I always wanted to be a painter. When my wife and I bought our house, I had an idea that I’d set up a studio in the attic and paint. It would be a nice little getaway from the rest of my life, just a chance to settle down away from all of the outside distractions and paint whatever came to mind.
It never came together. That wasn’t anyone’s fault, not even mine. Life just happened. Work took up a chunk of my day, the commute took another piece, and then we had kids and the rest of my free time just vanished. I still told myself that I was going to set up that studio someday. The attic was perfect for it, after all, or would be once I cleared some of the boxes out of the way. I knew I’d get to it just as soon as I had a little break.
Well, you know how that goes. Soon enough our oldest daughter was ten, and I hadn’t touched a paintbrush in a dozen years or more. I didn’t mind it, exactly, but I still thought about it from time to time and sort of wished that I’d find or make the time for my old hobby.
Then one day I was up in the attic putting the Christmas decorations away, and I saw that someone had cleared a big space up against the back wall, right where the light from the big round window shone. All of the boxes that had been in the area had been stacked up to the sides, their position taken by something large draped in a sheet.
Curious, I went over and pulled the sheet aside. Beneath it was a large wooden easel with a canvas propped up on it, blank and begging to be painted.
I grinned to myself. Obviously this was a surprise my wife Zoya was setting up for me. She’d realized that I was never actually going to get around to putting my studio in place, and so she’d taken it upon herself to do it for me. It was an extremely sweet gesture, and honestly probably the only way I was actually going to get back into painting before the kids went off to college, if then. If she’d taken the time to set up the space for me, it would be rude not to use it, after all.
I didn’t say anything to her when I went back downstairs. I hadn’t seen any paints around, so I figured she had a presentation planned whenever she was going to give it to me. I certainly wasn’t going to ruin her present by telling her that I’d seen it early. It wasn’t my birthday for a while, but maybe she was thinking about doing it as a Valentine’s Day present?
A couple of weeks went by, and Zoya hadn’t said anything about the easel in the attic. I was up there for something else—a legitimate reason, not just to snoop to see if she’d done anything—and to my surprise, I noticed that the sheet over the easel had some paint spatters on it. I was pretty sure it had been clean and new before.
The paint was dry to the touch, which probably meant that I had just been wrong about the newness of the covering. As long as I was over there anyway, though, I lifted the sheet to peek at the easel again. I love looking at blank canvases. They’re so full of potential. It was one of my favorite things about painting: the knowledge that there was always another fresh start just waiting for me.
The canvas was no longer blank. It was painted in a flurry of blues and blacks, an impressionistic style that I’d always admired but never mastered. The background was an array of medical devices and personnel, clustered and overlapping in a manner that conveyed urgency and haste. The central piece, stretching diagonally across the canvas, was a cutaway of an arm, showing a snapped ulna.
Ordinarily, I might not have been sure which bone was which. But just two days ago, my younger daughter Kara had fallen while climbing and broken the thinner of the two bones in her forearm, the ulna. The doctors had shown us the X-rays and told us that although the break looked severe, the cast would only have to stay on for a little over a month.
I didn’t have copies of the X-rays, but from my recollection her break looked almost exactly like the one shown on the canvas before me.
I lowered the sheet again, puzzled. Was Zoya coming up here to paint? I wouldn’t have minded if she was, though I had no idea it was something she was into. Why keep it a secret from me, though? Was she worried I’d be angry if she was better than me?
That night before dinner, I tried to ask Zoya about it.
“Hey hon, you know that little art studio in the attic?”
“Oh, are you finally going to set that up?” she asked me brightly. “That’s fantastic! Let me know if we need to get rid of anything up there to clear out space. We could probably get rid of half of the junk up there and never miss it.”
Her response baffled me. It was possible that she was pretending she didn’t know about it to still keep it a surprise for me, but if so, why offer to help me set it up? I couldn’t figure out how to ask if she really didn’t know or if she was just acting like she didn’t, and the conversation naturally moved on to other topics.
The next day, though, it was still bothering me. I decided to go back to the attic, bring down the painting and show it to Zoya. She could hardly deny having set up the studio in the attic once I showed her that I’d seen her work.
Only when I looked under the sheet this time, the arm painting wasn’t there. There was a different canvas, showered in bloody shades of red. A thick vertical column spiked upward at one side, and at its base was the shape of a man. The red paint was thickest and darkest at his head, spreading outward in a lake to cover the rest of the canvas.
I found it deeply unsettling, not least because the figure bore at least a passing resemblance to me. I touched the paint, but it was dry. Zoya must have painted it last night after I went to sleep. The work was excellent, but I still had no idea why she was being so secretive.
I took the new painting off of the easel and replaced the sheet. As I did so, I spied the painting of the broken arm leaning up against the wall; I’d missed it behind the easel before. I picked it up as well and carried them both to the attic ladder.
The paintings blocked my vision as I took my first careful step onto the pull-down stairs. It was slightly precarious, but I’d climbed these stairs hundreds of times and I was unconcerned. And in fact, I was doing fine until something pushed me hard from behind.
Both paintings went flying into the depths of the attic as I threw out my arms, desperately seeking to catch myself on the lip of the attic floor, or the flimsy railings of the stair, or anything. The shove was too strong and my movements too slow, and I could only windmill helplessly as the floor rapidly rushed up to meet my head.
I woke up to Zoya shaking me and frantically calling my name.
“I’m okay,” I slurred. I lifted my head, but the spike of pain that brought on caused me to instantly put it back down. There was a wet sound that confused me as I did that, like something was cushioning the hardwood floor. I raised my hand to my head and brought it away sticky. I was bleeding profusely.
“The ambulance is on its way,” she told me. “Just stay there.”
“There’s someone in the attic,” I said. I couldn’t let myself be taken out of the house without warning her about that. “There’s someone upstairs.”
“You hit your head, baby. Just lie still. Help is coming.”
I didn’t want to lie still. I wanted her to listen to me. I was so tired, though, and so I closed my eyes just for a minute. The last thing I saw before I woke up in the hospital was the curtain of blood slowly making its way out from my head, carpeting the hallway.
The doctors diagnosed me with nothing worse than a mild concussion and a nasty bruise, and sent me back home. I was told not to do anything strenuous for the next week, and warned specifically against things like ladders in case there was any lingering dizziness from the concussion.
I spent my time listening intently to the noises of the house. Whoever was up there would have to creak a board or scrape against a box eventually. If I could figure out what part of the attic they were in, I’d be better equipped to challenge them once I was back on my feet.
Zoya inquired about my odd new habits, but I played them off as nothing to be concerned about. The person in the attic had already shown a propensity for violence when they’d pushed me down the stairs. Judging by the painting, they’d even been planning it. Who knew what they’d do to Zoya if they caught her up there? I couldn’t let her risk herself.
After a week had passed, though, I had heard nothing definitive and I was tired of waiting. I armed myself with a crowbar and a Maglite, pulled down the attic trap door and headed back up the stairs.
The easel still sat against the back wall, bedecked with more paint splatters than ever. The paintings I had hurled away in my fall were stacked near it, leaning against the wall. Someone had moved them.
I searched the attic from top to bottom, shoving boxes aside and jabbing my crowbar into corners. I checked the rafters and banged on the plywood panels covering the beams of the floor. I found nothing.
Finally, I turned to the easel hiding under its sheet. It was the last place I hadn’t looked. I didn’t see how the intruder could be hiding under it, but I also didn’t see anywhere else he could be.
With a swift yank, I whipped the sheet aside. The easel tottered back and forth. The painting it held fell to the ground. There was no person there. There was nothing but three new paintings, the one that had fallen and one propped up against each leg.
The leftmost painting showed the entrance to my attic, exactly as it was. A woman’s head peered upward from the stairs. Her face was turned away, but her hair was styled like Zoya’s. Her attention was on something off to the side of the painting. She did not see the dark shape with the sharp blade behind her.
The painting on the right showed the far side of my attic, boxes stacked high in shadowy pillars. They framed the large window that let most of the natural light into the room. Through it, my large oak tree was visible. Two dark shapes hung from its branches, their necks bent at unnatural angles. The details were blurred by the thick glass of the window, but they were the right size to be my children.
Heart pounding, I stood the final painting upright. It completed the triptych, showing the central portion of the attic. Unlike the others, it conveyed no direct threat. Instead, it showed only an empty easel with a bare wall behind it, not a painting to be seen.
“What are you doing in the attic?” Zoya called from below me. I heard the stairs creak as she took the first step.
“Stop!” I called out frantically. I had to keep her out. The painting’s statement was clear: if she discovered the easel, or if my children did, or if I tried to get rid of the art—my family would die.
I cast about for an excuse as I rushed back to the stairs. On what pretext could I keep them all out of the attic? My mind seized on one that was close to the truth.
“I’m setting up that art studio,” I told Zoya. I climbed down and shut the stairs behind me. “I don’t want you to see it until I have something to show you. It needs to be a separate space.”
She believed me, for why wouldn’t she? Encouraged me, even. Which means that several times a week, sometimes even daily, I trudge up these stairs and make my way across to that paint-spattered sheet, dreading what disaster I will find beneath this time.
I have seen accidents both small and large, losses and failures aplenty. The worst, though, are the days when I take the sheet aside and see nothing but a blank canvas. Those are the days I have to paint my own destruction.
Zoya has not asked again to see my studio. She has been busy with the mishaps befalling our family. I would love to move, to throw it away, to burn it all down—but that threatening triptych hangs on the back wall of my attic, promising what will happen to everyone I love if I ever do.
And so I paint, and I hope, and I dread.