3 Baz
3
Baz
Instead of finishing the painting I should be working on, I scour social media for Dorian Gray.
He’s got an Instagram account—mostly pictures of his masculine yet elegant hands wearing gorgeous rings or holding various objects. His followers are nearly all women. I roll my eyes even though no one’s around to see it.
He’s more active on TikTok. Sometimes he dances, rolling his lean body and hips in the company of two or three guys. In other videos, he shows off hair-care products, moisturizer, makeup, or beverages—typical sponsorship deals for someone with his looks and charm. Sometimes he talks quietly to the camera, giving smiles that seem impulsive but are perfectly studied. When I catch myself smiling back into those brilliant blue eyes, I clamp my hand over my mouth, angry that I’ve fallen prey to his carefully curated persona.
Judging from his clothes and the luxurious settings of his videos, this guy could afford to find Banksy and hire him to paint his portrait. So why does he want me to do it?
Panic tightens my gut.
The paranoid part of me whispers there’s only one reason he’d choose me specifically—and that’s if he already knows what I can do.
But he can’t know. Nobody knew except Mom and Dad, and they’re gone. Mom hadn’t used her gift for years before she passed; her family was dead, and Dad was the only one who knew about her ancestry. Sometimes I wish he had let her create his portrait, trap his soul. Maybe he’d still be alive. But Mom said he didn’t want that kind of supernatural safety. Which makes me irrationally angry whenever I let myself think about it.
Keeping my secret was tough, especially in college. For my minor, I chose art classes that didn’t involve much painting from live models, and thanks to some strategic absences on particular days and some finagling with a few teachers, I managed to get through without drawing a single living person. I distracted my professors from those gaps in other ways, like in Mrs. Radley’s class where I excelled at the speed-sketching assignments she liked to spring on us.
I’ve never told anyone else, never painted anyone else. Nobody knows my secret. So there must be some other reason Dorian wants to commission me.
Not going to happen. I haven’t concealed my curse this long just to have some douchebag out me right after I finally set up my first studio.
A siren wails, and a cop car whizzes past outside. I jump, nearly toppling off my stool. God, I’m nervous lately.
Damn it, it’s six o’clock. Closing time. And I didn’t finish the beach painting.
I could lock up and stay after hours to work on it, but I want to get home and do a run before dark. Cleanup and closing takes a while, and then the drive from the shop to my house takes another five to ten minutes, depending on traffic.
The house Aunt Jessie left me is a pale-blue sideways shoebox of a place, one of Charleston’s trademark single houses, crammed into a sliver of space between two others. Technically I don’t own the whole building, just the first floor. There’s a porch, but instead of facing the street, it faces the incredibly narrow driveway and the wall of the next house, so I don’t sit there much. Lately it’s been hotter than the Devil’s asshole.
After inching my Toyota Camry into its designated spot, I mount the front steps and open the door just enough for me to squeeze inside while shoving Screwtape back with my leg. Damn cat’s always trying to get out. I inherited him from my aunt, too, and the past couple months haven’t brought us much closer to liking each other. He’s cute, with his glossy black fur and white-spotted nose, but like most cats, he’s kind of a dick.
At least he’s someone to talk to.
While I pull on a sports bra and switch to running shorts, I ask myself for the millionth time why I didn’t just sell the house and the studio. Why didn’t I find someone to adopt Screwtape? Why didn’t I stay where I was in Columbia, near USC, near my friends? Why did I buy into the notion of Charleston as some glamorous artists’ haven, a coastal paradise drenched in history, buzzing with activity?
Fine, I guess it is all those things. It’s also loud, crowded, and polluted, not to mention still grappling with the rotten weight of a bygone era. Charleston’s old wealth, its gorgeous homes are all relics from a time when plantations existed and enslaved people worked those sprawling tracts of land. It’s a wretched legacy that the city has tried to crawl away from, with doubtful success.
I grab my earbuds, shove my feet into my beat-up Pumas, and fill Screwtape’s food and water bowls on my way out. He eyes me reproachfully before deigning to sniff the offerings.
“Excuse me, Your Highness,” I mutter, locking the door behind me. I run down the three steps to the sidewalk and jog along Wentworth Street before turning right on Ashley Avenue and heading for Colonial Lake.
As I run, the tension of my encounter with Dorian Gray drains from my muscles. I inhale deeply, grateful that in this area at least, there’s more fresh air. It’s less claustrophobic than the close-set buildings of the downtown streets.
Fading sunlight dances across the ripples of Colonial Lake—a glorified name for a large tidal pond. A pelican sails, white-feathered and crook-necked, across the smoky blue gray of the evening clouds, the tips of his wings gilded by the sun.
The scuffing beat of my sneakers mingles with the shushing scrape of palm fronds tossing in the salt breeze, the jangle of a dog’s collar, the low conversation from a couple across the street, the high voice of a child, and the thwack of tennis rackets as I jog past Moultrie Park.
The air is slightly cooler this evening, a huge relief since we’ve been stuck in this September heat wave. The edge of the last hurricane that swerved out to sea gave us just enough rain to cool things off.
I take another right onto Broad Street, planning to do my usual loop. This stretch of road offers a weird contrast that fascinates me. On my right rises a gorgeous luxury apartment complex: taupe and tan bricks, elegant arches, windows reflecting the blue sky. A wide fountain and several palms adorn the entrance, and more palms line the edge of the roof, where I assume there’s a pool. I’ve never been inside.
To my left lies a weather-beaten concrete building, with ivy clinging to its sides and rust corroding the bars of its dirt-clouded windows. It’s some kind of old Coast Guard building, overgrown, abandoned, and locked. I know, because I tried to get in when I first moved here.
Two very different places, directly opposite each other. Both forbidden to me, one by locks and one by luxury.
I don’t like being excluded. It gives me itchy, rebellious feelings. But I’m more apt to align myself with the grungy, corroded loneliness of the first structure rather than the pristine elegance of the latter.
Impulsively I cross the street to the abandoned concrete building. The words Dining Center still cling to the moldering, moss-eaten bricks. I skirt the building, prowling in the shadows beneath the overgrown trees.
Part of this Coast Guard station is still active. Why has this particular building been left to decay? Maybe it’s haunted.
The thought makes me pause. I have more reason than most people to believe in the supernatural.
Part of me wishes I could see a ghost, confront a poltergeist, or encounter some being of the mystical variety. Then I’d know for sure that my family isn’t the only line of freaks in the world.
This part of Broad Street is quiet right now—no pedestrians. Just cars zooming along the street occasionally, and their occupants are too busy to care that I’m skulking around the abandoned building.
Sticking to the shadows, I wander past the flagpole at the front of the building and mount the mossy concrete steps. The double doors are deeply inset, and their brown diagonal planks point upward and inward, meeting in the center. Two diamond-shaped windows give the entrance a strange, sad, frowning look. Like a doleful face.
What is that word when normal stuff looks like faces? My art history major has to be good for something, right? I dig the term out of the recesses of my mind— pareidolia . That’s it. Face pareidolia.
Someone has scrawled on the doors. The words are half-obliterated, and I can’t make them out. Thick cobwebs swamp the corners beneath the heavy overhang, and stagnant water has pooled in a shallow dip of the concrete. An ant struggles in the liquid, a wriggling speck in a lake that must seem cosmically enormous to him.
Tucking my earbuds into my pocket, I step closer. My heart is thumping fast, and not just because of the run. I feel a dark and delicate affinity with this place, a kinship I can’t define. Like a tug in my gut, pulling me nearer.
Gently I lay one palm against the wood—or is it metal? Iron, maybe.
My skin hums at the contact—a barely perceptible vibration. Are the doors electrified? No, if they were, I’d feel the effects more dramatically.
My fingers slide down to the knob, curling around the rusted globe. The hum tingles stronger against my palm. I have the strangest sense that I need to get inside. A compulsion, gnawing like hunger.
I try twisting the knob, but it doesn’t budge.
“Let me in,” I whisper.
In my mind, I hear an answer, barely a breath, the faintest scratching echo, like the crackle of an old record.
Let me out.
My heartbeat stutters, and a chill runs over my skin.
The buzzing aura of the door spikes suddenly, engulfing me in a sense of something unutterably vast and alien.
Again the voice speaks—stronger, resonating in my skull, vibrating along my nerves, louder and louder. Let me out, let me out, let me out, let me —
A pickup truck roars down Broad Street behind me, “Werewolf” by Motionless in White blasting from its open windows.
Snapped out of my trance, I recoil from the door.
I’ve sensed the mystical before, in various ways, but this was by far the most intense, defined, and frightening experience yet. Every nerve in my body is screaming at me to run, so with a sharp intake of breath, I obey the impulse and flee the frowning entrance and its compulsive energy. I run across the grass, back to the sidewalk.
So I’m hearing voices now? Fuck my life. This day has been too weird, first with that strange commission request and now with some unnamed force reaching out to me. I don’t want to confront what either of those encounters could mean; I’d rather ignore them both. Pretend nothing happened. Tell myself that the voice was all in my head—which, let’s face it, could very well be true, given the stress I’ve been under. In this case, denial is much better for my mental health, overall. What I need is a comfy couch, a bowl of ramen, and a couple episodes of mindless reality TV on Netflix. And I’m going to burn some incense for good energy.
And if the hellcat wants to sit on the sofa and keep me company, I won’t say no.