The Last Painted Lady

My friend Elise worked as the receptionist at the old Wexler Estate, a sprawling Victorian mansion that had been converted into a municipal cultural center. The grounds were now a manicured park with a community pool and tennis courts, but the house itself remained stubbornly untouched, its peeling paint and creaking floors a stark contrast to the polished recreational areas. Elise was a pragmatist, a woman who believed in facts and evidence. She laughed at the stories the other staff told about the house’s resident ghost, a woman named Margaret Wexler, who supposedly haunted the top floor.

The tale went that Margaret, the daughter of the house’s original owner, had fallen in love with a traveling artist in the 1920s. She was a painter herself, and the artist, whose name was lost to time, had promised to return after a trip to Europe to finish the portrait she had begun of him. But the artist never came back. A letter arrived, months later, saying he had died of a fever in a foreign city. Margaret, distraught and pregnant, threw herself from the highest window of the house, which was in the third-floor studio.

Elise dismissed it all as folklore. She worked her shifts, answered the phone, and directed visitors, never once feeling a chill or hearing a phantom footstep. The house was just old, her rational mind insisted. The creaks were the building settling. The drafts were from the poor insulation. She even took to eating her lunch in the third-floor studio, a small room with a large bay window that overlooked the park, because it was quiet and had a nice view.

One afternoon, while Elise was eating a sandwich in the studio, she noticed a dust-covered easel in the corner. She had never paid it much attention before. On a whim, she wiped away the dust and found a half-finished painting on the canvas. It depicted a young man with dark, soulful eyes and a subtle smile. His likeness was so detailed that Elise felt a strange connection to him. She decided, out of boredom, to complete the painting herself. She had no formal training, but she had a natural eye for art. She spent her breaks over the next few weeks blending colors and adding brushstrokes, trying to match the original style.

Once the painting was finished, Elise hung it on the wall of the studio, feeling a weird sense of accomplishment. That night, she dreamed she was standing in that same studio, but the room was different. The walls were covered in dusty tapestries, and a woman with a long, flowing dress was by the window, staring out. She turned, and Elise saw her face was gaunt and pale, her eyes empty. The woman pointed at the painting and said, ‘He was mine. You’ve brought him back.’

Elise woke up with a start, her heart pounding. She dismissed it as a vivid nightmare. But when she went to work the next day, she found the painting had been turned to face the wall. She turned it back, assuming a cleaning crew had moved it. Over the next few days, strange things began to happen. The phone would ring, but when she answered, there was only static. Doors in the third-floor corridor would slam shut on their own. And one day, she found a used paintbrush on the floor, its bristles still wet with red paint, though no one else had been in the room.

Elise’s skepticism began to crack. She started researching Margaret’s history, digging through old newspaper archives in the local library. She found a faded, yellowed article from 1923 detailing Margaret’s suicide. There was a grainy photo of Margaret, and Elise felt a chill when she saw that Margaret had the same dark, intense eyes as the man in the painting. She also found a note, supposedly written by Margaret, saying she intended to finish her lover’s portrait from memory, but she never got the chance.

Elise became obsessed. She started staying late, painting in the studio even after her shift ended. She filled the canvas with more details, the background, the furniture, and soon, the painting depicted a full scene: the young man sitting on a velvet chair, a window behind him, and a garden outside. As she painted, she felt a presence in the room, as if someone was watching her, guiding her brush. She began to talk to the empty air, apologizing to Margaret for stealing her work.

One evening, as the sun set, Elise put the final stroke on the painting. She stepped back to admire it. The man’s eyes seemed to look directly at her, and she felt a bizarre warmth in her chest. Just then, the window behind her burst open, and a gale of cold wind blew through the room, extinguishing the lights. In the darkness, she heard a woman’s voice, clear and close to her ear: ‘You can have him now. He’s yours.’

Elise fainted. She was found the next morning by the groundskeeper, slumped in front of the easel. She had a fever and was delirious for a week. When she recovered, she refused to go back into the house. She quit her job soon after. But she told me that the worst part wasn’t the supernatural occurrences she experienced. It was that she couldn’t stop thinking about the painting, and she felt a deep, unexplainable longing for the man in it.

A few weeks later, I went to see the painting. It was still in the studio, covered with a white sheet. I lifted the sheet, and my breath caught. The man’s eyes were different. They were dark, but there was something new in them. A spark of life. And I swear, for just a second, the corner of his mouth moved, as if he was about to smile.

I dropped the sheet and ran. I’ve never gone back to that house. And now, every time I see a portrait, I think of Margaret, and what she might have become. The last painted lady, waiting upstairs, for someone to finish her work.