The Painter’s Last Canvas

It was a damp October evening in our draughty cottage on the edge of the Fens, a place where the mist rolled off the marshland and wrapped around the house like a shroud. I was eleven, sharing a cramped attic room with my younger brother, Pip. The room had a single dormer window that looked out over the dark, flat fields, and beneath it sat a heavy oak desk where we did our schoolwork. Our beds were pushed against opposite walls, mine closest to the window, Pip’s by the door. That night, Pip’s friend, Eli, had come to stay, and the three of us had been allowed to sleep in the same room, Pip and Eli on the floor in sleeping bags, me in my narrow bed.

We’d been giggling and telling stories until our voices grew hoarse, and the last thing I remembered was Eli’s whisper about a local legend: a painter who had lived in the cottage a hundred years ago, a solitary woman who had vanished one winter, leaving only a half-finished canvas on her easel. People said she still wandered the Fens, searching for her lost work. I’d laughed it off, but as sleep took me, I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold.

I woke in the deep blue hour before dawn, when the world is suspended between night and morning. The moon had set, and the only light came from a faint, silvery glow that seemed to seep through the window, casting long, distorted shadows across the room. I lay still, listening to the slow breathing of Pip and Eli, and then I heard it: a soft, rhythmic scratching, like a brush moving across a canvas. It came from the direction of the desk.

I turned my head slowly, my heart pounding. The desk was empty, but the air above it shimmered, as if heat were rising from it. I blinked, and there was a figure: a woman in a long, grey dress, her back to me, bent over the desk. She held a brush, and she was painting with furious, desperate strokes. I could see the canvas propped against the wall, but it was blank, and I watched as she painted nothing, only air, her brush moving in frantic, silent sweeps.

I wanted to call out, but my throat was tight. The woman paused, as if sensing my gaze. She turned her head slowly, and her face was a pale, featureless oval, like a canvas before the first stroke. There were no eyes, no mouth, only smooth, white skin. She seemed to look at me, though she had no eyes, and then she raised her brush and pointed it at me. I felt a cold pressure on my chest, as if a hand were pressing down, and the scratching sound grew louder, filling my ears.

The next thing I knew, the room was filled with grey light, and Pip was shaking me awake. ‘You were crying in your sleep,’ he said. I looked at the desk. It was covered in dust, and the wall was bare. Eli was sitting up, his face pale. ‘I saw her too,’ he whispered. ‘She was at the window.’ Neither of us slept again that night.

We told our father in the morning, but he dismissed it as a dream, a product of too much imagination. But that afternoon, as I was dusting the desk, I found a small, crumpled piece of canvas tucked behind a loose board. It was a fragment of an old painting, a woman’s face, but the features were blurred, as if they had been wiped away. On the back, in faded ink, were the words: ‘She comes to me in the night, and she steals my dreams.’

That night, I stayed awake, waiting. The scratching began again, faint at first, then louder. This time, I didn’t turn to look. I kept my eyes fixed on the ceiling, but I could feel her presence, the cold, the weight. I heard Pip’s voice, sleep-fogged: ‘She’s here.’ I finally turned my head. The figure was at the foot of my bed, closer than before. Her face was no longer blank; it was mine. She raised her brush, and slowly, deliberately, she painted a streak of black across her face. I felt a searing pain on my cheek, and I screamed.

The lights flicked on, and my father burst in. The figure was gone, but the air still smelled of oil paint and dust. I looked in the mirror: there was a fresh, red welt on my cheek, shaped like a brushstroke.

We moved out of the cottage shortly after. But sometimes, in those moments between sleep and waking, I still hear that scratching, and I see her face, not as mine, but as the blank canvas she left behind, waiting for the next dream to be stolen.