The Magic Painting

Her hand felt cold against his face. "Sarah? Are you all right?" Troy had never before seen his wife faint, and he knew she wasn't sickly, but nevertheless, the scene shocked him, and concern furrowed his face.

Sarah grumbled and began to come to, Troy easing her into a sitting position, and holding her back to prevent another blow to her head, should she fall backward again. "What happened?"

Troy, ever the physician, searched one eye, then the other, looking for signs of concussion. "I'm not sure. As I walked in, you passed out. I came in just in time to see you hit your head. Have you felt ill today?"

"No, not at all," she answered, rubbing a swiftly rising lump on the back of her head. Sarah gazed down at herself to find she was wearing a flour-coated apron. "I was baking a pie," she muttered.

"It looks that way."

She crossed to the sink, trying to remember what happened. Until she did, Troy wouldn't leave her side. He would perch himself on a kitchen chair and fuss and fret over her until bedtime if she let him. Sarah, an independent woman, and one who liked to look after her husband, didn't want him sitting in the kitchen all evening, complaining about how she should go to the doctor. "I was over here, and I washed the dough off my hands."

"And you must've gotten the crust into the oven," he noticed, not seeing a dish on the counter.

As he spoke, another spark of recognition returned and Sarah nodded. "Yes, that's right. I put the crust in the oven and turned around." She acted out the movement as she spoke, and again Troy saw her face drain of all color.

He leapt to his feet and stopped at her side. "What is it?"

Sarah raised a finger and pointed to the painting above the kitchen table.

Troy had purchased the item at an auction nearly five years ago. It reminded him of the dream house he wanted after retirement - a little cabin nestled deep in the woods, surrounded by the sweet scent of pine, where Troy could while away hours upon hours fishing or hunting. However, he knew his wife, and the painting would be about the closest she'd allow him to get to his dream home, so he'd snatched it up for the bargain basement price of $100.00.

Now, as he gazed at it, he understood what had turned his wife so pale. The painting of the cabin no longer hung on his wall. In its place, a two-story tan home decorated the wall, and it looked remarkably similar to their own. "Where did you put my painting?"

"I didn't touch it," Sarah stammered.

"What do you mean you didn't touch it? I doubt it sprouted legs and wandered off on its own."

"Well, Troy, that wouldn't be all that much more bizarre than what happened."

"All right, Sarah. By all means, tell me what happened to it."

"That's it, Troy. Look at the frame. It's the same cheap wooden frame that you bought for it. I don't know what happened to it. I don't know how it changed, but it did. And it changed right before my very eyes, and that's when I must've fainted."

His brow furrowed again and he crossed to her, touching her forehead with the back of his hand. Sarah felt slightly clammy, but it wasn't anything to get excited over, and she didn't think so either, from the way she swatted him away and called him a nuisance. "Naturally I'd think you're ill, Sarah. Paintings don't just change. It's not possible."

She planted her balled up fists on her hips and turned to face him. "I'm not insane, Troy. I'm not even elderly, so my brain is fine. Don't condescend to me. You're seeing it, too. I'm telling you. It changed."

In all their thirty-three years of marriage, Sarah had never once lied to him. He had no reason to disbelieve her when she swore she didn't exchange the painting for another. "All right, I'm sorry," he said. He waited for her features to soften again before asking, "Why do you think it changed?"

Sarah shrugged. "How should I know? Maybe it got tired of being a picture of a cabin in the woods?"

"Pictures don't just change their minds."

"You see that it's different."

"But it's an inanimate object. It can't just decide that it wants to change and do so," he argued.

"What do you suggest then?"

He pondered her question for a moment. "I suggest you shut off the stove and we go out to dinner tonight. It's really eerie."

Before he'd finished speaking, Sarah had her apron untied and balled up on top of the messy flour left on the counter. "Amen to that. I'll take care of this mess when we get home."

Throughout dinner, Sarah and Troy made small talk about the weather, a couple of his current patients that he kept in anonymity, and whether or not June, their neighbor, had gotten her begonias to respond to her care and grow yet. And the entire time, their thoughts were dwelling on the painting hanging in their own kitchen.

Neither mentioned it; both hoped it was a figment of shared imagination. After dinner, they drove home quietly, each wondering what they might find.

Troy unlocked the door and feigned a yawn, announcing he was going up to bed. Sarah, eager to reassure herself that she wasn't seeing anything, barely acknowledged him and made a beeline for the kitchen, where she stood and stared at the painting that depicted their home. It had changed again, now reflecting the nightfall that happened while they were out.

She stared for a few moments, a chill shuddering down her body, and then daringly, took a step forward, then another. She gazed at the picture as if admiring the brushstrokes of Pablo Picasso.

She couldn't figure it out anymore than Troy could. Common sense told her that a painting doesn't just change, but her husband had seen it was different, too, so she knew she wasn't hallucinating. Sarah sighed and took a step back, and as she did, something else happened.

A silhouette crossed one of the lit windows in the upstairs bedroom. "How odd." It occurred to her that it quite possibly was their own home, and counted the windows. The master bedroom was where she'd seen the silhouette. "Troy?" she whispered.

"What?"

Sarah jumped. "Gracious! How'd you get down here so fast?"

"I haven't gone up yet. I was worried you might faint again, and stayed."

She stared at her husband dumbly. "You haven't gone up yet?"

"Sarah, what's wrong now?" He purposely diverted his eyes from the painting, not wanting anything further to do with the thing. It was obviously not the best purchase he'd ever made, and he planned to burn it in the morning.

Her eyes still riveted on the picture, she saw the shadow pass the window again. "Troy, call the police."

"What? Are you insane?"

"Shhh! There's someone in the house."

Only then did he look up at the painting again, and took in the night sky illuminated with stars. "Changed it's mind again, did it?"

"I can't explain it, Troy, and I won't attempt to. But, this is our home. It changed because the sun went down, and that's our bedroom, and the lamp is on, and there's-See? There he was again!"

"There who was?"

"Watch. There's someone upstairs."

At that moment, the dim light in the painted window went off. A second later, the floorboards above their head creaked.

Troy's face paled and he repeated his wife's words in his head. "Sarah, go out the back door."

"What about you?"

Troy grabbed their cordless phone off the counter. "I'm right behind you."

Outside, they huddled in the shadow beneath their elm tree, hidden by the massive trunk. Troy dialed 911, and in a whispered tone, informed the operator of an intruder in their home. He explained where they were, and told the woman they were not in the home, and would stay safely out of it until the police told them it was safe. She advised them to move as far away from the house as possible, preferably to the front, if they could get there without being detected.

They managed to creep around the side of the house to the front yard, where they crossed the street and stood in June's yard hidden by shrubbery. The guest bedroom light was on, and then clicked off, and the next to turn on was his office.

Within minutes, police arrived and stopped outside the front of their home, practically pulling up onto the grass. Two officers jumped out and ducked behind their open car doors, both with their guns trained on the entrance of the house. A second squad car pulled up beside them, performing the same actions.

Troy stood slightly and hollered to one. "We're the owners. We're safe."

At that news, one of the officers made several hand gestures to the others and they rushed forward, stopping on either side of the front door. After a moment, one kicked in the door and they ran in.

From the bushes across the street, Sarah and Troy couldn't see anything. They heard voices yelling, followed by two gunshots. A few minutes passed and the officer that gave the gestures strolled out of the house and crossed the street.

He stopped on the other side of the bushes and told them, "Detective Tieggs," he said, introducing himself. "It's safe now. We've called the Coroner to remove the body."

"You killed him in my house?" Sarah asked, staring at her home.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am. He had a gun, and refused to put it down. Near as we can tell, he's the escaped convict we've been looking for, Lucien Wells. Killed a whole family across town about six months ago. You're lucky to be alive."

"What was he doing in our house?"

The officer shrugged. "I don't know. He said he was looking for a picture of some sort, that then he'd be on his way."

Sarah gawked at Troy. "The painting?"

"He said it would prove his innocence," the cop explained. "I told him there were better ways to go about that, and he said he'd sooner die, and raised a gun, so we had to fire."

Hours later, when the police had left and the burglar's body had been removed, Sarah again stood gazing at the painting. It had returned to its original depiction - the cabin in the woods. "Do you think this was what he was after?"

"I wish you would've let me take you to a motel tonight."

"This is my home and I won't be driven out." She took a step closer to the painting and gasped at what her eyes fell upon. "Look, Troy!"

He stepped next to her and his mouth dropped at what he saw. There, the artist's signature read Lucien Wells.

"I'm not sure what happened tonight," Troy said, "but it certainly seems that this painting is both blessed and cursed."

He put his arm around his wife's shoulders and led her upstairs to get some well-needed sleep. And as they turned their backs, the painting miraculously came to life again, this time playing the scene of what happened to Lucien Wells. For he had been right in that the painting would prove his innocence to those who saw the scene.

Replayed, like a tape recorder, at the exact moment of the deaths of the family across town, it depicted not a cruel and heartless man named Lucien Wells that brutally murdered a family in cold blood, but of a burglar who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when one Officer Elton Tieggs suffered a mental break and murdered his own family.