The Gallery of Unfinished Things

I never believed in ghosts, not really. I was a skeptic, a man of logic and reason. That was before the gallery. A month ago, my girlfriend, Lena, convinced me to accompany her to the opening of a new art exhibition at the old Millbrook Museum, a converted factory that always smelled of dust and turpentine. I went for her, not for the art. The exhibit was called ‘Unfinished Forms,’ a collection of wooden sculptures by a reclusive artist named Ezra Vane. The pieces were unsettling, all rough-hewn and faceless, their surfaces pitted like diseased wood. Lena was fascinated, but I felt a cold dread seeping into my bones the moment I stepped inside.

That night, as we lay in her apartment, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. It was worse than mere paranoia; it was a primal terror, the kind that makes your skin crawl and your heart pound. I tried to dismiss it as nerves, but the feeling only intensified. Then I heard them: two voices, a young girl and an older boy, whispering near the bedroom door. They were calling for their father, their voices soft and pleading. I turned to look, expecting to see Lena’s cat at the door, but instead, I saw one of Vane’s sculptures standing there, its wooden head tilted at an unnatural angle. It was the one from the exhibit: a faceless figure, its surface smooth except for a few cracks. I froze, my breath caught in my throat. Then, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone.

I told myself it was a trick of the light, a hallucination from lack of sleep. But the whispers continued, night after night, in the dark corners of Lena’s apartment. They always said the same thing: ‘Daddy, we’re here. Why won’t you see us?’ The voices grew more insistent, more desperate. I tried to tell Lena, but she thought I was just stressed from work. One night, I woke to find her standing by the window, staring blankly outside. When I touched her shoulder, she flinched and whispered, ‘He’s in the gallery. He’s coming.’

The next day, I went back to the Millbrook Museum. The exhibit was still there, the sculptures watching me with their featureless faces. I approached the one that had appeared in our bedroom. Its wood was warm to the touch, and I could swear I heard faint breathing. That’s when I noticed a hidden panel at the base, barely visible under a layer of dust. I pried it open and found a diary, bound in cracked leather. The entries were written in a trembling hand, dated fifty years ago. It was Ezra Vane’s diary.

I read it that night, sitting alone in my car outside the museum. Vane wrote of his two children, Alice and Michael, and how they died in a fire that consumed his studio. He had been carving them a gift, a pair of wooden dolls, when the flames took them. In his grief, he carved their likenesses into the very wood he had been working on, but he could never bring himself to finish their faces. He called the sculptures ‘my children, trapped in the wood.’ The final entry read: ‘I will join them soon. They call to me. I must go to them.’

I returned to Lena’s apartment, the diary clutched in my hands. The moment I stepped inside, I heard the whispers louder than ever, coming from our bedroom. I threw open the door and saw the sculpture again, standing beside our bed. Its head was no longer smooth; faint features were beginning to emerge, as if the wood was shifting, forming a face. I saw the outline of my own face in the grain.

Lena was standing in the corner, tears streaming down her cheeks. She pointed to the sculpture and sobbed, ‘It’s him. It’s the man from the gallery. He says his children are here. He says he wants to finish his work.’ I realized then that the man in the diary, Ezra Vane, had never left the gallery. His spirit was trapped, and he was seeking new bodies to inhabit, new ‘unfinished forms’ to complete. And he had chosen us.

The next morning, the gallery was closed indefinitely. The sculptures were marked as ‘mysteriously missing.’ But I know where they are. They are in our bedroom, in the hall, in every corner of the house. And every night, the whispers grow louder, the forms grow more defined, and I see my own reflection in the grain of the wood, ever so slowly, beginning to emerge.