Virgin With Child

Engulfed in the smell of solvents and colors, the Virgin seemed to bear on her face an expression of stoic resignation rather than contemplation and prayer, although her pose – head slightly bowed and hands joined – could hardly be misunderstood. A network of irregular cracks ran through the whole canvas, transforming the painting into an unusual mosaic which pieces seldom matched when they weren’t entirely missing.
An elderly couple from another town had brought it to Mark a few days ago, asking him if it could be restored. They had told him it had been found in an old basement, and probably, they thought they had stumbled upon a treasure. As soon as he had informed them that restoring it would have been more expensive than the painting could ever be worth, they had told him to get rid of it and left, never to be seen again. 
Mark had been tempted to throw it away, and he would have, if not for a detail that arose his curiosity. In the spots where the paint had peeled off completely, instead of a white canvas, a dark background surfaced.
Sure, it wasn’t so unusual for a canvas to be reused, drawing a painting over another, and it was unlikely for that Virgin to be hiding some previously unknown masterwork. Still, nothing was impossible. So, after completing another job, the restorer sat in front of that daub and started to patiently recover the underlying painting.
For long hours, he removed the upper layer of paint, a bit at a time, with the only result of revealing an almost uniform grayness. He wondered whether the mysterious painter had simply applied a layer of lead grey on the canvas before starting his work, but there was no logical reason to do that.
Then, when he had almost reached the center of the painting, some details began to come out. Little by little, an image was revealed, and Mark’s curiosity was so aroused by it that he kept working with no pauses to get at least a good look at what could be behind the Virgin.
The answer to that question astonished him.
In the center of the canvas, floating against the dull background, there was a baby, apparently just a few months old. He stood on all fours, but face up, his knees bent to compensate the different length of arms and legs and his feet absurdly twisted, pointing at the inside of the body. Except for this deformity and the green-gray hue of his skin, he was portrayed with extreme realism, the work of a talented hand. Mark wondered who could have painted such a portrait, and why. In a sense, it reminded him of a painting by Bosch, though almost entirely deprived of the surreal elements and made even too real, so much so that it elicited discomfort in the viewer.
Maybe, after removing the old painting completely, he would find a signature, and maybe that would lead him to some known artist. Or maybe it was the work of an unknown one, whose obvious talent had never been discovered. Anyway, he wasn’t going to find out right then. He was so tired that finishing the job was out of the question. The picture seemed to lose focus and swim before his weary eyes, as if the baby was moving on the canvas.
Then, suddenly, something fast moved at the edge of his vision, going toward the next room.
Mark rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands, abruptly awakened by the adrenaline rush. He looked at the painting just for a second, noticing that nothing had changed in it, then quickly turned his head, and met the eyes of Philo.
Sitting next to the doorjamb, the tabby cat stared at him, as if to ask him what he was looking at, then turned his back and walked away swaying, disappearing in the darkness.
That night, Mark’s sleep was troubled. He kept waking up again and again, without a reason he could discern.
It was almost dawn when a physical sense of oppression woke him up yet another time. He felt an unexplainable weight pressing down on his chest, making it hard to breathe. He opened his eyes and saw it. The baby in the painting was on him, in the very same pose he had in the portrait, except for his head, turned all the way back, and his mouth disclosed in the obscene parody of a smile. Instead of the teeth it wasn’t even supposed to have, rows of curved fangs stood, thin as needles, no two of which were of the same length.
The restorer panicked and reached out to push the foul creature away. He felt the weight slip down from his body, then something pierce the back of his hand, digging into his flesh. Sure that the thing had bitten him, he raised his head to look and...
He opened his eyes, staring at Philo who was trying unsuccessfully to avoid falling from the bed, clawing whatever he could reach. One paw was stuck in the bedspread, with the only result of pulling it down, while the other had found purchase in his hand, scratching it almost to the bone.
The cat admitted defeat and let go with both paws, smoothly landing on the floor. He addressed his owner with a reproachful look, hissed, and went away, probably looking for a less crowded place to sleep.
A shiver running down his spine, Mark got up to put something on the scratches. He froze as he was going through the study, noticing the chips of dried paint that surrounded the easel, like the result of a short and sudden snowfall. He had forgotten to sweep, he justified himself. He had been too tired to think about that.
The alternative explanation was something he didn’t want to consider.
He spent the early hours of the following day lost in a cloud of mystifying and contradicting thoughts. It was obvious that somehow that painting had affected his mind, more than he was willing to admit, although, in the light of the day, it wasn’t so terrifying. It still carried a strong, unexplainable sense of unease, which vouched for the prowess of the artist, but he would not say it scared him.
Nevertheless, he chose not to finish the restoration right away. Cleaning the remaining part could wait another day or two. So he started working on something else, banishing the grayish baby and the dream about it to the edge of his mind.
When he went to bed that night, he was serene. Nevertheless, sleep failed to get to him easily, and when it finally came, it didn’t last long. Soon, he found himself awake without a reason, as if something had alerted him. He opened his eyes, trying to assess what time it could be, and a shadow flickered by his side, silhouetted against the light coming from the street below, moving toward the kitchen.
Mark stood motionless, telling himself that he wasn’t paralyzed by fear, but merely uninterested in finding out what that movement had been. Slightly turning his head, he tried to look at the place where the shadow had gone, muttering under his breath that it had to be Philo again. Right on cue, the cat meowed abruptly, nervously, startling him, then was silent.
Mark quickly reached out to switch on the light on the nightstand, then withdrew his hand at the same speed, as if afraid that something was going to grab his arm. Curdled under the covers, which could do nothing for the kind of cold he was feeling, he darted his eyes here and there, looking in every possible direction without seeing anything that wasn’t supposed to be there.
He left the light on.
He dragged himself out of the bedroom, yawning, a little earlier than noon. Sleep had won over fear some time after sunrise, signing a brief truce with his unjustified jitters, still not really allowing him to recover his strength.
What really woke him up, just like a cold shower, was seeing the floor of his study once again covered in bits of dried paint. This time there could be no misunderstanding; the painting was almost entirely uncovered. Only the bottom right corner stood to testify the former existence of another layer of color. From the center of the canvas, although unchanged, the baby seemed to be sending him a taunting smile.
Mark stood motionless before that scene for much too long. Something weird and terrifying was happening, but he could not say what or why. He needed to think clearly and do something, anything.
He decided, not without an inner struggle, to start by having breakfast.
He walked to the kitchen, his eyes never leaving the baby from hell, at least until he set foot in an unexpected slimy pool, which produced a chilling sound. He looked down at a rusty-red stain decorating the kitchen floor. Close by, Philo was lying in a corner in the middle of a pool of blood. His head had been almost entirely detached from his body, except for a little patch of skin and flesh of his nape.
Fury irrupted into Mark’s mind, chasing fear away. He took a knife from the counter and lunged at the painting, leaving bloody footprints in his wake, but he froze an instant before piercing the canvas, the blade mere inches from it. What if cutting it made things worse? What if it permanently freed that creature, that for now only seemed to manifest itself at night?
It was a risk he wasn’t ready to run, and the tension in his body suddenly faded, his strength flowing away like water. The knife fell loudly on the floor as he let himself down on his work chair, dejected.
Fire, it must be burned.
Would it work?
Whoever was the author of that picture, if there had ever been any author, must have thought otherwise, since he hadn’t destroyed it by fire or any other means. Still, he had done something, because the painting had been harmless for days, surely for years before that couple found it.
And suddenly, he knew what had to be done.
He stood up with a jump, opened a can of grout, and started brushing it furiously on the canvas with neither logic nor method, until it was completely covered by a thick white layer. Unsatisfied, he waited as long as he could before covering it once again.
There, this will do, he thought, looking at his job. He would let it dry, then hide it somewhere, so no one would find it again.
Then, before his eyes, a small bubble suddenly surfaced from the white paint, followed by another and yet another. Four in all, arranged in an irregular line, then one more under them, slightly bigger.
Understanding hit him abruptly. Not bubbles, fingertips. The small fingertips of a baby, pushing from behind the paint. And soon, they became a hand, slowly but firmly coming out of the canvas. A wrist. An arm.
Mark screamed.
And opened his eyes at once. He was in his bed, looking at the ceiling. It hadn’t happened, not for real.
He tried to gather his thoughts. He remembered finishing painting over the picture, then disposing of the remains of poor Philo and cleaning the whole house. Maybe he had eaten something before crashing. The rest had been a dream. It was over. It must have been over.
But a doubt nagged his mind: why whoever had trapped the baby the first time hadn’t done just what he had done last evening. Why hadn’t they covered the painting and hidden it forever, instead of taking the time to draw something else over it? What if it hadn’t been the paint to keep the baby in, but the picture?
He jumped out of bed, running barefoot to the study. He wasn’t done, there was more to do!
He switched the light on and froze.
In the center of the canvas, the white layer was broken by an irregular spot, shaped like a baby standing on all fours, face up. Beyond that void, there was just a dark, uniform gray background.
It was the last thing he saw, before hundreds of fangs as thin as needles pierced his throat.
Category:Beings
Category:Items/Objects