The Faces On The Floor

Arthur sat hunched over his drafting table. He was not used to drawing in candle light, and his eyes were already strained. The last five days had been very productive. He had never felt more inspired to practice his craft. Coming out to his cabin had been a great idea, even if it was in the middle of winter. Arthur stopped drawing for a moment to button up his thick camouflage coat and glance over his shoulder at the dwindling fire in the fireplace. He sighed, and a puff of steam floated up in front of his eyes. His boots thumped on the floorboards like knuckles against a hollow tree as he walked over and threw a thick log on top of the flame. Smoke and embers puffed upwards and Arthur fanned his face coughing. His watch showed 12:34am in green glowing numbers. He had been drawing for over three hours. Arthur smiled. He could not remember the last time he had drawn for such a long stretch of time.

It did not take long for the fire to build and soon the cabin was somewhat comfortable again. After blowing out the candle, Arthur sat on the army cot he had brought with him and removed his boots, then his jacket and pants. His sleeping bag had been expensive, but after three nights of warm sleep, Arthur was glad he had bought it. The cabin was all quite except for the crackling of the fire. Arthur closed his eyes, but soon opened them. His body was tired, but his mind was not. He held up his hand in the light of the fire and saw where his wedding band had once been. There was a pale ring around the flesh of his finger. He smiled, thinking of how his wife had loved her spontaneous little camping trips that she so often planned for the two of them. Arthur rolled over and closed his eyes. A cold breeze rustled down through the treetops overhead. The breeze passed through the spaces between the log walls of the cabin. The draft stung Arthur’s exposed face. He pulled his head down deeper into the sleeping bag and forced himself to lay there with his eyes shut and his mind empty until he finally drifted into a light doze.

Arthur’s eyes opened, and he wondered if the sound he had heard had been real or imagined. There was no way of knowing for certain. He unzipped the sleeping bag and sat straight up on the cot staring out the window. He heard the faint chirping of crickets and the hoot of an owl and nothing more. The fire was steadily dying. The table and couch covered in old books and canned food cast dancing shadows on the walls. Without a second thought, Arthur got out of his sleeping bag and walked across the dirty floor in his socks. He threw open the window and stuck his head outside into the icy air. He saw the black outlines of trees against the sky but not much else. He kept half his body sticking out the window for a long time with his eyes closed. He tried to reach out with his ears to pick up on any sound that was out of place. Something crunched in the dry leaves on the forest floor and scurried away. An acorn dropped from an oak tree. Nothing else.

Arthur closed the window and felt the warm air burn away the cold of his numbed face. He looked around the cabin again feeling watched. The silence hummed. Arthur tiptoed into the kitchen and opened the rotten door. The heat of the fire did not reach the kitchen and neither did the light. Arthur pulled out his Zippo lighter and flicked it twice. The light lit the filthy countertop where the dishes were piled high on the counter and in the sink. A opossum was making a meal of Arthur’s left over chicken carcass. It looked up and sniffed the air before scurrying out through a hole in wall. Arthur smiled.

He started back towards his cot and stopped. He cupped his hands over the Zippo and walked to the closet at the back of the kitchen. Arthur threw back the curtain that served as the closet’s door and knelt down. Inside, there were faces painted on the floor boards. Some had faded and were now little more than stains in the shapes of faces. Others were new and held vibrant expressions of fear and pain. The faces seemed to stare up at him in the flickering light with hopeless eyes. His wife had not liked the faces. A tear rolled down Arthur’s cheek. The tear surprised him as he was certain that he had long ago accepted that his wife was gone. As Arthur was about to leave, his eye caught something different about the faces: A few were missing.

Arthur stared for a long time before he realized that he had forgotten to breathe. He ran his hand against the empty space where the three or four grimacing faces had once been. The boards were smooth and dry with no traces of where the paint had been. He drew his hand back and gasped when he heard something move behind him. Arthur craned his neck looking over his shoulder and saw nothing but his own dirty kitchen in the pale moonlight. Though the air was freezing cold, Arthur was ringing wet with sweat. One of the faces missing on the wall belonged to his wife.

Arthur jumped to his feet and grabbed the flash light sitting beside the toolbox on the closet’s self. He flicked on the light and was momentarily blinded. When his vision adjusted, he shined the light up onto the shelf and took down the toolbox. Inside, his brushes and paints were all neatly arranged. He opened one of the compartments and took out a long, flathead screwdriver. Knelling down on the floor again, he slipped the screwdriver between each of the boards, being careful not ruin the paintings, and lifted each board upwards. They were not nailed down and were easily lifted out of place. From underneath, the smell of rich soil filled the tiny closet. The scent was strong and thick with a faint hint of lime. Ages ago, Arthur had dug the pit in the dirt beneath and lined it with concrete to make it a tomb.

Taking a deep breath and holding it, Arthur stuck his head down into the hole. He moved the flashlight’s beam around and examined each black trash bag lying on the tomb’s floor. When he got to the far right corner, Arthur’s eyes widened. Four of the trash bags lay flat and empty. Arthur mumbled to himself. One of the trash bags had once held his wife. Arthur pulled his head out of the hole and tried to catch his breath. His eyes were shut and his mouth hung dangling open. When he finally opened his eyes, he screamed. On the wall in the center of the closet a new face had been painted that he was sure was not there a few moments earlier. The face was his own, its mouth open in a silent scream.

Arthur knew they were behind him before he turned around. He felt their dead stares burning through him. They were silhouetted in the moonlight, just black shapes. In the front was a figure he recognized. She took a step forward. Arthur tried to beg and plead for her forgiveness, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was a gasp. His wife’s face was decayed past the point of recognition. Her mouth, once a home for so many beautiful smiles, held no flesh and was now a rotted snarl of gnashed teeth. She approached him with arms out stretched. Her cloths were rags now that hung from her emaciated and graying corpse. The little hair she had left floated up around her head as through caught in a breeze.

Arthur backed up into the closet and lost his footing. He tumbled down into the tomb. The garbage bags broke his fall. He felt the rotten flesh against his own through the plastic. For the second time that night, he screamed. His wife looked down at him through the hole above his head. It was his last glimpse of her before she and the others began replacing the boards. Arthur crawled into the dark corner of the tomb he had made and listened as they took down the hammer and nails from the closet’s shelf and began nailing the floor boards into place.