The Devil's Carnival

The Artist

The boy led Harold and Tessa parker to the far end of the lot and into a small trailer behind the Ferris wheel. As they entered they stared in awe around them while the boy walked to a table and started assembling his supplies. The walls were covered from top to bottom with portraits. All were done either in pencil or oil paint and all of them were breathtaking. Some of the portraits were of men, women and children in old fashioned clothing while others wore designer jeans and t shirts. There was one of a young mother with her son seated on her lap, of a woman in a beautiful embroidered dress that belonged in a different era with what looked to be her husband behind her, even one of two little girls on either side of a young boy all dressed in their Sunday best. The portraits were extraordinary and neither Tessa nor Harold could believe this young boy, this child, could be capable of such a feat. The boy set up a small easel on the table before he ran to a large dresser and collected a hand full of uncomfortably short pencils which he ran back to his table. He didn’t stand still for a moment. He ran back to the dressed and grabbed a plastic bag full of tubes of paint, oil paint to be precise. These tubes had no labels on them and no other indication that they came from any recommended manufacturer, or unrecommended for that matter. He carefully checked everything and placed the pencils in order from the shortest to the longest and not necessarily according to hardness. He got a chair from the corner of the room and pulled it to the front of the table. He sifted it to the right and then the left, back and forth until he found what he thought would be the ‘perfect’ spot. It was only afterwards that he turned his attention to Harold and Tessa parker who were still gawking at the portraits. "Would you please sit here sir?" The boy looked at Harold before he motioned to the single wooden chair he had placed in front of the table. Harold smiled and put a hand on Tessa’s shoulder. He led her to the chair and she sat down with her hands folded in her lap while Harold stood to her right with his hand on her shoulder. The boy looked at them before he smiled. “Perfect.” The boy ran behind his easel before he carefully inspected his pencils, choosing carefully. Going for the smallest the boy readjusted his easel and studied his observation. Very carefully and very delicately he pressed lead to canvas and the soft sound of his pencil strokes drifting through the empty room, replacing the heavy silence with sweet solace. Harold found a spot on a painting of a woman in an old fashioned blue dress to focus his attention on so he wouldn’t move half way through. Tessa did the same but to both their surprise they found it increasingly easier to stay so still. Initially Harold thought it was because of the almost relaxing sound of the boy’s pencil strokes but he soon found that something else wasn’t right. It had been the silliest thing. Something was irritating his nose, it was probably all the dust and he thought he would quickly rub his nose while the boy was occupied looking at his pencils. Problem was when he tried moving his hand he found that he couldn’t. His heart shot up into his throat. What the hell was going on? All he could move were her eyes and as he looked down at wife. Tessa had several beads of sweat running down her forehead and her eyes were frantic, but her expression remained unchanged. She still looked contempt with a big smile across her face, as if nothing was wrong. “It is for the beset.” The boy put his pencil down and reached for an old wooden pallet. He ran his fingers over the tubes of paint, selecting what he wanted with great care. “It can be tedious, having to sit still for so long and if you move even an inch it won’t come out right.” He selected a member of blues, white, black, several browns and just a little bit of red. Harold and Tessa parker watched him squeeze different sized amounts onto his pallet. As he did Harold and Tessa grew all the more anxious even if they were unable to show it. “If it doesn’t come out right you’ll be stuck halfway between this world and the next. You’ll never make it to my portrait.” It wasn’t until that moment that Harold noticed all the portraits, more specifically their eyes. Every single pair of eyes in that room was moving, those on paper and those off. As he stared at the portraits their wild unblinking eyes conveyed fear and sadness and before long so did his. Harold parker could hear his wife’s soft cries but nothing could prepare him for what he would see once he looked down. As the boy started painting Tessa’s left arm slowly started to fade. It didn’t just vanish it just gradually became less and less visible before he just couldn’t see it anymore. Then her legs and then her waist and then her chest. She screamed as best he could without being able to move her lips but it did no god. “Please don’t worry. I promise it isn’t painful.” The boy looked over that canvas as he smiled. He noticed a tear run down Tessa Parker’s cheek and got up from his work stations. “Now then don’t be sad. I’ll make sure the two of you will be together forever.” Using the sleeve of his shirt he wiped away the tear. He had a strange calm expression on his beautiful face and it was this calm that drove Harold to madness. “It will take a while before were done.” The boy said before he went back to his workstation. “But I promise it will be worth it.”