Painted face

I must have been sleeping lightly because I made it from the raspy whisper in the dark.

"Suzy says . . . help the girl."

I sat rapidly on the bed and looked into the corner from where I heard it, which was a corner where I left the sheep from the mall. Once again, it was standing tall as an abominable humanoid with the plush-sheep head, looking in my direction with a head tilted a bit. I was so taken aback that I didn't manage to ask any follow-up questions and suddenly, the phone begun to rung.

Then I realised that I was still sleeping. The sheep was in the corner, but as a plush toy. I picked up the phone.

"Hey Jordan, my boy! I need you to take me to one house 'cause I need to pick up something from there," said the voice on the other side. It was my Uncle Ambrosius.

"Why can't you go yourself?" I asked.

"Ah," he groaned. "D.U.I."

"Again?" I asked and immediately regretted it, but I was still waking up and I wasn't thinking clearly. Generally, I prefer no to question my uncle's motives as it leads to lengthy and pointless monologues.

"Ah," he groaned again and decided to go with an abridged version. "You know how it goes."

"Yeah, alright, just give me a moment to collect myself."

"Sure, my boy."

I disconnected and got up and out of the bed and washed briefly but skipped the breakfast, then I got downstairs to the car and drove to my uncle who was already waiting outside of his house.

"Took you some time," he said.

"Well, you know how it goes," I replied and he chuckled.

"Touché, my boy," he said in return.

"Before we go, do you have the CD?" I asked.

"Yeah, yeah, here," he said.

We drove to the address he gave me and on the way, we listened to a radio playing country music. Uncle Ambrosius doesn't like any other kind of music because, he claims, it "sounds awful" and is performed by "demonic women sent to corrupt our kids." Just like with not questioning his motives, it's just easier to indulge his musical taste. And you can learn of such classics like "Thank God and Greyhound, She's Gone" on the way.

I parked in front of a dilapidated house. We got out of the car and walked up a steep flight of stairs and Uncle Ambrosius opened the door with keys he had with him. There was no furniture inside and the walls were naked. You could see it was abandoned for years at this point.

"Alright, you wait for me here, my boy, while I'm fetching the thing that I came here for," Uncle Ambrosius said, leaving me in the antechamber.

I honestly planned on just standing there until his return, but I heard a whisper coming from the living room to my right. I fought the temptation for a second but caved in and when to see that. This wasn't your usual theatrical whisper, but something more mystical. Ever since the cave, I felt tuned more to hear the difference. The room, however, was as empty as everything else I've seen so far. Well, almost. The wall opposite the big window seemed different, but I couldn't tell different how, so I started approaching it slowly. And then, just as I was in the middle of the room, the lights flickered--which didn't make any sense because it was a mid-day--and everything went black for a blink of an eye, and I was in the same room but flooded with red light. I quickly turned around to confirm it's "the same place," and it was the same but different. The red light seemed to be mainly coming from the outside where we were no longer surrounded by a city but a wasteland. Somehow, the house was still there. But the sky, sky was bloody red.

"No . . ." a whisper I heard in the antechamber said behind me. "Here . . ."

I turned around and looked at the wall that intrigued me earlier. Now it was no ordinary wall. It had a red face in the middle. Male face. I stepped away from the window and a bit closer to it.

"Good . . . come here . . ."

I did not, however. I got as close to it as the middle of the room, and I went sideways back and forth to observe the face closer because it was visually interesting. It seemed three dimensional at first, but it was, in fact, flat, just very well shaded and adapting to my point of view. But in the end, I could see that it was merely an elaborate painting on the wall.

"No," I replied.

And almost immediately, there was another flicker and the room went to its original state.

"There you are, my boy!" Uncle Ambrosius shouted. "I've been lookin' for ya everywhere."

He was standing next to me with a card box in his hands.

"I was here all the time," I replied. "Anyway, what happened here?"

"Whatcha mean?" he asked cautiously, as if to fish out what I know first.

"This house has been on the market for a while now. It's empty and in a dire state due to being abandoned for a long time," I specified. "Why?"

"Well," my uncle sighed. "You're Hunter and it shows. So, there was a weirdo livin' here who killed helluva people. He later claimed that the wall told him to do that. Johnny, a real homicidal maniac. I don't remember his last name."

I showed my uncle the wall.

"This one, right?"

He looked at my suspiciously.

"How would you--" he started, but stopped immediately and started laughing. "Ah, you're real Hunter!"

"At least you didn't addresed my as your boy again."

"A'ight, let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps."

I looked again at the wall.

"You don't say."