Reader’s Choice selection from DMC’s flash fiction group, Friday Frights.
by K.L. Coones:
Being a well to do gentleman, Dorian went out often, but not tonight. Instead, Dorian Grey sat in front of his mirror with a frown splayed across his face that caused his lips to thin almost to the point of disappearance. With his index finger, the young man traced a line that stretched laterally across his forehead. The crease in the once pristine skin had appeared overnight.
Perhaps I am just suffering from an acute maladjustment of a facial muscle. Dorian had drank heavily the night before, but that was nothing new and nothing like this had happened. He continued to scrutinize his face when he noticed a yellowing of the fingernail on his ring finger. Dorian reached into his inside coat pocket and produced an old iron skeleton key. Rust was beginning to show within the recesses of the intaglio of the ornate instrument. Dorian was never without it, but he rarely examined it, just as he rarely examined the painting held in the room the key opened. With measured steps Dorian ascended the stairs to the old room atop the stairwell. No one came to this level of the house other than Dorian, and when he did, he only made use of one room.
The disused door creaked opened into a darkened, dust covered room filled, for the most part, with items from Dorian’s past. An old study desk the size a child might sit in. A small wooden horse with a tattered mane. Various books and clothes lay hidden and forgotten in the corners. The most prominent feature of the room, however, was a large square covered in a white sheet. It was this odd object that Dorian approached after closing the door and locking it behind him. With a quick jerk, he slid the sheet off to reveal a painting resting on an easel. The horrific image of a man afflicted with all manner of cancerous growths and malformations of the body was painted on the canvas. Scraggly shocks of white tangled hair erupted from the bulbous growths prevalent on the images skull, and two uneven and bloodshot eyes glared with hatred and pain out from the canvas through pustulant eyelids. There was also something strange on the painting. At first it appeared someone had punched a hole in the canvas. Dorian lit a small candle and passed the flame behind the canvas. No light shown through the small patch on the painting now devoid of paint. Dorian watched in horror as the small hole began to slowly grow, covering more and more of the canvas before him. A sudden pain shot through the hand holding the candle. The candlestick dropped to the floor with a clank, dousing the light instantly, as Dorian clasped his hand in a desperate attempt to ease the pain. Gritting against the throbbing sensation, Dorian struggled to recover the painting and stagger from the room. With a shaking good hand he locked the door behind him. Once within the light of his gaslamp at the top of the stairwell, Dorian examined his hand through terror stricken eyes. The skin of his hand had dried to a leathery texture and the joints of his fingers splayed off at odd angles, riddled with arthritis. Without thought or awareness, Dorian sprinted down the stairs and into the study.
“Barnes!” he shouted in a shrill voice that echoed through the empty house. “Barnes!” Hiding his mangled hand in his coat pocket, Dorian scrawled a note and folded it without bothering to dry the ink. He shoved it roughly into an envelope as Barnes entered the room.
“What is it Master Grey?” Dorian thrusts the envelope at the man.
“Take this to Basil Hallward.” The man servant took the note, but remained to gaze at his manic master with concern. “Now man, now!” With his good hand, Dorian grabbed Barnes’ shoulder and roughly shoved him toward the front door of the house.
“Dorian!” shouted Hallward, as he entered the front door, followed closely by Barnes.
“Did you bring your tools, Basil?” a cloaked figure rasped from the shadows of the darkened anteroom.
“Dorian? Why are you wearing a cloak man?”
“Did you bring your paints, Basil! The same ones you used to paint my portrait?” croaked the voice more desperately.
“Yes, yes,” Hallward turned to Barnes. “Fetch them from the coach. Dorian, what’s going on? Are you ill man?” Dorian retreated further back into the shadows of the room.
“Basil, I need you to paint something for me, within the hour.”
“Dorian, I don’t understand…”
“Basil we don’t have time to argue about this!” Dorian cut off his friend in mid thought. “I’ll pay you whatever you want! Please!”
“It’s not a matter of money, Dorian,” sputtered Hallward as he gathered his belongings from the returning Barnes. “I…What is it you want me to paint?”
“Paint a window, Basil.” Hallward almost dropped his paint brush.
“Is this some sort of farce, Dorian?”
“Paint Basil!” For a moment it seemed as if Dorian would launch himself at his friend out of sheer desperation. Hallward must of sensed the frantic nature of his friend for he immediately set to painting the requested window. The next hour passed in silence. Finally, Basil stepped back from the canvas.
“Thank you, Basil,” croaked Dorian. “Barnes will show you out and help you with your tools.” Hallward stood bewildered.
“That’s it?” asked the artist.
“Yes, Basil.” Barnes quickly collected Hallward’s paints and ushered the speechless man from the house. Dorian waited till he heard the clop of the horse’s hooves recede before reaching out with a gnarled hand to painfully grip the painting. What if this didn’t work? It had to work! It was his only chance; he could only hope that Basil was able to, however unwittingly, repeat his bit of magic he had performed when he had painted Dorian’s portrait.
With staggered steps the beleaguered figure made its way back through the darkened house and up the stairs to the picture room. With a hand now shaking with palsy, Dorian struggled to insert the ancient key into the lock. Once inside, he re lit the candle to see that the void had grown to encompass the full upper right quarter of the portrait with its opaque recesses. Breathing heavily, Dorian placed the new painting in front of the area of void and peered into the depths of the image painted on the canvas. Behind the windows simulated glass, the vague image of a man moved back in forth. He appeared to be dressed in some sort of loose fitting strips of cloth, almost like a mummy from Egypt. With a trembling, twisted fingers ending in eroding fingernails, Dorian moved the painting aside, climbed up on the top of his small study desk, and let his body fall into the void.
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