Haunted Secrets: Tales of Leo Moreland Vol. 3

In the Picture

Quentin Musgrave was being watched.

He didn’t like it.

The gallery was empty, at least officially. Quentin’s business partner, Victor Chambliss, was off somewhere arranging one of his deals. Quentin had had a good day, selling five paintings. One had been a fairly undistinguished, kitschy portrait of a little girl playing with a kitten. It was amazing how much demand there was for such trash.

The other four sales were very different.

Quentin took another look at the painting that had fetched the highest price today. It was, like the other three big hitters, the work of the late Tony Calvert. The painter specialized in landscapes and coastal views. He was a local hero in a way, one of the few New Hampshire artists to achieve a national reputation. There had even been interest from Europe, China, and the Middle East.

Not that the guy was a van Gogh or a Renoir by any means. Nobody would mistake Calvert’s watercolor technique for innovation or genius. But his work epitomized the kind of art that kept small local galleries in business. Calvert’s oeuvre was popular, relatable, and competently done.

Quentin looked more closely at the painting. It showed an old lighthouse on a cliff above a pebbly beach. You could almost feel the wind, thanks to the rendition of the waves breaking on the shore. Quentin imagined the roar of the surf. The cry of gulls. Perhaps the distant sound of a person screaming…

No, that was absurd. Why would anyone be screaming? It was a nice picture.

“For Pete’s sake,” he muttered. “Why do you have to be so unreasonable about this?”

Then, he noticed something else. A small, vertical blur in the shadows under the cliff. It was a detail Quentin did not recall seeing before. Frowning, he took out a small magnifier and leaned closer to the painting. Now, he could see the streak of paint more clearly, and it looked like a human figure. There was just the suggestion of a head, shoulders, and perhaps an arm flung out to one side. Or held up, waving.

“Huh. Odd.”

Calvert seldom included figures in his paintings. Part of their appeal, Quentin had always thought, was that they gave the viewer the feeling that they were alone in an idyllic forest, up a mountain, or in this case, on a deserted stretch of coast. But the figure was so unobtrusive that it didn’t make any real difference. The buyer of the painting might have already noticed it and liked it, or would discover it in the future, no doubt to their delight. It was like those easter egg things some people on the internet seemed obsessed with finding in movies.

Quentin put away the magnifier and decided to lock up for the night. The gallery was closing in a few minutes, anyway. But then, as he turned away from the picture, he again felt the uncomfortable sensation of being watched. He knew who it was and hated it. But there was little he could reasonably do.

He knew what he was getting into, Quentin thought.

Determined to ignore the unseen presence, he went through the usual routine of checking the back entrance and the windows and switching off the lights. A second after he plunged the gallery into gloom, Quentin thought he saw a shadow move in the area near the Calvert painting.

No way! No way can he get out!

For the first time, Quentin felt actual panic. He fumbled with the alarm settings by the main door and got the PIN wrong. As he tried again, he felt the temperature plummet. The short hairs rose on the back of his neck. Then a voice whispered in his ear.

“Set me free!”

“No!” Quentin stammered. “We had a deal!”

The unseen speaker spat out a torrent of abuse. Then, as Quentin bungled the alarm code again, he felt a chill embracing his throat. Icy fingers clutched at his flesh as he struggled vainly to resist. His hands grasped nothing, but his assailant felt all too substantial.

“No!” he managed to gasp. “No, please…”

A face formed in front of him just as he began to lose consciousness. It was the face of an old man, framed with unruly white hair and a beard. The face had laugh lines, but it wasn’t laughing now. It was contorted with anger and despair as the cold hands squeezed tighter. Quentin fell against the wall and started to slide down it. He felt his butt connect with the wooden floor just before he blacked out.