Features

The walls of the manor twisted up from the snow like the crackling black boughs of a burning tree.

I was glad to see them. I’m not sure how much longer I would’ve lasted on these roads. I felt sick enough even without the conditions ahead of me. The snow was thick on the highway and the storm showed no sign of stopping. I was still hours away from home.

The wheels of my car crunched the salt on their driveway and I wondered how I ever could have missed the manor. I’d driven this way hundreds of times, and I would have remembered those ash black walls. But I was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The manor loomed over me, it was the only way to go. I ran from my car to the door, and knocked three times.

The door creaked open and I rushed in, desperate for warmth.

“Thank you so much,” I chattered. “I would’ve frozen out there…” I trailed off when I realized that I was alone in the foyer.

“Hello?”

My voice rebounded off the walls like a rubber ball on concrete.

The inside of the manor wasn’t much different than its exterior. Rich, dark, mahogany walls stretched up to a yawning ceiling, interrupted briefly by a mezzanine that held shelves and shelves of dusty leather-bound books. The furniture was scarce, but what existed there was a varnished black. The entrance was dimly lit. The scarce light cast from flickering lamps that protruded from the walls was swallowed by the darkness of the manor. There was barely any decoration, any sign that this place had been lived in at all. Except for the painting.

It was a masterwork. It was ginormous. It was the first thing you faced as you entered the building. Its bottom scraped the shiny floors and its top stretched high to the roof. It must’ve taken years of work to complete.

I struggled to think of a reason why anyone would want to complete a painting like this, though, let alone begin one. It was horrible.

An inky black steed charged towards me, ridden by a thin, red-faced jockey. The jockey was leaning forward on the horse, a knife in his hand. He was slitting its throat. There was a familiar glint in the eyes of the jockey, and he had a smile that stretched across his face from ear to ear. It seemed to me that there were too many teeth in his mouth, and that they were far too white. 

Thick, black brambles surrounded the two, tangling the horse's hoofs and framing the painting. The horse looked terrified, its big wet eyes followed you around the room, silently begging for help.

It was so lifelike. Every inch screamed realism. The horse looked like so many I'd seen before.

I was transfixed. I hadn't noticed, but I'd been crying while staring at it.

A teardrop slipped from my face. The manor was so quiet that I heard it splash to the ground. 

The noise broke me from my trance, and I hurriedly wiped my eyes and stepped towards the nearest corridor. Anywhere was better than the foyer, anything was better than looking at that painting.

As I let my feet carry me aimlessly through the house, my mind wandered. I thought of Otis, of his warm embrace, how his smell lingered on me for a while after he sent me on my way.

Only an idiot would drive home in this storm, and you’re not an idiot. Nobody will suspect a thing, he had whispered, before ushering me to my car. I’ll clean up here, my love. I’ll take care of everything.

I pulled the front of my turtleneck up to my nose to see if his scent was still there, but there was nothing but a faint smoky aroma.

I crinkled my nose and kept on. There were some photographs on the wall of stern-faced but ultimately forgettable-looking people from at least half a century ago. I let their expressions fall from my brain the moment they left my line of sight.

I walked up a set of stairs, turned a corner and saw the first beast. A giant taxidermied boar, its tusks glistening as if it was still alive to produce spittle.

I screamed, startled, and stumbled backwards a little. My heart started to slow when I realized the animal wasn’t moving. I laughed a little, if only to be comforted by the sound of my own voice, and smoothed my thick hair against my skull. Her voice came to me then, a memory from a lifetime ago.

Disgusting… she whispered. I shuddered.

Suddenly uncomfortable, I abandoned my inspection of the boar and finished my journey through its stretch of hallway, only to be greeted by a stuffed black bear, stretching up on its legs, mid roar.

It was like that for a while. The halls of the manor twisted like the boughs of a centuries old tree, and I had no choice but to meander through them. Every time I turned a corner there was another stuffed creature, posed in a perfect recreation of its most bloodthirsty moments in life. I never got used to it, and screamed more often than not. Eventually I came to the conclusion that there couldn’t be anybody else in the house, for surely someone would’ve investigated the terrified howls coming from their depraved gallery of dead animals.

The moment I saw a room, I turned into it. Breathing a deep sigh of relief that quickly reversed into a gasp when I saw it. The pride of their collection.

It was the horse.

A taxidermied behemoth on a red plinth. It reared up, just like in the painting. Patches of hair were absent from where the brambles had scraped at its legs. Its neck had been sewn shut with amateurish sutures, thick plastic thread protruded from the wound.

Its eyes …

I gagged, I moaned, I slid to the floor, cupping my head with my hands and pressing my nails hard into my scalp, trying to draw myself back to reality.

Those eyes, those eyes, those eyes. Big, brown, human. I was looking at the floor, tears blurring my vision, but I could still see them. I couldn’t not see them.

Thunder rumbled in my head like the beating of hooves.

I scrambled backwards, looking nowhere but the floorboards in front of me, until I backed into someone’s leg.

I had backed into someone’s leg!

I stood, sucking in the clean, cold air, and tried to seem presentable.

“Oh--I’m s-sorry,” I gasped. “I thought nobody lived in here, I really need your help--” 

It was then that I finally dragged my gaze up from the floor and to the stretched face of the other person. I choked on the back half of my sentence.

It was the jockey.

He’d been stuffed.

Arms folded across his chest, standing dead straight. Sick smile still plastered on his porous, blushing face. He looked satisfied. As if he was glad to see me here.

As if this is what I deserved.

I ran back through the corridor as fast as I could. That sick smile haunting my every step.

I had to get out of there.

With every pounding step I took, a voice grew louder in my head.

Stupid, stupid, STUPID!!!

I had gotten myself lost, stumbling from room to room, knocking into stuffed rams and toppling preserved coyotes. I was exhausted, but struggled to draw breath, feeling the icy grip of panic tight around my windpipe.

I finally emerged onto the mezzanine of the room I had entered into and collapsed against the cold iron rails that kept me from toppling over the edge. After drawing in a few deep, unsatisfying breaths, I looked up, surveying for a staircase or ladder that could take me to the front door, and then back out to my car.

I turned my head and saw the painting.

It had … no.

It changed.

The jockey was gone, but the horse was still there, it was drowning. It was sinking into a murky green lake. It no longer looked panicked: it looked betrayed. Like someone had led it there. That's when I saw her, hidden in the background. The artist had painted her in the same sodden greys of the grass and the clouds. I almost wouldn’t have noticed her, maybe if the painting had been smaller I wouldn’t have. She caught my eye regardless.

A wealthy young woman, near invisible. Smirking, peeking out coquettishly from behind a tree. 

A mop of charcoal-coloured curls tumbled down to her shoulders. She was holding a riding crop. 

She'd driven the horse into the water.

And she looked just like me.

I had to get out of there.

I spotted a set of stairs that took me back to the ground level. I ran for it, skipping steps and nearly spilling down the stairs as I rushed towards the front door.

Fuck this place. Fuck this storm. I’d happily take my chances on the road.

I leapt the last few steps and spun towards the door. I rushed forward and pulled at the handle. The door swung open to an unimaginable cold. I almost couldn't bear it, but it was better than spending another second in that creepy, black house.

I rushed to my car, opened the door of the manor and stepped inside.

I … what?

The painting had changed again. The Jockey and the young woman embraced in front of a

fireplace. He was gripping her wrists tightly, forcing his mouth on hers. Her eyes were wide open, but strangely empty. Above them, mounted on the fireplace, was the horse’s head. It looked the calmest I’d ever seen it. It stared peacefully into the young woman’s eyes, as if it knew this was the only way for the story to end.

Thrown back in time, I remembered how she had whispered to me. Her voice was stony and broken instead of its usual velvet concern.

I told you so.

I ran to the door again. Running outside, somehow finding myself back inside. Outside, inside, outside, inside.

The painting changes from the woman, reins tight on the horses neck, to the Jockey pushing red hot steel into the horses hide, to the Jockey tearing those ashen curls from the woman’s head, to the horse rearing, trying to keep the Jockey away from her.

Inside, outside.

Frost, pitch.

I must’ve seen a thousand paintings, each more gruesome than the last.

Outside, inside, the jockey, the woman, the house, the horse, inside, outside.

There was no way to escape the manor.

I had to stop. I was exhausted.

I looked to the painting. It was different this time. It was Otis.

I almost wept with relief at seeing something beautiful. He was leaning against the hood of my car, smiling widely with his hands in his pockets. It looked almost exactly like the last time I’d seen him. Except … I hadn’t noticed before, something was peeking out of his pockets. It looked like wires. The hood of the car was lifted slightly, like it had been hurriedly shut. And then there was his mouth … there was something wrong with his smile, it was too crowded.

I took my hands off of my knees and started to walk backwards, out to my car. When I came back in, the painting had shifted again. It was us, from a few months ago. We were at the beach, the chill hadn’t hit the autumn air yet, I remember. Not that it would’ve mattered if it had, we had nowhere else to go. His head was in my lap. I had been trying to braid his hair. This was the day he convinced me to go through with it.

I stepped out, and back in again.

This one was even further back, depicting the day I told her I was in love with him. My mother’s big brown eyes were wide and horrified. In the painting, she held me tightly, one arm around the back of my neck, crushing my ashen black curls against my spine. I still remember her voice, soft and soothing.

“He’s manipulating you, Ebony…”

“The inheritance. You’re in his way…”

“He’s so much older than you…”

“It’s disgusting.”

“Please, baby. I can fix this for you…”

“I understand, sweetheart. I love you…”

Of everything she had said that day, that had been the biggest lie, as she’d shown me when she kicked me out and cut me off. She told me it was tough love, that I could come back when I’d left Otis behind, but how could I ever? I loved him more than life itself.

I didn’t even feel my feet dragging me out into the cold, only for me to reappear in the foyer to a brand new painting. It was …

I let out a devastated whine. It hadn’t felt so real until now.

I stared through tears at the painting of my mother, dying on the floor, choking on her own blood. The woman was by her side, reaching for her. The top half of her face was obscured but her mouth was pulled into a shattered grimace. Otis stood above the women, pulling the younger one roughly to her feet, his red face split with a wide, white grin. 

I stepped out, and out, and out again. So fast that the paintings started to blend together like a flipbook. I watched Otis pull me to my feet and force his mouth onto mine. I still felt his hands pressing bruises into my wrists, my mother’s blood still on my hands. My eyes were wide and full of tears. I could almost hear her saying it again, in that bleeding, broken voice.

I couldn’t take it. When I opened the door again I stared unblinking at my car. Maybe if I didn’t blink, if I didn’t let myself lose focus, I could make it inside. Maybe I could make it home.

I inched forward, my footsteps silent on the crisp snow, and that’s when I noticed the smoke.

It danced up into the air from under the car’s hood. The car’s crumpled, battered hood. Oh, God.

I inched even closer, my eyes starting to burn.

The car was totaled. I don’t know how I didn’t notice. Maybe because the vehicle was covered in snow. 

But everything had been fine when I parked, I thought uselessly to myself, knowing the truth but not yet willing to admit it.

My teeth started to chatter as I stalked to the window, clearing snow off of it with my hand, horrified but not surprised to see what was underneath.

My face, covered in blood, eyes glassy, probably dead.

I heaved and shut my eyes instinctively, opening them to find my nose inches from the painting, depicting exactly what I had just seen. My car, a wreck, my life lost. Behind me was where the manor should’ve been, but all I saw was a vast white expanse.

I sighed.

It’s been weeks. I haven’t been out again. What’s the point? At least when I look at the painting I can pretend this place doesn’t exist. I can pretend my life ended when the steering wheel crushed my sternum, or when I drowned in the smoke, instead of whatever it’s become now.

No matter how hard I pretend, this is my new reality. Cold, quiet and completely alone.

But it’s not like I don’t deserve it.

Lindsay Campbell is a Sophomore majoring in Animation at the School of Visual Arts. Lindsay has a silly accent and a passion for ocean life. She insists that horror is her favorite genre, but her shelf is curiously full of romantic fiction.