The Beach Scene Read online

insists she did not move it. I opened the study door and showed her where it hung on my wall, but she said I must have put it there. The very idea is absurd. And yet, now that I have had time to cool down, to reflect on things, I cannot believe she is lying. If she did move the painting, she does not remember. If she did not move the painting...I am not prepared to consider the ramifications of this possibility.

  April 15, 2006

  Hard day at work today. Three times I made simple mistakes on equations I must have taught a hundred times by now, twice in the same class. I must be slipping.

  I have not felt like myself lately. Something is eating at me, keeping me from concentrating. It's difficult to describe the sensation. Almost as if I am trying to remember something important, but the harder I think about it the harder it is to pin down. Also I have had a headache for most of the day. I know it sounds strange, but I cannot shake the feeling that the painting is somehow responsible.

  April 16, 2006

  More of those horrible dreams tonight. I would not have believed it possible, but I think they're actually growing more intense. I took the painting off the wall and threw it in the dumpster on my way to work. I am not a man given to superstition, but I cannot bear its presence any longer. Already I feel as if a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

  (Later)

  It's back. I know better than to blame Sylvia this time. I cannot fully describe the feeling of fear I felt when I opened the door and saw it there on the wall. I am convinced it is an evil thing, and yet I do not know why. The painting remains unchanged. It shows what it has always shown. There are no dark eyes outlined in the clouds, no eldritch curse scratched in the sand between the beach chairs. Nothing. Am I losing my mind? The headaches are back.

  April 17, 2006

  Called in sick again today. This time it's for real. Headache is unbearable. Sylvia wanted me to see a doctor, but I refused. I know what is causing this, and it has to end. I will take care of it today.

  (Later)

  I am in hell. The painting will not die. As soon as Sylvia left for work, I went to my desk and took out a pair of scissors. Intended to cut it up but...this cannot be real. I am having a nightmare. I will wake up soon frightened but normal. But the blood, the blood is everywhere. It bled. I can still barely believe it myself. I sliced it down the middle, right between the two beach chairs, and blood sprayed out, covering my arms, my glasses. I must have screamed, though I have no memory of it. How could I not have? The blood was warm. Some of it got in my mouth. Before writing this I spent fifteen minutes retching over the toilet and yet I can still taste it on my tongue. I am dreaming, I must be. Oh God let this be a nightmare!

  It is no dream. I cannot explain it away so easily. There is something in the painting. I believe this. There must be a way to fight it, to defeat it. I don't think I can go on living like this. Sylvia got back from her shopping, and asked me if I was okay. At first I thought she was joking. How could she not see the blood soaked floor in the living room, the red stains on my shirt? But they were gone, dried up.

  Disappeared. How can they be gone? Told her I had a headache. That much at least is true, but how can I tell her of the thing that hangs in our living room, the thing that has come to haunt me day and night. I cannot. She does not feel its influence. It power of terror is reserved for me and me alone and I feel it full well. Reading back over the entries of the last few days I realized I sound like a madman. Perhaps I am mad. Some sick part of me hopes that it is so, for if I am mad then none of this, however terrifying, is real. But how can one know if one is mad? Because I have experienced something so far beyond what I had believed possible, does that prove my insanity? The madman says that aliens are sending him messages that only he can hear, that lining his hat with foil will keep them out, but what if it were true? How can one know the difference between what is real, and what is in the mind? Is not all experience in the mind?

  April 18, 2006

  More nightmares last night, and the headaches are getting worse. Sylvia again suggested that I see a doctor and again I refused. I know the source of my problem, and I will deal with it in my own way.

  (Later)

  I went for a walk to get away from the painting, thinking it might be easier to think if the distance between us was greater. The fresh air did seem to calm my nerves a bit, but the headache remains.

  I had the idea I should call Martha, Walter's widow. If there is something strange about the painting perhaps she would know about it. I could almost kick myself for not thinking of it sooner.

  (Later)

  The call did not go well. At first Martha sounded glad to hear from me (once I'd explained who I was of course) but when I brought up the painting she went suddenly silent. At first I thought the line had gone dead but then I could hear her breathing. “Walter didn't like that painting,” she said at last. Then I heard what sounded like a sob, and the line really did go dead.

  I thought about calling back, but I do not wish to upset her further. Still, the implication of her words is obvious, at least to me. The painting drove Walter to suicide. The “how” and the “why” are trivial at the moment. The one question that remains is this: Why did he send it to me?

  But I think I can answer that one. Yes I know I can. He did not send it. The painting sent itself. It only used Walter as a tool. And when it was done with him...

  Dear God I think I am going to be sick.

  (Later)

  I need answers. I approached the cursed thing with trepidation, looking for the thing I know must be there. It is almost too difficult for me to look at it, but I must. The painter's signature is there in the lower left corner of the painting, the letters following the curve of a leaf of sea grass.

  Timothy Lutz. His name is in the phone book. I want to call him but...what would I say? I have half convinced myself that I am crazy, but I do not want anyone else to know it. But the answer is there. It must be.

  I made the call. I almost didn't. The phone trembled in my hand, my fingers shook as they sought the keys, but I forced myself to go on. The voice that answered at the other end did not belong to Timothy Lutz. It was a woman. She sounded young, younger than me at any rate. I asked if I could speak to Mr. Lutz. At first she assumed I was a telemarketer, a reaction that seemed almost humorous given the circumstances. I explained that I had purchased one of his paintings and I had a few questions for him about it. Her voice took a new tone: edgy, evasive. She asked which painting it was.

  I described the beach scene.

  She flew into a fit. Told me to get rid of it. Demanded I get rid of it. “Burn it. Cut it up. Kill it before it can spread.” Those were her words. “Kill it.”

  I suppose her tone should have frightened me, but instead I was relieved to hear that she had some knowledge of the thing I was facing. I asked her to tell me what it was, what force gave The Beach Scene such power.

  She said she didn't know. She said that Timothy had said it was a virus. “Like a computer virus, only instead of infecting computers it infects people minds.”

  I asked her where he might have caught such a virus, but she didn't know. She told me he was studying some strange Mayan frescoes before he started acting strangely, but she couldn't be sure if it was their influence or some other force that had planted the idea in his mind.

  At first things had been normal. He had been more absorbed in his work than normal, but nothing to cause any real concern. But gradually, she told me, the painting began to be an obsession, a thing that “demanded to be completed.” Her words.

  I asked if Tim had any history of mental illness, and she told me no. He was normal. Nothing in his past to indicate such things might be percolating in his mind. No strange behavior leading up to the day that he said he “caught it”. Like an infection. Infection of the mind.

  I asked her what happened, eager to
learn how I might escape his fate. Her voice cracked, and then there was silence, and for a while I wondered if she had dropped off the line. But then she spoke and...her answer...I can't begin to convey how it chilled me.

  “He tried to kill me,” she said. I expected her to cry, but her voice was suddenly a flat eerie monotone. “He took a kitchen knife and tried to stab me in the back. But I fought back. I...killed him.”

  She paused for a long moment before continuing, and when she did her voice began to quaver. “He didn't die right away. He lay there on the kitchen floor bleeding, dying in my arms. That's when he told me what it was, made me promise to get rid of it. I tried to burn the thing, but I couldn't. Something stopped me. So I threw it away. But someone must have found it, and now...you have to stop it. There's no telling how many people it could affect. If something like this gets loose in the world...”

  I wanted to tell her, wanted to explain that I had tried to kill it and failed.

  I couldn't. My lips wouldn't move, refused to form the words I had in my head. Instead I heard myself speaking, thanking her for her time, promising to look into the matter. But it though it was my voice, it wasn't me speaking. A few days ago I used the term “mind worm” to describe this thing that's been happening to me. I didn't understand it then, but I think