The Painter (part three)

Chapter 9

Lena had hoped she would wake up dead. But no, she was still chained to the bed, suffering, agonisingly close to going out of her mind (perhaps then the pain wouldn’t be so bad), with a headscarf shoved in her mouth stopping her from biting her tongue off. Voltman sat on a chair next to her, keeping an all night vigil like an expectant father or dedicated Matron. Lunatic was a more fitting description. He had stitched the wound up using a needle and thread and crudely strapped a thick bandage around her foot. He had finished painting for the evening.

The pain in the sole of her right foot was constant. She curled her toes forward and winced. The wound opened slightly beneath the tightly wound blood-stained bandage. When she straightened them again she could feel the tightness of the thread being pulled through the tiny holes in her skin. She was vaguely aware of him removing the cloth from her mouth and inserting two capsules. They sat in her mouth and melted. A flow of water washed away the bitter taste of aspirin.

Then came the darkness again.

The next time she opened her eyes the pain had been reduced to just a cold throbbing in her foot. She felt drowsy. Knowing he was still there - watching, waiting for a sign of life - thwarted even the slightest bit of comfort. One thing was different though… she was no longer handcuffed to the bedposts.

‘Why don’t you just kill me?’ she croaked.

‘Because the portrait isn’t finished.’

‘If you kill me you can have all the blood you want.’

‘But you won’t see the finished article and I promise you it will be a masterpiece.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘But I do.’

He gave her a strange fatherly grin. It was that sight she was left with when she fell back into unconsciousness again.

The following morning she lay there shivering and sweating at the same time. She needed more pills to wash away the pain.

‘Hmm, blood dries so quickly but unfortunately you’re not strong enough to give me any more at the moment. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’

‘The pain… please… make it go away.’

‘Oh I will, in time. I think I’ll paint the eyes next,’ he said dreamily.

‘Because they’re so dark I’ll have to cut open your liver.’

He gave her two more capsules and she fell asleep.

By mid-afternoon the pain had returned. This time she gobbled the pills down not waiting for them to melt in her mouth. Before the pills took effect she was reminded of the horror of what will happen tomorrow when Voltman began sharpening the knife.

Lena woke during the night hurting. To her astonishment Voltman was gone. She lifted herself up and threw her legs over the side of the bed. The pain intensified but she was determined to escape. She placed both feet on the floor and the pain wasn’t as bad as she had expected. She was even able to put some weight on the injured foot and limp slowly, very slowly, over to the door.

The door was locked.

‘No, no, no.’ she cried.

She switched the light on and limped across to inspect the portrait, the masterpiece as he had so modestly put it. Voltman had draped a sheet over the painting. The idea of spoiling it crossed her mind. No – she didn’t want to do that. He would only make her suffer all the more. Her priority was escape not revenge. But she was curious. Lena lifted the sheet and her eyes widened in horror. In typical Voltman fashion he had drawn a perfect likeness of her but with a wretched demonic grin that stretched across her face from earlobe to earlobe. She involuntarily cupped a hand over her mouth. That thin, lipless smile, an aberration, seemed almost believable. She couldn’t bear to look at it any more.

After Lena covered it up she turned her attentions to the rest of the room, in particular the shelves where he kept all his tools, and the pine dresser. As she searched for something to jimmy the locked door the stinging pain in her foot deepened. Her face was covered in sweat, alternating between hot and cold. And somewhere in the background she could feel the bedsores along with muscle cramps.

Her eyes passed over a set of paintings leaning against the wall beside the dresser. On the back of the first painting were the initials ‘BK’. Suddenly a thought struck home, Bella Kemp. This must be his collection of Scarlet Ladies. She turned it around and gasped. It was definitely her – painted in different shades of red. Lena recognised Bella’s picture from the newspaper - the en brosse red hair, the trademark earrings like two chandeliers and the tiny mole above her lip. She was seated in the painting with both arms, minus their hands, hanging limply over the sides of the chair and wearing only a loose robe exposing one shoulder. On the side of her neck, just above the collarbone, was another face melded into the flesh with one eye only half open and the other, full of life, almost leaping out of the painting. It had a nose sitting slightly askew and a neat, lipless slit denoting a mouth with a long lizard like tongue rolling out of it, across and over her shoulder. She looked at the second painting with the initials ‘LO’. Again it had been painted in blood. The girl she didn’t recognise but the pain in her eyes resonated. She lay sprawled across the bed in a pose she was hardly capable of holding. One of her breasts had been amputated leaving a gaping wound exposing the tendons above the cartilage of her breastbone. Her head was turned slightly and there was a terrible scar crudely sown up where her ear should have been. The third painting, ‘EVB’, apart from a couple of scars on her torso, initially appeared normal. In fact the girl in it was quite pretty. Again there was a madness captured perfectly by her eyes that Lena could identify with, but it was only on closer inspection that Lena realised the terrible abnormality in this particular portrait. Her lower spine was so disjointed that her upper body didn’t line up exactly above her pelvis.

Lena did well to contain the rising sickness. She set the paintings down and turned away. The shock made her temporarily forget the pain in her foot. Suddenly she heard a door opening downstairs. She hobbled across the room and switched the light off. Several despairing thoughts crossed her mind at that moment – had he seen the light under the door? Did he hear her traipsing about the room? She could hear his heavy footsteps on the stairs as she made her way towards the bed dragging her injured foot behind her. A fresh bolt of pain, perhaps the worst yet, exploded up through her body. She winced, realising that the wound had reopened around the ball of her foot. He was outside the door now, fumbling with the key in the lock. What if I’ve left a trail of blood across the floor or displaced something? She heard the key drop and Voltman mouthing obscenities. He stooped, found the key and this time fitted it into the lock. The door opened just as Lena lay her head against the pillows. Voltman may have caught the slightest movement from her but she felt sure she had gotten away with it.

He was standing there in the shadows looking down at her. His right hand curled into a fist but more worryingly he held in his left hand a hammer.

Voltman walked over to the bed, stroked a tentative finger over her knee and smiled. ‘I thought you’d be awake,’ he said.

‘The pain… the pain,’ she muttered.

He looked at her directly and his smile faded, his bedside manner becoming more business like. He opened his hand and revealed the medication she so desperately craved.

‘Here, take these.’ She lifted her head slightly and he inserted the capsules in her mouth. ‘Now get plenty of sleep. You’ll need all your strength to get through tomorrow,’ he told her with a wicked smirk on his face.

Sadistic bastard is what Lena wanted to say but instead she asked him the time.

‘Four-thirty,’ he answered and left, as always locking the door.

After he was gone she spat out the two capsules.

Chapter 10

Voltman woke up around seven thirty and got dressed immediately. He was anxious to paint. The bed on which he lay was hardly fit for an animal. The sheets were encrusted with the stale, foulness of his own bodily fluids. The room had a dank smell like an underground latrine that soon even the neighbours would have grounds to complain about- and this despite the fact that he never opened a window. He sniffed at his fingers as he climbed the first flight of stairs- he’d been playing with himself again, touching that part of his body his mother had always referred to as the ‘Devil’s organ.’ She was a strict Lutheran, but Voltman’s beliefs in such doctrines had long since fallen by the wayside. That is not to say that he had become an atheist but simply that he no longer practised his religion or in anyway affiliated himself with any other religious practices. He passed by several rooms - his chambers of horror - and stopped outside the one he was saving for his current houseguest. Just like the others he intended keeping Lena alive for as long as possible. He shuddered with excitement. By this evening he would have the portrait finished and then he would cut her face open so that her smile mirrored it exactly. He recalled, with sheer delight, doing the same to Lotte Owel and Isabella Kemp. Eva Van den Burg was different though; she died much quicker than he had anticipated. When he hit her with that sledgehammer, instead of dislocating, it crushed her pelvis girdle and she had a massive internal haemorrhage. There was nothing he could do about it. Still, never mind, he thought - he had the painting to remember her by, and several other trophies- including Bella Kemp’s hands and Ydje Owel’s ears preserved in vinegar in glass jars upon his mantelpiece.

Lena was only half awake when he found her. He decided to give her a few more minutes before administering this morning’s dosage. He also decided to increase the dosage so that she won’t feel a thing when he cuts open her liver.

Voltman was examining himself in the mirror when Lena stirred. He crossed the room and sat next to her on the bed. She looked so haunted and yet… peaceful at the same time. Her glazed eyes stared pitiably at the ceiling. Had she finally accepted her fate? He leaned forward to kiss her on the mouth. Her gentle lips were moving – she was trying to say something. Voltman thought she was still sedated. He turned his head and leaned closer… what was that… I love you…? He leaned closer again…

She clamped her teeth around his ear and tore with all the savagery of a madwoman. The cartilage in his ear cracked and before he knew what was happening it was ripped from his head. The blood splattered against her face like war paint. Voltman let out an almighty scream that must have wakened half the neighbourhood, but Lena wasn’t finished yet. Her hand came out from under the blanket holding the scalpel. The same scalpel he had used on her. She rose and in one sweeping, poetic movement stabbed him in the side of the neck severing his jugular. Blood jetted from the vein and oozed between his lips as he croaked in surprised agony.

Lena watched, frightened that he might live.
Voltman stood up clutching his neck. He even managed a smile before falling off the end of the bed.

She leaned back and tears stung the corner of her eyes. The plan now was to… well, there was no plan, except to get out and scream for help.

She pushed herself up into a sitting position and crawled across the top of the bed to see if he was dead. Voltman wasn’t moving. Lena was confident the blow to his neck had been fatal but she wasn’t prepared to touch him to find out. She considered hitting him over the head with a heavy object but quickly dismissed the idea. She just wanted out of there. Other idea’s came to mind but she rejected them even quicker. One was to find a telephone and ring the police and an ambulance. Another was to remove the scalpel from his neck in case he came at her again. But she just wanted to be as far away from him as quickly as possible – alive or dead.

She hobbled over to the door and searched for the key to lock it behind her. It was gone. It wasn’t in the lock. She checked above the door, it wasn’t there either.

She made her way to the top of the stairs and leaned against the banister.

‘It’s only three flights, Lena, you can do it.’

The pain in her right foot and in her right leg throbbed horribly. She looked back and saw the trail of blood following her out of the attic room.

She managed one step, and another, then a third, and finally a fourth before she had to stop. Her legs trembled with shock. She gritted her teeth and grimaced at the pain in her foot. At one point she even entertained the idea of climbing onto the banister and sliding down it like she used to when she was a kid. But Lena knew she wouldn’t have the strength in her arms to slow herself down, and if she landed heavily on her feet the pain would make her pass out. She just had to grit her teeth and get on with it.

She reached the bottom stair, turned and lurched forward to the top of the second flight of stairs.

The house was dark, even though it was morning outside and the sun was breathing fresh light across the rooftops and the canals. With every door she passed she wondered what horrors lay beyond it. Everything smelled of death. How come she had never noticed this before? Because Lena didn’t know what death smelled like before… before she met Robin Voltman. And now, to her at least, death will always smell like Robin Voltman. She looked round half expecting to see him crawling after her but no, he was still dead! She laughed bitterly at this thought and then concentrated on the next step.

Lena no longer battled with the pain but rather the dark part of her imagination that knows only fear.

She had almost reached the bottom of the second flight of stairs when suddenly her legs gave under the strain. Even as she fell, gripping onto the banister, she willed herself not to land on her right foot. Somehow she succeeded but the pain was still immense.

She screamed.

Then she screamed a second time. Not because of the pain but because of her fear and the realisation that Robin Voltman was standing at the top of the stairs looking down at her.

Chapter 11

All she could see of him was his outline, a perfect silhouette against the confined dimness. The scalpel was still wedged in his neck but amazingly he was alive. She couldn’t see his eyes but she felt them boring a hole into her. Nor could she see his lips yet somehow she knew he was smiling. That same smile he had used on her at the party, the one that cleverly masked the craziness behind it. She could almost read the intent on that dark, demonic face, or else the dark part of her imagination had resurfaced to tell her he was going to skin her alive for this.

Lena tried to move but her whole body was frozen with terror. It was as if her wrists had been handcuffed to the balusters, and a ball and chain had been attached to her ankle.

No! She screamed but her voice betrayed her and no sound came out.

She watched in horrified silence to see what he would do. Lena could see that he was wavering, on the brink of unconsciousness. He took one step forward, lost his balance and fell. Within seconds he tumbled down the dozen or so stairs and crashed in an untidy heap next to her.

The last thing Lena remembered seeing before she fainted was the crazed look in Voltman’s eyes.

Chapter 12

First there was only darkness. Then came the pain followed by a soft haze of light. After which came awareness, confused, but awareness nonetheless. The first real returning thought was where am I? The words might have been spoken.

A distant female voice: ‘Can you hear me?’ Click, click, click.

Why can’t I move my arms or legs?

The light became brighter and the room came into focus. Suddenly it all came flooding back to him. Robin Voltman understood what was happening even before he saw Lena Kriskov standing over him sharpening the knife.

‘I’ve already covered the canvass with gesso and sanded it down. It makes for a smoother surface but of course you already know this.’ A smile lit up her whole face. ‘If you think four days is bad, just wait till you see how long I can keep you alive…’