“Oh. Well, that’s good to know. Thanks for that, Percy.”
The lock clicked open, and Percy looked up with a grin. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t enjoying the danger.”
True enough, but all that changed as Percy passed quickly into the room, as Joe stumbled in after him, and as Joe’s eyes settled on the horrifying object. Percy moved deftly around him, jamming the door shut with a chair, cracking the wooden case open, getting everything ready, but Joe’s gaze was locked on. His heart rate doubled, a tingle of sweat and a punch of adrenaline screaming at him that this was the time to flee.
The painting was undoubtedly an object of evil. It wreaked evil. It seethed death and hatred and despair, and he didn’t let his eyes leave for a second as his entire body revolted. He refused even to blink.
It was down from the wall. Percy leaned it against the bedhead and took his dagger to the back of it. With the excruciating care of an art historian, combined with the smooth reflexes of a cat burglar, he set to work. Although he was intent, he called to Joe, “Are we all right?”
“I think so.” But had the mother’s head shifted ever so slightly? He studied her. No. Maybe? Had the little girl’s expression changed? It was still harrowed, heartbroken, yet now… Was that a hint of consciousness? “Can’t you go faster?”
Joe couldn’t see Percy’s face. He only heard the scraping and chipping behind the giant frame. “There’s some very shoddy work back here. I just want to be careful.”
Her hand. The little girl’s hand. Was it a little lower on her face? “We’re burning it anyway,” Joe insisted, a little more urgently. “Just rip it out.”
“It’s a work of art?—”
“Oh, fuck!” Footsteps sounded loud on the stone stairs outside. Joe’s eyes were drawn irresistibly to the shaking door handle.
“I really hope you’re watching the painting,” came a calm reminder from behind the frame.
Panicked eyes flung back to the canvas. “Sorry. Sorry, she’s…” The sheet. The sheet had fallen from the bed. The mother lay out long and still in her nightgown. “Oh shit. Percy, I think it’s the mother,” said Joe. “She’s moved. I think she’s coming.”
“Stay calm.” There was another loud snap. “Don’t take your eyes off her.”
But it made no difference where Joe looked now. Her sallow head turned slowly, slowly, unstoppably, as the dark dead eyes rolled their watery gaze onto Joe. “Percy, she’s coming.”
Percy worked faster, but just as determined, just as carefully, extricating the painting, a touch of sweat about his brow.
“Open!” came the shout from the door. Banging, shouting in Flemish, the handle being wrenched uselessly.
The woman began to rise. She made her way, if such a thing can be imagined, just like a painting. Her movements were a sort of fluid, but a sort that defied the laws of physics. Her body sat straight up in the bed, but her unseeing face that stared and flopped and sagged was pulled along behind her, relentlessly locked onto Joe, watching emptily from black slits as one utterly untenanted. As a corpse from which any soul has flown, only more wrong somehow.
Joe took an involuntary step back from the impossible thing. It was a ghost. A plain and ordinary ghost, and Joe should have been fine with that. He’d fought ghosts before. But after his possession, which had happened well before he took up with Percy, his duty and his bravery had taken a beating and what he felt more than both those things was fear. Fear that came with the knowledge of what that creature might do to him, not if it reached his body, but if it got inside.
“Percy,” he whispered.
The reply came back just as though Percy understood his every thought. “I’m here, handsome. If she gets out, we’ll take care of her.”
The pounding on the door reached the same deafening crescendo as the pounding of Joe’s pulse in his ears, but he watched the mother so intently in her foul movement that it was too late when he realised.
The little girl. She had sunk down. And down. And the moment he finally understood was the moment he saw her grim little fingers curling around the frame. Joe ripped a dagger from his belt. “Percy, it’s both of them.”
There was a loud crack as Percy broke something apart. There was a sickening flopping sound as the mother fell to the floor in the picture. He heard the echoing count to three outside the door as the guards organised themselves to kick it in. Joe tightened his damp hand on the knife. And then a hiss. A hiss escaped the painting as the little girl’s face pushed over the edge, pulled into the reality of his world, full of malevolent intent, boiling hatred, the unmistakable craving to spill blood, and all of it directed at Joe.
She dropped onto the bed.
The door banged open.
Everything went black.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOMETHING UNEXPECTED
“Give me your belt.” Percy had already unbuckled it and was pulling it free. Joe couldn’t see a thing in the dark, but Percy slid the metal buckle over the handle of what must have been the walk-in wardrobe’s door and looped the belt tightly, so tightly around a rail that the door was effectively locked.
Percy placed a protective hand on Joe’s stomach, pushing him back a little behind him, as he took a step away from the door, waiting for someone—or something—to try it.