The Unfinished Portrait of Eleanor Voss

In the autumn of 1987, my brother Marcus moved into a cramped two-bedroom bungalow on the edge of Grey Hollow, a town so small it barely made the map. He shared the place with his childhood friend, a wiry man named Silas, whom everyone called ‘The Stomach’ because he’d eat anything—sandwiches left out for days, burnt toast, even the occasional rubber band. At the time, Marcus wasn’t with his girlfriend, Lena, who lived with her parents on the other side of town. Their son, a quiet boy named Toby, stayed with Marcus every other week.

The house itself was unremarkable: peeling wallpaper, a creaking porch, and a musty smell no amount of air freshener could mask. But there was one room that made Marcus and me uneasy—Silas’s bedroom. It was at the end of a narrow hallway, its door always shut. Whenever I walked past it, I felt a cold draft, as if the window had been left open, but the window was sealed shut with old paint. Marcus said the room ‘felt heavy,’ and even our father, a man not given to flights of fancy, refused to step inside. Silas, however, never complained. He’d shrug and say, ‘It’s just a room. I sleep fine.’

Small things started to happen. A coffee mug would appear on a different shelf. The TV remote would end up in the refrigerator. Marcus chalked it up to his own forgetfulness. But then Toby, only five years old, began to mention ‘the lady in the corner.’ He’d point to Silas’s door and say, ‘She watches me when I walk by.’ Marcus assumed it was a child’s imagination, but the unease grew.

One evening, Marcus found Toby sitting on the floor outside Silas’s room, staring at the door. ‘What are you doing?’ Marcus asked. Toby turned, his eyes wide. ‘The lady is singing,’ he whispered. ‘She’s sad because she lost her face.’ Marcus knelt down, his heart thudding. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, but Toby shook his head. ‘She’s in the mirror,’ he insisted. ‘She wants me to find her portrait.’

That night, Marcus couldn’t sleep. He crept to Silas’s door, which was slightly ajar. Through the crack, he saw Silas asleep, but on his nightstand, a small oil painting lay face-down. Marcus recognized it as an old portrait that had hung in the living room when they first moved in, but it had disappeared weeks ago. He pushed the door open, feeling a resistance as if something were leaning against it from the inside. He reached for the painting, and the moment his fingers touched the frame, a soft humming filled the room—a woman’s voice, low and mournful. He yanked the painting away and slammed the door.

In the hallway, he turned it over. The portrait showed a Victorian-era woman with blank, white eyes and a serene smile. On the back, in faded ink, was the name ‘Eleanor Voss.’ Marcus felt a chill deeper than any he’d known. He put the painting in a closet and locked it.

The next morning, Silas acted as if nothing had happened, but he had dark circles under his eyes. Marcus asked, ‘Silas, who was Eleanor Voss?’ Silas froze. ‘How do you know that name?’ ‘The painting,’ Marcus said. Silas sighed, his hands trembling. ‘That was the former owner’s grandmother. She lived here in the 1920s. They say she went mad after her husband left her, and she died in that room. The painting was rumored to… capture her soul. I found it in the attic when I moved in. I thought it was harmless.’

Hours later, Marcus found Toby sitting in front of the locked closet, humming the exact same melody he’d heard the night before. ‘Toby, where did you learn that?’ Marcus asked, panic rising. Toby looked up, his expression disturbingly calm. ‘She taught me. She says she’s happy you found her. She wants to be on the wall again.’ Marcus realized the painting had been the anchor. By moving it, he’d given it more power. He called our father, who came over with a priest. The priest said the room was ‘saturated with a grieving spirit’ and advised burning the painting.

As they built a fire in the backyard, the painting began to weep—thick, black tears dripping from the woman’s eyes. Silas, who had been watching from the porch, suddenly shrieked and clawed at his own face, screaming, ‘She wants my face!’ Marcus and the priest wrestled him to the ground while Toby calmly walked to the fire and tossed the painting in. The flames turned green, and a terrible wail tore through the air, then silence.

The painting turned to ash, but that night, Marcus found Silas standing in front of a full-length mirror in the hallway, his face pressed against the glass. He was whispering, ‘It’s my turn now, Eleanor.’ Marcus grabbed him, but Silas’s reflection lingered, a split-second longer than it should have, and in the mirror, a woman’s face—no eyes, no mouth—stared back.

They moved out the next week. Marcus, Lena, and Toby settled into a new apartment across town. Silas went to a mental hospital. But sometimes, when Toby glances at a reflective surface—a window, a spoon, a puddle—he doesn’t see his own face. He sees the faint outline of a woman, smiling, her eyes closed, watching him from the other side.

Toby never speaks of it, but he never looks into mirrors anymore. And in the new apartment, on the wall above the couch, hangs a blank frame—a space Marcus keeps empty, as if waiting for a portrait to fill it.