The Painted Darkness by Brian Keene, Brian James Freeman Read Free Book Online

wondered where the necklace had come from. Why would someone leave something like this in a tree house? How could it have been forgotten? What happened to the previous owner?
Henry dropped the necklace in his pocket, put his hands on the crude window, and gazed out over the endless forest and the snow-covered river in the distance. The sight was beautiful, but Henry was concerned by the coldness he felt tightening inside himself, as if he was still on the verge of falling. Only the height wasn’t what made him nervous. His parents always said he was a thoughtful boy and he accepted he spent more time just thinking about stuff than other kids, but he didn’t know how to be any other way. He simply was the way he was.
So Henry stood in the empty tree house and he stared at the snowy winter landscape and he contemplated what was happening in his ever-expanding world of youthful magic and wonder.
A few moments later, right as he felt the floor crumbling under his feet, he noticed the movement in the bushes beyond the clearing: thousands of white rabbits with dark red eyes, all of them bounding through the woods like a herd of cattle.
But before Henry could really grasp the bizarreness of the spectacle, his entire world flipped upside down and he was falling for real.
THE PRESENT (6)
A Brave Man or a Coward
H

enry the Adult has never considered
    himself to be either a brave man or a coward, but now he knows which side of the fence he falls on when strange things happen. He’s a coward and he plans on having no problem telling everyone that once he learns what made the sound in the cellar. And what moved the flashlight.
    Henry sits in the attic and listens to the storm blowing against his house. He’s a grown man and there must be a reasonable explanation for what happened. He tells himself this because he understands it’s what he’s supposed to believe as an adult.
    The problem is, Henry thinks as he sits in the darkened attic with the door locked, there is not a good explanation.
    Sometimes he may spend hours lost in his imagination, certain there are mysterious forces at work in the universe that allow him to take the worries in his head and transform them into beautiful and disturbing images painted on a canvas, but he’s not ready to admit there could actually be some kind of monster in his cellar. Those kinds of thoughts open the doors to madness. There must be a better explanation.
    “Those stupid rats!” Henry cries, quickly latching on to the sanest idea his semihysterical mind can conjure. “Could they have made that sound? They certainly could have moved the flashlight, right? Of course they could! They’re always moving crap down there.”
    Which was true. Sometimes, when he and Sarah were in the kitchen, they’d hear the clang of the rusty tools being knocked together. Sometimes it even sounded like the cabinet doors in the old workshop were opening and closing as the rats searched for food and supplies to build their nests in THE PAINTED DARKNESS
the foundation walls and wherever else they might roam.
    Henry isn’t convinced the rats were the source of the sound and the movement, but he is an adult—a grown man with a wife and a child—and he understands he’s not allowed to accept the possibility there might really be monsters in the world. Not until he exhausts every natural explanation, no matter how strange.
Henry unlocks the attic door and heads downstairs.
THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST (7)
O

ne moment Henry was gazing through
    the crudely made window at the snow-covered forest, the next moment everything had gone black. He had no idea where he was and he couldn’t remember what had happened, but when he blinked open his eyes the world was very dark and very wet— and an extremely heavy weight was pressing on his chest.
    Then images and sounds flashed into his mind:
The creaking of the tree house crumbling under his weight.
His terrified attempt to grab on to the window.
The plummet through the