The following is an assignment for a class I am taking as I study abroad in London for the summer, a small horror-adjacent short story inspired by my excitement over the portraits of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell in the National Portrait Gallery.
The lady on the wall doesn’t have eyes. The boy below her does not know if she ever did. As the lights of the space grow imperceptibly dimmer, the boy looks to the lady once more, taking in her slumped posture. She’s collapsed against a burnt orange armchair, expressive contours in the shadows carving her place into the plush fabric.
Unbeknownst to the boy, though he could likely gather if he were not so transfixed, he is nearly alone in the building now, save for the occasional security guard who has inexplicably passed him by.
The boy does not know what time it is.
Neither does the lady on the wall.
Her friend beside her watches the figure below them, though the boy is afraid to meet her gaze. Gulping down a deep breath, he attempts to speak aloud.
“Is she sick?” His small voice carries further than he thought possible, and he recoils from the echo.
Neither of the women answers; the boy shuffles his feet anxiously.
Avoiding the bright, critical eyes of the lady beside the armchair, the boy scans the space. The walls are crowded with people, mostly uncritical, though all gazing upon him. He shudders, returning his gaze to the lady without eyes.
“I don’t know where I am.” He says aloud, quieter this time. His voice carries just as far as it did the first time.
His mother always told him that, if he was to become lost, he should look for a mother, and ask to borrow her phone. The lady on the wall did not look like she had a phone, but he was much too concerned about her face to be thinking about calling anyone. She also did not look much like anyone he knew, which would’ve led anyone with a bit more foresight to question why he felt pulled to her. But the boy was much too young to be contemplating such things. He was here because that was where his feet had led him.
Where was his mother? She had been by his side just a moment ago, before she was whisked away by a crowd of stomping feet and rough pantlegs. None of the various women on the wall look like her, which prompts a fearful thought in the boy’s mind.
He does not want to leave the room. Even with the unsettling feature upon the woman in the orange armchair’s face, she seems peaceful. Her posture is that of one who had just dozed off, as his father often does in his own weathered recliner. If she were to wake, the boy reasoned, she would help him.
“But she will not.” A voice fills the room, though it does not echo as his does. It rings out, clear and precise, but does not resonate, passing through him as wind through reeds. He recoils, although he attempts to hide it.
Peering up through his curls, the boy meets the gaze of the lady on the wall. The one who spoke was to the right of the armchair, wearing a bright red dress that stands in stark contrast to the blue wall behind her.
“She will not wake. And she would not help you.” The woman speaks again, her mouth barely moving. Each shift of posture sends rippling colored shadows across the surface she sits within, blues and greens collecting in the curves of her arms and neck. The boy does not want to stare, but he cannot help following a worming trail of purple shadow as it slithers up the woman’s jaw.
“Who are you?” Everything he does feels too loud, too distinct in the overwhelming order of the high-ceilinged room.
“A resident,” the colorful woman says simply. “Which you are not.”
The boy does not entirely understand what she means, but he feels the weight of her condescension. He knew from the offset that he did not belong, but being told the fact outright made it all the more real. Shame settles on his shoulders, warning him of his trespassing. Staring ahead, an eternity could’ve easily passed in moments as he is locked in fixation on those in front of him. The sterile lights above wash out even his own shadow, an eternal midday light cast upon a lone figure in an art gallery.
Minutes turn to hours, and to all the boy’s knowledge, hours could have been days. But, almost without thinking, he wakes the next morning in his own bed, still wearing his rumpled school uniform and shoes under the covers. Stranger things have happened to the friends he holds in books lining his shelves, and though a chill remains firmly settled on his spine for the morning, he is easily swept away by the bustle of routine. If his mother casts a worried gaze his way, taking in eyebags much too mature for a boy of his age, he does not notice it. And she does not comment.
The boy, as he grew older, would think back to the time he had spent standing beneath the wall, and he would begin to rationalize. The women were simply portraits, and portraits could not have spoken to him the way that they had. The wall did not curve and contort, tendrils of shining paint leaking from frames and inching toward his colorful sneakers. The red-dressed woman’s hand did not beckon to him, rough surface caressing his chin and ruffling his hair as his mother’s would.
He would tell himself that he did not scream, scrambling out of the room, but more so for the retrospective embarrassment of being afraid of a portrait of all things than for actual condemnation of the memory. The unmoving two portraits, of a long-dead author and her sister, that would sit in silence for years until the boy was at once a man, visiting with his own children, who were barely older than he was at his first sight of that curious wall.
It would be then that, without warning or repercussion, the woman in the armchair would move, just slightly, turning her eyeless gaze to meet his.
And he would blink.
And she would not.
No comments:
Post a Comment