Chapter 9 – The Painter of Ghosts
The knife in Carl's hand gleamed like a fang beneath the flickering bulb.
The light buzzed, coughed, and threatened to die, throwing the room into uneven gulfs of light and shadow. Every sputter of the bulb stretched Carl's smile wider, made his face seem less human, more like a mask pulled too tight across his skull.
His voice was soft, almost playful, but every syllable scraped like glass against stone.
"You should've seen your face," Carl whispered, chuckling. "So gullible. So easy to prod and push. You came running here with questions in your eyes, and I've been waiting for that look. Do you know how long I've waited for someone clever enough, desperate enough, to reach this far?"
Lumian's throat felt raw. He gripped his knife so hard the hilt dug into his palm. His arm trembled from blood loss, every heartbeat pushing warm streaks down his wrist. The air smelled of iron and mildew, heavy with suffocation.
The grotesque paintings stared at him from the walls. Faces stretched open, eyes hollow, mouths locked in silent screams. He realized with a sick lurch they weren't just paint. Not just brushstrokes. The textures were too raw. Too organic. They were not portraits, but prisons. Flesh and pigment fused. Victims, immortalized.
Carl stepped forward, boots groaning against warped wood. His eyes burned like fever.
"I could've killed you the moment you entered. I could've slit your throat like a pig. But death—death is cheap. Anyone can die. True art is not in the ending, but in the process." His grin twitched. "You, boy… you'll be my next song. Your screams will stretch across these walls in colors the living can't imagine."
Lumian's chest heaved. His pulse thundered like war drums. The door was only steps away, but the corridor beyond was no escape. He remembered the silhouette outside—the one that devoured another ghost whole. Freedom was an illusion.
Carl tilted his head, as though savoring Lumian's silence.
"You want the truth, don't you? About my wife? My son?"
The words froze Lumian. He didn't speak, but his silence betrayed him.
Carl's grin spread, his voice softening into something reverent.
"They were beautiful. So trusting. So fragile. The world never appreciated them, not the way I did. But art demands sacrifice. Perfection demands pain. My boy's eyes…" He licked his lips. "Blue as winter frost. And his mother's skin… pale, tender, flawless. I preserved them both the only way I knew how."
He raised his knife, the blade catching the trembling light. His tongue slithered across the steel, leaving a wet sheen.
"I've always seen them. The ghosts. Since I was a child. They whispered from closets, from cracks in the floorboards. They begged me, cursed me, prayed to me. At first, I hid. I cowered. But then I learned the truth—they're simple things. Empty vessels. They only know resentment, sorrow, hunger. And what is an empty vessel but a canvas?"
Lumian's stomach twisted.
Carl's eyes widened, feverish, like a prophet mid-sermon.
"Most men flee from them. I welcomed them. I learned them. I molded them. I discovered that with just the right cruelty, just the right fracture of body and soul, you can craft them. You can make ghosts."
He raised three fingers slowly.
"I made three. The first, my wife. The second, my boy. And the third…" He smirked. "My brother, Simon."
Lumian's veins iced. The shadow he'd seen in the corridor. The devourer. Simon.
Carl continued, voice low, coaxing, like he was explaining beauty to a blind man.
"My wife is bound to that room. She can never leave. A bird in her cage. My boy… ah, too delicate. Too weak to wander. But Simon? Simon is a marvel. He walks the halls. He hunts. He feeds. He's stronger than the others. A perfect creation. Except… I blinded him before his death. Took away his sight so he could only feel, only hunger. He is art that knows only need."
Lumian shivered. This wasn't madness alone—it was devotion, obsession carved into the shape of a man.
"You're insane," Lumian spat, though his voice wavered. "A disease in human skin."
Carl only laughed, the sound echoing like chains dragged across concrete.
"Insanity is what the small-minded call clarity. And I see further than any of them."
He took another step. His breath was warm and rancid, his words coated in fervor.
"But you… you fascinate me. You see them too, don't you? Ghosts. With no tricks. With no ritual. You see them with naked eyes."
Lumian's lips pressed into a line, but his silence was confession.
Carl's expression deepened into awe.
"Only the rarest do that. The broken ones, like me. Or those steeped in Yin energy until their souls are black. Or…" His grin stretched again, blade trembling with excitement. "Those carved open by trauma so deep it rewrites them. Which one are you, boy? Which scar do you wear?"
The words drilled into Lumian's chest. Why could he see them? Why him? Was it the system? Or something older, darker, buried?
Carl's voice dropped to a whisper, slow and poisonous.
"You don't know, do you? Perfect. That makes you art still unfinished. And unfinished art must be… completed."
Then he lunged.
Steel hissed past Lumian's ear. He ducked, pain searing his wounded arm. His thoughts blurred, his vision blackened at the edges. But something—something deep within—stirred.
A memory. A flash of white walls.
He froze.
For an instant he wasn't here. He was younger. A child. A man in a white coat loomed over him, face blurred, hand crushing his throat. He couldn't breathe. Panic. Pain. His eyes blurred—when he opened them again—blood. His own hands, small and trembling, drenched in red. The man on the floor, lifeless. The copper taste flooded his mouth.
The vision snapped away. Lumian's knees weakened. His knife shook in his grip.
"I… I killed?? No, it can't be… That… wasn't my memory, right? … It can't be." His voice broke into a bitter laugh.
Carl paused, brow furrowed. For a moment, even his mania faltered. "Oh? Perhaps… we are the same."
Lumian's rage ignited. He lunged, feinting with his knife, but at the last instant he seized the heavy chair and swung it with desperate force.
Wood shattered against Carl's ribs. The man staggered, coughing, surprised.
Lumian's blade flashed next, aimed low. It tore across Carl's thigh. Blood splattered across the warped floorboards.
Carl roared. "DAMN YOU!"
Lumian didn't wait. He bolted for the door, lungs burning, shadows stretching like claws to drag him back.
The corridor yawned open, long and suffocating. Somewhere in the dark, Simon lingered. Somewhere behind him, Carl bled and laughed, a predator unbroken.
One thing rang clear in Lumian's mind as his feet pounded the floorboards:
Humans were far more dangerous than ghosts.
Yet even as he ran, his thoughts twisted into something darker. Carl had said three ghosts—wife, son, Simon. All enemies to Carl. All trapped in this place.
And a dangerous, desperate thought flickered across Lumian's mind.
What if he could use them?
He didn't know why, but deep inside, some part of him whispered that ghosts weren't enemies. That they were closer to him than he dared to admit.
The door creaked open with a groan, spilling him into the endless corridor of shadows.
And the darkness welcomed him.