The Painting - Volume IV

My art gallery purchased the old oil painting from the estate sale. The haunting landscape depicted a moonlit forest with a shadowy figure beneath the trees. I was struck by its somber beauty and displayed it proudly in the front window. But soon I sensed a deeper darkness lurking within its aged canvas.

The first odd incident was the cleaning crew complaining that the painting gave them nightmares. One swears the shadowy figure's expression changed when she turned away. But art doesn't change itself, of course. I assumed they were just being superstitious. However, soon customers started remarking on the painting's lifelike quality.

Late at night in the gallery I occasionally glimpsed the shadow stirring or moonlight glinting differently in the painted sky. But I shrugged it off as tired eyes playing tricks in the dim light. Until one evening on locking up I spotted fresh claw marks gouged into the gallery floor before the canvas that most certainly hadn't been there earlier.

A break-in seemed the only logical explanation. But nothing else was disturbed and the security system showed nothing. The marks looked almost like something had emerged from the painting itself, but that was impossible. Nervously, I stowed the work in a locked storage room just to be safe. But strange events continued plaguing the gallery.

Even locked away, every morning the painting would be found facing the door as if watching me arrive. Patrons kept reporting moving figures glimpsed in paintings when glancing away. Voices whispered from empty corners. Shadows darted where no one stood. The entire gallery felt haunted by some malevolent presence.

I decided to destroy the eerie painting before the unrest turned dangerous. But when I retrieved it from storage, I shuddered - the shadowy figure beneath the trees now stared directly out of the canvas, eyes glowing. The dark strokes seemed to writhe, fresher and more lurid than before.

As I hurried with matches to burn the cursed work, the room temperature plummeted. A phantom wind howled as the figure stepped forward out of the painted forest toward me, morphing into a horned demon with gnashing fangs. I struck the match, but it went out as the fiend lunged, freezing my blood with otherworldly terror.

When the horror released me, I fled trembling out into the night. Behind me the storage room burned, but I knew the malevolent spirit was only temporarily banished. Whatever dark forces had been unleashed could not be unmade. The innocuous painting had opened a door between worlds that could never again be sealed.

Even now I sometimes wake to inhuman eyes watching from shadowy corners and ancient dreams stalking my sleep. The encounter irrevocably marked my soul. Like a cancer, the entity burrowed deep into this reality. It will always find those vulnerable minds where it can take root and spread evil.

"The Painting" by Oscar Mendieta Bravo