He’d have to venture into the dark alone. And for the first time, he didn’t feel scared. He was far too focused for that.
It took some effort to move the barricade from before the bedroom door. There was no point trying to be quiet because nothing was waking Edward. Not the screech of the desk as William pushed it out of the way, nor the creak of the door’s hinges as he opened it and crept out onto the landing.
He didn’t plan to be out of the bedroom for long. At least this time, William was in control, not lost in another bout of sleepwalking.
Hanbury was strangely quiet. Beside the natural creak of floorboards beneath William’s feet or the whistling of late autumn winds beyond single-paned windows, there was nothing untoward to note.
The manor was holding its breath, waiting for William to find the next piece of the heartbreaking puzzle.
There wasn’t much thought of ghosts as he made his way to the drawing room on the ground floor. His phone’s torch swept a path through the shadowed corridor, carving a safe passage to his destination. When he reached the front room, his heartbeat was in his ears, his mouth dry and sour.
He knew what he was looking for. Robert Thomas’s portrait, the same one he’d seen on his first day. Framed in a dramatic gilded formation of wood, gold-leaf flaking off in areas, there sat Robert himself. Piercing blue eyes, the colour so vibrant it looked as though it had been painted yesterday. The dead man’s eyes cut holes through William. Robert looked, for all intents and purposes, happy. Someone not effected by the burden of loving someone – man or not. Youth smoothed his skin, his honey-gold hair swept back, hands clasping a book and a paintbrush.
It perfectly captured the young man that William was getting to know.
The portrait’s eyes followed him the closer he gained to it. Never leaving him, never straying for a moment.
“I’m sorry, Robert.” William found himself saying aloud, not even bothering to whisper. But what was he sorry for? Sorry about how he would lose that happiness, how love would kill him? Sorry for disturbing his home – his story. But most of all, for taking him off the wall.
William hoisted the painting, aware of the itch of dust beneath his fingers and the string of cobwebs as the frame was pulled from the wall. Carefully, he lowered it to the floor before propping it against the wall. Using the leverage, he began looking around the frame for any sign of tampering. If this were the hiding spot for their journals, the place where Robert and Teddy exchanged secrets, then it would’ve been a place where the face of the painting was uninterrupted.
Maybe his hunch had been wrong.
Maybe not.
“Ah ha,” William said, noticing a few of the nails keeping the portrait to the frame’s backing had snapped away. He fingered his way into a slight crack, pulled and flashed his torchlight inside. “You sneaky devils.”
There it was, waiting for years to be found: a book – not just any book, but a journal similar to the one on the bedside table in the room directly above him.
A thrill coursed through William, dusting away any sign of tiredness. Although victim to a nasty bout of mould from its time within the portrait’s frame, the journal was in surprisingly readable condition. Some of the pages had crisped, the spine slightly swollen from moisture, but besides that, it had survived the test of being forgotten to time.
And William couldn’t wait to open it and discover all the missing pieces to their tragic love story. As he lifted the front cover, a creaking sound started above him. He looked up, shining the torch to the ceiling, to find a subtle cloud of dust falling like snow above him. The chandelier, missing some crystal droplets, swung as though disturbed. His bedroom was above this – perhaps Edward had awoken to find the bed empty. William could imagine the panic that would’ve caused Edward, so before the shouting began, he needed to get back to him.
William was in his right mind to call out and tell Edward that he was fine, that this time at least he’d not sleepwalked. But as he inhaled the dust-coated air to say something, a loud bang sounded from behind him.
The blood cooled in his veins. A violent sensation of ice crept from his skull down to his bare feet, freezing him to the spot. Because the sound – the bang – had come from the drawing room he’d just left.
The floorboards no longer creaked above him. There was no more noise to suggest Edward was even awake. Besides William, there was another entity who couldn’t sleep.
Hanbury Manor yawned like a waking demon.
Clutching Teddy’s journal to his chest, he cast the torch light out before him like a sword, as he stepped back into view of the drawing room. Peaking inside, nothing seemed amiss besides Robert’s portrait.
It wasn’t where he’d left it, leaning against the wall. Honestly, William didn’t even think about re-hanging it, not as his mind was pinned on the journal and the belief that Edward had woken up. And he regretted it instantly. The portrait, painting facing the floor, was laid across the floor.
The one thing he didn’t want to do was offend Robert’s memory by showing carelessness to his painting.
Freeing his hand, William pocketed his phone enough to leave the torch poking out of it. He laid the journal on the cupboard beside the door, then walked towards the portrait. Rushing, he knelt to pick it up. As his palm brushed the frame, it moved. But not becausehemoved it. The suddenness had William scrambling back as the frame continued to shudder, shifting on the floor like some great creature had been crushed beneath it in the fall and longed to get free.
The portrait jolted. Wood clattered loudly against the floor, splintering beneath the force. His torch swept from side to side as he crawled backwards, putting space between the portrait, him and whatever was beneath it.
Hands. Pale hands with skin as grey as storm clouds reached from beneath the frame. Nails crawled at the floor, gouging through the wood, leaving track marks. The sound was terrible. Long, drawn-out screeches as the blackened nails dug closer and closer, dragging the portrait with them.
William couldn’t even scream, let alone move anymore. His body betrayed him, and his mind was completely fixated on the impossibility before him. A scream clogged his throat, choking him as the hands beneath the frame began to push up. With it, the frame lifted enough to glimpse the painting beneath.
Robert Thomas still took up the canvas, but not in the sense he had before. His blue eyes were now pale like milk, rimmed by shadows of black. But what turned William’s stomach sour was Robert’s neck. It was tilted unnaturally to the side, the gleam of bone protruding through rotten flesh. And his hands – no longer holding the book or the paint brush, reached out from the painting.
Blunt nails clawed through the canvas, chipping away at the wood frame as it grappled for purchase.
