𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔹𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕕 ℙ𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣

The first painting arrived on a Wednesday.

Margaret Howell found it leaning against her door, wrapped in brown paper, the edges damp from the morning mist. There was no address, no postage, no name—just the weight of it in her trembling hands.

She unwrapped it slowly, already feeling the wrongness crawling over her skin.

It was her.

But not as she was now.

In the painting, Margaret’s body lay in a field of withered grass. Her mouth was torn wide in an expression beyond screaming, her jaw unhinged, her lips shredded like something had forced them open far too wide. Her fingers were broken and twisted in ways that no human hands should ever be.

The worst part? The thing behind her.

A black smear of something not human, standing at her back, one clawed hand resting gently on her shoulder.

Margaret slammed the painting against the wall and ran to the phone.

She never made the call.

The next morning, they found her body exactly as the painting had shown.

Her mouth stretched far beyond what skin should allow.

Her fingers broken like dry twigs.

And though the field was empty, those who found her swore they saw prints in the dead grass behind her, leading nowhere.

The Paintings Keep Coming

At first, people thought it was a sick joke.

Then the second painting arrived.

And the third.

By the tenth, the town of Grey Hollow had already stopped pretending it was anything but a death sentence.

Some tried to run. It didn’t matter. Their portraits arrived anyway.

A boy named Daniel Ward burned his. He was found in his bedroom three nights later, burned from the inside out, his blackened lips curled into a smile of something far worse than pain.

An old man named Peter Simms refused to open his. His body was discovered at his kitchen table, his eyes gouged out, the envelope still unopened in front of him.

It was as if the act of receiving a painting itself was enough.

They all led back to one place.

Elias Moore.

The Cottage of the Blind Man

They came for him in the dead of night—six men, armed with knives, axes, and trembling resolve.

The cottage was silent. It smelled of rotting wood and something worse.

The walls were lined with canvases. Hundreds of them.

Some familiar faces.

Some long dead.

Some not yet born.

Elias Moore sat in the center of the room, his blind eyes milky and unseeing, his fingers smeared in crimson.

Not paint.

Blood.

He worked feverishly on a new canvas, his bony hands dragging the brush in frantic strokes. The men froze when they saw what he was painting.

Them.

Every single one of them, standing in that very room.

Their own faces, twisted in agony.

Their own flesh, peeled back like parchment.

Their own mouths, screaming.

Before they could move, Elias spoke.

“I do not choose,” he rasped. His voice was like dead leaves rustling in an empty grave. “The paintings show what must be.”

Then, without warning, the candles in the room snuffed out.

The darkness swallowed them.

And in that silence, something else was breathing.

Something behind them.

The first scream came seconds later.

Then another.

The blood sprayed the walls in thick, wet splatters. Fingers clawed at the floor, leaving deep grooves in the rotting wood. Bones cracked like dry branches. Flesh was stripped in long, wet ribbons.

By morning, there was nothing left.

No bodies.

Only six new paintings, still wet.

And Elias Moore, smiling.

Waiting.

For the next name to be revealed.

The Final Painting

Grey Hollow is gone now.

No one speaks of it. The land is abandoned. Nothing grows there. The air is thick with something unseen, something hungry.

But sometimes, on cold, windless nights, the paintings appear again.

Leaning against forgotten doorsteps.

Nailed to trees along lonely highways.

Wrapped in brown paper, waiting for their next victim.

Maybe one will find you.

And if it does, don’t bother running.

The Blind Painter has already seen your end.

And it is coming.