Chapter 2 - Blood Red Canvas
I pressed my back to the cold steel of the door and took a couple of deep breaths. Trying ever so hard to steady my now frantic heartbeat. After a couple of seconds (when was convinced that I could move around without hyperventilating) I slowly got to my feet, picked up my flashlight, tossed my bag over my shoulder, and took a good long look around. The light from my flashlight cut through the darkness revealing to me the contents of the small backroom.
The right side of the room was a complete mess. Paintbrushes and tubes of paint lay scattered across the small metal shelves. Blank canvases were leaned sideways against the concrete wall while wooden easels teetered dangerously on broken legs, threatening to fall at any second. It was a neat freaks worst nightmare come to life. Thank god I wasn’t one of those people.
The right side of the room was the one that caught my attention. It was much more clean and organized than the left. There were no paintbrushes or easels or lose tubes of paint. But in there place sat at least a dozen square. They were different shapes and sizes but were each covered by a white sheet of fabric.
“God I hope these are what I think they are,” I thought to myself, as I walked up to the closest square and pulled back the sheet.
Indeed it was. Under the white fabric, inside a large black frame was one of the abstract paintings the Studio was set to show this week. Jackpot. The painting was not the one I was looking for but it was a good start and let me know I was in the right place.
So with that I began the super long process of searching each of the covered paintings. After uncovering about half a dozen I was no closer to the finishing, than I was five minutes ago.
I was just about to give up when something in the corner caught my eye. It was partially covered by a thicker white cloth then the other paintings. But someone must have not noticed that one side had fallen off and was now in view. Silently I walked towards the painting, all the while silently praying that this would be the painting I was looking for.
With one hand on my flashlight, I grabbed the edge of the sheet and pulled. The white cloth fell silently to the concrete floor and I couldn’t help but grin, as my light fell on the canvas.
I had found it. The painting I was looking for, the “Red Phoenix”. Now it was time to get to work. But it was only when I got closer to look at the piece I was about the switch, that I realized how abstract it really was. Now I’m not that much of an art buff but this painting had me down right puzzled.
Bright color brushstrokes trailed downward towards the bottom of the canvas creating two long wing-like archs of red and orange. A small circle (which I would assume was the head) sat on top of a long line that trailed down past the end of the “wings” and stopped about 5 inches before the bottom of the canvas. where it split into five lines that shot downward in all different directions.
I saw a bird, that could have been a phoenix but right now I wasn’t so sure.
“Honestly I thought that it would be better than this,” I couldn’t help but think. But then, that’s when my eyes locked on the paintings background.
Unlike the blindingly bright colors of the image on the front of the painting, the background was cooler and darker. The dark gray and blue-ish sky gave the flying “phoenix” more depth and in the distance I could see purple and dark blue colors of what looked like a streak of lightning descending from the heavens. But the thing that caught my attention most of all, was a small line of text. They were so small that you couldn’t read them and yet, these words gave me a bizarre feeling.
An eerie feeling that fluttered around in the pit of my stomach.
But, with the shake of head, I tuned it out and got to work. After quickly and quietly pulling the back off the frame, I sat the canvas on top of three paintings stacked near the wall. I reached into my bag and pulled out the blank poster paper that I had bought from Staples on the way here. Unrolling the paper, I took one more glance at the painting. Marveling at it one more time. When I felt a sharp pain move across my thumb.
Paper cut.
“Shit” I thought to myself, dropping the poster and sticking my bleeding thumb into my mouth.
Sucking my thumb, (don’t even think about making a joke about that) I crouched down to pick up the poster and was about an inch or so from the floor, when I noticed it. Sticking out from underneath the white piece of paper was a rag. It was old and wore but one thing stuck out in particular.
A dark red substance, that dotted the entire surface of the cloth.
My heart skipped another beat as I bent down further and plucked it from off the floor, pushing the poster aside.
“It's gotta be paint,” I said to myself, turning over the cloth and examined the splotches of red on the fabric. “Someone probably was wiping the paint off their fingers and dropped the cloth on the floor by accident. That's all it is. Unless.....
My eyes slowly worked it's way down to my hand. Where the a red liquid, of the same color as the one on the cloth, was trickling down the side of my thumb.
Blood.
I gave a slight shriek, and dropped the cloth onto the ground, where it landed without so much as a whisper. I really needed to get my outbursts under control.
I slowly began to back away from the cloth when the light from the moon, trickled through the windows and illuminated the concrete floor. And there, leading away from the cloth was a trail of red droplets.
Blood droplets.
My heart kick-started into machine gun mode and was (once again) furiously hammering away at my chest.
“It's probably some animal that got in,” I told myself, my voice shaky and unsure “I'm pretty sure that that is what it is.”
But in my mind I knew that the odds of that were pretty much non-existent.
Any animal that jump about a story into the air, could squeeze through a tiny opening in the window, and not make a sound had to be the smartest and most skilled animal on this planet. And sadly not many of those lived in Downtown Los Angeles.
I was trying to sort out what could have done this when a low sound echoed through the still air of the backroom.
I froze, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
It's the wind. It's just the wind!!! I practically screamed in my head.
But in that same second, I heard it again.
A sound that shook me to the core. Not the wind, but a low throaty groan, that was soon followed by a loud clang as something metallic struck the concrete floor.
I jumped, and watched as a small can of paint roll out from underneath a nearby shelf and came to rest at the the tip of my foot.
“Don't do it!!” the voice in my head said. “Finish the job and get out of here".
But even as my inner self practically screamed at me to get out of this room, my body did the opposite. My feet, seeming to move with a mind of their own, followed the crimson droplets that glistened in the dim light.
The trail took me to the far side of the room, where canvases, paints, and other types of art supplies lay scattered clumsily across the floor. This portion of the room was close to pitch black and it was only the clouds pulled away from the moon, and it's light shined brighting through the skyline did he appear to me.
He was sitting on the concrete floor, his back propped up against a fabric canvas. He had to be no more than seventeen years old, but the moonlight streaming in through the skylight hardened them making him appear much older.
His hands lay at his sides and his head tilted back, giving his long hair a silvery glow. Shadows were cast onto the lids of his closed eyes giving him the appearance of a statue, just cut from a slab of marble. It would have been a beautiful picture for a photographer to take except for something that made my breath catch in my throat.
Smeared across the once white canvas was a streak of red. Not paint but blood.
The same blood that had stained the tattered rag I had picked up.
The same blood that had formed the red droplets on the concrete at my feet.
The same blood that was now dripping from the chest of the moonlit boy.
