The Painted Guest

It was the summer I turned nineteen, and I needed to escape the suffocating quiet of my parents’ house. My friend Marcus had invited me to stay at his family’s place in the countryside, a sprawling property that had once been a dairy farm. The main house was a rambling Victorian, but guests stayed in a converted barn a hundred yards away, now a self-contained apartment with exposed beams and a wood-burning stove. The land around it was flat and golden, dotted with ancient oaks, and a long, winding gravel drive connected the barn to the main road, almost a mile away. It felt like stepping into another world, one where time moved slower and the sky seemed impossibly vast.

Marcus showed me to the barn, which he called ‘the Studio’. Inside, it smelled of dust and old paint, but it was comfortable enough. There was a large bed under a sloping window, a small kitchenette, and a heavy oak wardrobe. On the wall opposite the bed hung a large, rectangular painting in a faded gilt frame. It depicted a man in late Victorian attire, sitting in a high-backed chair, one hand resting on his cheek. The hand was the first thing I noticed: it wasn’t flesh, but bone, the metacarpals and phalanges clearly visible, as if the skin had been peeled away. The man’s face was gaunt, with sunken cheeks and a high forehead. His hair was dark and slicked back, but it looked greasy, almost wet. But it was the eyes that made my stomach clench. They were a dull yellow, and as I stared, they seemed to shift, flickering to a burnt orange, then a deep crimson, and back again. And they were looking straight at me, bored into me, as if they could see through my skin.

I tried to laugh it off, telling Marcus the painting was a bit too ‘creepy’ for my taste. He just shrugged, saying it was some antique from his grandmother’s attic and that he’d never noticed. But I couldn’t shake it. Every time I glanced at the canvas, those eyes were on me, tracking my movements across the room. That night, as I tried to sleep, I could feel the weight of that gaze in the darkness. I lay in bed, the sheets pulled up to my chin, listening to the wind outside. A car door slammed in the distance, and I heard footsteps on the gravel path, but they stopped short of the door, then faded. I convinced myself it was Marcus checking on me, but I didn’t hear him knock.

The next morning, I told Marcus I couldn’t sleep with that thing staring at me. He seemed embarrassed and apologized. He climbed up on a chair and turned the painting so it faced the wall. As the frame scraped against the plaster, I felt a cold draught wash over me, and the air in the room grew thick, as if a pressure had descended. I thanked him, and he left. I spent the day reading on the porch, trying to ignore the nervous flutter in my stomach. But when I collapsed into bed that night, the feeling of being watched had intensified. I couldn’t shake it. I lay there, staring at the blank back of the painting, and I could swear I heard a faint, rhythmic scratching, like fingernails on canvas, coming from the wall.

I sat up, my heart pounding. The scratching stopped. I held my breath. Then, from the direction of the painting, I heard a soft, wet sound, like a tongue moving across dry lips. I flicked on the bedside lamp. The painting was still turned, but the light cast long shadows across the room. I got up, my legs trembling, and approached the back of the canvas. The wood frame was dusty, and the dust was disturbed in short, parallel lines, as if something had been dragged across it. I touched the taut canvas. It was warm to the touch. I yanked my hand back.

I called Marcus, but he didn’t pick up. I tried to sleep with the light on, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw those eyes in my mind, shifting through colors. I must have dozed off, because I woke with a start in the middle of the night. The light was off. I lay in darkness, and then I heard a low, guttural whisper, right by my ear: ‘You see me.’ I screamed and scrambled out of bed, tripping over the duvet. I fumbled for the light switch, and when the room flooded with light, the painting was facing me again. The man in the portrait was leaning forward, his skeletal hand now cupping his chin, and his eyes were wide, staring directly into mine, now a bright, malevolent red. His lips were parted, showing yellow, crooked teeth, and he was smiling.

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat in a corner of the room, a chair dragged against the door, staring at the painting, which remained facing me for the rest of the night. At dawn, I fled to the main house. I told Marcus I had to leave, that there was something wrong with that painting. He looked at me strangely and said, ‘What painting? There’s no painting in the Studio.’ I ran back to the barn. The wall was blank. There was no frame, no canvas, no sign that anything had ever hung there. But as I stood there, panting, I felt a cold finger trace down my spine, and a voice, slick and intimate, whispered in my ear, ‘There’s always room for one more.’