Suspense Stories

Portraits (A Wattpad Story)

*another online story I put my own spin on :)*

Thunder crashed. Lightning flashed. The rain came down in torrents.
I'm going to kill my brother, I thought, thinking back to when my younger sibling had told me, extremely confidently, that this weekend was the perfect weather to go camping. So here I was, trekking through some off-the-grid forest to a campsite still about ten miles away.
Where am I? I can't see two feet in front of me, and I lost the path about a mile back. This is just like the movies! I'll end up taking shelter in some random log cabin that looks nice, but actually is the home of a deranged psychopath that microwaves hamsters for lunch. It always begins with the unwitting protagonist spying firelight in the distance.
Through the haze of rain came a small flicker of light. My stomach dropped.
And then a million dollars drops out of a tree in front of them.
To my dismay, nothing happened.
Dang it.
Terrified but curious, I awkwardly made my way towards the light, tripping over tree stumps and periodically being deafened by thunder. I reached the source of light in about ten minutes, and saw that the source of light was in fact a small, log cabin about the size of my kitchen. Blinking through the relentless rainwater, I swiftly decided that eating hamsters would be a small price to pay for shelter, and went up and knocked on the door. Nothing happened.
Screw it.
I turned the handle, which was unlocked, and tramped inside.
Well, this is not like the movies at all!
Before me was a small room, with a bed in one corner,and a stove in another. By one wall stood a TV, and next to the bed was a battery operated lamp, which had been turned on. The LED bulb was shining directly out the one small window by the door I had just come in.
How odd.
Then I looked up.
"Ugh!"
I backed against the closed door. Along the top of the cabin where the walls met the ceiling, there was a continuous line of hideous paintings all around the room, each one more frightful then the one before. Each of them featured a grotesquely deformed face of a man or a woman, and sometimes it was hard to tell which was which. Their eyes seemed to follow me as I moved toward the lamp and sat down on the bed, and I swear the one in the left corner smiled at me! I decided to try and ignore them, so I flipped on the TV. Nothing but static. Cursing, I flopped back on the bed and sulked, planning different ways to murder my brother. I had just come up with number 57 (dangling him by his ankles into a pit of crazed ostriches) when I woke with a start. Daylight was filtering in.
I must have dozed off...
I yawned. I lay on the bed for a few minutes, in no hurry to get up and start the long journey to the campsite, wherever it may be. At least the sun was out now! The cabin didn't feel so foreboding, swathed in light. I could feel my eyes closing again, and settled back down. I sat bolt upright.
Something's wrong.
I stood up, and walked around the cabin. Something was off.
It's so bright in here...
I looked at the window by the door. Then I looked up. Frozen, I stared at what couldn't be. Then I grabbed my bag, and hightailed it out of there as fast as I could move. I didn't stop until I found a way out of the forest and into a convenience shop to borrow a phone. I just wanted to go home.  Why did I run, you ask? When I looked up where the portaits should be, I saw only windows, letting the morning sun stream into the room.