Pyres by Kev Harrison

There’s a bite in the air that I haven’t felt since … well, since the last time I was
here. I pull the jacket round me and do the zip up halfway.

After unlatching the gate, I walk it back, fastening it in place with its rope to a
hook on the old stone wall, then dash back to my car and park up.

The house seems at first to be in darkness, but then I catch the orange quiver of
candlelight through the windows.

Angela must be painting. Just my luck.

I grab a holdall from the boot—the rest of my things can wait until the
morning—and make for the front door. I knock. Wait. And, as expected, there’s
no reply.

A glance up at the sky tells me this pause in the rain won’t last long, so I head
around the back of the cottage, through the knee-high grass and wildflowers to
the old wooden summer house. I lift the locking bar and let myself in.

Cobwebs stretch from corners, telling tales of a summer to forget. I swat them away,
careful not to catch any spiders in the process, then make for the curtain at
the back. Sweeping it aside, I find the painting—my sister’s first ‘with help’,
as she likes to put it—and take it down. The front door key is, as always,
nestled in the corner of the frame.

With the summer house locked up, I traipse back to the front door and carefully
unlock it. I creep inside, leaving my bag under the coat rack, then lock the
door with as much stealth as I can manage.

Now, all that’s left is to follow the wavering shadows from the candlelight, and the
pungent fragrance of henbane, to Angela’s studio on the other side of the
cottage. I think about using the torch on my phone, but fear the consequences
if I wake her while she paints.

The walls are emblazoned with canvases from the hall through to the lounge. The
styles are eclectic, so varied you could never say they prescribed to any
specific theme. Such is the way of things in her line of artistic expression.

When I reach the glass panelled door to the studio, I pause before turning the
handle, knowing as I do that what I’m about to witness will never not jar
with me. I take a breath, hold it, and push.

The door glides silently open and she’s there, facing me, hands frantically swiping
with the brush on the portrait canvas before her. She balances with poise on
the high artist’s stool, despite the extravagant motions of her painting,
despite the fact her eyes are rolled back, the bulging sclera pulsing,
criss-crossed with angry-looking pink veins. The shadows, swaying in the
candlelight, render the scene still more other worldly. Unsettling.

The decades-old futon in the corner looks so inviting, especially as I have no idea
how long this could continue for. But curiosity tugs at me, even through the
fog of my exhaustion. I always want to know what she’s painting, even if I’m
not wholly convinced by the way she describes her methods.

Taking care not to get too close, I tiptoe around the edge of the studio and come to a
stop behind her. Her brush hand continues to thrash one way and the other,
while mine are drawn, without my permission, to my mouth.

On the canvas, there is a room. The utterly unremarkable magnolia walls and
fireplace are not what has stolen my breath. That prize goes to what’s at the
centre of the piece. A green, leather armchair, somehow, remains intact, as do
one and a half of the legs ‘sitting’ on it, if you can call it that.

At the top of the worst affected of the two legs, the thigh is a bubbled,
overcooked mound of flesh, from which a charred femur extends. The torso is
missing, but for a blackened imprint melted into the fabric of the chair
behind. Despite this, the right leg remains covered in a fragment of a pressed,
grey trouser leg. Each foot remains encased in a perfectly preserved shoe.

I try to breathe. Try to remember the mechanism by which my lungs have been
pulling in air for the length of my life to date. The extremities of my vision
begin to darken, my balance slipping away, when I hear Angela’s voice.

“Not again.”

Originally from the UK, but now living in Lisbon,
Portugal, Kev Harrison is the Independent Press Award-winning author
of Shadow of the Hidden and his newest novel, Pyres,
as well as the novellas, Below and The Balance.
His short fiction has appeared in more than twenty venues and is collected
in Paths Best Left Untrodden. When not crafting creepy tales, he
can be found travelling and eating with his partner in crime, Ana, or singing
bizarre songs to his three cat overlords.

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