The Painted Darkness

by Brian Freeman

  Henry spins at the sound, but the MagLite is knocked from his hand before he can glimpse anything in the dark. The flashlight shatters against the stone wall, plunging the cellar into pitch darkness.

  There’s another growl, huge and echoing, and then something cold and sharp grabs at Henry’s arms.

  He screams and breaks free from the icy grip and spins around to flee and then, at the last second, he remembers the grave-like hole lurking between him and the stairs.

  In his panic, he almost jumps directly into the low-lying support beams—but he realizes his error just in time and he dives forward like a kid playing Superman.

  His momentum carries him across the grave and he lands hard and rolls onto the pile of freshly dug dirt.

  He stumbles to his feet and he doesn’t stop running until he has scaled the steps and he’s in the attic again, locking the door and crawling into a darkened corner, pulling his legs up to his chest.

  Henry can’t believe what’s happening; he’s an adult and he must face reality head-on, but tears are pouring from his eyes. He can’t remember ever being more scared than he is in this moment. He sniffles, reaches for his pocket for a tissue that isn’t there.

  Downstairs, there’s a loud crash on the first floor. Then there’s another crash. The fierce sounds grow louder and louder, closer and closer.

  Henry hopes the attic door will protect him. If the door isn’t enough, he doesn’t think hiding in the darkness will be sufficient, either. But for now, he hides.

  THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST (8)

  W

  hen the tracks from the rabbits crossed the snow-covered open area located between the two sides of the forest, Henry knew he should stop and turn back. He could hear the roar of the water under the long and narrow clearing. This was the river, hidden under a blanket of ice and snow.

  There was no path, but the rabbit tracks continued downstream, down the middle of the frozen river as if the death didn’t lurk feet or inches below their paws. Henry followed their lead, but he didn’t dare cross the river. Instead he did his best to stay on the snowy bank, but eventually the ground got steeper and steeper and he had to make a choice: go back into the woods or walk on the ice.

  Henry couldn’t stop thinking about the rabbits. Were they like the skeleton, just something he had dreamed up and simply imagined was real? How could he have imagined something so amazing, something he had never thought of or seen before? Baseball, football, cops and robbers, army men were all things he had watched on television. Even skeletons were a staple of his cartoons.

  The rabbits with the red eyes were different. They had to be real if he had never seen them before. More importantly, he closed his eyes and reopened them a dozen times and the tracks never disappeared.

  Henry carefully inched down the snowy back and onto the frozen river, a few small steps at a time. When his feet didn’t break through, he trusted the ice to hold his weight more and more. Soon he was walking down the middle of the river, following the rabbit tracks as if this was just another path in the woods, one that roared liked a thunderstorm under his boots at times. He kept trying to imagine where the rabbits could have come from, and how they moved in sync like that, and why their eyes were red. And, most importantly, where were they going?

  Henry was so lost in his thoughts he didn’t hear the faint warning cries beneath him, the sound like glass being shattered in slow motion.

  His first indication of the danger was when his right boot pushed through the ice and was grabbed by the frigid water, as if a hand had emerged from below to pull him down.

  A shrill cry escaped Henry’s throat. He took a step backwards and then he was sinking and an instant later the world was cold and black and he was struggling under the surface of the river, surrounded by a rushing wall of freezing water.

  The current sucked Henry away from the hole he had created in the ice and into the darkness beyond. His eyes were wide and his arms flailed; the coldness slithered along his skin, chilling the blood in his veins, squeezing his chest.

  Henry kicked his legs and he desperately held his breath as the swift current dragged him along. Vise-like pressure squeezed him from all sides and he couldn’t believe what was happening. He felt trapped in a terrible nightmare.

  His heart raced, yet his body was already becoming lethargic and sleepy from the biting cold.

  Then, when Henry’s eyes were about to close, when he was on the verge of letting the river carry him away, he smashed into the trunk of a submerged tree.

  The pain was tremendous, but even though the water tugged at him with icy claws, the current wasn’t dragging him along anymore and the shock jolted him back awake.

  Henry wrapped his arms around the mossy trunk and pulled himself into the slick branches. His lungs were burning and screaming at him.

  He looked up in desperation and saw the ice was only inches above him; he extended his arm weakly. His knuckles tapped at the frozen ceiling like he was pushing on solid rock.

  He punched again with more force and a crack formed, the lines splintering away from him.

  His third punch smashed the ice apart, opening a window into the cool winter sunlight.

  Henry pulled himself up the branches and out of the water, sucking in a huge breath the moment he felt the dazzling embrace of the sun. He crawled up the tree toward the uprooted base of the trunk where the roots hung limply, exposed to the elements.

  Once over land, Henry dropped to the snowy riverbank, gasping for air and staring into the sky at those dancing clouds. A chill was eating into his bones and he couldn’t stop shivering. His teeth chattered and he bit down on one of his knuckles to make them stop.

  Henry lay there in the snow, grateful to see the sky. He watched the clouds through a break in the trees. Exhaustion overwhelmed him. He couldn’t imagine moving again, let alone crossing the river and finding his way home. He wanted to close his eyes and settle into the comfort of the cold darkness.

  As the chill lulled Henry toward the grip of an endless sleep, a rustle came from the bushes.

  The herd of white rabbits, hundreds of them, burst through the brush and stopped just short of where Henry lay.

  Their noses and whiskers twitched and they stared at the little boy with their red eyes. Follow us, there’s more to see and do, they seemed to say. Then they turned in unison and darted deeper into the forest.

  Henry watched them go.

  THE PRESENT (8)

  The Madness in the Cellar

  I

  t might be madness to believe there’s a monster in your cellar, but Henry is pretty sure denying what just happened to him would be an even worse kind of madness. The kind that ends with someone living in a padded room. Henry is also beginning to believe he

  didn’t need to discover an eye in the cellar drain to understand something was wrong in his home.

  Under the surface, he has been sensing an intrusion into his peaceful world for longer than he cares to admit. Maybe even since he and Sarah bought the house. Maybe even before they bought the house. After all, the first time he felt worried here was when the real estate agent reluctantly showed him the steam boiler.

  There’s definitely something wrong and Henry doesn’t have the slightest idea how he’s supposed to fix it. He’s an adult and adults fix problems, that much he knows. There aren’t bogeymen in the real world, but he also knows what he felt and what he saw in the cellar. All of it was real.

  There’s another greasy thump from the second floor. Then another.

  Henry looks out the window at the storm. The snow banks across the property are large and drifting; his little Honda in the garage is definitely no match for them. He watches the snow and the ice blowing in the wind and he wonders how far he could make it if he had to run for help.

  Probably not very far. He doesn’t even have his shoes on and there’s no way he can get to them—they’re in the bedroom on the second floor, well beyond whatever is stalking through the house.


  As if to remind him he is trapped, the meaty thump, thump arrives at the bottom of the stairs to the attic. Whether or not that’s a real monster doesn’t really matter now. Something is down there and it’s coming for Henry and if Henry’s best defense is to hide in the dark, the results are going to be very unpleasant for him.

  He only has one choice: the window.

  He passes the unfinished painting he had been working on earlier when he left to care for the boiler, then stops suddenly in his tracks. There are splashes of red and gray and black across the canvas. The ancient dungeon has rough stone walls damp with blood and there are dead rats scattered across the brown dirt floor. Hidden in the darkness are red glowing eyes, hundreds of them. But the focus is the princess in her tattered gown. She stands between a lumbering monster and a small child, and she has raised the sword, as if preparing to charge the hideous beast.

  Henry reaches for the canvas from yesterday, which he had faced at the wall with all of his other recent works so he couldn’t see what he had painted.

  The image is basically the same, but there is more distance between the princess and the monster. Henry moves down the line, turning the other paintings, none of which he can remember creating—just like he can’t recall what he was thinking when he painted them.

  They’re all part of this series, which he’s apparently been working on for at least a month. They’re essentially the same image, with one small difference: the older the painting, the further the monster is from the princess. Very little changes otherwise. Just the depth of the shadows here or there, along with the number of the dead rats. Red eyes always glow in the darkness, watching the scene unfold.

  What does this mean? Henry wonders.

  There’s another thump, thump, this time right outside the attic door.

  Henry drops the painting and shoves the small attic window open, eliciting a cry from the monster behind the door. The winter wind smacks Henry in the face like a fist.

  Snow blows into the attic as Henry climbs onto the slate roof, his hands already cold from gripping the splintering window frame. Once he’s on the slick slate shingles, he closes the window again as the wind and snow whips past him. He watches through the window as the attic door bursts open and something slithers into the darkness.

  Henry doesn’t want to see what has come through the door. Instead he turns and crawls along the roof, the blistering wind biting into him. He’s still only wearing his t-shirt and shorts, and the ice and snow against his legs and feet is so cold it burns him until his skin is numb.

  He turns the corner at the side of the house, looks at the swaying tree in the front yard, then at the garage. That’s where he has to go if he’s to have any chance in this weather, but there’s only one way to his destination: the fragile rose trellis that extends from the ground to the roof on the east side of the house, outside the kitchen window.

  Henry begins to climb up toward the peak of the roof, taking the most direct route to the trellis. His hands ache from the chill; his entire body shakes.

  He’s crossing the peak when his right hand slips and he falls forward, landing chin first and sliding.

  As his arms flail for anything he might be able to grab onto, two images flash in Henry’s mind for the first time in years:

  First is a crumbling tree house high above his head, a path of broken branches showing where gravity pulled him to the ground.

  The second is a wall of ice holding him under a raging river as an icy rush of water attempted to suck the life out of him.

  Henry has no time to analyze these images as he slides down the roof, plowing through the ice and the snow toward his cold and painful death.

  The darkness envelopes him and he has almost accepted the inevitability of the fall when he slams into the stone chimney that directs the toxic fumes of the boiler away from the house and into the sky. He hadn’t even seen the chimney in the snowy darkness, but he’s never been more grateful for the awful old boiler in the cellar than he is at this moment.

  Henry gasps, his arms wrapped around the chimney, his eyes staring past the gutter, down at the snowy lawn three stories below. The images of the tree house and the icy river are already fading from his mind.

  With no time to catch his breath, Henry crawls the rest of the way to the top of the trellis. He swings his leg over the side and plants his bare foot as if this were a regular ladder.

  The thorns dig into him like teeth; he bites his lip to keep from screaming. He swings his other leg over the edge. He has no choice but to ignore the pain while trusting the collection of interlaced wooden slats with his life. Where else can he go?

  There’s a slight groan as a few of the nails holding the trellis to the house pull free, and he’s certain he’ll fall this time, but Henry keeps moving slowly, lowering himself one careful step at a time, gritting his teeth as the rose thorns slice through his palms and his fingers, stab at his exposed arms and legs, and tear into his feet.

  The pain in his hands and feet is nearly unbearable and when he finally arrives at the ground, he’s bleeding from a dozen places, but he’s alive.

  THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST (9)

  H

  enry knew he was too far from home,and he also knew he had to get out of his wet clothes and into a warm house sooner than later, so he did the only thing he could think to do: he followed the rabbit tracks. He pushed through the bushes and underbrush, stumbled down a hill and climbed another, all while trying to ignore the pain radiating from where his cold body had slammed into the tree.

  Henry didn’t understand what was happening, but he was experiencing more and more signs of delirium and exhaustion the further he went into the woods. Out of the corner of his eyes, he started to see movement. Little things at first, which he could explain away. That one shaking tree branch was due to a clump of snow falling from higher in the tree. Happens all the time after a snowstorm. Those two shaking branches? A couple of squirrels chasing each other, that’s all.

  But then, when entire trees were shaking and creaking with growls emerging from deep in their trunks—then Henry grew certain the forest was coming alive around him, stalking him.

  Suddenly, Henry sensed one of the trees actually following him, having broken free of the ground, hulking after him and trying to grab onto his yellow raincoat. There were thunderous footsteps chasing after him and the entire world shook from the impacts.

  Henry jumped in surprise, started to run…but then he looked over his shoulder in terror and realized the tree hadn’t moved, of course. Maybe none of them had. He stopped running, his chest heaving, his body exhausted.

  Henry continued following the rabbit tracks, much more slowly, but soon he heard strange sounds like thousands of birds gathering in the trees above him. They were flapping their wings incessantly and cawing shrilly. He could feel their beady eyes tracking him as he in turn tracked the rabbits, which were following deer trails deeper into the darkest, thickest part of the woods.

  Eventually the tracks started up another hill, but Henry slowed to a stop in the snowy brush at the bottom. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to go on. The woods were as dark as night, and the cawing of the birds was louder than ever, and he couldn’t shake the idea that something was following him, even though he saw nothing when he spun around and looked where he had just come from. There was movement everywhere, but it was always just out of his field of vision.

  I need to find out what’s at the top of this hill, he thought, tracing the tracks with his eyes. Maybe the rabbits will be waiting for me.

  Or maybe not. At least he would know. He promised himself he would at least check the top of this hill. If he didn’t find the rabbits, he would start running home until he couldn’t run anymore, leaving the evil woods far behind.

  Henry climbed the hill, his legs burning from the strain. The birds screamed at him, the trees rustled and started pulling out of the ground again to follow him. Dark and light danced around him. His heart raced in terror, and
he fell to his knees and crawled, pulling himself along with his hands. He got to his feet again, but he stumbled at the top of the hill, landing on his side in a beam of sunlight breaking through the tree cover.

  Henry’s eyes wanted to close, he didn’t want to see whatever monsters were about to devour him, but he made himself look around like he had promised himself—and when he saw where he was, his eyes widened and he felt his heart leap in his chest.

  The river route had taken him the entire way around town. Beyond the underbrush was a plowed parking lot and beyond the icy pavement was the Black Hill Community School. His father’s station wagon was parked by the front doors. There were no other cars in sight.

  Henry got to his feet, his mind suddenly very clear. The birds had vanished,the trees were back to normal and the daylight was bright and safe.

  With newfound strength, Henry climbed the snow bank created by the plow earlier in the day and he crossed the parking lot, taking care to avoid the slick spots. Mountains of plowed snow surrounded the tall light poles.

  Henry stopped on the far side of the parking lot. The rabbit tracks appeared there again, leading directly to the school’s front doors, only this time the tracks weren’t soft indentations in the snow.

  They were made out of blood.

  Henry carefully approached the front doors, confused by the tracks and trying to decide how to explain to his father what he was doing here and why he was soaked to the bone. His mother would ground him for life if she learned where he had gone, and Ms. Winslow would probably never let him leave the house again, but the cold was crushing him and he had to get into the warmth.

  When Henry pulled on the door, he was surprised it opened so easily. He had assumed the doors would be locked since the school was closed for the day.

  He stepped into the well-lit hallway where the trail of bloody rabbit tracks continued, covering the floor between the rows of lockers.

  The school was as silent as a tomb, with the exception of the buzzing lights above his head. There was no one to be seen anywhere.