Hide and Seek

Chapter 22: When Paintings Come to Life

Once the lights were off, I ran upstairs. The thing on all four was after me but often crashed into stuff. By the time I was on the fourth floor, the thing was on the second, still crashing into things.

I went into Mr. Harmon's art room and turned on my phone's flashlight. Downstairs, I heard the cops yelling and Abby calling after me. It brought back the same memories of my parents yet, they have been in Mr. Harmon's grip the whole time, and I had no idea why. They weren't going to get in. Not unless I somehow stopped Mr. Harmon.

I shined the light around the room and noticed something. Every single painting was different. There were paintings of Tate, Jasper, Violet, the crawling woman, Caroline, Caleb. There were regular pictures of them then there were paintings of them dead. A picture beside the window was of me. It was normal. As I was lifting it, another picture from behind fell. I picked it up.

I viewed the painting, and my heart stopped. My body started to shake, and I wanted to collapse right then and there. The painting was a picture of a clown holding me, passed out in his left hand. And in the other hand was an actual beating heart.

I put my hand to my heart to feel for a beat. This whole time, I thought my heart was beating when I was scared, and it wasn't. There was no beat now. Only the beating of my heart on the picture. He already had me. That same second I felt my heart beating. False alarm. Guess I was just too afraid in that moment and my anxiety had reached over the limits.

I started looking around at every other painting.