CREEPY CATALOG

If You Ever See This Painting Of A Hallway, Destroy It

I got this package in the mail from my dad: brown paper wrapping, large but flat, with the word "FRAGILE" written on it in black ink. When I unwrapped it, it was this big, acrylic painting, framed in some sort of bronze-gilded plaster.

The painting itself was of this long hallway full of doors, kind of like you'd see in a fancy hotel. The walls had edging about halfway up, the upper part was painted sort of an off white while the lower half was a crimson red that blended into the carpeting. Between each door was an up-turned light, as well as on the far wall at the end, where the corridor seemed to connect to another hallway running perpendicular to it, disappearing around a corner.

It was really amazing detail, though I wouldn't call it life-like by any means. Just the sheer amount of intricate pieces to each aspect of the scene showed that the artist really paid attention to every little thing, like somewhere in the world was this hallway, and you could stand in it and hold the painting up in front of you and if it weren't for the border and the clearly stylized art, you wouldn't be able to tell where the canvas ended and the real world began.

I called him up and thanked him immediately.

"But where'd you find this?"

"I got it at an auction."

I kinda figured as much.

So I hung up the painting in my office, just behind my desk, which I realized later wasn't the best place for it because in order to actually look at it, I had to swivel completely around, but there wasn't anywhere better really, and once I'd gotten it hung up, I felt less willing to take it back down, so I just left it there. It kind of hung out over my shoulder and watched me work, and every now and then I'd turn around and stare at it and get entranced by it, feeling like I could get up and put my hands in the frame and climb into the painting as if the frame were a window.

Of course, I wouldn't be writing this if something weird didn't happen as a result of the painting.

We had a couple friends over, Marc and Sabina, and Marc and I went into my office when the women-folk started talking about knitting, which has become my wife's new favorite hobby. I went and sat down at my laptop to find a video I had been telling Marc about, and Marc wandered over and started admiring the painting.

"Where'd you get that?"

"My dad bought it at an auction and gave it to me."

"It's creepy."

"It's not that creepy. It's kind of... I don't know."

"Hypnotic?"

"Yeah."

I turned around to look at it with him while the video loaded. He got up close and was running his finger over the canvas, feeling the raised acrylic, and I just let my gaze wander over all the details again.

"Huh, I didn't notice that before."

"What?"

"At the end of the hall, there's some sort of light coming from around the corner, and it's casting a shadow on the floor."

I got up and looked closer, because I really hadn't spent a lot of time studying the far end of the hallway. There was definitely some yellow and some darker colors making what looked like the shadow of a person coming from around the corner. I even reached out and touched it to make sure it wasn't some trick of the light in the study making it just look like there was this shadow in the painting, but I felt the paint and sure enough it was actually there in the painting.

"See what I mean?" Marc said, "Creepy."

I genuinely felt weirded out by it. It was one of those moments where you start thinking, Why didn't I notice this earlier? Was it there to notice?