Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV

For those of you who missed the first post, my night shifts as an art gallery’s security guard are more horrifying than anything a person should endure. My job isn’t to protect the paintings — it’s to protect humanity from the paintings.

Each canvas is a paranormal cell. The artist, Harper Andrews, even contained a terrifying interpretation of her younger self in a portrait as a safeguard. That faceless child isn’t even the worst thing in there. There are paintings of mankind’s doom. Hellfire. Armageddon.

And then there’s the painting of The Exacter. An inhuman man, tall as a tree, with woefully-white eyes and a limp jaw. He and his malformed minions are imprisoned in the gallery’s exhibits, and they seek freedom. They long to eternally torture mankind in unimaginable ways. They plot a fate worse than death.

I’ve spoken about my first shift, but I’m sure you didn’t think I’d gone two years without another incident.

One particular evening, about four months ago, a text conversation with my wife took a horrifying turn:

>Cara: You can quit the day job, surely? You’re making plenty of money from the gallery.

>Me: You just want to spend more time with me. You looooove me.

>Cara: Well, it is a little suspicious that you spend so much time away from home. Have you got another woman on the side? Eh? Amy’s hot in a squint-your-eyes kind of way.

>Me: There’s a higher chance of me hooking up with one of Harper’s demons.

>Cara: Oooo! That reminds me. I just bought one of the paintings! Couldn’t resist.

Fuck. I should’ve told my wife about my work. I should’ve told her about the terrible nature of the things I guard. She never would’ve bought the artwork if she’d known it were more than paint on a canvas. After reading her message, I hurriedly rang her.

“Please tell me you were joking,” I said, shaking.

“Are you okay, Frank? You sound weird,” Cara replied.

“Why did you have to buy one of the paintings?” I asked.

“What…? You know I like macabre things,” She chortled. “Don’t be a baby. You stare at those paintings all night. What’s so wrong with having one of them in our living room?”

“I don’t even… I don’t understand why Amy would sell her sister’s work,” I said.

“I pulled her aside for a chat after you showed me around the gallery. Honestly, I can’t believe it took you over a year to give me a tour! Such beautiful paintings — disturbing, but beautiful. Harper Andrews is incredibly talented. What happened to her is sad,” Cara sighed.

“You just… made an offer that Amy accepted?” I asked.

“She claimed to have little attachment to it. She said it isn’t one of the paintings that demands eyes upon it… Seemed a rude comment because I think it’s as great as the rest of her sister’s art, but-” Cara began.

“- I have to go,” I interrupted, hanging up the phone.

It was an hour or so before my night shift, but I arrived early. Amy Andrews was engrossed in conversation with the last few gallery visitors of the day, but I quickly dragged her away from the crowd. Fury frothed to the surface of my lips.

“Why did you sell one of the paintings to Cara?” I asked.

Miss Andrews answered in an eerily flat tone. “I come from a wealthy family, Mr Hull, but I’m not thatwealthy. I have limited income streams, and I have to keep the gallery’s lights on. Sure, I make money from memberships and fundraising events, but I try to sell paintings too.”

“But Harper… You know they need to be watched at all times…” I protested.

“Not all of them,” She said.

And that was when I realised which painting was missing from the gallery. There was an empty spot on the wall above the plaque that read Harper’s Youth Dies.

“What have you done?” I gasped.

“My sister’s demented self-portrait might be horrifying, Mr Hull, but it doesn’t intend to harm us. It’s not one that needs to be watched. And your wife paid handsomely for it,” Miss Andrews explained, shrugging.

I gripped my employer’s arm in a moment of madness that could have cost my job and, for all I knew, the future of mankind.

“On that first night, Young Harper was the entity that kept watch over me,” I hissed furiously. “Your sister painted herself for a reason. Everything in this gallery has a purpose. Don’t you understand that?”

For a flicker of a moment, I was certain that something flashed in Amy Andrews’ eyes. Something black. And the corner of her lips twitched, as if to reveal that she were well aware of what she had done. But her mouth quickly returned to its normal position.

“I pay you to watch over the exhibits,” She said. “You shouldn’t need anyone or anything to watch over you.”

“Fuck this,” I spat. “I’m going home, and I’m bringing that painting back with me.”

Miss Andrews huffed, glancing at her watch. “Fifty-five minutes until your shift begins. I’d hurry.”

I drove home, mind racing with the horror of Miss Andrews’ crooked grin. Did she intentionally sell the painting to sabotage the gallery? I wondered. Don’t be foolish. If she were that evil, she could have just left the paintings unwatched, freeing the Exacter into the world.

I tried to still my throbbing heartbeat as I pulled onto our street. After hurriedly parking, I didn’t even close the car door behind me — I raced into our darkened home and started screaming at the top of my lungs.

“Cara! Where are you?”

“In the living room!” She shouted. “Why are we yelling?”

I rushed into the room, and my chest loosened a little. There was no sign of destruction. Just my wife sitting on the sofa in a well-lit room. Harper’s Youth Dies hung on the wall, but the girl’s ghastly form remained in its canvas.

“Thank fuck,” I exhaled.

“What is your deal with this creepy little girl?” Cara asked, laughing.

“I just… I have to take it back, Cara. I’ll make sure Miss Andrews gives us a refund.”

My wife rose to her feet and walked over to the painting, stroking Harper’s featureless face. I shuddered in terror, waiting for the ghoul to leap free from its frame. I assumed that she wouldn’t hurt us, but I wasn’t certain of anything.

“Come and give her a stroke,” My wife teased. “She doesn’t bite.”

I looked at my phone. I had half an hour until the start of my shift. Miss Andrews hadn’t made it clear what would happen if I weren’t on time. I feared she might do something worse than fire me — she might leave the paintings unattended.

“I’ll get you a better painting,” I said. “Something creepy from another gallery. Just anything other than a Harper Andrews piece. Please.”

“Would it make you happier if I were to draw a smiley face on her?” Cara asked.

My wife dipped her finger into her glass of water, and I cried in agony as she drew a crude pair of dots and a pencil-thin smile on Harper’s featureless face. Cara frowned at my gawping mouth when she finished.

“Relax. We own it,” She said. “Besides, it’ll dry. Don’t worry.”

I walked over to her and seized her hands tightly, taking a deep breath.

“Cara,” I said gently. “I’m begging you.”

She frowned. “Shit… I know that look, Frank. You’re genuinely scared. Why? Just tell me, and I’ll let you take the painting back.”

“You saw a ghost when you were young, didn’t you?” I asked.

Cara nodded. “My… My dad. Shortly after the car crash. Hard to believe, but I did. Well, I know youbelieve. You said you once saw your grandma’s ghost, didn’t you?”

I gripped her hands tightly and nodded. “Right. So, we believe in spirituality. Well, this painting… All of Harper’s paintings… are gateways to… to something unearthly. And that’s why I guard them. I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you.”

My wife hung her head and shook it. “You talk in your sleep, you know? You’ve been having nightmares for months… Talking about an entity and the end of the world. I knew there was something wrong with you. I-”

The lights suddenly cut out, and a wisp of wind, like a hissing voice, filled the room. Cara shrieked and leapt into my arms. I shuddered, keeping her close to my chest so she couldn’t see what I saw.

Harper’s Youth Dies.

The watery marks on Harper’s featureless face glowed faintly in the darkness — a dim, white light. And the most terrifying part was that the droplets which formed the smile had inexplicably transformed into a sulk.

“May I take it?” I asked Cara in a whisper.

She nodded, face burrowed deeply into my chest, so I guided her to the bedroom and instructed her to shut the door. I checked my phone. Twenty minutes until my shift. I seized the painting from the wall, sprinted out of the house, and lunged into my car.

When I arrived at the art gallery, the lights were off, and Amy’s car was nowhere in sight. Fortunately, I was on time for my shift, but I had no way of knowing how long she left the place unattended.

I hurried inside and immediately hung Harper’s Youth Dies above its plaque. The gallery was full again. I looked at the painting of The Exacter. I was relieved to see the monstrosity was still encaged.

But something still felt wrong. There was a churning chasm in my gut.

“You’re not in the art gallery,” Harper’s entity whispered in a distorted voice.

I finally saw what she meant. The colours of my surroundings started to swirl. The gallery walls, the floor, the paintings, and even my hands looked murky. The world was composed of paint. I was composed of paint.

And when I looked into the street, I saw the towering edges of a painting’s frame. I was trapped in Prison — Harper’s depiction of the art gallery, which you may remember from my first post. And I knew I was trapped in the painting because I could see the real world beyond the canvas.

My memories flooded back.

When I’d entered the real art gallery, the Exacter tricked me. He stood in his painting, and everything seemed fine. I looked into those horrible white eyes, and that’s when its mouth tore open to swallow me. I screeched into the hellish nothingness. Never had I felt such nightmarish horror before — not even on my first night in the gallery.

I felt dead. Worse than dead. I thought I’d entered Hell itself. I thought I’d failed at my job and the rapture had commenced. I thought of so many sickening possibilities as the Exacter’s blackened void engulfed me. Squirming inside his darkened body, I was carried by the inhuman man across the gallery floor, and he aggressively spat me into the canvas of Prison.

I’d forgotten that. He made me forget that I’d left the real world.

“It’s looking for an exit,” Harper’s voice croaked.

“Me too,” I cried.

I looked at Harper’s painting, and she wasn’t there. In her place, there was a doorway with a flickering green exit sign above it. I felt the brushstrokes of that painted world stretch and strain. The canvas was crushing me — I didn’t belong there. My painted form tightened, and I rushed to the doorway that Harper had created, terrified of what might happen if I were to stay in that false world for a moment longer.

As my hand met the painted canvas within the painted canvas, my body liquified and merged with the exit on the canvas. A blackness, still and serene, enveloped me. And then I found myself lying on a tiled floor. A real tiled floor. Choking.

Back in reality, I gazed across the gallery, and my eyes met a terrible sight. The contents of every painting had spilled onto the floor. The Exacter stood proudly amidst his minions, plotting in a sharp whisper. I’d expected a cacophonous roar of noise from the apocalyptic demons, but something about the near-silence of their scheming was even more frightening.

Still, in the distance, I could hear human screams again — the apocalyptic sound of mankind being tortured in an endless oblivion. The agonising cries were almost tuneful, in a terribly dissonant way. Choral screaming. Humanity’s horrifying final song.

Suddenly, in unearthly unison, the Exacter’s minions — smaller versions of him, but no less terrifying — snapped their heads backwards to face me, as if the brittle bones in their necks had jellied. I screamed at their upside-down faces, which hung over their unclothed backs. They were white-eyed and slack-jawed, eyeing me from the middle of the room. They wheezed as their skin sizzled beneath the weight of my eyes upon them.

“Back to your paintings!” I feebly shrieked.

There was nothing commanding about my tone — pure terror drove me. And the Exacter could see that. His eyes pierced mine, as they had on that first night. In them, I saw nothing. The absence of anything. And by that, I mean the end of everything. The end of man. The end of ends.

He tried to fill me with dread beyond imagination, and he succeeded, but it was the same fateful error that he made on that first night. I thought of Cara. My parents. My friends. Everyone I love. That was what motivated me whilst my eyes watered under the strain of looking at those horrid things. Ghoulish voices chittered that I must either close my eyelids or die.

I didn’t fall for the entity’s egregious schemes. I clenched my fists, armed only with my eyes and sheer willpower. The minions retreated first — flesh burning, they scurried backwards, dragging their upside-down heads and misshapen limbs with them. Back into the flames of their painted paradise. And it’ll always be a dream, I told myself.

But the Exacter remained, mouth gaping so wide that it dropped past his shoulders. His flesh scorched. Wisps of smoke billowed from his shirtless torso and raggedy trousers. In one final fit of rage, he took powerful strides towards me and outstretched one of his slender arms.

I caught his wrist before those gnarled, ghastly fingers could wrap around my neck, and the pain was unexplainable. It was a deep burning of the mind, not the body — the Exacter’s last-ditch attempt to incapacitate the guard who was standing between it and the apocalypse.

I saw Cara. She was sitting in our living room, smiling at something on the wall. I could only watch in unbridled horror as her flesh melted before my very eyes. Horrifyingly, she continued to smile, even when she’d been reduced to smouldering, bloody meat on the sofa.

The Exacter showed me what she saw.

On the wall, there hung a painting of our house burning to the ground in the midst of mankind’s total annihilation. On the streets, the Exacter’s minions inflicted unspeakable horrors upon humanity. A demon gutted a woman with the protruding bone from her own severed limb. That’s the only scene I can put into writing — the rest are too dreadful.

Wait… It’s not real. It’s another trick. Cara wouldn’t smile at such horror.

My eyes ached under the immense strain of watching that unholy apparition, but the Exacter caved first. Unable to bear my eyes upon it, it wriggled free from my grip, taking what appeared to be excruciating steps back to its canvas. And when it returned to its frame, the choral screaming ceased. The gallery was still and silent.

I spent the rest of my shift standing in that exact spot, eyeballing the paintings before me. I didn’t speak, and I didn’t move.

Before I left the building, at the end of my shift, I quickly glanced back at Prison — the painting that trapped me. Existential dread gripped my heart, and, four months later, it still hasn’t released me. I can’t stop thinking about how it felt to be within that canvas.

How will I ever know that I’m in the real world? What if the apocalypse has already happened? I might be living in a painting right now.

Well, there you go. Another direful tale from the art gallery. Another near-miss. Just part and parcel of the job, eh?

Since my first shift, nothing has been the same. Every passing day feels worse than the last. The impending apocalypse casts a long shadow over my life. I explained everything to Cara, and she knows why I can’t quit.

And now you know that I worry about something other than the Exacter.

Amy Andrews.

Something’s wrong with her. Perhaps I should speak to the one person who could actually give me some answers.

I think I need to visit the local psychiatric ward.

Update - Part III

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