The Portrait of Perdition

Salem, Massachusetts exuded a horrifying silence, its impenetrable forests and perilous hills concealing unspeakable terrors. Every full moon, a malignant force crawled over the town, snatching souls in an instant—fueling bloodcurdling legends of vengeful curses and abominations lurking in the shadows.

On the outskirts, the dilapidated Salem Asylum towered—a decaying relic of terror that defiant teens dared to explore. Its endless, festering halls throbbed with the agonized cries of forgotten torment and the putrid reek of ancient decay.

One accursed night, friends Ethan, Sam, Rachel, and Marcus plunged into the choking gloom of the asylum, flashlights trembling like dying embers in their hands. In the suffocating silence of the main hall, they discovered a massive, eerie portrait of Dr. Jeff Banks—a once revered figure whose unnervingly luminous eyes now unleashed a torrent of primal fear. With trembling determination, Rachel wiped away layers of dust from a brass plaque beneath the portrait, unveiling a chilling inscription:

Dr. Jeff Banks, 1894.

In a voice barely louder than a death rattle, Marcus recounted grisly legends of Banks ensnaring patients’ souls in his cursed portraits. Even as Ethan scoffed, his uneasy laughter betraying him, an insidious dread slithered through the stale air.

As they turned to flee, a sinister murmur and the groaning of ancient wood paralyzed them with terror. In that frozen moment, the portrait contorted—Dr. Banks’ chair sat ominously empty. Then, as if summoned by pure malice, a gruesome scraping erupted, heralding the emergence of a gaunt, twisted figure with jagged claws, a slack, lipless grin, and those same eyes, now ablaze with a predatory, icy hunger.

The friends bolted through a frantic maze of shifting corridors. Amid their desperate escape, Ethan’s blood-curdling scream shattered the oppressive darkness as an icy, serrated grip clamped around his throat, unleashing a horrifying symphony of tearing flesh and splintering bone. Massive doors slammed shut, sealing the terrified group inside as flickering lights revealed a chorus of disembodied, agonized wails and walls that wept a black, tar-like decay.

Marcus gasped in terror, "He takes one every full moon! This is why people vanish!" In a scream of desperate panic, Sam cried, "We have to destroy the painting!"

Hurriedly racing back to the hall, they found the painting had warped once more—Dr. Banks now wore Ethan’s ghostly visage, his skin ashen and eyes hollow, reflecting an eternity of unrelenting torment. Before they could even react, the painted Dr. Banks sneered with malevolent glee and raised a spectral hand. With a violent shudder, the room convulsed as a savage gust extinguished their flashlights, plunging them into an all-consuming darkness. Sinister breaths and bony, skeletal fingers slithered around their throats, dragging them into an abyss of unfathomable oblivion.

When dawn finally broke, Salem emerged into a haunting emptiness. Ethan, Sam, Rachel, and Marcus had vanished, leaving behind a cursed painting that now imprisoned four tormented souls—a macabre, eternal testament to fragile humanity shattered by relentless supernatural evil. Deep within the asylum’s decaying bowels, an unspeakable malevolence lay in wait, patiently marking time until the next full moon and the next doomed soul would vanish into darkness.

Author's Note

Salem, Massachusetts has long been a place steeped in dark history, whispered folklore, and lingering shadows of the past. The town’s infamous legacy of fear makes it the perfect setting for a tale where reality and nightmare intertwine.

The Portrait of Perdition is a story born from the timeless dread of things that watch when they shouldn't, places that breathe when they should be still, and the fear that some doors, once opened, can never be closed again. It draws inspiration from the notion that true horror is not just in what we see, but in what we cannot escape—fate sealed in oil and canvas, the lingering grip of an entity that refuses to be forgotten.

To those who venture too far into the dark: some legends are warnings, not invitations.

Enjoy the nightmares.