The Art of Nightmares - Chapter Two

 

TWO

 

The boy at the door looked even younger than Beth had expected him to be from his e-mail. He was quite wordy for his age. He couldn’t be much older than seventeen. He was dressed in faded jeans, Converse shoes, a Ramones T-shirt and a wrinkled, greasy flannel shirt. His hair was longish and uncombed. He looked familiar though. As she recognized him, she let out a little scream. Although in her painting a lot of his features were darkened it was in fact the very same person she’d just painted.

“What’s wrong?” the boy asked, worry clearly visible in his face.

She stepped back. “No, no… It can’t be…”

“Please… What is wrong? Why did I startle you?”

She pointed at the boy.  “You… you… You cannot be… You can’t…”

“I am so very sorry I startled you. I meant you no harm… I e-mailed you, asking to speak to you, remember? The boy without fear?”

She nodded. “Yes, yes.” The boy was so full of wide-eyed innocence and worried about her, Beth calmed down a bit again.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, no. That’s all right. It’s just… You look very familiar.”

“Oh?”

“Just come in.”

The boy followed Beth inside. They walked into her living room. Beth asked him if he wanted to have some tea. The boy said he would like that. She walked to the kitchen after the boy sat down on her couch. She went into the kitchen, leaning down on the kitchen counter for a moment, trying to process what she’d just witnessed. How could she paint someone she had never seen before? And why was the boy from the painting there just after she’d painted him. Thinking about it made her dizzy. She figured the best way to find out what was going on though, was to speak to him. So she just put the kettle on.

When she returned with the tea the boy was studying her paintings on the wall. He was especially intrigued by the depiction of a rotting carcass hanging from a cross. It was being tortured by a succubus-like woman with a whip. The succubus had a shapely female body and antler-like horns. She was naked, but covered in blood.

“Not one of my best works,” Beth noted.

The boy turned around. “It looks very real.”

Beth shrugged. “That’s what I’ve heard people say, yes. Have a seat, drink some tea and tell me what you need to know.”

The boy sat down on the couch again. He sipped some tea and said, “Like I e-mailed you I want to know a bit more of how you know what to paint. Where do these scary images come from? How do you know so well what scares them? What does…” The last part she couldn’t quite follow.

Beth held up her hands. “Slow down so I can read your lips better.”

“I’m sorry,” the boy said, blushing. He repeated the questions, slower. He seemed like a very polite and nice young man. The last part of the question was, “what does painting these pictures do to you?”

“It’s difficult to say. The images… They just pop into my head. I don’t know where they come from. I just know that I’m compelled to paint them. Sometimes when I look at them I feel uncomfortable. I don’t really like horrific things. But I just have to put them on the canvas to get them out of my head. I have displayed some of them so I can hopefully understand better where they come from.”

“That’s intriguing. So they are a mystery to you?”

“You could say that, yes.”

“Were you always so good at painting?”

Beth shook her head. “Didn’t pick up a paintbrush until I painted my first horrific picture ten years ago, just after I lost my hearing.”

“How did you lose that?”

“That’s a peculiar story,” Beth said. “But I will tell you.”

The Art of Nightmares - Chapter One

 ONE

 

The boy was drinking a Cherry Coke in one of those classic diners that you read about in Archie comic books and Lee Child novels but rarely saw in real life anymore. He’d just finished eating some fries and some salad. The place unfortunately had no veggie burgers on the menu. He’d had quite a trip the last few weeks from the farm where he worked as a farmhand. He wasn’t at first sure where to go next until he found the discarded magazine at a truck stop. He was looking at the magazine while drinking his Coke.

The headline of the article he was looking at read “Art of Nightmares”. The article was about an artist called Beth Simmons. She painted these incredible pictures of nightmarish creatures with so much detail they had made her work very popular. People called her work disturbing, frightful and nightmarish. The boy tried to see what those people saw in the paintings. He understood the praise for the matter of detail in them. The claws of the demons depicted seemed to gleam, the blood of mauled victims practically seeped off the paintings, their eyes staring right into the viewer’s. He didn’t think they were frightful however. Nothing was ever frightful to the boy. That’s why he left his home a year or so ago. He’d never felt anything resembling fear and really felt that was an experience he had to have. So he’d packed a backpack and travelled around the country, looking for things to scare him. Bungee jumping, breaking and entering, driving fast cars, jumping off cliffs, even encountering extradimensional creatures and Native American monsters had failed to scare him.

There was a picture of Beth in the article. She was in her thirties, short reddish hair, freckles and big glasses. She looked somewhat plain and mousy. Not the person to paint these pictures of monsters, demons and carnage. That was fascinating to him. Where did these pictures come from then? How did she know so well what would frighten people? In the article she’d told the interviewer she wasn’t sure where they came from. Still, the boy thought she might be able to help him understand how to fear things. According to the article she’d lost her hearing years ago but could read lips. Hopefully she would have no trouble understanding his questions.

It was only an hour’s walk over to Beth’s place from the diner. That was nothing to the boy, he’d gotten used to walking almost entire day’s when he couldn’t get a lift or spare a bus ticket.

“Hey, that’s Beth,” a female voice said. The boy looked up from the magazine. The waitress, a middle-aged woman with kind eyes and a wild perm was standing next to her table.

“Yeah, you know her?”

“Of course. Everybody in Cheshire Lake knows her. She’s quite the celebrity. Doesn’t go out much though. She used to come here more often, but ever since she lost her hearing she seems to avoid people.”

“Do you know how she lost her hearing? I wasn’t able to find that anywhere.”

The waitress gave him a suspicious glare. “Why are you so interested in Beth?”

“I’m interested in the concept of fear. She seems to know all about it.”

The waitress shrugged. “Don’t know about that. She paints some horrible things, that’s for sure though. Odd, she had such an average childhood and was working as a clerk at the post office. Suddenly she is able to paint these amazing pictures and loses her hearing. She’s been quite a mystery to us ever since, to be honest.”

“I mean her no harm. I just want to talk to her,” the boy told the waitress.

“Then you should ask her how she lost her hearing. Nobody seems to have any clue about that.”

The boy smiled. “Maybe I should. Thanks for the food, it was excellent. I’m really sorry I don’t have enough money to tip you.”

The waitress had a look at the boy’s wrinkled shirt. “You don’t look like you do.”

“I’ve on the road for a long time,” he said.

“You seem like a nice kid. You remind me of my boy before he went to college. If you want, I can get you some of his old clothes. They might fit you.”

“That would be great,” the boy said.

“Be here at ten, we close then. We’ll go over to my place and pick up the clothes.”

“Awesome. I should be back from visiting Beth by then,” the boy said. In his travels he’d encountered many kind people. Looked like Cheshire Lake had them as well. He was wondering if Beth Simmons would be as kind.

 

The Art of Nightmares - Prologue

 

PROLOGUE

 

Beth had no idea where the images she painted came from. All she knew was that she had to put them on a canvas. There was this uncanny need to exorcize them from her mind by painting them. Her studio was filled with paintings. What was depicted on them was the stuff of nightmares. Screaming demons, naked men and women with their eyes and tongues ripped out. Butchered animals. Monsters dwelling underneath the earth. She had amassed quite a fan following among the lovers of this kind of dark art. She couldn’t really like her work herself. She hated the darkness, the goriness of the images. She was actually a pretty upbeat person herself. She liked the sunny kind of country music, not the dark country kind. She dressed in pink, not black. Most of her fans expected her to be this goth looking young woman, not the blue-eyed freckled brunette she was.

The piece she was currently working on was another bizarre one. It depicted a young man, well more of a boy really. The boy was standing in the dark. A small gaslight illuminated him. Above the boy, barely visible was some kind of demonic looking creature with glowing red eyes. The boy seemed unaware of the danger above him. She couldn’t understand how she was able to perfectly illustrate the boy’s face. Like she’d seen him before. She pretty sure she hadn’t though. The last few months she actually didn’t leave the house that much anymore. She just had to paint, paint and paint. She couldn’t stop. Like an addiction.

She screamed. She couldn’t say how loud as she had lost her hearing already ten years ago. But she did, startled by the image that was suddenly standing behind the painting. It was vaguely humanoid. A sinewy, tall man with grey, stringy hair, hollow eyes. The man smiled. His teeth were yellowing, grimy. It was the kind of man she would paint, but it was right there in the room with her.

She stood from her chair, stepping back from the easel she was working on. The man stepped forward, right through the canvas if it wasn’t there. It reached out a hand. The fingernails were dirty and chewed off. The man spoke, but Beth was unable to read his lips. The man’s jaw dropped open, started to stretch. He vomited a bunch of writhing maggots.

Beth was standing against the wall, screaming again. The maggots made their way across the floor. She tried to crush them with her foot, but stepped right through them. Then the man was gone. The maggots were gone. It was as if nothing had happened.

She looked at her watch. Just when she was expecting company. She would have to gather her wits quickly. She wouldn’t want her visitor to think she was going crazy.