Chapter 1
If you asked me where I got the painting, I don’t think I would be able to tell you. I have no memory of buying it. I don’t even know if I found it on the street. I guess it just wound up in my apartment after college. I even called my mother to see if she knew anything. Nothing. Fucking nothing. So here I was. 23 year old college dropout in a dank apartment with a weird LSD drug induced painting hanging on the wall right when you walk in the fucking door. Something about walking in and seeing it just smugly eyeing you up. God this fucking painting I cant get it out of my head. Every night I end up losing sleep over what looks like a piece of fucking childs artwork. But then why is it so fucking nightmarish. I suppose I should tell you what it looks like so you don’t think I’m insane. I guess it was supposed to be a portrait. I’m not sure if it was a self portrait or a caricature. Neither of those options give me any comfort. The subject’s face is hollow. I’m not sure how else to put it. His cheeks are sunken in, and in the space where his eyes should be, there’s nothing. I think that’s what creeps me out the most. I’ve looked at this fucking thing so many times and theres nothing. Just inky blackness. As if it couldn’t get any weirder, his mouth is stuck in a permanent silent wail. As if he just watched his mother die. He has hair, but it doesn’t look much like hair. It looks more like something that you’d find in a horse’s vomit. I think my least favorite part of it however, is the sheer lack of detail. It’s like if you let a blind man touch your face and had him then draw a picture of what he remembers. It’s so void of any detail, yet so numbingly frightening. Hopefully you’re building a nice pretty picture of this horror. Things started slow. Barely even noticeable at first. I think the first thing that I actually noticed was when it turned on the stove. Now, I could be wrong about that. In fact I hope I am. As I remember more though, I can’t really find any other explanation besides the irrational ones.
It was simple. I came home and the stove was on. Nothing really worth noting. I just turned it off. I was only out for a couple of minutes, maybe I just forgot. You never really realize though, how unnerving the rat-tat-tat of the stove’s ignition is. There is no way I could have left the house without hearing it. In the back of my mind there was the thought that someone might have been in my house. Still, I thought nothing of it.
The next thing I remember is the hall light. I remember this, once again thanks to an audio cue. When you entered my apartment and flicked the light switch, you’d hear a fizz, then a very subtle pop, then the light would come on. Now, considering how old and shitty my apartment was, this never took me by surprise. It started to get weird however, when I would hear it in the middle of the night. It got weirder when I would go to turn off the light, only to discover that it wasn’t even on. Then I would be faced with two equally unnerving thoughts. The first: somehow this light turned on and something had to have done it. And second, I was losing my fucking mind. The worst part of this was easily the painting. Somehow it was more terrifying at night. The eye sockets were somehow blacker, and it almost looked like his wailing face was even more distressed. Now, the stove incident happened only once, but the lights were a lot worse. It felt like it would happen every other night at least. Things were pretty normal for a while, I mean yeah, the lights would turn on without actually turning on, and on occasion I’d hear footsteps, but I could chalk all those up to electricity problems and my loud-ass neighbors. I was incident free for a pretty long while. At least a couple of months, but of-fucking-course nothing can ever be normal.
The painting was always in the same spot. You’d open the door and be greeted by a small table with the painting resting on it. Bam, as soon as you enter the house. It’s not exactly a pleasant sight, so when I came home from my girlfriend’s place, I was almost relieved to see that it wasn’t there anymore. The relief only really lasted a couple of seconds before my brain started asking me “why the fuck is it gone”. I had locked my door, deadbolt and chain, and I had no set of spare keys anywhere. There weren’t any signs of a break in, and everything was still exactly where it was. My first thought was why the fuck would anyone want this painting? I wondered briefly if maybe it was a piece of fine art that was worth millions, but I quickly dismissed that thought when I walked into my bedroom. There it was, on my fucking bed. What. The. Fuck? I honestly did not know what to do. Why was it on my bed? And who the fuck moved it there. I think now is probably a good time to mention that I don’t believe in anything. Ghost’s aren’t real, god isn’t real, and demons are not fucking real. Whatever had been going on was some other person’s doing. So, while I removed the painting from my bed and put it back on the walk-in table, I thought about who might be messing with me. My girlfriend knows I don’t like getting scared. My only friend Anthony doesn’t know where I live, and the only person who could get into my house without me knowing was my 73 year old landlord, who is far past the age of practical jokes.
I think it was that night that the knocking started. I have a hard time sleeping anyway, and the knowledge that someone had been in my apartment without me knowing didn’t exactly make me want to go to sleep. Instagram reels to the rescue. As I scrolled past a reel of a metal band, I heard 4 loud knocks. It was probably around 2 in the morning, so who the fuck was at my door. I waited in my bed for about a minute before I heard them again. This time, I noticed something. The knocks were perfect. They were spaced apart perfectly. *knock*, pause, *knock*, pause. This time, I got up to check. I intentionally averted my eyes from the painting as I approached my front door, and I pressed my eye against the peephole. Nothing. I don’t mean that there was no one there, I mean there was nothing. Just black. I stood there for minutes debating whether to open the door, and when I finally reached to unlock the deadbolt, I heard it again. The fucking picture perfect knocking. Fuck it. I unlocked the deadbolt, unhooked the chain, and threw the door open. What a surprise, there was no one there. I looked at my peephole, and it looked fine. No spray paint or duct tape or anything. At this point I was done. I just shut the door, locked it, and turned to go to bed. It was when I turned around that I had wished I looked at the painting a couple minutes earlier. It was gone. Once again. This time I genuinely freaked out. There was no way someone had come into my house this late at night without me knowing. I was so afraid I forgot about the knocking. I immediately raced back to my room and turned on the light. Sleeping was out of the question at this point. I laid down in bed and was about to put my head under the covers, when I saw a reflection. Very slight, I will say, but it was there. A sliver of light in the crack of my closet door. I reluctantly got up and opened my closet very slowly, and there it was. That stupid fucking painting. If I’m being honest, I let out a little yelp. I didn’t even bother moving it this time, I just slammed the closet shut and raced into my bed, whole body under the covers. What. The. Fuck? To the couch it is. I would have to be insane to sleep in there. Like I said, I don’t believe in anything without evidence, but I was feeling extremely uneasy. I was thinking that someone definitely was in my house. After all, how else was the painting moved? I didn’t even think about the fact that I would have heard someone walking over and taking it, not to mention the fact that there is no one weird enough to break into my house just to move my painting to different rooms. I didn’t even bother to grab any blankets or pillows, I rushed to the couch and found a shitty little quilt that was folded to cover myself with.
It was a long night to say the least. I didn’t sleep at all, but I told myself not to go on my phone in case I alerted whoever was in my house. I literally sat in silence the whole night, just waiting to see the sun crest over my third floor window. Daylight makes everything less scary. While it was long, eventually the sun did rise, and I finally threw my covers off of my face, half expecting to be greeted with a gun or a knife pointed at me. Thankfully, Neither was being pointed towards me. I was, however, faced with a bucket of sweat pouring down my face and the memory of the previous night fresh in my mind. I debated if I should go back to my room or not. The argument in my head was quite bitter, but against my better judgment, I slowly rose off the couch and crept over to my bedroom. I cracked the door ever so slightly, not sure if I was ready to face whoever was in there, and I was greeted by a hefty disappointment. The best kind of disappointment. The room was empty. Better yet, it was exactly how I had left it. I had another brief argument with myself about whether or not I should open the closet, and eventually I found the nerve to open the door. I was greeted once again by the painting. Right where I had left it. Before I could talk myself out of it, I picked it up and speed-walked to the table to put it back where it belonged. Come to think of it, why did I not just throw it away?
That was about a month ago. The reason I am writing this is because stuff started happening again, and I don’t know how long I have to spread the word. The other day I was once again lying awake in bed. I had mostly forgotten about the whole incident of the painting in the closet, and I was ready to enjoy some sleep, when I heard something. It was subtle, but irrefutable. The slight sound of scratching. I don’t own a cat. I don’t own a dog. What the fuck was the scratching? I immediately felt the same fear as I did that first really bad night. This time however, I decided to be brave and figure it out once and for all. I opened my door, and let out a squeal. My door was covered in gashes. I’m not talking about small little scratches. It looked like a lion had had his way with my door. Despite my inability to believe in the paranormal, I felt a need to find the painting. If nothing else it would ease my nerves knowing where it was. The good news was that the painting was exactly where it was supposed to be. There was, however, some bad news. He was gone. I know it sounds crazy, but that stupid fucking malnourished caricature was gone. The bland background assaulted the painting like a plague. At that point, I was convinced I was losing my mind. Hell, I might still be. How in the fuck does a painting just change. I came to the conclusion that I was insane, and that I should probably just go to sleep, so I just went back to bed.
The next day I checked the painting again. Still missing. I didn’t and still don’t understand how the fuck that happens. I decided to ask my best friend google. After google basically told me I was a schizophrenic, I had run out of options. I called my girlfriend and asked her if she had been in my apartment at all, or if she had seen the painting, but she hadn’t. I managed to calm myself down with the thought that maybe whoever was doing this just replaced the painting with a different one not featuring the subject. Yes, that seemed possible.
That was two days ago, and as I’m writing this, that explanation is becoming less and less possible. Tonight, everything went to shit. I was enjoying the first good sleep I’d gotten in a while, when the scratching started again. Somehow I didn’t think it could get worse. The scratching was coming from my closet. I watched as the door opened a crack, and two white dots appeared. As I write this, those dots are burning holes into my laptop, almost begging me to look. Look, I said that I didn’t believe anything that was not backed up by scientific evidence, but since I might be about to die, I figured what harm could come from praying. See, I think I found the subject of the painting, and it looks like he found his eyes.
