The Man in the Window

Jamie’s grandmother had passed away. She had been old and had died of natural causes. It seemed to Jamie that it was easier for people to accept a passing that way. She had been living in a nursing home and Jamie and his Dad were there to sort out her things the day after the funeral. His Dad had asked if he wanted to come. He was 14 now and his parents were letting him be more and more involved in the events of adulthood. Jamie was a shy boy and they probably thought it would mold him more into a man. He wandered through his Grandma’s apartment and opened a drawer of the bedroom closet. It was weird to go through someone’s stuff when they had passed, but it also made him curious what he would find. Jamie’s Dad was walking around, mapping out the big objects before delving into the smaller things. His footsteps were going back and forth until they stopped and Jamie noticed that it had been quiet for some time. He looked up to see where his Dad was and found him staring at a painting on the wall. Jamie sneaked up to him and asked him what it was.
‘It’s a painting’ he said.
‘Yeah I know, Dad, I have eyes,’ Jamie returned. ‘But what does it mean? You are staring at it for some time now.’
‘Well that’s what they are for aren’t they?’ he said and briefly smiled at Jamie. ‘A painting is a window to another world, with a story enclosed. People stare at it to uncover the story, unfold it into what it means to them.’
Jamie looked at the painting which had an ominous feeling to it. He didn’t know what caused it but it was there and he felt uncomfortable the longer he looked at it. It was a drawing of a man standing behind a window of what looked like a house. The window was basically the frame of the canvas and the man was the center of the piece. He was a middle-aged man with brown hair that was lazily swiped to the left side of his head. He had a mustache that covered his upper lip fully and one of those glasses that you hardly notice unless you look for them. Behind him you could see people grouped together, they were silhouettes, you couldn’t see their faces. They were like extras on the set. The man gazed straight out of the painting towards the observer. His facial expression was inviting. Jamie felt safe and frightened at the same time.
‘Who made this?’ he asked.
‘I have no idea, mother bought it at a flea market in France,’ said Dad as he drew his eyes from the canvas.
‘Are you going to take it?’ Jamie asked.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Dad, ‘used to give me nightmares when I was a kid.’
Jamie looked again at the painting and felt drawn into it. The longer you observed the more details you noticed. As if it came to life.
‘Can I have it?’ he asked.
Jamie’s Dad turned towards him in disbelief, ‘You like this?’
‘Well, I don’t know, I haven’t really looked at paintings before but, you told me I had to be more culturally open.’ It was true, his Dad had said this to him whilst he was playing video games again. Like parents always do. “How much more culture do you want” had Jamie said while butchering some Spartans in ancient Greece. “Musea and art galleries is where you should be” the old people would say waving their fists in the air.
‘I did say that,’ his Dad admitted.
‘So you should encourage me.’
Jamie’s Dad laughed for the first time since Grandma had passed and gently pushed his son aside. ‘Alright, alright you can have it but you hang it up in your room. I don’t want to be confronted with it,’ he said as he shuddered and walked away to observe the other stuff his mother had left behind.

That night Jamie was playing his Playstation lost in another world where he was slaying a demon sent from Hell. He failed for the twentieth time and put the controller down. He looked at the painting that was firmly hung up on his wall. He had done it himself which he was pretty proud of. He now had his own artwork. He looked at the man in the window which seemed to have been witnessing his failed attempts at trying to beat the game.
‘Could you do any better?’ Jamie asked.
The man’s expression seemed to tell him he would if he could.

Days passed and life started to turn back to what it was before. Every time Jamie walked into his room he looked at the painting and he noticed that sometimes he was talking to it. Not out loud, most of the time, but more like an inner conversation. The man’s expression on the canvas was so well done that it seemed to resemble Jamie’s feelings. When he was sad the man in the window looked caring and when he was happy the man seemed to have a hint of a smile. That is some real artistry Jamie thought, the painter must have had tremendous skill. Jamie grew more and more comfortable with the painting as if it was slowly becoming a friend, a confidant, something Jamie had never had. He told him more and more about his everyday life until one evening his mother came in.
‘Who are you talking to?’ she asked.
Jamie was aghast at the thought that he had been speaking out loud. Did he really?
‘I’m practicing for theater class in school,’ he muttered and was glad that mother seemed to accept this improvisation. Jamie wouldn’t know then that it would be the last conversation he would have with his mother.

That Saturday morning Jamie was eating his cereal at the kitchen table while his mother was cleaning the rooms upstairs. She would always go through the house, cleaning up, when Dad was away to play tennis with his buddies from work. It was what the weekends seem to be for, tidying up the house. The vacuum cleaner stopped making noise and it was the first time that morning that it was completely silent in their home. Jamie heard his own slurping when he finished the last bit of milk that was in his bowl. As he put the remnants of breakfast away in the sink he got startled by a loud scream that came from upstairs. At first, he wasn’t sure who it was until he realized that he had never heard his mother scream like that before in his life. His heart was pounding instantly and the silence after the shriek was deafening. He slowly walked towards the stairs while his senses were on high alert. He called for his mother but on the first try he was too scared to produce any sound and all he heard was a low hiss from his throat.
‘Mom?’ he tried again softly since there was not a sound in the house so she would be able to hear it. Nothing returned. His legs were so weak of fear that he didn’t know if he could climb the stairs. He started to ascend one step at a time, fighting his own fright. The door to his bedroom was open and he saw the vacuum cleaner lying on the ground.
‘Mom?’ he called and his voice cracked. Slowly he stepped through the door to find that his mother…, was not there. ‘Mom?’ he called a little louder. ‘Are you alright?’ he asked while he peeked at the painting. Winston – what he had been naming him lately – was right there and glanced at Jamie with a warm caring glow.
‘It’s alright Jamie,’ Winston said, ‘Nothing for you to worry about.’
Jamie’s breath came back to him slowly. ‘But I can’t find my mother,’ he said.
‘Your mother is perfectly fine, she is proud that you care so much.’
‘Of course I do, I love her. I thought she was in danger. She scared me.’
‘There, there, Jamie,’ the man in the window said. ‘Do you need a hug?’
‘Yes please, and then I want to find my mother.’
‘We will Jamie, come here.’
Jamie walked towards the painting and stood right in front of it. Winston gazed into his eyes and Jamie saw for the first time that Winston’s pupils were a fiery red. Winston’s arms shot through the canvas, caught Jamie by the shoulders and he dragged him into the other world.

When Jamie came to he saw his own bedroom through the window at the far wall. He couldn’t move, he was standing in one place. He couldn’t breathe but there was no need for breathing here. He couldn’t blink but there was no need to moist his eyes. He couldn’t scream though there was every need for him to do so. The only thing that he could move was his eyes and to his left and right there stood other people. No more silhouettes but people of flesh and blood. Every person in the room radiated extreme anxiety, horror, and desperation and it slowly took hold of Jamie. It felt like they were, as a group, on the verge of screaming, to warn a person on the other end of the window, but there was no breath to create any sound. It was then that Jamie noticed that the person next to him was his mother. He felt safe and frightened at the same time, just as when he had first laid eyes on the painting. He couldn’t turn his head but he felt the fear vibrating out of his mother. He wanted a hug from her so bad, to hear her say that everything would be alright. But he knew then that as close as he was standing to his mother he couldn’t be farther. At that moment a man walked past them, brushing the wrinkles from his clothes, and took his place at the window with his back towards the people in the room. The silhouettes that would stand there forever, caught in horror and desperation until the end of time.
Winston glanced back at Jamie and winked. Then he turned around facing the window and everything turned silent. A silence so pressing and so quiet that Jamie had never heard before.