12.5

 

They sat on the floor by the front doors, backs pressed against the framework of wood and glass. Shadows of people walking past flickered over the displayed artwork, though no-one stopped to try the door. Roisin was amazed the gallery stayed open with so little foot traffic. If she were working here, she’d have signs all around the town to get people to spend their money, but then, this was Wolverhampton, and what little money people had was generally reserved for items of a more urgent necessity than art: food, alcohol and cigarettes.  

The gallery stretched out before them like a living, breathing organism, colours shifting as the afternoon shifted into evening, then night. The assistant had turned off the overhead lights, leaving only the emergency strips glowing faintly along the skirting boards. The paintings loomed in the half‑light, their colours muted but not still.

Roisin stomach gurgled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten all day. She pulled her jacket tighter around her. “How long do we wait?”

The assistant didn’t look at her. She kept her gaze fixed on the far end of the room, where the third painting hung like a dark window. “He comes when he wants to. Sometimes not at all. Sometimes twice in one night.”

Roisin swallowed. “And you stay here for that?”

The assistant let out a humourless breath. “I used to go home. Before the accident. Before the changes started. Before I realised someone needed to be here.”

“To do what?”

“To witness,” the assistant said softly.

Roisin frowned. “Witness what?”

The assistant hesitated, then turned her head slightly, studying Roisin’s face as though weighing how much to say. “You saw they’d changed today.”

Roisin nodded.

“Then you know,” the assistant murmured. “They’re not what most people would call paintings anymore. Not really.”

Roisin looked at the canvases. Even in the dim light, she could see the subtle shifts — the way the shadows seemed deeper, the way the colours held a faint, impossible luminescence.

“They feel alive,” Roisin whispered.

The assistant’s breath caught. “Yes. That’s the word I’ve been avoiding.”

Roisin hugged her knees. “How long has this been happening?”

“A few weeks,” the assistant said. “At first I thought it was my imagination. Or the lighting. Or exhaustion. But then I started taking photos.”

“And?”

“They never show the changes,” she said. “Not once. The photos stay the same. Only the real thing moves.”

Roisin felt a chill crawl up her spine. “So it’s not just the paintings. It’s the space they occupy.”

The assistant nodded. “It’s like the gallery becomes… porous. Like something is leaking through.”

Roisin stared at her. “Leaking from where?”

The assistant looked away. “I’ve never tried to find out. And I never want to know.”

Silence settled between them — not empty, but thick, as though the air itself were listening.

After a moment, Roisin said, “You mentioned an accident.”

The assistant stiffened. “I shouldn’t have.”

“But you did.”

The assistant exhaled, long and shaky. “The gallery was in the proverbial shitter and we had about six weeks before Antonia had to close up and then the first paintings appeared. I was freaked out but Antonia just accepted them and hung them the same day. It took us ages, moving everything around to make room for them and by the time we’d managed it, and moved the pieces we’d taken down into return crates, we were both utterly exhausted. They were just ordinary paintings then, and they still are, as far as Antonia knows, but I was so tired when I left that I walked straight in front of a car and ended up in a coma.”

“God! How awful for you.”

The assistant shrugged. “Thanks, but I’m okay now. That was the shortest two weeks of my life. One minute I was walking along the pavement and the next I was looking up at the ceiling in New Cross Post-operative care. It was like I’d just had a nap, except everything hurt and I had a bandage around my head and a tube in my arm. When they told me I’d been in a coma for a fortnight I thought I was going to lose everything. My job. My flat. My college course. But then my Antonia came in and told me she’d covered all my expenses, and not only that, but all the back pay she owed me. I couldn’t understand it, but then she told me she was being paid to hang the paintings. And not just being paid but being paid very well. If I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes, I’d have said this was all a shady money laundering scheme.”

Roisin shook her head. “But it isn’t.”

“It’s certainly shady, but only if you’re a religious person.” She gave a nervous laugh. “If you want my opinion, I think these paintings lead directly to Hell.”