The January Featured Story is by C. Wait
Please feel free to email C. at:
ccrwait@gmail.com
THE PAINTER
by C. Wait
She needed the money.
That’s what it came down to. That’s why she was driving out on an unpaved road, in the middle of the woods before the sun had even broached the horizon. She checked her cell—no service. There were clouds in front of the moon and it wasn’t raining, but a steady mist hung above the ground.
She parked the car at the back of the building and stared up at it through the misted windshield. It looked fragile. Like a newly cut patient at a plastic surgeon’s office—fresh with scars and sawed on bones. The roof was covered in fresh hardwood, planks soaking up the moisture in the air and turning dark. Yellow construction sealant covered the outside walls. The front door stood, white, in stark contrast to the darkness around it.
Welcome, a lopsided sign post said next to it, to Grisham Presbyterian Church.
The contractor handed her the keys as she walked up the back steps. “It’s not blessed yet, but we’re getting there.”
“You got a deadline?”
“Seven at the latest.”
She cocked her head, felt the weight of her lighter in her jacket pocket and itched for a cigarette. Twelve hours. She could do it. “Of course.”
“You sure? It has to be done by nightfall.”
“Why? Will something come out to get me when the sun goes down?”
The contractor narrowed his eyes. His face was a mesh of pink and grey skin that hung in lumps and mottled pockets. He barely had any hair on his head and stank like a garage filled with exhaust.
His spit hit the pavement next to her shoe.
“Finish it or you don’t get paid, Jenny. I need this place ready to open.”
*****
She started on the bottom floor and worked through the rooms counter clockwise. The paint was a pitiful shade of off-white and it stuck to the tips of her fingers as she lay down the first coat. The sun had crested over the mountains in the distance, but the light couldn’t cut through the trees and the clouds. It was still cold. It was still damp and dark and felt like night.
Jenny hurried.
About an hour in, the full, wailing sound of an organ hit her full force. She was so startled by the suddenness of it that she dropped her roller and paint splattered across the ground. Specks of off-white flecked the cement flooring. She cursed.
Upstairs a hollow melody struck out across the keys.
“Eight o’clock in the morning,” Jenny muttered to herself. “For Chrissakes…”
She finished the second room and the organ continued to play. She finished the third and her head was throbbing. Her ears felt numb and behind the sound of the organ she heard a faint buzzing.
“Hey up there,” she called during a pause. “Could you give it a rest a minute?”
Seconds passed in silence. She picked up the paint roller and finished the ceiling. Her nose was frozen and the ringing in her ears grew stronger even though the church had fallen silent. It compounded with the pounding in her head and she felt dizzy, faint. She wished for daylight. For warmth. Her eyes stung but she plowed on. She needed to finish this job.
But the organ began again.
It started with a single note, followed by a quick trail of three, then burst into a thick, flowing melody. It seemed louder and stronger than before. Vibrations shot through the walls, through the floors, and she could feel the movement echoing up through her feet until it reached her neck. She placed the paint roller on the ground and wiped her hands on her jeans, then took out her lighter and rolled it between her fingers.
When she reached the top of the stairs and entered the church sanctuary, the organ noise stopped. She peered down across the rows of red velvet lined pews, the empty pulpit, and the giant granite steps on the left. There were no crosses or statues or books. They would come when the construction work was finally complete.
“Hello?”
Her voice echoed. The room felt awfully empty and vast. She looked up and saw that the ceiling stretched seventy feet high with a dome roof. There were cracks in the cement foundation. She could see them from where she stood.
“Hey!”
She hated how timid her voice sounded. How small. It was as if the air inside the room compressed the sound, chewed it up, and spit it back out as something unrecognizable. The lighter danced between her fingers. She shivered and went back downstairs.
The organ started up again soon after and within minutes her head was throbbing so hard she could barely stand. Her lips felt cracked, her throat dry. Some of the paint had lodged up under her fingernails and it felt like the skin there had peeled off. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
The job needed to be done by nightfall. It had to be. That money…
She balled her fists and stormed upstairs.
This time she caught the organist in the act. He was a short man, mousy looking with blondish brown hair that stood up a bit in the back. His nose was small and his mouth pinched in concentration. He wore slim, sliver spectacles.
“It’s rude, you know,” she began. “Some of us have work to do.”
His hands stilled but he didn’t turn to look at her.
“Look, I’ve got to finish the paint job by night. Can’t you wait until then?”
He licked his lips and the sound echoed in the large room. Like he was chewing on something greasy and smacking his lips. “You are the painter?”
“I am.”
His voice was soft and measured, careful. “Today there is ninety percent cloud coverage.”
“Lovely.”
“It is a good time to be inside practicing.”
Jenny wrinkled her nose. The place smelled stale and old and rank. Had she smelled this smell before? Most old houses had a particular stench, but this was something thicker and mustier. It churned her stomach. She clenched her hands, then fingered the lighter again. “I would appreciate if you’d hold off.”
His nose crinkled in an exact mimic of hers. He turned finally to face her and she could see how pale his skin was. He seemed sickly. But those smooth, red lips… she tore her eyes away and turned quickly on her heel.
His gaze followed her all the way down the stairs.
*****
The church was silent for an hour after that. Jenny felt her shoulders losing their tension, her neck relaxing against the tightness that had seized it earlier. She was almost done the ceiling and then all she would have left was the detailing around the windows and doors. She would finish before nightfall, she felt that with a calm certainty now, although it would be hard to tell. The entire day the air had been coated in a thick, choking fog. She could barely see outside. No light filtered in through the window and she relied on the gas lamps in the center of the room to guide her.
When one of them flickered, she turned and saw the organist standing near the back wall—his posture ramrod straight, arms folded in front of him. A dark coat hung baggily over his small frame.
She was taller than him, and probably stronger, too. So why did her throat tighten and tremble at the sight of him? Her skin broke out in goosebumps and she felt a muscle below her eye start to twitch. Jenny stiffened. “Enjoying the view?”
“You are meticulous.”
“It’s my job.”
“You have a very nice eye for detail.”
His voice was soft and mellifluous. Singsong and sickly sweet. She wanted to throw her hands up against her ears to block it out and the stale smell, the smell of something primordial, was back. “I’m touched,” she began, and had to clear her throat. “But you should really go home and let me work.”
“I am not impeding you. By all means, continue.”
Jenny shivered. There was something about his lips. They seemed to fester and twitch even though they weren’t moving. Like there was something inside them that breathed and lived on its own. Her pulse throbbed in her neck. “You need to leave. Now.”
“Or what?”
“Are you kidding me?”
He smiled and it hung in the air for a while. Jenny could hear her breath wheezing through her chest, rattling with all the old packs she used to smoke, her heartbeat a steady throb that echoed throughout the room.
Go away, she thought. You’re not wanted.
His face twitched like he heard her and she squeezed her palms, feeling the sweat grow as they stood facing one another. The smell was back. It choked her.
He wouldn’t stay much longer…would he?
Her eyes stung. Jenny blinked and somehow he had moved closer to her. He now stood several feet in front of her, his lips jittered, and the dark material of his coat made a scraping sound in the silence. She hadn’t even heard his footsteps along the cement.
“It’s such a nice day, Jenny,” he said, and his eyes latched onto hers.
For a moment she couldn’t think anything. All she could do was stare back at him and watch how his irises dilated, how his short lashes back against the bottom of his eyelid when he blinked. His eyebrows were perfectly plucked, meticulous, and his skin was smoother than any other man’s she had ever met before.
Then the wind blew one of the doors shut and she snapped free of the trance. She raised her fist in the air to strike him, blinked once, and found he wasn’t there. His dark coat flashed in the corner of her eyes. The door to the back barely rattled as it nestled against the rusting hinges.
She forced herself to relax.
One more window detail, she told herself. Only one more. You can do this. You never leave a job unfinished.
Breathing deep, she picked up a clean paintbrush and went to work on the last window. The fog had grown thicker, and grey mist beat against the window as she smoothed beige paint against the careful wood etchings. She dipped her hand, curling her wrist. Just around this edge and she would finish. It wasn’t so hard. No one could scare her away, or keep her from doing what she needed to do.
She exhaled, took a step back.
And there he was again on the other side of the window, staring back at her. Jenny shrieked.
He was so close she could touch him. She could smell him and feel him breathing. His lips twitched, red and pertinent, and his teeth were bared in a perfect line of white. It was almost as if the glass was no longer there and it was just air between them.
She stumbled backward. The heel of her shoe stuck and she fell, but when she looked back up he was no longer in the window. Where was he? A bolt of pain shot through her chest. Inside? He had to be close by because the smell was still there. It stuck to her skin like a thin film of dirt.
Jenny pushed to her feet just as the organ shrieked back to life upstairs. The notes came quick and disjointed. It was the hastened melody of nimble, practiced fingers. The melody of a man lulling the trees to sleep as the sun set along the mountains.
“You nearly finished the job,” he said.
She spun and found him standing on the steps to the sanctuary. Standing there, even though the notes droned on and on. The skin on her throat prickled as if drawing back from approaching danger. She licked her lips. “You play this game with everyone?”
“Just you… Jenny.”
His voice echoed across the room.
She turned and ran.
The air outside was dense and still. The trees drew in tight around her. Brittle, gnarled branches cried out and broke as she hit them, her breaths falling in short, staccato beats. It was so dark she could barely see.
Her car engine had been disabled but it didn’t matter. She had a job to finish and no one would get in her way. No one. Especially not him.
Jenny hovered in the tree line around the perimeter of the church, watching for a flash of that old, black coat so she could sneak up and immobilize him. Her footsteps absorbed into damp soil as she settled behind a pine near the steeple of the church and waited. The mist hung thick. Her breath clouded in front of her and slowly the last of the sunlight rescinded through the trees.
Jenny.
His whisper filtered through the leaves.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw his black coat flashing. Panic consumed her and she took off running.
How did he find her? It was impossible. No one could find her out here. She had been born in the trees, could sneak up on a deer from a mile away, and yet somehow he’d sniffed her out. It seemed like he was inside her head, seeing everything she saw.
Branches scraped at her face as she sprinted through the trees behind the church and rounded the front yard again. If she could get inside, she could find a weapon. A nail gun or hammer would be best. She could silence him in one easy strike and go back to work. Everything would be all right.
She threw herself against the front door and it gave easily under her weight. Rows and rows of unfinished pews spread before her. Her boots scuffled the floor as she looked frantically for a broken piece of wood or a forgotten construction tool but there was nothing.
Damn them, she thought. The contractor, the construction workers…they knew what was out here. They knew all along.
As she reached up to wipe the sweat from her eyes, his black coat flickered across her vision. She spun to her right. He stood along the wall there, his arms folded neatly over his chest, breathing cool and evenly as if he hadn’t just chased her around the building three times.
“Don’t,” she said.
He smiled but it was more of a frown. “Please, Jenny. I have to.”
Sprinting did no good because as fast as she was, he was infinitely faster. She felt his hands slipping around her shoulders with uncanny force, and then she was falling forward into the sound of the organ pipes, the smell of rot around them so strong she gagged. A string of spit burst from her lips.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. His body was strong and lean on top of her.
“Relax,” he told her. There was something so supple and smooth about his voice that made her want to give in. “Trust me.”
But she wouldn’t give in. She elbowed him in the face. Heard the crack of bone against bone but he didn’t falter. His hands stayed strong around her and that’s when he started babbling. Speaking gibberish like some crazy person. It sounded like nonsense but the more she listened, the more it made sense. The more she listened, the more she felt it resounding inside of her, and then her eyes were closing because she was too tired to keep them open anymore. She lingered on the paint detailing from the window. The only job she’d ever left unfinished…
Her head tipped back in deep slumber.
The fog entered the sanctuary just as his lips closed around her throat and his teeth entered her jugular vein.
C. Wait writes horror stories based on her memories of growing up in rural Vermont. The house where she lived was drafty and old—perfect setting for mysteries, ghosts, and creepy crawlies. There was an old, abandoned trade route and a Christmas tree farm that spread several acres behind her house where she used to play hide and seek as a child. And even though it never happened, she always wondered—what if she did get lost? And what if there was someone or something out there with her? That Christmas tree farm and the trade route are the settings for many of her stories, as is the cemetery where Black Agnus stands in Montpelier (look that tale up for a good scare).
Now the author lives about twenty minutes from the Big Apple where there are less haunted houses and more “nightmare” highways. But she is still quite gripped by the power small, rural towns have to inspire fear.
When she not writing, you can find her traveling, hiking, or working with kids. Her favorite holiday is Halloween.