By Ali Diamond
Should I tap her on the shoulder? I grasped the bag of Chick-Fil-A tightly, as it started to grow uncomfortably humid under my firm grip. The air inside the enormous gazebo was stifling, and my throat felt like chalk as I tried to swallow. Pulling my collar from my neck, I felt a drop of sweat roll down my back.
But it didn’t seem to bother the woman standing in front of the easel.
“Uh, ma’am?” I asked quietly. “Is this your Doordash order?”
No response. People swarmed around me; professors with books, students rushing to their next class, and I kept shifting from one foot to the other, trying to avoid the crush. A flicker of annoyance rushed through me.
“Ma’am!”
She started suddenly, and with a clatter her paintbrush dropped, as if she’d just noticed I was here.
Holding the bag out like it was a mud-covered piglet, I tried again. “Ma’am, is this your order..”
“Yes, that’s mine.” She answered, distractedly, turning to take it from me.
Her long brown hair fell over her shoulder, dragging splotches of red paint across the front of her overalls. God, she was covered in it. Flecks of black, white, orange, red, gray… Her face especially. It looked as if she’d been rubbing her face or something, leaving behind big red stripes. But I held still, as a sudden flash of recognition streaked through me.
“Wait, Kate Richards?” I paused. “Not… that same Kate Richards who did that painting?”
Her eyes jumped up to mine, her tired gaze holding me. Then she smiled briefly, her eyes still cold and sad, before turning back to that swirl of color.
***
“I’m telling you dude, she looked terrible. I almost didn’t recognize her.”
My friend Thomas snorted, loudly. An impressive feat, considering how much pizza he had stuffed into his mouth. We’d met up a few hours later, after Thomas had finished his classes and I completed my Doordash deliveries for the day. “How terrible?” He asked after noisily swallowing, and I watched as he reached for another pepperoni slice.
“Gaunt. Starved.” I said, snagging my own.
“Good.” Thomas spat out, with venom. My face must’ve looked shocked, as he suddenly looked surprisingly admonished. “I mean.” He continued, somewhat sheepishly. “I hated what she did with that painting.”
I bit deep into my slice. “Agreed,” I said wincing, as grease burned the roof of my mouth.
Tulane Art University is well-known for three things. One: its sequestered campus, located a few hours south of Fayetteville, West Virginia and deep into the wilderness that surrounds the New River Gorge National Park. Two: it’s nationally-recognized art program, infamous for producing landscape surrealists like Rubio Manuel, and three: a year ago, the University suffered an enormous scandal when a sophomore, by the name of Kate Richards, debuted an original painting during the annual end-of-the-year gallery presentation which depicted the “destruction of Unetlanvhi,” as she called it.
With Tulane Art University, or TAU, located within ancestral Cherokee territory, the uproar was understandable. After it was discovered that she mixed black bear fur into the thick ridges of paint, the outrage became visceral.
Of course, it didn’t help that she’d debuted her painting almost exactly a year after the terrible accident that happened within one of her family’s logging companies. People had been killed, and the fire that broke out ended up destroying several hundred acres of old-growth forest south of the University. The fire also revealed that this family-owned company had been illegally logging in protected parts of the forest for years, leading to a call for charges against her family.
The patriarch of the family disappeared almost immediately, leaving Kate’s older brother to take the heat. Which ultimately didn’t help much, as Kate’s brother disappeared soon after.
After all that, Kate’s painting ended up selling for millions of dollars. Because, of course it did.
***
“You know, she’s working on another one.”
“I heard.” Thomas said, perturbed. “Apparently she’s been working on it since the last one.”
That swirl of colors flashed frantically through my mind. My hands twitched, itching, as if my hands were streaked with drying red paint.
I took a second and waited for the sudden nausea to pass. “Well, from the looks of it, I’d say she’s almost done.”
***
I was walking home from my studio, where I’d spent the morning frantically working, when Thomas suddenly appeared and yanked my headphones out.
“Jesus, where did you come from?” I gasped, knocked off balance. My end-of-the-year project was precariously perched in the crook of my elbow. I’d decided on doing a sculpture, but it was still largely (unfortunately) unfinished. I shot Thomas a pissed look. He didn’t notice.
His eyes were wild. “Dude.” He said. “You gotta come see this.”
“See what?” I asked, but Thomas was already tugging me along. He wasn’t the only one too. There was a stream of people pushing past us, pouring in from all parts of campus, with some even craning their necks to peer above the growing crowd. A small trickle of fear raced down my back. “What’s going on?”
Thomas paused. “Somebody posted it on Tiktok. Said they found it this morning.”
“Found what?!” I tried to pull my arm from Thomas’s grip. “Dude, is it a dead body?”
“Not a dead body.” Thomas huffed, out of breath.
“Then what…” I started to ask, as we suddenly came to a stop.
The crowd surged around us, becoming a living wall of people. What seemed like the entire student body pressed in, extending around and circling up the entirety of the sunken amphitheater, which served as the most central point on campus.
I turned. Thomas was standing on a nearby bench. Heart pounding, I pushed my way through the crowd and joined him.
There was police tape ringing the gazebo that sat in the center of the ampitheater.
Normally, the enormous gazebo was bustling with students; as it was a popular spot to meet up, eat lunch, or finish their class projects. Not today though. Because between sometime late last night and early this morning, somebody had covered the gazebo with flowers.
“Who do you think did this?” I gasped, my brain reeling to take it in.
“I don’t know.” Thomas said, laughing. “Probably some performance artist shit.”
Performance artist shit? I nodded, but something in my gut shifted uneasily.
The gazebo was drowning in flowers. Pink, blue, white, orange, yellow bunches pinwheeled across the front, down the sides, over the top, before bleeding out onto the sidewalk around it. Not a single inch of the white, wooden lattice-work could be seen underneath.
I scanned the crowd, amidst the courtyard’s hullabaloo, looking for that tell-tale smug face. Someone gloating at their heist, proud of what they’d accomplished. Someone capable of pulling something like this off. When suddenly, I spotted her.
Kate Richards. Standing at the edge of the asphalt path. But she looked horrified.
Even the asphalt path hadn’t been spared, during the onslaught of decorations. Deep red flowers crowded the path; a scarlet arrow, pointing towards the nearest exit. She was hovering at the edge of it, as if afraid this red would bleed onto her.
Bewildered, I watched as she turned on her heel and ran away.
***
It’d been almost a month, and still no one had confessed to the stunt.
It’d been funny at first, an ongoing practical joke. But the longer we went without an admission of guilt, or a dramatic reveal, the more surreal it became.
Especially, as one whispered rumor claimed, that when the security guards went to remove the flowers, it was discovered that they seemed to be growing from the wood itself. I asked Thomas, but all he did was tease me. Whatever the reason was though, the flowers were still up.
They’d doubled the police tape though.
***
It was a little after 11 by the time I was finally leaving the studio
My hands trembled from exhaustion, as I locked the double doors behind me. With the end-of-the-year presentation looming early next week, I’d been leaving later and later these past few days.
But tonight, I’d finally finished. Hallelujah.
Tucking my hands back into my gloves, my quilted Carhartt gloves stalwart soldiers against this week’s icy temps, I started to head back to my apartment. My apartment, of course, was on the other end of campus, as far away as possible from my studio. There was a path I usually took, which ran straight through campus. While it was convenient; that meant that it went straight past the sunken courtyard. Around the gazebo.
During the day, the flower-covered gazebo didn’t bother me. At practically midnight though, that was a different story. I hesitated, feeling my breath catch in my throat. And there it was.
I shivered, as an icy tendril snaked under my scarf.
It squatted, like a bloated toad, at the bottom of the amphitheater. Another gust of wind sliced through me and I shivered, pulling my jacket tighter. It howled past me, a thousand icy needles pricking any exposed skin, before racing downward into the sunken bowl. The gazebo’s flowers fluttered like crazy in the wind, and…
Wait. All thoughts drained from my head. What’s that? I squinted against the numbing cold.
My heart stopped.
There was a light inside the gazebo.
The prankster? I whipped my head around, looking for any evidence of another living soul, but it was too dark to tell. Back for more? I reached into my pocket for my phone to… I don’t know, take a picture, or text Thomas or post something when…
Another gust of wind rushed past.
With the faint sounds of someone crying.
Oh. My hands went cold. Cold like the wind. It howled around me, with an otherworldly echo, reverberating in the sunken pit. A doomed chorus of souls, singing their final song. I couldn’t leave. Not now.
The stairs. Where are the stairs? Oh, there they are.
***
The sobbing stopped as soon as I reached the gazebo.
I stopped too, trying to listen. But the only thing that answered me was the wind, and my own heartbeat pulsing in my ears. Hands shaking, I slipped the gloves off my sweaty hands and shoved them inside my jacket pocket. There was a full moon tonight, like a spotlight in the sky, illuminating everything in front of me. The flowers, especially. I watched for a moment, chest heaving, as the wind rolled over them like a wave. The sterile white light was washing them out, turning them into a silvery sheet. The hanging vines swung wildly in the wind, to and fro, pulling aside for brief moments.
A glimpse inside. The light I’d seen… It was candles. I leaned in as the vines swung again. There, again! I could see…
Kate.
With one eye pressed against the gap.
My blood went cold. My heart stopped. But before I could move a muscle, Kate suddenly reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me inside the gazebo. Falling from my arms, my sculpture shattered on the ground outside.
“Jesus Christ, Kate!” I sputtered. “What are you doing-”
“It’s not safe.”
My heart slammed into my chest. I tripped and fell to the floor. She was inches from my face. I scooted backwards, my fingernails scrabbling for purchase, when my right hand suddenly flared in pain. I pulled it to my chest, wincing. I’d put my hand directly on a candle. Gosh, they were everywhere.
“Kate, what the fuck-”
“Why are you here? Why? I thought you were-” She stalked around me, her shadow wildly flickering against the walls.
I struggled to breathe, my vision going white at the edges. Jesus, she was soaked in red paint. Her overalls were streaked with splotches of white and gray, crusting over that awful crimson.
“Thought I was who?!” God, my hand was burning. “Who’d you think I was?”
She stopped pacing, looking at me. Her eyes were sunken horribly into her skull. “The Yunwi Tsunsdi'.”
“The Youuu.. who?”
She suddenly laughed, the loud noise bouncing sharply off the walls. I jumped. She was gesturing wildly. “The Yunwi Tsunsdi.’”
Took me a second, but then I realized what she was doing. She was pointing at the flowers.
I felt the color drain from my face. I looked up. The underside of the gazebo was thrown into sharp relief, with flickering shadows crawling across the walls. “Wait, you’re telling me-”
But Kate wasn’t listening. With her head in her hands, she was pacing in front of her painting. As she walked back and forth, the candles flickered in her wake. Black smoke wafted, twisting around her painting. Her painting. I felt my eyes widen. I could’ve sworn it was… smaller the last time I’d seen it. It sat heavy on the ground, no easel to be seen, and filling nearly the entire back wall.
And it was done.
It was… magnificent. Say what you will about Kate; and by extension, her awful family, but Christ almighty she can paint. Huge swirls of layered vermillion and burgundy and crimson buffeted across the painting. Like pools of blood, they splashed and dripped onto a thick stream of color underneath. Then, shooting upwards from that technicolor wave were thick ridges of onyx, piercing almost painfully into those crimson clouds. And there, in the dead center, was a shadowed figure. Practically a stick figure, amidst all that red and black.
I had to force myself to turn away. “Kate.”
But she isn’t listening. She's muttering something.
“Kate.”
I watch as her actions grow more frantic. She wrapped her arms around herself, clutching herself tightly.
“Not safe.” She was whispering. “Not safe.”
I stumble upwards. My legs groan in response, a horrible heaviness settling in deep. It was as if all the thick, black smoke was molasses, weighing down my stiff limbs. It pooled around my feet, waves left in my wake as I reached out for Kate. God I could… barely see her. She was like that stick figure, the one in the center of her painting, barely visible amidst all that black.
I swallowed hard, as nausea curled in my stomach. I squinted, fighting against a growing, pounding headache. “Kate, what’s going on? Why aren’t we safe?”
Even in the dim, I could see her expression twist horribly. “Because it’s coming.”
My stomach heaved. “What’s coming?”
Her eyes glittered in the candlelight. “The skinned bear that lives in these woods.”
***
In the deep, where the trees are tall and old, there lives the spectral bear. Born from a piece of the Moon’s fallen soul, its hide as pale as bones, bleached from the sun. So big, and so great; that with one glance upon this creature, all the other bears fled. The birds fled too. And the squirrels, the ants, and even the wind and the tides. This gift, embodiment of the heavenly skies, and all of Earth’s Life was too afraid of this great, white being.
So the Earth sent Death to keep it company instead.
It is said that it walks besides Death, stepping between light and dark, where the hooded devil cannot easily reach. Fetching for it damned souls, their names marked with fresh ink on ancient, decaying scrolls. The woods whisper its name, the wind carrying the scent of charred wood and rot. In its wake, the forest breathes a mournful dirge, a reminder that some spirits guard the Earth with teeth and claws.
***
Through my pounding headache, I heard something chime softly in the distance.
Kate’s head snaps up, intently listening. Then, she looks over at me, a stricken expression on her face. “You have to hide.”
What? I try to say. But I can’t. My brain is roaring. GET UP. That horrible heaviness is bone-deep now, as if my veins had filled with lead. THE SMOKE. My brain weeps. IT’S DOING SOMETHING TO YOU. But as I squinted in the dim, my eyes searching for the door, I felt my knees start to collapse. My consciousness is disintegrating, like rice paper in water.
I can't fight back as Kate drags me to her painting. I sluggishly cry, fighting weakly in her grip. It looms closer, the colors leaping out at me. Kate shoves me, as if to push me behind it, and I reach out to steady myself. “Get down.” She hisses and shoves me again, forcing me behind the enormous canvas. I reach back, to help her down too, but she easily pulls her arm from my grip. She’s shaking her head.
“But… why?” I’m blinking, trying to focus on her. My vision is fading in and out, swirling and pulsing in time with those colors.
“Because it was me.” She sobs. “I set the fire.”
The abyss roars up, tendrils wrapping tightly around my body. I feel myself start to pass out, as my eyes roll back in my head. Kate throws a tarp over my body, as that distant clock strikes midnight, and the final chime follows me downwards into the dark.
***
At $2.1 million, Kate’s painting was the highest-ever recorded sale during the end-of-the-year presentation. But the new owners never got a chance to enjoy their purchase, because the police ended up confiscating it almost immediately.
Because with Kate now missing too, it was their final attempt at bringing any sort of closure to the case surrounding the Richards family.
Which the painting ended up doing a surprisingly good job of. Because there, in the center of the painting, an eerily-identical painted image of Kate stood standing, with a lit cigarette in hand. Her mouth hung open, as if in a perpetual scream, as the fire raged around her.
The police called it a “retroactive admission of guilt.” The art world called it “a masterpiece.” But I guess I’d call it, the same thing Kate called it. Because there, in small red letters at the very bottom, was the name of the painting.
“Unetlanvhi’s Revenge.”
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