Your eyes reach the far edge of the painting. There is an anomaly in the corner of the otherwise black plain: three pale splotches, each the size of a dime, touching each other like a short string of pearls. You get close to them. You reach for a scalpel and use the tip to probe the blotches, with the lightest touch. They look as if an observer stood over the painting with a candle that dripped wax in a neat line. But no, the blotches are definitely paint. You’ll have to test them to see if the paint was placed there by de Wit, or if it was perhaps added by another person later, to cover something up. You set the scalpel down next to the jar of turpentine on your desk.

 

You start, realizing that you’ve been making these observations for the better part of an hour without your tape recorder. You swear, hit REWIND, and then PLAY, pressing it to your ear. “The Morning Room, Diederick…” You fast-forward.

 

“Roughly three inches deep…”

 

Your finger begins to press STOP when there is a burst of static from the recorder. You pull it away from your head. A new sound emerges, slithering from the speakers. A hissing whisper, rising and falling like the cadence of human speech. You pick the recorder up and stare at it. The voice—is it a voice? It isn’t yours—murmurs and sighs, and you can hear the intonation of a language you do not speak. You hesitate, and lift the recorder to your ear.

 

“… aan God.” The voice sharpens into a snap of static, and the sound is so pointed you can feel it in your ear, in your skull. You fling the recorder away from you. Thankfully, it misses the painting and lands on the floor, but when it does, it breaks.

 

A bang goes off beneath your feet and reverberates through the floor. Even the painting jumps on the table. Was it an earthquake? You wait for the thin wail of an alarm, the flashing lights. Nothing. You throw open your office door.

 

“Gregory?” you call.

 

Silence. You run to the balcony and peer over, looking for the telltale beam of his flashlight roving over the floor or the visitor’s entrance.

 

No motion.

 

 

If you run to investigate the ominous sound and find Gregory, turn to page 20.

If you cannot resist the thrumming pull of the de Wit painting, turn to page 18.