The Painter of Vermillion

In the autumn of 1996, I was a senior at Blackwood High, living in the town of Ashburn, where the fog rolled in from the marsh and clung to the streets like a second skin. Our house, a two-story Victorian on the edge of town, had a peculiar feature: a small, perpetually locked room off the kitchen that my parents used for storage. I’d grown up with the house, but I’d never felt truly alone there until I turned seventeen.

It began with a sound: a faint, steady scratch, like a pencil dragging across paper, coming from the locked room. At first, I dismissed it as mice or the old pipes. But it grew louder, more deliberate, and soon I found myself avoiding the kitchen after dark. My sleep became restless, and I’d wake with my heart pounding, the scratch echoing in my ears like a secret I couldn’t quite grasp.

One night, I was sprawled on the living room couch, trying to study for a history exam, when the scratching turned into a rhythmic tapping. I put down my book and walked to the kitchen doorway. The hallway beyond was dark, but in my peripheral vision, I caught a flicker of movement—a figure, tall and gaunt, standing in the doorway of the locked room. It wore a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat, its face obscured by shadow. In one hand, it held a paintbrush, dripping with a sickly, crimson liquid.

I blinked, and it was gone. My breath hitched, and I felt a cold sweat break out across my forehead. I tried to convince myself it was a trick of the light, but the tapping continued, now coming from the locked door itself. I took a step forward, my heart thudding, and pressed my ear against the door. Inside, I heard a voice, low and guttural, whispering: ‘Come in, come see what I’ve painted.’ I stumbled back, and that’s when I noticed the door was slightly ajar.

I ran. I didn’t stop until I was in my room, door locked, sheets pulled over my head. But the fear didn’t fade; it nestled in my chest like a cold stone. The next day, I told my parents about the shape and the whispers, but they dismissed it as an overactive imagination. My father even opened the locked room to show it was empty—just dusty boxes and old furniture. But as he turned to leave, I saw it: a fresh, dark red handprint on the wall, near the door. He didn’t see it. I didn’t dare point it out.

The scratching continued, growing more insistent each night. I started sleeping on the couch, but the figure followed me there, always in my periphery, always holding that brush. I began to lose weight, and my grades slipped. My parents, worried, sent me to Dr. Ellison, a psychologist in the next town over. I sat in his office, which smelled of old books and lemon polish, and tried to explain what I saw. He listened patiently, asking gentle questions, but I could see the skepticism in his eyes. He prescribed sleeping pills and told me I was stressed.

But the pills only gave me nightmares. In one, I was trapped in the locked room, standing before a giant canvas. On it, a portrait of a woman, her face half-finished, her eyes blank white. The figure stood behind me, its breath cold on my neck, and it said, ‘Complete her. Then I’ll let you go.’ I woke screaming, and my ankle twisted as I stumbled off the bed. I limped for weeks.

I returned to Dr. Ellison, this time with bruises and a wild look in my eyes. I told him about the woman in the portrait, and for the first time, he frowned. He pulled out an old case file from his cabinet, its pages yellowed. ‘There was a painter who lived in your house in the 1920s,’ he said. ‘He was obsessed with a woman named Verity. He painted her portrait, but she rejected him, and he killed himself in that room. Some say his ghost still haunts the house, searching for his muse.’ He looked at me with a new intensity. ‘Perhaps you’re not imagining things, Ethan. Perhaps you’re seeing what he left behind.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my room, listening to the scratch, now clearer than ever. It was like a brush on canvas. I made a decision: I had to face it. I crept downstairs, the floorboards groaning under my weight. The kitchen was dark, but the door to the locked room was open, a dim light spilling out. I walked forward, my heart hammering, and peered inside.

The room was filled with canvases, all covered in crimson paint. In the center stood the figure, its back to me, painting furiously. On the canvas before it, the woman’s face was nearly complete—my own face, twisted in terror. I gasped, and the figure turned. Its face was a void, but I felt its gaze boring into me. It held out the brush, dripping with red. ‘Finish it,’ it said, its voice like dry leaves. ‘Then you’ll be free.’

I felt a pull, like an invisible hand guiding me. My hand reached out, trembling, to take the brush. But at the last moment, I remembered something Dr. Ellison had said: ‘Sometimes, the only way to defeat a ghost is to give it what it wants, but on your own terms.’ I looked at the portrait, at the terror in my painted eyes, and I understood. The ghost was trapped in a cycle, seeking a new victim to paint its obsession. But I could break that cycle.

I grabbed a nearby rag, soaked in turpentine, and swiped it across the canvas, smearing the paint. The figure let out a wail that rattled the windows, and it lunged at me. But I threw the rag at it, and it passed through, dissolving into a cloud of dust. The room fell silent. When I blinked, the canvases were empty, and the figure was gone. The locked door stood closed, as if it had never been opened.

I stood in the darkness, my breath ragged. The house felt still, peaceful. I walked back to my room, my ankle barely aching. The next day, I told Dr. Ellison what I’d done, and he nodded slowly. ‘You painted your own ending,’ he said. ‘That’s the bravest thing a person can do.’

I still live in that house, now grown, with a family of my own. The locked room remains locked, and I’ve never told anyone else the full story. But sometimes, at night, I hear a faint scratching from behind the door—a reminder that some ghosts never leave, they just wait for the next person who is willing to look.