Last Christmas my mother was gifted a painting of our family by… well, there was no name on the card. She had assumed it was a fan of hers. My mother is a horror writer, she posts online and has recently been given a publishing deal. The portrait is of me, 17M, my little brother, 13M, my father, 45M, and my mother, 43F, sitting on a 2-seat sofa, my parents in the middle and me and my brother sat on the arms of the chair. My mother had got a family friend to take this photo the Christmas prior and she posted it on her Facebook, however I was the only one who seemed to find it strange that a framed oil painting of it appeared on the porch a year later. It came with a card that read “Merry Christmas, I hope you enjoy this painting as it is one of my best pieces to date.”, there was no signature on the card. My mother seemed to love the gift as she proudly hung it in the entrance hall, making it the first thing you’d see as you entered the house. I, on the other hand, couldn’t get over the fact that every little detail had been expertly captured, as if the person painting it saw more than just the photo posted online.
As usual, my alarm screaming brought me out of a peaceful sleep. I groaned and opened my eyes, blinking away the sleep. I was about to pull myself up until I realised how dark it was in my room. My eyes wandered over to the window. It was pitch black outside, as if it were only very early hours of the morning. Confused, I looked to my alarm clock that read 3:03am. I blinked at it, thinking I hadn’t fully emerged from whatever dream I had just been having, but it didn’t change. That’s when the noise began. A scratching noise, like a dry brush rubbing on paper. It wasn’t loud, in fact I almost missed it, however the absolute silence of the night made it the only noise in the house. My bedroom door was open. My brother must have come in looking for something, I thought to myself, idiot can’t even close a door after him.
My thoughts were shattered in an instant as a hand reached into the room through the open doorway. The house, including my room, was in complete darkness yet somehow this shape was deeper, almost as if the door handle itself would be absorbed into its embrace. Its fingers were long, extremely long, and thin, ending in sharp points. I stared, somehow feeling more intrigued than scared. Its gnarly claws beckoned towards me, calling me. Before I had a chance to react, the door to my room swung fully open and crashed against the wall with a bang, followed by freezing cold air rushing into my room. I covered my ears instinctively against the crash, slowly lowering them upon seeing the hand beckoning me from the doorway yet again. I cautiously moved the blanket down and swung my feet over the edge, shivering as they touched the icey floorboards. I drew myself off the bed, gently tip-toeing towards the door, seeing the hand was no longer there. The feeling of confusion was replaced by a deep pit of dread in my stomach as I wandered along the corridor towards the stairs. I didn’t know where I was going, my legs seemed to be moving on their own.
When I reached the stairs, I peered over the banister. My heart sank seeing a black mass opposite the front door, positioned in front of… the portrait? It looked to be watching, no, touching it, with a hand impossibly thin and dark, the same hand that had been in my doorway. It was impossible to tell which way it was looking or if it could even see at all but a feeling in my gut told me it was looking straight at me. This was where the scratching noise was coming from. It had grown louder as I got closer to the stairs. It raised its hand to the portrait, hovered over my mother’s face, then my father’s, my brother’s, and, painfully slowly, made its way over to mine. As it hovered over my painted face, the air around me became thin and cold, it was painful to breathe, my heart beat in my ears and my throat was dry. My eyes struggled to focus and my head pounded in sync with my heart beat. All the fear I thought I’d have felt before, but didn’t, came rushing to me now, almost knocking me to the ground. This.. this thing, whatever it was, had evil intentions seeping out of its entire being. Its intentions were so undoubtedly malevolent, no feeling, no thought, could rival the utter despair I felt from my head to my feet.
I struggled to watch as its claw stroked my painted face, before pressing it into my cheek, piercing the canvas. I gasped in pain and stumbled back, tripping over my own feet, ending up on my backside on the floor of the upstairs landing. I reached for my cheek, my arm shaking uncontrollably, and gently touched it. I could feel it. The spot was warm and wet. Blood trickled from my face down my neck, staining my pyjamas. What the hell was happening? I crawled over to the railing and peered down at the painting, but the thing was gone. The air temperature returned to normal and I collapsed, my consciousness fleeing from me. Everything faded into nothingness.
I don’t know how long it had been but I awoke, yet again, to the sound of my alarm. I sat up slowly, feeling overwhelmingly exhausted, as if I hadn’t slept in weeks. I concluded it was a dream for I was in the safety of my bed with the door shut as I had left it. I rose from my bed and walked to the door, inspecting it. Inspecting around it. That’s when I noticed the scratching on the door frame, the crack in the wall where the handle had crashed against it. I opened the door and stepped into the hallway, making my way over to the stairs. The house looked completely different in the light of day than it did at night. Trying to convince myself it was all a dream, I descended the stairs and walked up to the painting, steadying my breathing before looking up at it. Everything about it was exactly the same, except for one thing. My cheek had a deep cut in it, as if that detail had always been there. What creeped me out even more is the dark smudge behind me in the painting. Drip, drip, drip. I looked down in shock to see blood dripping from the painting, or from behind it. I carefully took it down from its spot to see the wallpaper behind it soaked in crimson liquid. Fresh blood. The stench that came from removing the canvas was overwhelming. Metallic, fear-inducing. I looked down to the painting in my hands and screamed, throwing it across the hall. What the hell was that monster gripping itself to my neck?!