Chapter 12.2

 

Roisin hesitated, then returned to the paintings. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were watching her. Not with eyes—there were no eyes—but with presence. With attention. As though they recognised her.

She reached out a hand, stopping just short of touching the canvas. She felt no different, but just like the prisms in her ceiling, she could see colours shifting across her fingers in the same blocking-the-projector way. The air felt charged, like the moment before a storm breaks.

“You came back.”

The voice made her jump. She spun around.

The shop assistant stood in the doorway that led to the back room. Her hair was slightly mussed, as though she’d been lying down. Her eyes were wide, but not with surprise—with something like relief.

“Oh,” Roisin said, exhaling. “I didn’t see you.”

“Sorry,” the assistant said, stepping into the room. “I was in the back. I didn’t hear you come in.”

Roisin nodded, though she wasn’t convinced. The assistant’s voice had a tremor in it, a thin thread of unease.

“I didn’t expect you to come back.” the assistant shrugged as she sat behind the counter. “Most people don’t, not if they haven’t bought anything.”

“Do you sell a lot of paintings?”

“Not really. Some of the local artist ones sell, but I think that’s mostly their family members wanting to encourage them. I’ve seen someone come in and buy a portrait of themselves more than once. Or they tie their dog up outside and it looks exactly like the painting they choose. I think we sell enough to keep the shop ticking over, unless the council puts the business rates up again.”

“I wanted to see these again,” Roisin said, gesturing toward the large paintings.

The assistant followed her gaze. “They’re… intense, aren’t they? I’m glad they’re hung back there. I’d get depression if I had to look at them all day.”

She picked up her coffee mug and glanced inside, wrinkling her nose at the state of it. “Honestly, I only made this an hour ago. You’d think it had been here weeks to see the state of it.” She tipped it slightly in Roisin’s direction to show her the crust around the rim, careful not to spill the coffee within.

“There must be mould in the ceiling.” Roisin looked up. “Damp, maybe. I lived in a house where the walls had to be bleached daily because of black mould. The landlord claimed it was my fault because there were jars of solvents and turps about.” She looked not at the mug, but at the assistant’s long fingernails. They were acrylics, but they had grown since the day before. There was a three of four millimetre gap between the bottom of the false nail and the nail bed, revealing her cuticles. If she hadn’t seen her yesterday, she’d have thought that about two weeks of nail growth. She looked at the paintings instead. “They look different today.”

The assistant frowned. “Different how?”

“The colours,” Roisin said. “The shapes. They’ve shifted.”

The assistant stepped closer to the nearest painting, squinting. “I don’t see it.”

Roisin swallowed. “You don’t?”

“No,” the assistant said. “They look the same to me.”

Roisin turned back to the canvas. The shapes were unmistakable now—an arm, a torso, a face dissolving into colour. She felt a chill crawl up her spine.

“Maybe it’s the lighting,” the assistant offered.

“Maybe,” Roisin said, though she didn’t believe it.

The assistant lingered beside her, arms crossed. “You really like these, don’t you?”

“I don’t know if ‘like’ is the right word,” Roisin said quietly. “They feel… familiar.”

The assistant tilted her head. “Familiar how?”

Roisin hesitated. She didn’t want to sound unhinged. “I saw something recently. Something that looked like this.”

The assistant’s expression softened. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not that,” Roisin said quickly. “It’s just… these paintings feel like they’re showing something I’ve already seen. Or something I’m supposed to see.”

The assistant didn’t respond. She looked at Roisin for a long moment, then at the paintings, then back again.

“You know,” she said slowly, “you’re not the first person to say that.”

Roisin’s pulse quickened. “What do you mean?”

“People come in sometimes,” the assistant said, lowering her voice. “Not many. But a few. They look at these paintings and say they recognise something. Something they can’t explain.”

Roisin felt a shiver run through her. “What do they say?”

The assistant shook her head. “They never explain. They just… look. And then they leave. And never come back.”

Roisin turned back to the paintings. The face in the nearest one seemed clearer now, the features emerging from the chaos of colour. A cheekbone. A hollowed eye socket. A mouth half-open, as though caught mid-breath.

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