The Painted Darkness Read Free

enough. He was tucked under his warm blankets, feeling like a freshly toasted marshmallow, staring at the glowing green stars his father had stuck on the ceiling years ago—and he was trying his hardest to go back to sleep and pretend he didn’t have to pee so badly his belly burned.
    Eventually, though, Henry knew there was no way he was going to sleep. He crawled out from under the covers, shivered as his bare feet settled on the hardwood floor, and he scurried off to the bathroom. He was finished and debating whether to flush, which might wake his parents, or not to flush, which might get him scolded in the morning, when he realized there was frost on the window above the toilet. He closed the lid without flushing and climbed up for a better look. There were thick ice particles on the glass and snow was clinging to the trees in the backyard. The lawn was buried under a blanket of white powder.
    “Mom! Dad! It snowed!” Henry cried, jumping off the toilet and running to the hallway. He pushed open his parents’ bedroom door and scampered into their room, leaping onto the bed between them.
    “What’s wrong?” his father mumbled, rolling over, blinking his eyes open in the darkness. His mother covered her head with a pillow and muttered something.
    “It snowed, Dad, it snowed!” Henry cried.
“Are you sure you didn’t imagine the snow?” his father asked, checking the clock on the nightstand. It wasn’t much past six.
“No, Dad, it’s real this time, I swear!”
“Okay, okay, go get dressed and we’ll check it out together,” his father replied, rubbing his eyes.
Henry didn’t wait a moment to run back to his room and start digging through the closet for his snow pants. He tossed everything else over his shoulder, creating a lopsided pile of discarded clothing and toys in the middle of the floor.
As far as Henry the Child was concerned, today was going to be the best day of his life. Maybe the best day ever.
THE PRESENT (2)
The Monster and the Princess
S

tart at the beginning, and the rest will
take care of itself.
    Henry understands these words are true—they’ve never led him astray—but right now all he can do is stare at the huge oak tree outside his window. The view reminds him of a tree he once discovered in the woods behind his childhood home. There was something unusual about that particular tree, but his memory is faded and he doesn’t try to delve into the thoughts. Some topics, he suspects, are better left buried.
    Henry loves the home he and Sarah bought last summer, using their life’s savings as the down payment, but he now understands how truly isolated it is. The former farm borders a state park on three sides and there’s forest for as far as the eye can see. Dozens of streams and ponds are within a mile of the main house, too. This is the perfect place to raise a little boy; that was Henry’s first thought when he and Sarah visited with the real estate agent last summer. A little boy and maybe even a man with a lot of little boy left inside of him—a description Sarah has lovingly tossed at Henry from time to time when he’s lost deep in thought.
    Henry touches the silver crucifix hanging around his neck and he watches the tree twist in the wind. Under the window is the painting he worked on yesterday, but he has placed the finished canvas against the wall so the image faces away from him. There are a dozen paintings in a row like this one, turned so they can’t be seen—and although Henry can’t remember the subject matter of most of them, he doesn’t need to see yesterday’s artwork to remember it.
    There is a lot of red and gray and black flowing across the front of the canvas. The scene is set in an ancient dungeon, and not the type you’d find in any fairy tale. The rough stone walls are damp with blood. The dirt floor is littered with the bloody remains of hundreds of dead rats.
    In the middle of the canvas, he painted a princess wearing a tattered gown standing