’d destroyed. He’d had the talent to create beauty and the power to destroy it. Hindsight is a terrible gift when you realise you’ve destroyed more beauty than you created.

  Returning to his first brush, he flew across the canvas finishing the brow, the jaw, the cheeks of the man appearing before him. With one pained hand, he stroked the unshaved planes of his own face, adding a darkening shadow along the jaw line. Until that moment, he’d persuaded himself he’d been painting the man downstairs, or Abraham. Either would have suited him but his time was over. He was done.

  His son Leonard’s legacy would live on; his art had reached the lofty heights of being collectible, desirable, because of his reclusiveness. Would they be so quick to hang the art in their homes if they realised how wicked Leo had been? How wicked he’d been himself all those years before? He’d stopped signing his own art long ago. G.L.K., the kiss of death.

  George Kubin picked a clean brush and dipped it in a delicate eggshell white, which had the hint of a glaze. Dabbing the canvas, he sketched the outline of a star to the man’s shirt — eight points, with delicate gems positioned along each arm of the star. Using a thinner brush, he added radiating prisms of light from each of the refracted surfaces — the perfect rendering of a diamond brooch.

  Leaving only the old eyes, which had seen people come and people go. Their loss neither disturbed him nor invigorated him, they were art. Like all art, some pieces were more entertaining and memorable than others. Uncertain whether he’d feel anything when he finished, the crippling pain in his hands taking him beyond caring. The portrait in front of him was no masterpiece, a rough likeness, no more or less. This would be his last piece. Let Abraham deal with his daughter. He wanted to be with his son now.

  George Laurence Kubin picked up another brush, swirling the sparse bristles in a dollop of black oil paint. Guiding his painting hand with his other, his fingers on the surface of the canvas, he painted in his eyes. The light in his eyes dimming with every stroke until the only sound in the turret was that of an unheld brush falling to the floor. And the artist was gone.

  Chapter 57

  Callaghan slammed shut the car door, locking it once more. She wouldn’t be using it again. He ran back towards the house, car keys clutched in his hand. He slowed at the top of the front steps, fear pouring off him. What the hell? Someone had left a baby doll at the door. A sick joke. He kicked it away and the doll thumped into the wall of the house.

  Callaghan’s smug smile was replaced with naked terror. It was a hallucination; he was hallucinating, she can’t have disappeared; she must have run into shadow. The stupid girl had taken off down the driveway and was probably crying on the shoulder of that damn farmer.

  He needed to pack up his things and get out of here, then he’d deal with Anita, that was a priority. Back inside he faced the portraits Anita had stacked in piles on the floor, now lying in jumbled heaps, all face down. It was better that way. He liked no one watching him do the things he did. It was easier to do things unseen. The dead-eyed portraits watching him made him feel uncomfortable.

  His neck prickled and he spun around. Were the others back? No, it was nothing other the groans of an old house settling around him, the clicking of pipes or insects.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, it took less than a minute to pack his bag. Leavi
ng his bedroom, he shivered. The frigid breeze followed him upstairs and in the darkened corridor he saw Yvonne’s portrait on the floor and skirted it as if it were a somnambulant snake.

  Throwing his bag towards the front door, he ducked back into the drawing room to collect his laptop and the rest of his things. Snapping the computer shut, he froze at the unmistakable crunch of footsteps behind him.

  Straightening up from the coffee table, he squared his shoulders and turned around.

  There was nothing there. No one, nothing.

  He turned back and there was Anita, her large eyes wide, plump lips open in an approximation of a grimace. Fear emanated from her in waves. Callaghan’s breathing restarted. A painting, not Anita. Where the hell had that come from? It was a sick joke, this whole thing. And whoever the joker was would be coming after him next.

  Grabbing the portrait of Anita he didn’t notice the wetness of the paint, or smell the oil paint. He wanted to pack his car and get the hell out. Someone was picking them off one by one, like a sniper from a rooftop. Was it the farmer? Christ, he was lucky he was still alive. That’s what he’d tell the police anyway, if he had to. He didn’t have a plan other than to get away from here as fast as possible, drive home, and then what? Go back to work like nothing had happened? Hypocritically, he didn’t want to think about what the farmer was doing to Anita. Callaghan deliberated about whether there was anything of value inside he could take, which would help make his life a little easier. Preferably something easy to dispose of. If he thought too long about it, he’d be next. Stuff it, he thought and sprinted down the front steps, his long legs making quick work of the distance between the house and Anita’s car.

  Shoving the painting into the back seat of Anita’s car, he flung his bag in after it. There was no time to find the keys for the car he’d arrived in, Anita’s car would do. He’d leave it outside her place, although now he remembered hearing she’d moved home so wasn’t entirely sure where her home was. No worries, he’d leave the car down the road from work and that way it would look like she’d driven back and had gone missing from there. Someone would find it. If anyone asked him about it, he’d say he’d driven his own car there and back. Easy. Plausible. Doable.