The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The People in the Painted House
by Sue Renol

The painting had been on my grandmother’s living room wall since before I was born. I’d even seen it in the background of pictures of my parents when they were little. It was old, definitely older than Grandma, and it always creeped me out.

I felt as if there was someone in that house, maybe watching me from the window. Every time I felt a chill up my spine I’d turn and look at the painting, making sure there was no silhouette peering out from within.

I asked Grandma once where she got it. She said it was given to her by her parents, but she couldn’t remember where they got it. It just seemed to always be there, never moved from where it was originally hung. I once tilted it to the side to see if anything was behind it. All I found was a stark-white patch of wall unstained by decades of cigarette smoke.

Every time I spent the night at Grandma’s as a kid I had trouble sleeping because of that painting. She had a couch with a pull-out bed, so that’s where I’d be for the night. The lights in the old house seemed to glow, as if the lamps within were real. Sometimes I could hear the wind blow right inside the frame, not from outdoors. And sometimes, I swore there would be someone in one of the windows. Every time I saw them I’d pull the blanket over my head and pray they went away.

It wasn’t until I was a little older that I stopped fearing the picture and became more comfortable with it. It stopped bothering me on holidays and summer visits. Eventually I came to ignore it. It blended in with familiarity as it had been there so long, still unmoved.

But when Grandma passed away, I began to see not one person in the window, but two. My parents inherited her house, and rather than sell it, we moved in. The people in the painted house watched me often at night. Over time I grew to accept them, it became normal, and eventually I found their presence comforting.

Now, as an adult, that painting remains unmoved. I decided to leave it when my parents passed and left me the house, as I was now the fourth generation to live beneath its image. Now when I stared at the painting, there were three people staring back.

Sad that I never had any children of my own, I wondered if I’d be the last to join my family in the painted house.

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Fiction © Copyright Sue Renol
Image courtesy of Pixabay