Take Away the Saints

Mimesis : Girl with a Pearl Earring || Nick Blakeslee

Before me was a gallery of paintings, hung on walls that shot upwards into the rafters, enough to make me dizzy when I look up at them. It was silent and dark, yet I could see my breath cast in the warm glow of my candle.

I moved towards the center of the room, hoping to find a bit more light nearer to the center. Silence had invaded and that feeling returned, I thought of eyes replacing those in the faces on the walls, watching me walk past them. As I walked to the center, my flickering light caught the shadow of something in the corner. I couldn't quite tell in the dim candle light, but someone—or something—sat in a chair. I reached back into my jacket and pulled out the Model 85, creeping towards the corner of the room.

Long shadows leapt against the walls, my candle waned, the wick flickering pitifully. The darkness of the room seemed to devour the light. Still, I could see the features of someone sitting in the chair, their shoulders facing away from me. Shrouded by twilight, their head turned to look over their shoulder.

"Hello?" I called out. "My name is Detective Gianopulos."

They didn't respond.

I walked closer, a chill ran up my spine.

"I'm here to help."

Ten feet away, the candle began to bath her in the waning light. She wore something around her head. Next to her, a sheet was hung on what looked like an easel.

"Ma'am, are you OK?"

Logic taking hold now, I freed the safety. I was close enough to see her now, her head was wrapped in some sort of dress, she wore a yellow robe, a single pearl earring shimmered in the candle light. The rigidity in her pose made me worried. I clenched my jaw and swallowed hard, giving her person a wide berth, my gun trained on her.

Her face was caught in an expression: eyes wide, perhaps from trying to see in the dark, but my heart told me it was something closer to terror. I thought of the woman screaming back in the house. She stared off into space, face set in relaxed surprise, but her stillness was inhuman.

I reached out, and touched her shoulder and felt a sudden sense of déjà vu. Her cheek was cold as well, no pulse. Her eyes stared right through me.

"Fuck." I said to the cold, dark room. Another corpse.

I ran my hands through my hair, turned around and faced the wall. For the first time, I really looked at the paintings. Before me, I saw magnificent pieces, looking as if they had been taken directly from an art museum. A painting of Mary holding a deceased Jesus, but wrong. Bastardized by gore, here Mary was mangled, and not Jesus.

The painting next to it was the same story. I raised my candle higher, and squinted, there was a set of men standing around a corpse, one seeming to be giving a lecture, pointing to the tendons of an opened arm. But in the background a man leered back, seemingly straight through the painting at me. His eyes wide and dead, his lips and chin covered in red, in his hand he held something plump and fleshy.

Then I saw it. A frame housing a woman, no arms, just the bust, standing elegantly next to a bed. If I closed my eyes, I could see the old house from earlier. I could imagine the stairs leading up to the room, and the first victim's body arranged like a piece of art. But here the arms weren't sutured, a bleached, mangled bone protruded from bleeding stumps. I scanned the paintings in the room, not wanting to look, but some sick part of me wanted to make sure: there were hundreds here, each a deranged copy of the original. I found a woman in a painting, just like the one here in the room, but her throat was cut from ear to ear, her earring blood red instead of pearl. I sucked in my breath, was the bust the first victim? Or did each painting represent someone's end, each frame an epitaph writ in blood?