The painting leaked around the edges, the stream seemingly flowing from the distant mountains in the background through to a grate in the floor. According to the gallery there was a hose planted somewhere in the upper middle that was feeding the stream, drawing water from the small bucket underneath the grate and pumping it straight through to feed the illusion of a flowing body of water.
Now this explanation was all well and good but it didn't explain how birds migrated from the painted woods or how bears came and fished there once a year. It certainly didn't explain the hikers that came, camped and left or the skeletal creature that was seen shortly after wearing the remnants of a jacket that matched one of the hikers.
The creature came and went as it pleased, sometimes lurking in the farthest background, a little black spec on the mountains, sometimes just to one side of the frame's view, a clawed hand that could almost be mistaken for branches.
Eventually it seemed to figure a way out of the painting, freezing mid-step when the gallery opened. The staff were horrified and put a cordon around it, quickly hiring two burly men to guard it while they printed off a new bio that claimed the artist had adapted the work just in time for Halloween.
It went down great with visitors, none of whom noticed how the "statue" gradually moved forward over the course of the day. None of them noticed how scared the staff were, putting it down to a Halloween prank and shaking off the feeling that something was deeply wrong. None of them noticed how the corpse it held changed several times that day.
When the gallery closed that night, it didn't reopen again for weeks.
One painting down.
Now this explanation was all well and good but it didn't explain how birds migrated from the painted woods or how bears came and fished there once a year. It certainly didn't explain the hikers that came, camped and left or the skeletal creature that was seen shortly after wearing the remnants of a jacket that matched one of the hikers.
The creature came and went as it pleased, sometimes lurking in the farthest background, a little black spec on the mountains, sometimes just to one side of the frame's view, a clawed hand that could almost be mistaken for branches.
Eventually it seemed to figure a way out of the painting, freezing mid-step when the gallery opened. The staff were horrified and put a cordon around it, quickly hiring two burly men to guard it while they printed off a new bio that claimed the artist had adapted the work just in time for Halloween.
It went down great with visitors, none of whom noticed how the "statue" gradually moved forward over the course of the day. None of them noticed how scared the staff were, putting it down to a Halloween prank and shaking off the feeling that something was deeply wrong. None of them noticed how the corpse it held changed several times that day.
When the gallery closed that night, it didn't reopen again for weeks.
One painting down.
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