Chills

(This story contains mentions of death.)

Not long after the death of her beloved aunt, Belle Dubois arrived at her inherited estate that loomed over the quiet outskirts of Paris—a regal home of whispering corridors and shuttered windows. The locals referred to it as “la maison sans sommeil,” or “the sleepless house,” for its flickering candle-lit halls swallowed the house in a darkness greater than the one they attempted to cast away. Within the ashen walls lingered the smell of oil paint and golden dust that danced in your airways.

During the first few days of her occupancy, she paraded through the halls, tracing the tapering memory of her famed aunt, Elsie Dubois; it was as if her spirit had left an impression in every corner, much as she had crafted a great impression during her lifetime. Her work once drew whispers of divine madness from the tongues of the world; it had once filled prestigious galleries and acted as a muse to the hearts of forlorn artists. Belle’s own name, tied to Elsie by both blood and ambition, had begun to stir murmurs among critics internationally. She was subsequently exceptionally acclaimed for her artistry at such a tender age, but she couldn’t expunge the sensation that she had suddenly become burdened by a legacy seemingly too large for her to inhabit.

Her doubts deepened during one twilit evening when she had come to discover her aunt’s arsenal of unopened, yellowing letters. She winnowed through a collection of salon invitations, patron proposals, and scattered epistles—fragments of her aunt’s carefully constructed legacy. Among them, a persistently recurring name: Etienne Flower. The words were written in an almost feverish, desperate style. The handwriting spoke of a man who hadn’t sought skill for himself; rather, he sought validation through proximity to it.

Etienne Flower, a Franco-American gallery owner, had written of his annual Parisian salon—an ornate affair marked by the bubbles of champagne and the whirring elegance of a string quartet. “Etienne: Le Pont Entre Les Mondes,” he called it. The bridge between worlds. Belle snickered as her eyes skimmed the title, “The Bridge Between Worlds.” She muttered, piercing the silence of the stagnant study, “or the man who pretends to own both.”

In the weeks following, at the Academie Julian, fate—or perhaps something of a more sinister nature—had summoned Etienne Flower to Belle.

“Ms. Dubois! Ah, Ms. Dubois!” A voice whirred from behind Belle, who had just concluded her lesson of the day. She had spun to meet the eyes of an eager Etienne Flower, a lanky, aging man with hair silvered by vanity. Trailing shortly behind him was his daughter, Madeline Flower, a striking young girl who beamed with the insolence of youth. A large, vacuous smile painted across her rosy cheeks as she bobbed blithely behind her father.

“A moment of your time, Mademoiselle,” He briskly extended his hand and promptly began with his prepared introduction: “Etienne Flower. I am the owner of the Galerie Beaumont; perhaps you’ve heard—”

“Yes,” Belle interrupted through a faint grin, “my aunt spoke of you.”

“Ah! Then she spoke fondly, I presume?”

“She mentioned you,” Belle lowly added.

Etienne briefly paused before gesturing toward his daughter. “Madeline, my daughter, studies here. I’d be honored if you would paint her portrait; she is to be the centerpiece of my next salon. It would be… mutually beneficial, I’m sure.”

No, it wouldn’t.

Madeline’s eyes twinkled in anticipation, her lips sewn together in a feeble attempt to conceal her exuberant nature. Belle’s pulse had hastily quickened, though not from excitement, but from recognition. It had been the same request he had made to Elsie. The same request Elsie had disregarded. Regardless of what Belle had cemented in her mind about Etienne and Madeline, she agreed.

“Very well,” Belle said at last, “I would be delighted.”

The following night, Belle brought Madeline back to her estate. Madeline’s curiosity and zeal echoed off the gilded sconces; her behavior seemed almost touched by sacrilege.

“Your aunt’s home is so grand!” Madeline gasped, outlining gilt frames with imprudent fingers.

“It’s my home. My aunt merely preserved the soul.” Belle replied, leading Madeline down a drawn-out corridor.

As Belle yanked open the doors to the atelier, motes of dust swam in the lamplight, settling on the velvet chaise and the tall, expectant canvas. Madeline pressed past Belle and ardently plopped herself on the stool that sat before the canvas.

“What fun it would be if I painted you instead!” Madeline jovially blurted.

“It would certainly be something of a laugh…” Belle lightly remarked, “Stand before the canvas.”

“Facing it?”

“Yes.”

Madeline furrowed her brows, though she obeyed without hesitation, delighted by the strangeness of the request. Belle started for the cabinets lining the back wall, beginning to retrieve a heavy tool.

“You’ll paint me from memory? How avant-garde!” Madeline hummed, her legs lightly wiggling with anticipation.

Belle, who held a small cloth to rid her tool of dust, called out from the back of the room, “It’s a technique I’ve long wished to try—you’re the perfect subject.”

Madeline’s laughter had faltered, succumbing to the blistering silence of the room. “You’re very quiet, Ms. Dubois.”

“I’m only concentrating.” She answered lowly.

“Will it hurt?” Madeline lightly teased.

Belle exhaled, a faint smile distorting her lips. “Only a little.”

Belle steadied herself behind Madeline, her fingers ghosting over the handle of her instrument. The air surrounding them seemed to have suddenly contracted, the low hum of the rain beyond the window dissolving into an eerie hush.

Belle paused, recalling her aunt’s voice, her lessons, and her sacrifices. She thought about how Elsie was a testament to the way art demands devotion, even blood. She inhaled heavily and raised her arms with a slow precision; the vision of Madeline’s final form danced on the canvas before her, the beauty that she would soon become, and the beauty that would soon destroy her

Under her breath, a scarce whisper flowed from Belle’s bloodless lips:

“You’re going to be beautiful.”

Months later, it had come time for the salon. Rain pelted against the slate roof of Etienne’s Parisian townhouse. Inside, chandeliers trembled under the bustling of music and conversation. The scent of an indistinct burning candle capered with the smell of wine and lavish perfume. Guests filed in, cloaked in velvet, and the buzzing of their murmurs mingled in the air like incense.

“She is her aunt reborn,” a voice whispered.

“Or her ghost,” whispered another.

Etienne greeted Belle with a flourish, “Ah, the woman of the hour! You must be proud. I have yet to see the piece myself—I insisted it remain veiled until tonight.”

Belle’s palms, slick with sweat, fidgeted with the hems of her sleeves. Her heart began to wallop against her chest as the gravity of what she had done slowly began to settle in her bones. The air thickened as Etienne led her into the grand parlor. There, the canvas stood beneath crimson silk, tall and foreboding.

A dry rasp stirred in Etienne’s throat, permeating the teeming parlor. “Welcome, friends!” He announced, raising a glass. “I thank you all for coming. I’m sure you’re all well aware of the great Elsie Dubois’s passing; however, relinquish your sorrows, as tonight, we honor the bridge between worlds, between art and spirit, and France and America. And above all, let us honor Mademoiselle Belle Dubois!”

Polite applause blanketed the room. A waned smile rested on Belle’s face, her tongue tasting of iron.

“And my daughter,” Etienne added, surveying the room. “Where is Madeline?”

Belle’s gaze lowered. “She’s here,” she muttered softly, her eyes crawling toward the canvas.

“Well, no matter! Let us see this triumph!” Etienne declared enthusiastically before he drew the veil.

Gasps rippled through the room. The painting glimmered with feverish life—a young, ravishing Madeline reclined on a scarlet chaise, her limbs graceful as they languidly hung in the air, her face almost divine. But something was odd. The painting had not been crafted with varying colors but instead crafted in all layers of red. Layers seemingly alive, the texture glistening with a depth that seized the eye and refused to release it.

“Mon Dieu… it breathes.” A voice murmured.

Etienne stepped forward, trembling, the hair on the back of his neck rising. His hand reached toward the canvas, tracing the thick strokes. The strokes rested on the canvas so rigidly, so vivaciously—so much so it seemed as though it were painted with more than traditional colors.

“I call it La Muse Écarlate. The scarlet muse.”

Belle’s voice stung the room, fracturing the hush of the dazed audience. Candlelight twinkled, bending shadows across her ashen face. The guests, beguiled by both the brilliance and ghostliness of the art, could not decide whether to applaud or flee. Etienne’s eyes were fastened on the canvas, almost as if he were waiting for movement.

“My… such peculiar strokes of genius…” Etienne crooned, swallowed by the grand phantasm of Belle’s work. “Such beauty… chills.”

In the painting, Madeline Flower’s eyes gazed back—her lips a wilted breath and eyes wide and glassy, forever trapped in the ecstasy of Belle’s ambition and her father’s desire. From the thick, dark ridges of ruby—just at the edge of the canvas—a single strand of pale hair glimmered faintly in the feeble lighting.

By the time Belle had arrived back at her estate, night had fallen. The atelier sat in near darkness; frail lighting emitted from a single swinging oil lamp. The stillness of the taciturn room was disturbed only by the weak shiver of a draft slipping through the imposing windows.

Belle cautiously stepped across the wooden floor, her slippers muttering against the aged cedar planks. The faint scent of iron hung thick in the air as the door croaked to a close behind her.

Her eyes fell upon the chaise. There, Madeline’s lifeless body lay draped, pallid, and frozen.

The life from Madeline’s obsidian eyes had bled out onto Belle’s canvas. A bead of light caught on a lock of Madeline’s hair as Belle reluctantly made her way toward her body. A thin sheet partially covered her before Belle removed it with shuddering fingers. She ran her fingers over the edge of the chaise, creeping up to the tendons of Madeline’s frigid hands. Kneeling beside the chaise, her shadow grotesquely contorted across the wall. She parted her lips and whispered reverently:

“You were perfect.”

She lifted a small, glistening vial of deep red, thick, and luminous. She peered back over at Madeline, then at her canvas. A bitter thrill ran through her—the same thrill that had gripped her when she first discovered her aunt’s sacrificial methods, the same thrill that had whispered of glory and immortality. With slow, precise strokes, she applied the substance to the canvas. The paint alive beneath her hands, it slowly began to take on a vitality no traditional pigment could.

“My art will live forever… just as your legacy did, Aunt Elsie.”

The solemn space rattled with a gust of wind, and the shadow of the lamp quivered across Madeline’s face. The breeze brushed against the obsessive satisfaction saturated on Belle’s features. She inhaled deeply, eyes locked with the canvas before her, the quiet body of Madeline Flower motionless behind the canvas.

Outside, rain tapped relentlessly against the window, a twisted cadence that felt both like applause and benediction.