The First Lie
1309 Words
Elara didn’t speak for a long time.
The painting stared back at her like a prophecy carved in oil and dread. Her face — her death — had been captured in every perfect stroke. Her hair was sprawled around her head like a halo of ash. The black rose on her chest looked alive, fresh with dew. And the ribbon on her wrist glowed crimson, like it had been dipped in fresh blood.
“I can’t die like this,” she said finally, her voice thin.
Damien didn’t look at her. He was staring at the painting as if it were a puzzle he’d been trying to solve his whole life. “I never know when it’s going to happen,” he murmured. “I never know what the paintings mean. Some come true within days. Others… never happen at all.”
Elara backed away from the canvas, swallowing hard. “So you’ve painted people who lived?”
“Yes.” He met her eyes. “But most of them didn’t.”
The room suddenly felt smaller, the air thicker, like it pressed against her lungs. “I need to stop this. I need to know who’s doing this and why I’m being targeted.”
“Then you’ll need to start with the first one,” Damien said quietly. “The first painting I ever had... the one I burned.”
Her gaze snapped to his.
“You burned it?”
Damien nodded. “I was nineteen. I had a nightmare. Woke up in a panic. Painted it with shaking hands. It was a girl — maybe seventeen — lying in the forest, surrounded by crows. I didn’t recognize her. But three days later, she was found exactly as I’d painted her. Out near Bellgrave Ridge.”
Elara went still. “That wasn’t in any records I read.”
Damien shook his head. “The police didn’t make it public. Her parents were wealthy. They didn’t want the scandal. And they didn’t want me involved.”
“What was her name?”
“Lydia Elwin.”
Elara filed the name away instantly. “And you think that’s when it started?”
“I know it is. That was the first time something inside me woke up.”
He sat on the edge of a stool and rubbed his temples, exhausted. “Ever since then, the visions come in waves. I’ll be fine for months, and then I’ll start dreaming of death again. I never see the killer. Only the aftermath.”
“And Julian knows this?”
“He’s always known. He investigated Lydia’s case. He visited me the day she died. Accused me to my face. I was almost arrested.”
“But you weren’t.”
“No.” Damien looked up slowly. “Because someone else confessed.”
Elara stiffened. “Who?”
“A man named William Soren. Local drunk. Died in custody before he could stand trial. They said it was a heart attack. But I always thought it was too convenient.”
She let the silence stretch as she processed it.
A girl found dead. A painting matching her death. A suspect who confessed and died. A case sealed and forgotten.
It sounded too neat.
“Someone covered it up,” she said. “Someone made sure you’d be discredited early on.”
Damien gave a bitter laugh. “They didn’t have to work hard. People here were always afraid of me. They think I was born wrong. I started painting at five — and even then, it was always graves, blood, ghosts. They said my mother went mad because of me.”
“Did she?”
He met her eyes, something broken flickering behind his gaze. “She slit her wrists in the bathtub when I was ten. I found her. I painted it the night before.”
Elara’s breath caught. “You didn’t try to warn her?”
“I was ten,” he said softly.
The guilt in his voice was deeper than she could bear.
She sat down across from him, the heavy silence wrapping around them both like the fog outside. She studied him carefully — the curve of his jaw, the way he sat with his shoulders slightly hunched, like someone forever bracing for the next blow.
“You’re not crazy,” she said.
He didn’t reply.
“You’re not a killer either.”
He looked up then, startled.
“I’ve interviewed enough murderers to know the difference. You don’t have the eyes for it.”
Damien tilted his head. “What kind of eyes do killers have?”
“The kind that don’t look away from the blood.”
They locked eyes for a moment longer than either of them intended.
Then he said quietly, “You should leave. Before the painting becomes real.”
“I can’t leave,” she replied. “Not until I find out why this is happening. And who’s behind it.”
She stood, pacing. “The victims — they all had similar wounds, right? And the ribbon and rose. What if it’s not random? What if the killer is choosing them for a reason?”
“You think it’s ritualistic.”
“I think it’s personal.”
Damien’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I found something in the case files. All three victims had scars. Burn scars. Just like Noah had. I used to think it was an accident from when we were kids. But what if it wasn’t?”
Damien stood. “You think they were marked? That the killer is branding them somehow?”
“Or choosing people who already were,” she said. “Which means it’s someone who knows their past. Someone from inside the town.”
Damien’s expression darkened. “Then that narrows the list.”
“I need to talk to Julian again.”
Damien’s lips thinned. “He won’t help you. He doesn’t want you digging.”
“Then I’ll dig anyway.”
She turned to go, but his voice stopped her.
“Elara.”
She glanced back.
“I don’t want you to die.”
It was the first time he’d said her name like it mattered. Like she mattered.
She gave him a tight nod. “Then help me stop this.”
---
The streets were near silent when she left the manor. Her thoughts stormed louder than the wind. The name Lydia Elwin echoed in her mind, tangling with visions of her brother, the scars, the rose, the ribbon.
She drove straight to the town’s archive building. It was after hours, but the clerk on duty — an old man named Hugh she remembered from her teenage years — recognized her instantly and let her in.
“I’ll give you twenty minutes,” he said. “But don’t break anything.”
“I won’t,” she promised, already striding toward the microfilm station.
She dug into records from eleven years ago, the year of Lydia’s death.
Nothing in the official obituaries. No public record of her murder. But in the town gazette, buried in a column of “social notes,” she found a name:
> The Elwin family has requested privacy during this time of loss. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Gravemoor Youth Foundation.
A death disguised as charity.
But she had what she needed. A name. A date. A direction.
She slipped the paper into her bag and made her way out.
Outside, the wind had risen, and the moon was cloaked in clouds. She wrapped her coat tighter and turned the corner toward her car—
And froze.
A black rose lay on her windshield.
No note. No ribbon.
Just the rose.
But this time... the petals were flecked with red.
She wasn’t just next.
She was being watched.
- Writer
