Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV

“I want the job,” I said.

It was two years ago, but I can vividly recall every aspect of that interview. The innocence of those four words. The stillness of the gallery. My befuddled reaction to Amy Andrews — the gallery owner whose questions unsettled me. Her composure never waned.

“Are you a spiritual man, Mr Hull?” Miss Andrews asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “Are we talking about the art? I can’t say I’ll be able to give philosophical or religious insights.”

“Don’t worry,” Miss Andrews replied, smiling. “I’m not trying to trip you up. In a way, my question doesrelate to the paintings, but perhaps not in the way you might expect.”

“I just want you to know that I was a police officer for many years before working as a security guard at the embassy,” I said. “I have plenty of references.”

The gallery owner raised a hand, smiling politely. “I’ve seen your CV. I promise that you don’t have to fight your corner, Mr Hull. I know you’re physically capable, but this job takes a toll on a mental level.”

I nodded my head, ignorantly believing that I understood her. “I know. I worked many solo night shifts at the embassy, but I can handle it.”

“That’s not what I mean,” She replied. “Do you know why my gallery exhibits a permanent display of my sister’s artwork?”

“To honour her memory,” I said. “I saw that news clip a couple of years ago about her admittance to the local psychiatric ward. Harper Andrews, right? I’m sorry. That must have been tough on your family.”

“Not as tough as Harper found it,” Miss Andrews replied. “Her artwork tells the story of her decline into sickness — not sickness of the mind, but sickness of the soul. She faced something and captured it in these paintings to protect humanity.”

Hearing her speak, I thought Amy seemed just as unwell as her sister, but I would soon learn that it was no delusion. Every night on the job is terrifying, but none so much as the first. And I’ll never forget Miss Andrews’ parting words as she walked out of the door.

“At night, the paintings must be closely guarded. Left unobserved for too long, they can… Well… Just make sure you keep watch.”

What is this? Night at the Museum? I mused.

No. Far worse than fiction.

The first hour of my shift was blissfully mundane. Basking in the blue glow of the gallery’s security lighting, a perturbing painting eyeballed me from the far wall. It depicted a lanky, pencil-thin man with frightfully long legs and a pair of white eyes which seemed to follow me around the room — as all freakish eyes in paintings do.

As I strolled around the gallery, following Miss Andrews’ strict rule of regularly observing the paintings, I took a closer look at the white-eyed man. I shivered at his janky jaw, which hung abnormally loosely. He wore jet-black trousers, but his monstrous, bony torso was shirtless, and he was the farthest a man could be from looking human. I stopped to read the plaque beneath the painting of the haunting figure.

The Exacter

The one who exacts torture. He longs to break free. He will devour mankind.

I hurried past the painting, reasonably certain that nobody would ever dream of stealing artwork so horrifying — no need to guard it too closely. But the gallery didn’t exactly become more joyous as I continued my round. They were petrifying. I should’ve given the paintings more than a cursory glance before applying for the job position.

Another painting portrayed a young girl, no more than ten years of age, who wore a bright-red pinafore, plaited brunette hair, and a blank face. Not figuratively. Blank. In place of eyes, a nose, and a mouth, there was only skin. Taut flesh, painted with smooth brushstrokes that made Harper’s intentions abundantly clear — the artist had not accidentally smudged the face. She had purposefully neglected to give the little girl any features.

Harper’s Youth Dies

As we age, we slowly come to life. We sin. They know that. They know everything.

There were countless paintings of dreadful scenes too. Cities in ruin. The end of the world. Endless infernos of melting flesh — and they were the lucky ones who were offered a swift mercy. The survivors in the apocalyptic paintings were tortured in gory, gruesome ways by dreadful, inhuman men like the one in the first painting.

I usually have a strong stomach, but something about those paintings filled me with unbearable dread. The apocalyptic art seemed so visceral. As I viewed it, I was certain I heard the screams of the last humans on Earth. Felt the heat of the flames on my skin. Saw the Exacters move.

And then there was a painting of the art gallery. The plaque read:

Prison

They entered our world, so I locked them here.

Feeling suitably terrified, I scurried to the sofa by the gallery’s entrance and plopped myself down. I work a day job, and the night shift is just my way of making ends meet. The exhaustion of that jam-packed day finally hit me. It was only when I sat down on the sofa that fatigue walloped me like a wall. My eyelids closed.

An hour later, a thrumming sound startled me awake. I twisted my head to see a notification on my phone, chuckling in relief. I opened the message from Cara, my wife, welcoming the distraction from my isolated, soundless night shift. But it was an odd message.

>I was telling my mum about your new job, and she said you should look for another one. Apparently, there are always adverts for the night shift on Facebook, and her friend’s husband had a mental breakdown after one shift. He won’t talk to anyone about what happened.

There was another thrumming sound, but it wasn’t a vibration from my phone. It was a muffled voice. My head snapped up in time to catch a silhouette vanishing behind one of the gallery walls. I managed to stifle a scream, but I lost my composure and clammed up. I contemplated running out of the gallery, but something stopped me, and it wasn’t the prospect of being fired.

It was those paintings of Armageddon.

I rose to my feet, using the flashlight on my phone to illuminate the dimly-lit gallery floor. That muffled sound repeated again, haunting me — a ghostly groan of some emotion I couldn’t quite place, but I knew it terrified me. And when I rounded the corner, I found myself facing something utterly inexplicable.

The girl from Harper’s Youth Dies. A young version of Harper, I could only assume. I trembled on the spot as she took clunky steps towards me with frail, near-skeletal legs. She continued to groan, seemingly speaking beneath the flesh that covered her entire face.

“I can’t understand you,” I whispered in horror as the ghastly girl stopped a foot in front of me.

I found myself leaning forwards, driven by a force beyond my control, and then the most horrifying thing happened. My cheek twisted to the side, allowing my ear to melt through the phantom pool of the girl’s face. I screamed silently, terrified to find that I was unable to move my body or utter a sound.

Then, with my ear beneath the flesh on Harper’s horrendous, featureless face, I could finally hear the words she had been repeating in a muffled, ghoulish voice.

“Why did you close your eyes?” The malformed ghost asked in a distorted cry.

My body was suddenly hurled to the floor, and the little girl fled into the shadows. My eyes shot to the far wall, and I found that my gut achieved the impossible — it sank to a deeper realm of fear.

He was gone. The Exacter was a blank canvas. The horrible entity had escaped its painting.

Harper’s disembodied voice whispered beside my ear, scaring the life out of me. “Find him. He’s hiding.”

I looked up at the ghostly girl’s painting. Harper had returned to the canvas, but she was adopting a different pose. Her index finger was pointing at the painting of the art gallery. I yelped in fright, seeing what she had noticed. Behind one of the painted windows on the empty top floor of the building, that inhuman man stood and watched me.

Legs shaking, I walked across the gallery to the set of stairs in the back corner. They led to an out-of-bounds floor — Miss Andrews made that abundantly clear. But she also made it clear that I had to keep my eyes on the artwork, and I failed at that. I didn’t really have any options.

Quivering, I crept up the creaky wooden stairs to a floor that was littered with unhung paintings. The frames were shrouded in white sheets. And at the far end of the room, illuminated only by the moonlight which poured through the murky glass panes, I saw something truly terrifying.

The Exacter.

He stood as tall as the ceiling, and his large form was crouching over an uncovered painting. As I crept closer, I saw what had captivated the terrible creature. It was one of Harper’s apocalyptic paintings, depicting a world in flames, and the Exacter was melding its shrivelled, unclothed arm with the canvas — much as young Harper sank my ear through her flesh.

However, as I approached the abomination, casting my flashlight upon him, its flesh started to sizzle, and it unleashed a hideous hissing sound. At first I thought the light hurt it, but then I realised it had become aware of the guard’s watchful eyes upon it. I finally realised the power of keeping watch. I knew why I was there.

“Cast it away,” Harper’s voice whispered.

“How?” I cried.

The man spun around, and I screamed at the sight of his wretched white eyes. They were worse in the flesh, and he was far larger than he had appeared in the painting. The entity lunged at me, coiling its bony hands around my neck, squeezing the light out of my soul. I slipped into the darkness, and the Exacter howled at me — a howl that sounded like a boat’s horn.

“Tell it to return to its cell,” Harper croaked. “Tell it that you won’t stop looking at it until it does what you say.”

I wheezed, watching flickering images in the Exacter’s blank eyes. Prophecies of a direful destruction — a fiery vision of mankind’s end at the hands of this terrifying apparition and its demonic army. He intended to scare me, but the thought of such a horrific future only motivated me to keep my eyes open.

“I won’t stop…” I said, slowly choking. “… until you stop.”

Inhuman flesh burning beneath the weight of my vision, the Exacter screeched in fury, but I thought the world might already be doomed. If I’d passed out, I would’ve left the demon unguarded and free to wreak havoc upon mankind. But in some favourable twist of fate, it released my neck, and I fell to the ground — it, too, must have been close to death.

I crawled downstairs, and the canvases were filled with paint once more. Everything was back in its place. And the strangest thing is that I didn’t hang up my hat. I didn’t call it a day. When Miss Andrews came to the gallery at six in the morning, she seemed fully prepared to watch another traumatised guard quit the job.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not after seeing the Exacter’s apocalyptic desire. Too much is at stake.

Update - Part II

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