There was a girl at my school who was crazily talented at art. I remember that she was bullied a lot, although I can’t remember why. But I remember her art.
As most people do, I lost contact with pretty much everyone when I left school. I was friends on Facebook with people I went to school with, but I hardly ever went on Facebook anyway, so those people were still strangers.
But one day I was browsing Etsy in search of a print for my mother’s birthday, and I found a seller who sold exactly the kind of thing that I loved. And that seller turned out to be the girl from school.
I don’t know how to describe her art, exactly. It wasn’t lifelike, but it was so detailed it brought everything to life. The style reminded me of the artist Richard Dadd, but in a monochromatic, line drawing style. You could look at a picture and appreciate it from afar, but when you looked deeper there were so many things to pick up and examine.
I browsed her art for a while, and whilst I loved everything listed, none of it was exactly what I wanted. So I messaged her and asked if she took commissions.
She responded within the hour, saying she was happy to take commissions, but that depending on the request, she couldn’t provide a timescale.
That was fine. By that point I didn’t want the picture for my mother, I wanted it for me, so time wasn’t an issue. I bought my mother an off-the-peg piece that she was very happy with.
I let the artist know my preferences: I told her about my love of constellations, and small furry creatures, and huge trees. I told her every detail I could think of that I was drawn to that might contribute to her artistic rendition. I wanted something totally tailored to me. And though it took a few months, she delivered.
She sent me a digital file to download. Assured me it was totally exclusive and that nobody else owned anything like it.
I was so grateful. The art was impeccable, and I left her a glowing review on Etsy.
I printed the piece out as large as I could, framed it, and put it in my hallway where I could see it every day.
Her art style was black and white line drawings in ink, with subtle shading and incredible detail included in the simplicity.
The art she made for me consisted of a tall tree that might have been an oak, with a night sky full of stars behind it, and many small creatures nesting within the tree and huddled around its roots. It gave me a huge amount of pleasure to view it every day, and every time I saw it, it seemed I noticed a new detail.
A few weeks after I had printed and framed it, I noticed a tiny detail in the bottom left corner I hadn’t seen before. It was angular and patterned, and I thought it might be writing.
I found a very old magnifying glass in a drawer of my desk, a happy discovery. Using it, I squinted at the blur I’d seen before, and whilst I could tell it was definitely writing, I could not read it.
It was then I got the idea, far too late, to examine it on the digital print in more detail.
Using my ipad, I opened the art up and spread it wide with my fingers, centering the possible writing and expanding it.
It was indeed writing. “Look deeper”, it said.
So I did.
I concentrated on the tree first. Zoomed in on the creatures frolicking in the branches. They were like a cross between monkeys and goats, with long prehensile tails, human-like hands, and curved horns on the rounded domes of their little heads.
They were crafted in such detail that when I zoomed in closer I could make out the bark dust clinging to individual strands of fur, tiny molecules that looked so real I felt I could blow them off from outside the picture.
I looked at the bark of the tree itself, and that made me gasp. In the grooves and lines, I saw even tinier creatures, insects drawn in excruciating detail.
I zoomed in even more, until the grooves in the bark resembled deep valleys, and within those valleys the tiny specks of insects loomed huge, like monsters, above a miniscule township drawn onto the banks of a river.
Entranced, I pinched the picture wider. The town was a complete community, with creatures walking in the streets, riding weird fuzzy beasts, carrying groceries in woven baskets. I focused on a nearby house, and realised I could look in at the window. There was a family of spindly bug creatures sitting down to dinner: a baby in a high chair splashing food with a spoon; a dog-like beast hovering by the table legs for dropped scraps; a steaming feast laid out. I could see the grain of the wood in the tabletop, the sheen of the silverware they held.
I had to stop then. I was breathless, awed. It was only when I looked up from the screen that I realised it was dark outside. I had been browsing the picture for hours and hadn’t noticed time passing.
Reluctant as I was, I shut down my ipad and went to bed.
I dreamed about the world in the picture that night. Roamed the tiny streets and listened to the miniscule babble of the creatures I mingled with. It was delightful.
The next day I wanted to look deeper, but I had to go to work. As soon as I was home, I cooked myself a hasty meal and opened the art on my ipad again.
This time, I focused on the line of creatures marching past the bottom of the tree that held the little universe in its bark.
They resembled beetles, but if beetles had somehow been able to breed with bison.
They had the shaggy heads of bison, but the shiny carapace of beetles.
They carried objects bigger than them, they way ants do. A large snippet of leaf, a crumb of wood. But those weren’t what interested me.
On the shell of one of the mini beasts was a drop of water, possibly some dew from one of the blades of grass that loomed over it, and when I zoomed in on that drop I found a whole new world.
At the surface I found mermaid creatures, intricate sailboats with full crews, things in bathing suits splashing around. There was a pirate ship that looked fascinating, and I wanted to explore that, but my attention was caught by the scales of a fish swimming beneath the surface.
Despite the fact that the drawing was in black and white ink lines, the scales seemed to glow, and the luminosity drew me in. I couldn’t imagine how the artist had managed to make the lines phosphorescent, but she had.
In the glow, I saw even more detailed life against the backdrop of a vast ocean. And I felt compelled to go deeper.
Deep sea creatures had always held a fascination for me: Blind in the darkness, and surviving under enormous pressure, I found them both scary and inspiring.
So I went deeper, ignoring the flashing tails of prettier fish to delve into the murky depths.
I zoomed in for a long time before I found anything. Zoomed so far and so long I nearly gave up, until I glimpsed a white flash of something in the blackness that gave me a focus.
It was a luminous white creature, simple in design. A mere droplet of life with a basic form that reminded me of sperm. It had huge dark eyes, though, bigger than its spindly head, and I zoomed in on those eyes.
There were constellations in its eyes, as unlikely as that may seem. Ones I didn’t recognise from our reality, but made as much sense as the ones that existed here. I wondered what these strange formations were named after; what beings might name them.
Unwilling to leave this new discovery, I went deeper. There were tiny stars in the distance, planets circling alien suns. Something that might have been a spaceship caught my attention as I zoomed closer to the nearest planet, and I diverted my inspection to that.
There were things inside that might have been aliens to the universe inside the creature’s eye, but everything I’d seen in the art was alien in its own way anyhow. I wondered if there were creatures on one of the planets in this solar system that spoke in hushed tones of the possibility of things in spacecrafts, or whether the spacecraft held explorers of their own.
Whilst the inhabitants of the craft were fascinating, there was more to be learned in the galaxy around them, and I reluctantly zoomed out a little and found the planet I’d originally wanted to look at.
It was purple and red coloured, partially obscured by a film of gas around it, and I swept my way through the atmosphere until the continents and seas were visible.
I don’t know what I expected: Maybe some kind of science fiction landscape, with futuristic buildings and hovering vehicles, but what I found was far stranger.
I cannot describe what was drawn in any meaningful way. There were living beings there, and structures for them to dwell in, but the shape of all that I saw seemed to twist in my vision the longer I looked.
I couldn’t make sense of anything I saw. It was like looking at the picture of the old and young woman merged into one, and you could only see one or the other if you focused, not both at once. Everything merged and drifted and tangled, and the confusion was enough to make me finally raise my head from my ipad to clear my mind.
There was a rosy glow to the sky outside, and I assumed it was the sunset, but when I went to draw my curtains and put on my lamps I heard birds singing in an exuberant chorus I normally only heard at dawn. I checked my clock. The small hand was near the 4. I knew I had got back from work at 6pm, so there was no way it was 4pm.
I checked my phone, and sure enough, it was gone 4am. I had been inside the art all night, the light outside was the sunlight approaching, not receding.
I was stunned, and weary. I had to get up at 6am, so I stumbled to bed and grabbed a scant couple of hours sleep, hitting snooze as many times as I dared before getting up again, more tired than I had been when I went to bed.
There had been dreams when I slept. Confused and tangled and frantic. But that was to be expected.
I spent the day at work like a zombie, barely scraping my way through my tasks, looking forward to getting home and getting an early night.
When I got home I didn’t even glance at the art on my wall as I passed it. I didn’t dare. I was afraid I would spot something else I might want to examine in more detail.
I watched TV after dinner, dozing in my chair, and crawled into bed at 8pm. The pillow was cool and the sheets warm, and I began to drift off to sleep.
But despite my exhaustion, the drifting didn’t get as far as slumber. I was in the limbo between sleep and wakefulness and it felt like I had forgotten to do something, and the nagging feeling persisted until I gave in.
I forced myself out of bed and checked the locks on the doors and windows. I checked the dials on my gas stove. I checked the alarm on my phone, and the battery on my smoke detector, and the level of milk in my fridge.
Haggard and despairing, I sat on my couch and opened my ipad, meaning to open up some sleep noises that might soothe me, but instead I found myself opening up the art again.
There was something I was missing. I felt sure of it. Some important detail that would explain everything in the picture.
I ignored the tree and the creatures in it this time, and looked into the background.
There was grassland stretching beyond the tree, with grasses both tall and short, and when I zoomed in the tiny pieces of gravel amongst the blades looked like mountains. There were beings living in the mountains. Of course there were. Tiny creatures toiling away at the base, working fields, and others that had built structures further up.
There were caves within the mountains too, and one that I focused on looked like some kind of mine. There were creatures that might have been derived from ponies pulling carts away from the gaping maws of the mine mouths, the carts laden with something that could have been coal or diamonds, sketched out in black and white.
There were also creatures fleeing the mine, their limbs blurs of motion as they ran, their mouths open and gaping and their eyes filled with terror.
What could they be escaping? I wondered. A cave in? Something else?
I had to find out.
I delved into the cave. Or mine. There were boards around the entrance, but they looked singed.
As I went deeper, there were more creatures fleeing, screaming silently in ink. The walls of the mine bulged inwards, suggesting some kind of structural issue.
Some beings lay on the floor of the mineshafts, trampled into pulp by the pit pony things and their fellow miners. Their innards were scribed in excruciating detail, albeit in black and white lines.
I was honestly scared to go deeper, but I did. The most I imagined was some kind of cave in: a disaster that any miner in any plane could sympathise with. But what I found was worse.
Beyond the bulging walls and sagging ceilings the mine delved into the very depths of the earth. I kept thinking of the Tolkien passage that said the dwarves had dug too deep, and it seemed that the inhabitants of this reality had also dug too deep.
Whatever they had found was darker and more sinister than any balrog. No flames to confront them: Instead, a vast, dark entity like a bleeding shadow filled all the gaps where the earth had once been.
How could this idyllic land I’d commissioned hold such dark imagery? How could the artist allow these blameless creatures to suffer so?
These things weren’t human, as I knew them, but they suffered. They knew fear. And I felt it with them.
I wanted to shut the ipad down, but instead I scrolled deeper with morbid dread.
There was blood strewn on the walls, stark in black and white even though I saw it in red. Body parts spackled the floor and ceiling. I could not hear any screams, because it was a drawing, but I felt screams in my soul.
There was something ahead I should not see, but I wanted to see it. The darkness was everywhere, flooding every gap, but it still was not the source of the horror.
The artist had drawn it. I knew she had. And I had to see it.
I went deep. Far deeper than I had meant to. I zoomed and pinched and zoomed, following the mine walls through mineral deposits and rock and some kind of weird, light emitting mould. I scrolled until I reached a pit that held a darkness I could not comprehend.
Again, my mind rebelled. I could not grasp what I was seeing. Lovecraft would have struggled to describe it, as was his wont, and I could not blame him. It was vast and pitiless and ancient. It saw me. Its mind touched mine for a split second before I threw my ipad away from me. I had seen something I should never have seen.
My foray into the world of my art had eaten up far more than one night. I slept briefly, only to wake up at 5pm to multiple messages from my work asking where I was. I had scrolled an entire night and most of a day away.
I called in sick for the next couple of days. Physically, I felt well, if tired, but mentally I was weary. And I didn’t like how I’d lost so much time.
I managed to sleep, but my dreams were full of jumbled images from the art. I was stalked and haunted by terrifying things, hunted through a maze I felt like I should remember.
I called in sick to work without giving a date for my return.
I found the maze on my second day of searching. I had not been looking for it, just for some happy place to focus on, but the maze apparently existed outside of my dreams.
At a mere glance it looked pleasant: Neat hedgerows carved into a puzzle where families might idle an afternoon away. I zoomed in on it gratefully, imagining strolling wide aisles with foliage either side, chuckling ruefully at a dead end before turning back to find another way. I felt like if I could solve the maze, everything would be OK.
On closer inspection, though, the maze wasn’t so innocent.
It was a living thing, constructed of plants and flesh and teeth. It pulsed and bit and contracted when I tried to move through it. I’d seen a lot by then: Innocent things and horrible things. Sweet little beasts with big eyes and hand-like paws, and monstrosities that wanted to swallow my soul. The maze didn’t care what it ate. It took all entrants without discrimination.
I was able to escape, by virtue of our differing worlds, or some miracle, but not before I had seen things I never wished to see again.
I saw a spiny yet somehow humanoid creature dashing another, much smaller, creature against a rock, swinging it by its feet. The smaller creature resembled the larger one, and a tiny object that might have been a toy fell from its hand on impact.
I saw a furry creature wearing a homespun suit gash its own throat open with claws that looked like they had only ever dug through earth for vegetables.
I understood more the more I saw.
The thing I had seen in the mines had escaped. It had seeped through the bedrock of their diggings and drifted upwards, driving all who it contacted insane. They knew what it was. They slaughtered their own families to save them from the darkness.
My world and the world in the art were getting closer every day.
I did get some sleep, when my body allowed. Normally I passed out from exhaustion, but sometimes I merely shut myself off so I could recharge and reevaluate. I slept, I scrolled, I slept, I wept. I pinned my eyes open and examined the starshine against a blade of grass. Watched a galaxy explode in slow motion through a series of sketches, taking an entire planet of living things to their deaths.
I began to realise that the universe held so much more than me and my little job and my stupid home and my Funko Pop collection I was so proud of.
I had taken a week to paint my apartment in the exact shade of blue-green I had imagined. I had sweated over the precise rug I should get to match my walls.
I had a wall full of shelves that held plants and books and ornaments I had selected and purchased with painstaking focus. Everything in my life, from my wardrobe to my surroundings, had been cultivated to give me pleasure. And why?
I was insignificant. My pleasures were ephemeral. There was so much more to the universe than me and my matching set of silverware, my novelty shot glasses, my upcycled bedside cabinets.
I had sanded and painted and repurposed those cabinets from an old desk. Taken pictures of every stage and posted them on Facebook and Instagram to show the progress I’d made.
And whilst I did that, there was another world I wasn’t aware of, going about their own business, meeting ancient and terrifying gods they’d uprooted by accident. Creatures living and dying under the foot of a passing beast that never knew they’d existed.
I wondered if my existence was the same. If I went to work and bought pasta and selected rugs and watched TV whilst some fathomless entity watched me, sipping a latte and checking the clock because it had work in the morning.
I felt like nothing, and my dreams enforced that when I slept.
I found more caves. Went too deep into them. Tragedies unfolded beneath my fingers, entire civilisations turned to dust and blood and mush in a single swipe. I no longer knew if I dreamed or browsed, whether I was awake or slept. Dreams and reality melded together, and I felt the tragedy of every lost empire I saw die in the shadow of the hungry darkness I’d first found in the mines.
The darkness followed me. Once seen, it could not be forgotten.
I tried to revisit the happy places in the tree bark I’d seen before, to watch the uncomplicated lives of the little beings in their simple streets, but where I had once seen contentment and peace I now found chaos and mayhem. My discovery of the living darkness seemed to have tainted everything I saw now, and everywhere I looked it left its mark. The family I’d once seen eating a communal meal with a dog under the table were gone. The high chair where the child had sat was overgrown with thorns, the table split in half and splintered. There was mould clinging to every wall, and burst cobblestones in every street as far as the eye could see.
I was so tired, yet I could not sleep. The darkness has taken over everything.
I messaged the artist on Etsy. I was desperate. I didn’t know what else to do. And she answered me within minutes.
“Are you enjoying your piece?” She asked. “I only accept refunds within 30 days.”
I was going to tell her that it had been less than 30 days since I’d received the art file, but suddenly I wasn’t sure. How long had it been? I had no idea.
“There is something wrong with it,” I told her.
“Can you be more specific?” She asked. “I fulfilled all your requests. And more.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to say. She had done all I asked. I couldn’t complain. And I didn’t know how to explain that the details were wrong. I felt like I was never meant to see them, and that it was my own fault for looking deeper. For digging too deep.
But then I remembered the writing. “Look deeper”, it had said. She had intended I see all those things.
I was about to respond to her when I got another message.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” She asked.
That annoyed me. Of course I remembered her. I told her so.
“How much do you remember?” She asked.
I thought about it. Like I said, I’d remembered her being bullied. So I wrote that to her.
I had to wait for her reply. It was 3am so I wasn’t surprised, but by that point my only options were to wait or go back into the art.
When her reply came, it was long.
“You were one of the worst. My wife says I’m naive, and have too much faith in human nature, but I was honestly surprised when you messaged me like there were no bad feelings between us. Do you honestly not remember? Are you in denial? Are you gaslighting me? Or am I really so insignificant that you have no memory of how you treated me?
“You made my life a living hell! Every second you could! You went out of your way, took so much trouble. If the others started easing up on me, it was always you that reminded them, that wouldn’t let me rest. Hiding my clothes after PE. Pushing me over in the corridors. Spreading those rumours about an STI. Telling your boyfriend to ask me out in front of everyone then reject me. Calling me slurs. Lmao. Turns out you were right. But I’ve never been happier. Unlike you, I think. You were always someone who liked sneaky details. You always liked to pry. So I made some art specifically for you. You should feel flattered: It took me a long time. I hope you’re enjoying it.
“No refunds.”
She blocked me then.
I sat for a while, thinking about what she’d said.
She must have gotten me confused with someone else. I hadn’t been that bad. I had played a few pranks on her, true, but it had been harmless stuff. Just a joke. And she seemed happy now. So why bear such a grudge?
Maybe the art has the answer. I’m sure if I look deep enough, I can find out. I think somewhere inside it, I will find out what really happened. It can’t be my fault. We were just kids. None of that matters any more.
I will look for one more hour. I will set an alarm. If I don’t find any answers by then I will delete the art, and it will all be over.
That’s what I think.