When Artur Van der Kamp found out that his painting had been lost he was furious.

​

He’d screwed up the telegram in his hands till his knuckles had bleached as white as the paper, then hurled the twisted ball at his wife’s prize spaniel, Lucille, who’d yelped and fled the room. He’d called his solicitor, Michael Walker-Smitt, screaming down the receiver till he felt his chest going stiff and his throat beginning to burn. He tried to sit, to work through the breathing exercises Doctor Saltzman had taught him [‘to destress your lungs, Artur – and also your temperament…’], but found the urge to move too great. And so he paced, repeating great, booming plods around his study, resisting punching any number of glass and ceramic ornaments he encountered along his way. Instead he huffed, puffed, tore at his hair [what was left of it anyway], and coloured the air blue with every cuss known to him. In a cold New England cemetery somewhere his grandmother – a devout Protestant who’d never said so much as boo to a goose – span in her grave.

 

‘I just don’t see, don’t understand,’ he kept saying, as though each repetition could chip its way to revelation, ‘I don’t understand how this could’ve happened..!’

 

It would be the only thing in that evening’s papers, and for weeks after that: “such an unspeakable catastrophe!” “The sheer loss of life unlike anything ever seen!” “What horror in these supposedly civilized times!”

 

But for those things Artur had little sympathy, if any at all. He cared only about his lost painting.

 

That – that – was the true tragedy here.

 

Lament of the Wood-Witch had been intended as the crowning glory of his private collection. The upper echelons of the East Coast would have salivated over it at every dinner party, a multitude of eyes flashing green with envy. Sir Christopher Hammer - a life-long rival collector - would have refused any invitation to come and view it out of sheer spite. Artur had imagined more delicate ladies might even swoon and faint as soon as their eyes had fallen upon it.

​

Because this piece! Oh! The mastery of its composition, the careful and inspired choice of colours, the execution of light! This was technique unheard of in anything else from the era. The scene itself - with the lonely figure uncurling by the river that ran red beside her, face upturned to heaven, nimble fingers frozen in pain as her face contorted silently into a scream – it chimed deeply with the soul. Somehow. Inexplicably.

 

You could almost hear her wails. Taste the very rapture of her grief.

 

And its provenance – such a story! How he had often reminisced of his own awe as he’d listened to Oscar tell it to him that first time on the night-train to Paris, champagne flute frequently nearly slipping from his grip. His attention was completely stolen away by the painting’s remarkably scandalous and grotesque history – oh, how his jaw had widened!

​

How he had anticipated regaling it himself sometime soon, to assembled guests, on dark winter’s nights, brandies in hand [ice clinking as nerves shook], wind and snow lashing at the window panes. He’d chill them more than the blizzard outside. Yes, to the very bone.

​

He’d always had a taste for the theatrical; now the Wood-Witch would help him become the grand showman of which he’d always dreamed.

​

Yes, how the women would’ve swooned…

 

‘Simply supernatural,’ is how he’d first described the painting, viewing it in person earlier that spring [he made a point of jotting down the phrase, thinking it would be an effective denouement to future anecdotes he’d deliver standing before the fireplace above where it would hang]. The nervous little gentleman who’d overseen the viewing had nodded slowly in agreement. ‘You have no idea, sir,’ he’d said, whistling through his teeth. Then, briskly drawing back the curtain on it, he’d hurried Artur up to his office, eager to secure a deal.

​

And Artur hadn’t even needed to barter. The client, apparently, was keen for a quick sale. The painting was his own within the ten minutes it took to sign the paperwork, and for a good few thousand below the asking price too. It just needed to be packed, and shipped to the States.

​

Now, all that money might as well reside in oblivion alongside the blasted thing, Artur scoffed, flushing with fury again. He’d paced – unmeaning - to the drawing room, found himself staring up at the empty space where it was to have been displayed. A vacuum that now seemed to mock him.

​

Notable only by its absence. An anomaly. Ghostlike.

​

Simply supernatural, he thought, and that was when he could hold it no longer, his clenched fist connecting with the nearest thing to hand: on this occasion, an 18th century porcelain vase last valued at some twenty-three thousand dollars.

 

​

​

Further down the hall, Cassandra Van der Kamp had been listening to all of her husband’s screaming, his storming, and now this final smash, and the noises pleased her. She let out a huge shudder of relief, steadying herself by the stairs.

​

His wrath could only mean one thing: that that damned painting was gone. It was sinking back to Hell - where it had come from, and where it belonged.

 

Lucille appeared from the shadows and began to whimper at Cassandra’s feet. She scooped the animal up, and cradled it close.

 

‘There is a god,’ she whispered, and her eyes flickered heavenward. Her hands still shook, but maybe now she may finally be able to sleep well again. ‘Thank you.’

 

Every night, in the weeks since her husband had bought the painting, Cassandra had dreamt of blood. Oceans of it, pouring from the earth, drowning the world. Cities were consumed, fields and forests. The mountains too. The planet became a cherry, suspended silent in space. Bright but bruised, waiting to rot.

 

She had stood by his side that day in Paris as the gallery owner had drawn back the curtain behind which Lament of the Wood-Witch waited.  

 

And a dread - a taut, frosted, prickled dread - had entered her then, as though it had swooped out from the very paint itself, feeling her fear in the room, and seeking to agonise it. To get inside her head, and poison the dreams there into nightmares.

It was a talented torturer too. After all, it had had a lot of practise.

​

The very idea of it in the house made her want to vomit, and she did, most mornings since. Seeing it in the flesh that afternoon had alerted something within her. Something primal. A lamb first sensing a wolf.

 

Cassandra had tried to make Artur reconsider his purchase. During the voyage back to America, she’d picked the moment carefully, hoping to catch him in a good mood.  A pointless exercise, of course.

 

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Artur had said, barely looking up from his paper. ‘This piece is one-of-a-kind. And you heard everything Oscar and Monsieur El-Amin had to say. Extraordinary.

 

Darling, I simply had to have it.’

 

‘But, that is exactly it, Artur!’ she’d pressed. ‘Those awful stories - everyone who’s owned this before, how they’ve ended up. It’s more ridiculous, surely, to bring it into our lives.’

 

‘Superstitious folly,’ Artur had laughed. ‘I didn’t know you were the type to take fairy tales so seriously, my pet. Those stories are constructs of coincidence and imagination. Designed to spook children, and adults who’ve partaken in a little too much libation -

​

[he’d looked off then, again envisaging how such tales would soon invigorate his own entertaining]

​

- but to invest too much worry in them is, to put it bluntly, complete idiocy’.

​

With that Artur had ruffled his newspaper, returning to the words within. The case was closed. This she knew. They’d been married twenty years, and betrothed before that longer still. Her husband’s nature was, regrettably, comprised of precious little that could still surprise her.

​

Yet, she had had to try. In the recent weeks, she’d even considered appealing to Artur’s solicitor, Mr. Walker-Smitt, and arrange for him to cancel the whole thing… if she hadn’t been so sure that the oily worm would’ve only laughed in her face and ran straight to her husband.

​

But, anything to stop the painting boarding the ship meant to carry it here, to her door, into her life! An evil that would cause only ruin, before it claimed their souls like the countless others it had gorged itself on in the past.

​

With nothing else to do, she’d taken to prayer. Calling upon a god she’d not spoken with since childhood. Someone she’d almost forgotten about, and who she feared that now, in what seemed her darkest hour, may have also forgotten her.

In light of that morning’s news, maybe not. Again, she whispered her breathless thanks.

 

​

​

‘The woman,’ Monsieur El-Amin had explained as he’d led the couple through the seemingly endless corridors of his gallery [a highly exclusive establishment just off Montmartre with an elite clientele; obviously: her husband wouldn’t be seen dead buying from anywhere less], towards where the painting was then housed. ‘Yes, the woman. The titular witch. According to legend she lived peacefully in the woods with her children, during the reign of a tyrant king, in lands long now gone.

​

She was a kind witch, and would cast spells to bring good harvests to the local farmers, as long as they respected and protected her secrecy, and promised the safety of her children. The king was a fearful man, you see.  Terrified of anything he did not understand, anything he had no power over. This included magic. He had condemned many witches to burn at the stake or hang from the castle walls since the crown had become his.’

​

‘Was he a young king?’ Cassandra had asked.

​

‘I should think so, yes,’ the owner had replied after a moment’s brief rumination. ‘Why?’

​

‘Young men are always so full of silly ideas,’ she’d said.

 

Artur had shushed her then. ‘Let Monsieur El-Amin finish his story.’ He grinned at the gentleman. ‘Please, continue.’

 

Monsieur El-Amin had nodded, cleared his throat, and resumed. ‘So, the witch was as afraid of the king as he was afraid of her. She could not leave the woods [she would die if she did, as a flower wilts without water], and so if the king were to discover her there she couldn’t even escape. There would be nowhere to run to. So she needed to remain a secret. Hidden. A myth never spoken.

​

Anyway: one of the local farmers, he’d grown scared of the peaceful wood-witch. A foolish man, easily led. He’d being seduced by the declarations of the king’s men who went into the villages, spreading hate and fear of witches and magic. “Put all your trust in the King, and only God above him”, and so on, you see?’

​

Cassandra had agreed, which seemed to greatly please Monsieur El-Amin no end. His post here at the gallery never usually saw him relaying ancient folk tales, and he was heartened to see it was a skill not lost on him. His cheeks blushed with reassurance.

​

‘The foolish farmer believed that one day the good and kindly witch of the woods might turn on him and the other people of the land. Then, her spells would no longer be used to guarantee bountiful fruits and healthy grains, but instead for spoiling the soil and polluting the wells. If she cared to, the wood-witch could curse each and every one of the villagers to live out the rest of their lives in untold pain and hardship. Because as much as magic can heal, it can also curse.

 

And so he decided to betray the wood-witch, telling the king’s men where to find her. The soldiers waited, disguised in the undergrowth, till the witch went – as she did daily, as the farmer had informed them – to forage for nuts and wild berries so that she and her children could eat. They waited till she was gone before they pillaged her home. They tore it apart. They set it alight. They stole her children away.

​

And, as I explained, she could not even leave the woods to try and rescue them, for the king’s castle – where they’d been taken – lay just outside, up on the mountainside, and if she stepped just one step out of the forest she would wither and die, like a leaf in winter.

So when she discovered her burning home and missing brood, she could only cry out, and beg for mercy as she heard her babies screaming from within the castle walls. She could only listen as the king denounced her and all her kind. And then he took each of her children up onto the battlements, and personally slit each of their young throats.

​

And this is the scene that the painting depicts. The wood-witch having to watch as the river by which she had collapsed ran red with their blood, pouring over the castle walls, down into the place she had once called home. Powerless.’

​

Monsieur El-Amin stopped then, taking a deep, definite breath. Somewhere in the city – it could be heard beyond the walls – a timely church bell chimed the hour.

​

‘And what happened to the witch?’ Cassandra said.

​

‘Well, exactly what the farmer had been afraid of,’ El-Amin replied. ‘Her anguish became wrath. She put a hex on the land and its people. Using her magic she brought plague, catastrophe, and famine where once was peace. She rained fire on the earth, brought great chunks of ice up from the sea, cracked the skies with lightning. Terrible things. Different versions exist of the same story. Some more romantic, some more gruesome. They all end this way: the king is killed, the woods are razed, the land becomes barren and cold forever more, and the wood-witch – she vanishes.’ 

​

A heartbeat.

 

Artur laughed. A real guffaw, which echoed down along the winding corridor they’d come to rest in, loud and obnoxious. A church bell rang by an idiot.

​

‘That’s the legend?’ he said, and then coughed [whenever he laughed too much it would aggravate his chest, which was why, Cassandra believed, her husband was slowly but surely trying to squeeze any sort of genuine joy out of their life]. ‘That is the story behind this infamous curse? The curse of the wood-witch?’

​

‘It is, sir, indeed.’ El-Amin shifted uncomfortably where he stood. When Mr. Van der Kamp had inquired about the legend he had been in two minds as to whether he should reveal it. Might this prospective buyer be further impressed, or might he lose interest altogether? The man appeared amused [good, good], but the lady looked very much the opposite. She’d, in fact, grown quite pale. What if he had scared the poor woman? She’d surely veto against having the painting in her house then.

​

Or maybe not. These kind of stories, they worked both ways.  And the Americans were always hard to read, in his experience. Either laced-up prudes or violent fetishists, he thought, there really was no middle line. 

​

Monsieur El-Amin gulped, waiting for one of them to speak. He was so very desperate to see the back of this. He hadn’t slept a wink in the two weeks since it had come to him – bad dreams. He’d even thought of burning the wretched thing if he hadn’t feared the ashes might reconfigure into some smoking, angry mass that would claw up at him and then drag him into their darkness.

​

‘Well, that’s a load of horseshit if I ever did hear it! Almost as bad as what Oscar tried to sell us,’ Mr. Van der Kamp seemed to conclude, his temperament still as ruddy as his complexion. ‘Classic European nonsense. Dark Ages hokum. The folks at home are going to love it.’

​

With this, El-Amin recovered his enthusiasm. ‘The story is just that, you’ll agree, sir – just a story. It simply would not do to demean this superb piece by only fascinating on that, it is so much more. Far beyond whatever or whoever inspired it. The beauty! The skill of the artist! Unsurpassed for something as old as it undoubtedly is.’ He was hastening them onward with a fresh pace.

​

‘And just how old is it, do you think, Monsieur?’ Artur had inquired [Oscar hadn’t known, many experts were equally dumbfounded, but maybe he had a take?]

 

‘Very hard to tell. This is what they all say. But, that is only part of the great mystery, no?’ The winding corridor opened up into a room now, lined with antique furniture and marble busts mounted on plinths. Some were shrouded in white sheets; they looked like ghosts from some cheap vaudeville. ‘Most believe potentially as early as the mid-fifteenth century, but this is pure guesswork. It’s certainly at least three hundred years old, when you trace the list of owners back, but -’

 

‘Owners who are now all dead.’ The two men stopped in their tracks, turning to face Cassandra. Her input had surprised them.

​

‘You told the lady of the deaths?’ Monsieur El-Amin looked to Artur. One of his eyes twitched.

​

Artur didn’t like the tone of his voice and cut back. ‘A friend did, as a matter of fact, yes. What of it?’

​

‘A little grisly for a lady’s sensibility, no?’

 

‘Well, I’d have rather known than not,’ Cassandra said, hoping to remind the men that she was still present and even – potentially – capable of opinion. El-Amin had smiled.

​

‘Apologies, Madame. Only, it really is a sad and unpleasant series of events,’ he said. And something had wavered, fleeting, in his face then. Cassandra thought it might have been fear.

 

‘It’s no more of a fiction than that of the witch herself, Monsieur,’ her husband chipped back in. ‘Coincidence, that’s all. Coincidences that’ve collided to form one hell of a good story.’

 

A particular story that Monsieur El-Amin had been keen to ignore no doubt, Cassandra supposed, probably hoping they had no knowledge of it. Far from ancient fable – which could be sugar-coated as melodrama, made pretty – this was an altogether stranger beast. No one would lovingly detail the blood soaked through these events in paint.

 

This story was rawer, more visceral, and

 

primal.

 

​

​

Oscar Bazelgette was Artur’s European contact, keeping eyes peeled and ears to the ground for any pieces the collector might be interested in adding to his set. It was Oscar who’d met them off the boat at Le Havre, and then accompanied them on their train to Paris.

​

During dinner that first night - as the moonlit French countryside soared past them beyond the dining car windows, as they talked on continental affairs and domestic gossip, as they drank champagne and swallowed oysters - Oscar had first told them of the wood-witch’s curse.

 

‘The piece itself looks maybe early Renaissance – you’ll see for yourself in a few days - but there’s a lot of red herrings and misdemeanours that could date it earlier still. Or, of course, it could be a very, very accomplished fake,’ Oscar began, cracking open an oyster. ‘There’s a lot of heresy about where it first crops up, where it might’ve come from. Who might’ve painted it.

​

The popular theory, as I’ve been told, is that it hung on the wall of a small German chapel for a century or so, and that it could have also originated there. Anyway, that’s the first recorded sighting, in the journals of this Lutheran pilgrim.

​

But there are other accounts – many, if you choose to dig, and boy is it hard to stop digging once you start - that put it in Italy before that, or even over in the UK… Ireland… somewhere else kind of Nordic-sounding…’

 

‘So it’s quite the globetrotter,’ Artur butted in, and Oscar had laughed politely. Cassandra chose to look back out of the window, conserving the energy she’d have needed to expend to appear amused.

​

Back then, this had still been just another one of her husband’s routine trips to the continent that she’d been dragged along on. Not that there was anything better back in New England for her to occupy her time with, but she had grown tired a very long time ago of traipsing around nondescript boulevards shopping for hats and gloves and curtains or whatever it was Artur thought she might enjoy, whilst she waited for him to greedily buy up more art that he could flaunt at their dinner parties [she often briefed the help on what the correct procedure should be lest one of their unfortunate guests expired of terminal boredom during one of Artur’s lectures on the Pre-Raphaelites. How she wished for a get-together that wouldn’t end in an art class].

 

Cassandra also found Oscar Bazelgette to be the worst sort of bore, his stories a slow death to rival her husband’s. And yet how she had wished on the sleepless nights that were to follow their expedition to Paris that his stories on the train that night had been anywhere near as dull as they usually were.

 

‘It’s been reframed several times, no signature from the artist. It’s a complete enigma,’ Oscar knocked back the oyster, smacked his lips. ‘The only thing about this damned thing you can be sure of is that it’s never been restored, which is quite remarkable given the condition it’s in. Truly exquisite. Like it was painted yesterday.’

 

‘Remarkable,’ Artur recited, almost whispering. Cassandra felt his greed bristle in the seat beside her.

 

‘Truly,’ Oscar nodded. ‘But, it’s when the piece reappears that things get really interesting.’

 

‘Please do, go on,’ Artur’s eyes were wide. Ravenous.

 

So Oscar had indeed gone on, lowering his tone, forcing them to listen in closer, conspiratorially almost, as the lights in the dining car had dimmed in perfect timing. The sound of the rattling tracks beneath seemed to fade, the gentle chatter of the other guests also, so there became only Oscar, and his words, and the miserable and unbelievable story he began to recount.

​

Lament of the Wood-Witch had reappeared some two hundred years after its first mention in the diary of the Lutheran. Acquired by Russian nobility - a duke - it is unclear whether he inherited it in a will, bought it during a European tour, or was sold it by a gypsy traveller as he’d returned home from a long business trip abroad. There were many versions, but they all led to the painting being hung in the duke’s office at his lakeside mansion house.

​

Several weeks later, the duke is found dead, having shot himself with his own hunting rifle. At his feet are discovered his two faithful hounds, whom he had shot before turning the gun on himself, and in a bedroom – that seemed to have been barricaded to stop someone getting in - lying together, arm in arm where they had fallen, his wife, children, and mother. Murdered also by the duke. Even the servants, and the horses tied up in the stables. All slaughtered. Shot dead. A massacre.

​

Before the tragedy, friends and acquaintances of the duke claim of his increasing paranoia, a feeling he was being watched, or becoming bewitched. He had complained of sleepless nights and waking visions – devils, fire, rivers of blood.

 

The bodies are buried. The house is sold. The painting vanishes.

 

Artur was rapt, had been from the off. Cassandra, against her better judgement, had found her attention being peeled away from the views outside the carriage, a world slowly but surely ebbing into the blackness of the oncoming night.

 

Oscar continued: ‘Later, it is noted in the inventory of another stately home, this time in Buckinghamshire, England. It is now belonging to a family who have made their wealth from shipping spices round the world. For his wife Juliet’s fortieth birthday, the head of the family – a Lord Anthony Granbrook – purchases from an Austrian gentleman a ‘fine and quite sublime’ painting called Lament of the Wood-Witch. See, all this is detailed in the personal memoirs of one Elizabeth Granbrook, one of Lord Anthony and Juliet’s four daughters.

​

Now, Elizabeth writes initially of her mother’s delight at receiving the painting, and how she requests that it is immediately mounted in her parlour, for her to enjoy at all hours of the day. And this she does, spending increasing amounts of time, even late at night, staring into it, utterly transfixed.

​

But, the happiness does not last. Lady Juliet soon grows sick. She will not eat, must be forced to take water, and will under no circumstances leave her parlour. She even demands her bed be moved there, which on threats of her hurting herself, it swiftly is.

​

However, it doesn’t afford Lady Juliet any peace. When she does sleep, it is fevered, and while she is awake all she can do is cry and grow increasingly manic. Doctors are at a loss. The children are afraid. Lord Granbrook, filled with confusion and horror at his wife’s rapid decline, commands the painting be removed from the house, sure it is somehow to blame. He commands a bonfire on which it will be burnt be constructed in sight of his wife’s parlour window. Elizabeth writes that the family hoped, in seeing it destroyed, it may exorcise whatever demons plagued their mother.

​

But on the morning on which this is to happen, they discover that the painting is gone. And so is Lady Juliet. A search party begins sweeping the adjoining woods and fields, desperate to find the sick woman. No luck.’

​

‘Stolen away by the fairies, perhaps?’ Artur offered, out of the three of them the only one amused at his interjection.

​

Oscar shook his head no. ‘Sadly not. Hours later she is finally spotted by fishermen, having washed up in a nearby cove, still in her nightdress. She is dead. Drowned. It is concluded, at some point during the night that she had walked up to the clifftops, miles away from the house, and thrown herself into the sea beneath.‘

​

‘How awful,’ Cassandra said. She saw it clearly, rendered in her imagination without meaning; the frail slip of a woman, white robes fluttering around her, splitting the air. There is the crash of foam. Waves folding in on themselves, consuming. Water becomes blushed with crimson. She did not like the image, how it replayed over and over, and tried to shake it from her head.

​

‘The Granbrooks are bereft,’ Oscar had noticed Cassandra’s discomfort, but knew that this story must be finished. ‘The lord, grief-stricken, hangs himself in the attic days later. But that’s only the beginning of the strange Granbrook deaths. Get this: within ten years, the whole family is wiped out. Not a single Granbrook left.’

​

‘How do you mean?’ Artur asked.

​

‘The immediate relatives of Lady Juliet: the lord, his father, all five of their children - including Elizabeth - and several cousins. More than a few pets. Whether through accident, illness, or – as is the case with one son – a casualty of war. Dead. Gone.

 

Just like the painting.’

 

Cassandra had heard countless ghost stories in her time. Many she had read of her own accord, and as a girl she’d especially delighted in scaring her kid sisters with tales of monsters creeping out from under their beds – her fascination with the paranormal had only helped steady her nerve. But there was something – something distinctly unspoken; an undertone – to this whole affair that deeply, deeply troubled her.

 

The lamb, sensing the approaching wolf.

 

She could contain herself no longer.

 

‘Are you seriously suggesting, Oscar,’ she said, ‘that this painting is genuinely possessed of some killing curse? That whoever comes in contact with it should meet with a suitably grisly end?’

 

Out of the corner of her eye Cassandra saw Artur rubbing his hands with glee. He sat there, hungry for more, and ready to commit every macabre detail of it to memory. This infantile enthusiasm she could almost cope with. However, opposite her, Oscar remained stony-faced. And this she did not like.

 

‘Not everyone who comes into contact with it dies, no. Just those who own it, I think. Who bring it into their home, into their lives. Those who, perhaps, underestimate its power.

 

People like Sebastian Farvino, for example.’

 

‘Another victim?’ Artur chuckled, rolling his eyes.

 

‘Another recorded incident,’ Oscar said, definitely not laughing. Cassandra braced herself. ‘Farvino was a painter himself. Young and self-taught, but fiercely promising. Not the sort of stuff you’d like, Atur, but the Europeans would’ve no doubt gone crazy for it.

Anyways, he acquires the Wood-Witch sometime around 1888. He buys it from an auction house in Lisbon, with the intention of displaying it in his studio. A friend notes that he’d been feeling distinctly uninspired around this time, felt he needed a muse, and fell in love with the woman in the painting. It rekindled something in him. So, he snaps it up.

 

Now, we will never know if he was aware of the true nature of the piece, of its twisted history. Probably not. Either way, he was about to become a part of it.

 

In the weeks that follow, Sebastian’s art takes on a dark turn. No longer does he capture the delicate still lives of which he studied and is perfecting – the new work is absurd, frenzied. Maddening. There are skeletons crawling out of their graves, ships sinking at sea, monsters, suffering, and huge red lakes of blood.

 

Friends are concerned. Sebastian appears in public looking gaunt, rambling in gibberish. Then, he locks himself away from the world entirely.

 

In the autumn of 1889, Sebastian was found by a lover in his studio with his throat cut, a shard of bottle-glass in his hand. It is believed he inflicted the damage himself. As he’d been dying he’d allowed his blood to spurt onto a canvas laid out on the floor. His last painting, a friend writes. That was claimed by the local police, and most probably destroyed.’

 

‘And the Wood-Witch?’ Cassandra asked.

 

‘Again, she vanishes. That is, until 1895, when a painting fitting its exact description is noted hanging in the ballroom of a hotel in the South of Italy. The guest in question remembers it from an old picture book she had. So, this hotel - The Olympia, it was called – it burnt down a year later, killing thirty people. Arson was not suspected. No cause was ever determined. 

 

And then we have a Mr. and Mrs. Politcz. Istanbul. 1901. They are a young couple, recently married, building a good life for themselves, with many friends who speak highly of them and excellent prospects. Mrs. Politcz is pregnant with their first child. She has taken a break from her singing career to mother the child. Her husband works as a government official, and the Wood-Witch is photographed in his office – a gift he receives for achieving the position.

 

It doesn’t take long for the curse to rear its head once more.’

 

Outside, it had begun to rain. The droplets stung the window panes of the locomotive hard, like stones thrown with malice. In the distance, thunder rumbled.

 

‘Winter of 1901. Mrs. Politcz goes into labour months earlier than expected and – tragically - dies during the childbirth despite being in apparently excellent health. Her baby passes away only days after that.

 

And poor Mr. Politcz, a month later, falls onto the tracks at the Sirkeci station, just as a train is arriving at the platform. He is crushed underneath. It is unknown whether he tripped, or whether he jumped. I feel we can hazard a guess.

 

That night in hospital, Politcz dies. He dies screaming of black magic.’ Oscar paused for a moment. He looked out to the night, eyes glazed. No sight, only thought. Then he drained what was left of his champagne, taking it like one would a medicine.

 

‘Strangest of all, two months later, an earthquake flattens the government building where he had worked. An earthquake. Can you believe..? The painting had still hung there. Not that it was ever recovered from the wreckage. It, as usual, disappeared.

 

That is, until earlier this year, when I stumbled across it in the catalogue of Monsieur El-Amin. Of course, back then, I was drawn to it only by aesthetics. Christ, it’s so up your alley, Artur, it’s as though you’d commissioned it yourself.

​

But then, when I began my investigations – to secure its provenance, to determine that you weren’t going to be fleeced for the sake of a fake... I hadn’t reckoned on the can of worms I was about to unearth, let me tell you - ’

​

Artur was laughing again, making no attempt to stifle it now that Oscar had apparently finished his tale.

 

‘You don’t seriously believe in all that claptrap though, do you?’ he said. ‘Lord, man, I think you’ve been in this blasted country too long…’

 

‘I believe as far as the facts extend, Artur,’ Oscar replied, his tone still solemn, business-like. ‘That’s what I do, I’m a researcher. And it’s all there, just below the surface – the manuscripts, the newspaper clippings, the correspondences. You just have to look, and – just for a moment – believe too. Then you see.’

 

Artur waved the comments away. ‘I don’t doubt you, old friend. Not for a second. And this is all quite excellent, and has only made me fall deeper in love with this piece, obviously. If it’s anywhere near as masterful as you’ve described, and with all you’ve told us to boot, I simply must add it to my collection.

 

But genuine witchcraft? Ha!’

 

‘I’m the biggest sceptic there is, Art,’ Oscar went to refill his glass, finishing the bottle. Cassandra noticed that as he did, his hand was enormously unsteady; his attention hastened elsewhere. Was that sweat on his brow?

 

‘But don’t you admit,’ he said, ‘that there’s just something about this story in particular that gets your hairs standing on end? Makes you a little sick to the gut?’

​

But Artur had shook his head, grinning wide. He had mopped away at his own brow that was wet with excitement. Even before he signed his autograph on the paperwork that then officiated the painting as his, Cassandra knew already that he had become hypnotised. He’d said it himself, just then: it was love. Love for this ludicrous but terrifying story he mocked as fantastical but which she – as she also knew Oscar had recently come to realise – was completely true.

​

All of the wonders of the universe, all the weird and incredible phenomena and coincidence that existed without source or motivation – yet such a sequence of events as this, marked by their absolute wretchedness and misfortune, could only mean one thing. This – all of this that Oscar had explained, from the murdered Russian nobles to the drowned English lady, the self-destructive artist to the hotel inferno and the Turkish earthquake – it was a warning.

​

And, like in that dusty little room buried deep within the gallery a few days later, when she had seen it first with her own eyes, she had felt a dread. Real, distinct, and urgent. Warnings from herself. Calls to action against her better judgement, her civilized logics.

​

Oh, if only she’d snatched the butter knife from the dining car table, plunged it into Artur’s fat hand, calling an end to the whole trip! How she should’ve grabbed Monsieur El-Amin by the lapels of his jacket and hurled him into the visage of the painting his gallery had once again dragged from its wicked shadow-place! Thrown her fist through it, taken the torn canvas, and obliterated it till only scraps were left. All this she should’ve – could’ve – done. Ended this disaster before it had even begun.

​

To think, how close she had come. What terrors would have meted themselves out on Artur and Cassandra if the wood-witch’s curse had reached their home shores? She knew full well. Every night, those excruciating nightmares had shown her as much.  

 

And how she had prayed.

 

How she had resigned herself to a fate she believed was immovable as it was final.

 

But then – this morning, and from nowhere – a miracle. 

 

Standing there now, in the murk of the hallway, as Artur fumed in the drawing room, Cassandra was calm. She hadn’t until then realised the weight of the exhaustion her unceasing anxiety had caused her. Like unseen rocks suddenly removed from her pockets, she felt light, like a breeze.

 

Lucille still in her arms she began to walk, moving from the gloom and into the light, seeking out the first breaks of a bright, dry, but warming afternoon’s sun that had begun to crawl into the upper floors of the house.

 

Cassandra came to her husband’s study. It was really was a marvel in itself that his rage hadn’t wreaked more chaos there. The help would be so relieved [the last time Artur had thrown one of his tantrums it had taken several days to clean up the debris. There was still a quite distressing dent in one of the walls].

 

But no, here she found only an oasis of quiet serenity in which she chose to stay awhile, watching the leaves on the trees outside fluttering, teased by distant sea-winds.

 

Why was she here? In this house? Tethered to this man and his painted playthings? From the mud, came clarity. Revelation. Perhaps some form of Cassandra had died in one of those torturous dreams. Maybe she’d been living these past few weeks as a dead woman, without knowing. Fearing the end, not understanding it had already come.

 

But here had arrived a second chance. An opportunity for rebirth.

 

So yes, she would be reborn and she would leave this place. Because she could escape. She could.  She was free to run, and she realised that now.  

 

Traversing the room, dreamlike, filled with a hazy excitement, Cassandra’s foot connected with something unexpected. Looking down, she saw a scrunched up ball of paper. Curious, she picked it up, opened it out. It was a telegram - no doubt the spark that had ignited Artur’s earlier fury.

 

Cassandra read. Read of the news that reached New York this morning, how it was wired out immediately across the country. Across the world. There, stamped in black on the white, it suddenly all made sense.

 

It was as though some hidden trickster poured ice-water over her head.

 

The ship. The one that carried the painting amongst its cargo. The ship promised to be one of the fastest, most reliable, most magnificent of its age. Artur had handpicked it himself. ‘It’s perfect!’ he’d gushed over breakfast one morning, spraying her with scrambled eggs. ‘The only chariot fit to courier my Wood-Witch across the oceans. Yes, it’s perfect!’

 

How Artur must be standing now, before the fireplace, the wall empty above it, chewing those words to cud. Preparing to choke on them.

 

‘Nothing but the best. After all, we can’t take any chances.’ 

 

The sun dipped behind a cloud, and the study was changed in an instant. Shadows sprung up from all places, as though they were a jack-in-the-box. A crow called out as the wind whipped up, a howl. Suddenly, Cassandra did not feel so light anymore. Leaden, gut like an anchor, her legs quivered, giving way. If the armchair hadn’t stood behind her, she’d have collapsed straight to the floor.

 

Again, her eyes traced the headline printed at the telegram’s head. Over and over. Hoping. Praying. Again and again. Praying that it was wrong, as she’d prayed countless times that her life might be saved from the witch’s curse. Those prayers that had been answered - but now she thought, answered by what?

 

Her mind was a mad-spinning wheel, splattering mud.

​

No, not like this. Not like this!  Must there be no freedom without debt?!  

​

She heard the church bell that had tolled in Paris, so so long ago. 

 

And Artur’s voice, speaking from the past: ‘They’re calling it unsinkable.’

 

Then here, in black and white, the means of her salvation:

​

TITANTIC DISASTER 

​

Waters becoming crimson.

 

1500 PERISH AT SEA

​

And that is what she read.

 

​

​

The painting slips back into the void.

​

Fat with souls, it will sleep. But only for now -

 

because the cycle must continue,

​

until the whole world is red.

 

 

While on holiday in Venice, I saw a lot of art – some contemporary, mostly classical. A lot of it was very inspiring, and it got me thinking about artworks and their artists and their audiences. About how art has an uncanny power, which can morph or diminish over time. Or, in some cases, how it can retain a certain potency [an energy, almost like a battery] that can reach out and electrify you even now, hundreds of years later.

​

I imagined a painting that could drive people mad. I imagined a painting that could change the world. Something travelling through the ages, ultimately inanimate in form, but also furiously alive. Immortal, perhaps.

​

And all that became diluted into this piece, which I hope you enjoyed. Something about the subject matter and setting of 19th century America got me thinking about Poe, whose writings I love, so I think you can glimpse his spectre in this occasionally. I certainly hope so, anyway. Because if we want to discuss the strange timelessness of things, how they can shock and unsettle despite the passage of centuries, Poe literally wrote the book on it.