A Little Friend

Chapter Two

One night, however, I happened to be at Harriet's place. It was very late and the room was quite dark for my liking, but she had lighted a couple of pillar candles so she can work on a new painting. She had fallen asleep before me, probably surpassed by veiled thoughts and haunting secrets, as I was watching her from a comfortable porter's chair, where I had sat to read that day's newspaper. Her sad, tired eyes were now resting, but her face had locked into a twisted grimace, which made me think that not even in the dreamworld was she abandoned by her repressed fears. Watching her body, I noticed she had drifted off in an unusual manner, as she had been painting the moment sleep took over her. The proof was in her left hand; she was still holding flimsily on her favorite brush. Instinctively, I looked for the painting, which was next to Harriet, but couldn't make anything out of it. I was too far. Her other paintings were, as always, scattered around theroom, faced down for a reason I couldn't understand. I suddenly sensed that they became entities of their own and I knew they were silently watching me. Even if they weren't, I knew that the woman inside of them surely was. I found myself, now, surrounded by someone else's shadowy ghosts of the past and was terrified to my bones. After all, I was so weak that I couldn't fight my own mind, let alone Harriet's wounded psyche. In a daring moment, I got up from the chair and moved towards Harriet. Her body resembled a corpse with the face of an angel. It seemed to me that she was barely breathing, if not at all and I thought, for one brief second, that her art was so powerful that it had sucked the soul out of her. Spellbound by her impeccable beauty, my legs refused moving forward and I was stuck in place, obligated to admire Harriet's alluring figure. In that soft light, she looked even more splendid than what I had already perceived of her. Even so, I finally snapped out of my trance and I realized what I had got up for. My eyes were mesmerized by my friend's grace, but my mind was still preoccupied by her newest painting; I was looking for answers without my notice. I got closer and closer to her; with every step I was taking, I seemed to hear the echo of my own feet. Was it really my steps? Was there someone else behind me? I felt my heart racing and I quickly turned around, so fast that even I couldn't comprehend the movements of my body. As I was spinning in half a pirouette, I thought I saw someone standing in the doorway, but as soon as my brain stopped spinning itself and my eyes ceased to play tricks on me, my mind understood that there was no one; what my soul understood is less important. Nonetheless, I was not out of any dangers. It didn't take me a second glance to observe that all the paintings Harriet had done over time were now carefully hanged on the wall in front of me, unlike how I had last seen them; unlike how Harriet had left them, spread all around the room. There was something very spooky about the view; it looked so real that it made me doubt my mind, my senses– no, it couldn't have been real. Few minutes earlier, the paintings were chaotically dumped on the floor, the desk, the bed; they were, in fact, everywhere your eyes could reach. Now, the whole wall was covered by them, from the very top to the bottom. It took me a bit to recover, as I was standing in front of it, searching for a logical explanation. Unfortunately, there was none. Or, I couldn't find any. What was even more alarming was that the paintings seemed to be arranged very meticulously, in some sort of chronological order. That cursed shadow, indispensable in Harriet's art, was not only present in each painting, but starting from the first picture – hanged high on the wall – to the last one, it seemed to get clearer and clearer. From a small, blurred figure standing in the distance, the shadow grew bigger and bigger with each painting. Slowly, it was not just a tiny dot resembling a person in the background anymore, but was coming to life as I was moving my eyes through the images. In that doomed moment, watching the paintings felt like watching the shadow walking towards me. I was shaken, as I thought that the shadow would escape its realm if I gave it the power, but my thirst for disclosing the mystery had grown so big and intense that it didn't allow me to look away. So, I kept following it until the end, where it seemed to have been patiently waiting for me. For the first time, I could see it closely. It was so close that I didn't dare make a move. I was expecting it to get out of its world without warning and drag me in with it. Instead, it just sat there. Laying on the grass, under a big tree, the shadow looked unbothered, as if time hadstopped in its kingdom and it was not in a hurry. The whole thing was very familiar to me, I just couldn't exactly name it. The scenery was lifeless, gray tones had taken over; the withered tree and the matted grass were indications of a death curse; and the shadow – that gloomy figure – was watching me again, but this time not from afar. It was, indeed, a she. I could tell by her long, black hair and the dress she was wearing. Her face was still hidden. I was wondering if she knew that she was trapped in a world of decay, if she knew that she was slowly dying, but she carelessly denied my curiosities. She seemed to have accepted her destiny. For a thorough analysis, I moved two steps ahead and crouched. All I could see before that horrifying scream was Harriet's signature in the right bottom corner of the painting. Except it was not her usual print "H" written there, but a cursive "Anne". Very short after that, I remember she cried out from the top of her lungs and I turned around. It was not the shadow, no. It was Harriet's body crucified on the opposite wall. Her arms extended and her legs bent. She was simply levitating in front of me. As she was screaming, her mouth would get wider and wider and I could feel the terror going through my veins. I screamed. I woke up. It was dark, but I was not in Harriet's room. The shadow had entered my mind permanently.