.jpg)
The Forgetting Gallery
The call came at 3:47 AM, pulling Detective Maya Chen from a dream she couldn't remember. Her partner's voice crackled through the phone, urgent and strange.
"Maya, you need to see this. The East Wing."
The East Wing. Maya's hands tightened on the steering wheel as she drove through empty streets toward the Ashford Museum. Everyone in the city knew about the East Wing—sealed since 1995 after some structural incident the museum never fully explained. She'd walked past its heavy oak doors a hundred times during investigations, never giving them much thought.
Until now.
Four patrol cars sat outside the museum, their lights painting the neoclassical facade in alternating blue and red. Detective James Rodriguez met her at the entrance, his face pale in the predawn darkness.
"The night guard called it in," he said, leading her through the main gallery. "Said he heard something. Music, maybe. Coming from behind the sealed doors."
.jpg)
"The East Wing's been closed for thirty years, James."
"I know. That's not the weird part."
They stopped before the oak doors. Someone had cut through the padlock. The doors stood open, revealing a corridor thick with dust and darkness. James handed her a flashlight.
The beam cut through shadow, illuminating walls lined with paintings. Maya's breath caught. These weren't the museum's collection. These were portraits—hyperrealistic, almost photographic. And they were of people she recognized.
"That's Sarah Hendricks," she whispered, approaching the first painting. "Missing since 2019. We never found her."
The portrait showed Sarah in what looked like a gray room, wearing the same yellow dress she'd disappeared in. But Sarah looked older now—exactly as old as she would be if she'd lived these past six years.
"There are forty-three paintings," James said quietly. "All missing persons. Some go back decades."
Maya walked slowly down the gallery, her flashlight revealing face after face. Marcus Webb, gone in 2015. The Chen twins, vanished in 2008. Elizabeth Park, missing since 1998. Each portrait showed them aged appropriately, as if they'd been sitting for these paintings year after year.
Then Maya stopped.
Her flashlight beam trembled on a portrait of a young woman in a blue hoodie. Dark hair. Sharp cheekbones. Seventeen years old.
"Lily," Maya breathed.
Her sister stared out from the canvas, older than Maya remembered but unmistakably Lily. Fifteen years had passed since that October night when Lily had left for a friend's house and never arrived. Fifteen years of searching, of hoping, of slowly accepting that she was gone.
But here she was. Painted in exquisite detail.
Maya stepped closer. Then she froze.
Lily's eyes had moved.
"James," Maya said slowly. "Are you seeing this?"
"Seeing what?"
Maya's heart hammered against her ribs. Lily's eyes—they were tracking her, following her movement across the gallery. And now her sister was holding something. A small white card.
Maya pressed closer to the canvas, squinting at the painted card in Lily's hand. Numbers were written on it in Lily's handwriting: 01.30.26.
Today's date.
"This isn't possible," Maya whispered. "James, look at the card—"
"Maya." James's voice was sharp. "Who's that?"
He pointed to the far end of the gallery. In the dim light, Maya could make out one more portrait, partially hidden in shadow. They approached together.
The brass plaque read: Evelyn Ashford, Museum Architect, 1952-1995.
The woman in the portrait was perhaps sixty years old, gray-haired and elegant, wearing a paint-stained smock. She stood in this very gallery, surrounded by the same portraits that now hung on these walls. In her hand, she held a paintbrush, and behind her, an empty canvas waited on an easel.
"Evelyn Ashford," Maya said. "She designed this museum. Disappeared the day the East Wing was sealed."
"Look at what she's painting," James said.
Maya leaned in. On Evelyn's half-finished canvas, barely visible in the portrait's background, was the suggestion of a face. A woman's face. And even in that rough sketch, Maya could see the resemblance.
It looked like her.
By dawn, the East Wing was crawling with technicians. Crime scene photographers documented every painting. Art experts examined brushstrokes and signatures—there were none. Carbon dating proved impossible; the paint was fresh, applied within the last few days. But the canvases themselves were old, some dating back thirty years.
Maya stood before Lily's portrait, a cup of cold coffee in her hand. In the growing light, she could see more details. The gray room where Lily stood had no windows, no door. Just walls covered in strange symbols—geometric patterns that made Maya's eyes hurt if she looked too long.
And Lily's expression. God, her expression. Not fear exactly. More like... waiting. Like she was trying to tell Maya something.
"Detective Chen?" A young officer approached nervously. "We found something in the Ashford portrait. Might want to take a look."
Maya followed him to Evelyn's painting. The officer pointed to the bottom right corner of the canvas within the canvas—the painting Evelyn was working on in her portrait.
"We enhanced the image. There's writing. Really small, but legible."
He handed Maya a tablet showing a magnified photograph. In tiny letters, hidden in the brushstrokes of Evelyn's painted canvas, were words:
They are not gone. They are waiting. The gallery remembers. February 13, 2026.
Two weeks away.
Maya spent the next three days living in the museum. She requisitioned every file on the East Wing's closure, interviewed the original construction crew, tracked down Evelyn Ashford's surviving relatives. The story that emerged was strange and fragmented.
Evelyn had been a visionary, brilliant and eccentric. She'd designed the East Wing specifically for a collection that never materialized—a private donor had promised masterpieces that never arrived. The wing had opened briefly in 1995, empty except for a single exhibition: Moments in Time, a showing of Evelyn's own paintings.
The exhibition ran for one night. Seventy people attended the opening gala. By morning, Evelyn had vanished, and the museum board had sealed the wing, citing "structural concerns" that no engineer could ever identify.
Maya dug deeper. Of those seventy attendees, five had gone missing in the years since. Five people who now hung on these walls.
But it was Evelyn's journal that broke the case open. Maya found it in the museum archives, misfiled under "Construction Documents." The last entry was dated October 12, 1995—the night of the gala.
I understand now what I've built. The geometry isn't decorative—it's functional. The angles, the proportions, the way light moves through the gallery at certain times. I thought I was creating art, but I was creating a door. And tonight, when the paintings are all hung and the guests arrive, the door will open.
I see them in the paint. The missing ones. They're not dead. They're caught between moments, suspended in the spaces where time folds. The gallery shows them as they are, aging in their prison. And if my calculations are correct, February 13 is when the fold completes its cycle. When the door opens fully.
I'm afraid of what might come through. But I'm more afraid of leaving them there.
The entry ended there.
Maya read it three times, her hands shaking. Then she returned to the East Wing.
The paintings had changed.
It was subtle—Maya might have missed it if she hadn't memorized every detail. But Sarah Hendricks was holding something now: a small object that looked like a key. Marcus Webb's background had shifted; the gray walls showed a door now, barely visible. And Lily—
Lily was pointing. Her arm extended toward the end of the gallery, toward something Maya hadn't noticed before.
A canvas covered by a white sheet, tucked in the corner.
Maya approached slowly. James appeared beside her, gun drawn, though neither of them knew what they were protecting against.
Maya pulled away the sheet.
The canvas showed her.
Detective Maya Chen, standing in this exact spot, in the clothes she was wearing right now. Behind her painted self, the gallery stretched into impossible distances, filled with hundreds of portraits—far more than forty-three. And in her hand, the painted Maya held a paintbrush.
"That's impossible," James said. "This was painted before you got here. Before you wore those clothes."
But Maya was staring at the bottom of the canvas. A brass plaque, identical to the others, read: Maya Chen, Detective, 1989-2026.
Her birth year. And her death year—February 13, two weeks from now.
Maya spent every waking hour in the East Wing. She photographed the paintings hourly, documenting each change. They were all shifting now, all communicating. The missing people were arranging themselves, positioning objects, creating patterns.
It was James who saw it first. "They're making a map," he said on day seven.
He'd printed out all the portraits and laid them on a table, arranging them in the order they hung on the walls. The objects the painted figures held—keys, books, geometric shapes—created a sequence. And the backgrounds, when viewed together, formed a single continuous image: a room with a specific configuration of doors and windows.
Maya cross-referenced it with the museum's blueprints. "It's here. Beneath the East Wing. A basement level that's not on the official plans."
They found the entrance behind Evelyn's portrait. The wall wasn't solid—it was a cleverly disguised door, the seams invisible until you knew where to look. It opened onto a narrow staircase descending into darkness.
The basement was a single large room, octagonal, with walls covered in those same geometric symbols Maya had seen in Lily's portrait. And in the center, on a raised platform, sat an easel with a blank canvas.
"What is this place?" James whispered.
Maya approached the easel. Beside it lay a palette with fresh paints and a single brush. Everything was covered in dust except these tools, which gleamed as if recently used.
Then she heard the voice.
"Maya."
She spun around. The room was empty—but the voice had been clear, familiar. Lily's voice.
"Maya, you have to paint."
"Lily?" Maya's voice broke. "Where are you?"
"Between. We're all between. The geometry traps us in the spaces between moments. But you can finish it. You can complete the cycle."
James was backing toward the stairs. "Maya, we should go—"
"No." Maya stared at the blank canvas. "If there's a chance to bring them back—"
"You don't understand what you're painting," Lily's voice said, urgent now. "When Evelyn created this place, she opened a door. But she didn't know what lived in the spaces between. Something old. Something hungry. It's been using the gallery to pull people through, collecting them. Feeding on their trapped moments."
Maya's hand hovered over the paintbrush. "Then how do I stop it?"
"You don't stop it. You give it what it wants. Paint yourself, Maya. Complete the portrait it started. Let it take you. And when you're between, when you're suspended in that fold of time—break the pattern. Change the geometry. Free us all."
"That's suicide," James said.
"It's the only way." Lily's voice was fading. "February 13. When the cycle completes, the door opens fully. Either we all come back, or it comes through into your world. And it's so hungry, Maya. So very hungry."
The voice vanished.
Maya stood in the silence, staring at the blank canvas. Then she picked up the brush.
"Maya, no—" James grabbed her arm.
She shook him off. "Call for backup. Get every officer we have here on February 13. If this goes wrong—if something comes through—"
"You can't do this."
"My sister's been trapped for fifteen years." Maya's voice was steel. "They all have. Living in gray rooms, aging in suspended moments, while something feeds on their stolen time. I won't leave them there."
She dipped the brush in paint and brought it to the canvas.
The moment the bristles touched the surface, Maya felt it—a pulling sensation, like standing at the edge of a cliff. The basement room flickered. For an instant, she saw other rooms overlapping this one, dozens of them, hundreds. And in each room, a person stood frozen, trapped in an eternal moment.
She began to paint.
February 13, 2026.
The East Wing was sealed again, this time from the outside. Forty officers surrounded the museum. Inside, James stood before the portraits with a team of specialists and something the FBI had insisted on—a demolition crew, just in case.
The paintings were alive now. There was no other word for it. The figures moved freely, sometimes leaving the frame entirely, the canvas showing only empty gray rooms. They were gathering, preparing for something.
At 3:47 AM—exactly two weeks since the gallery was discovered—the lights flickered.
Maya's portrait appeared on the wall. Not the unfinished one from the basement, but a new one, showing her in that same gray room, holding a paintbrush. And behind her, finally visible, was the thing that had been feeding on the trapped. A shadow with too many angles, a presence that hurt to look at, something that existed in the spaces where geometry broke down.
But Maya was painting. On a canvas within the canvas, she was painting the geometry of the room itself, altering the symbols on the walls, changing the angles that created the trap.
The building began to shake.
"Everyone out!" James shouted.
But before anyone could move, the portraits blazed with light. Every painting at once, burning with impossible radiance. The light filled the gallery, and in that light, figures began to emerge.
Sarah Hendricks stumbled out of her frame, gasping, solid and real. Marcus Webb followed, then the Chen twins, Elizabeth Park, dozens of others. They poured from the paintings, restored, alive, exactly as old as they should be.
And then Lily. She stepped from her portrait, saw James, saw the officers staring in shock. "Where's Maya?" she demanded.
They turned to Maya's portrait.
She was still painting, but the shadow behind her was closer now, reaching for her with impossible appendages. And Maya was smiling—a fierce, triumphant smile—as she painted the final stroke.
The geometry shattered.
Maya's portrait exploded in a shower of paint and canvas. The entire East Wing convulsed. Windows cracked. Walls groaned. And from the ruined frame, something dark and writhing tried to push through into the world.
It screamed—a sound like breaking glass and tearing metal—as the geometry collapsed on itself. The trap Evelyn had accidentally created turned inward, folding that hungry thing back into the spaces between, sealing it in a prison of impossible angles.
Then silence.
The gallery was empty except for dust and forty-three empty frames. The returned people huddled together, confused, traumatized, but alive. Fifteen years older, but alive.
And in the corner, lying in a pile of torn canvas and dried paint, Detective Maya Chen opened her eyes.
Three months later
Maya sat across from Lily in their mother's kitchen, drinking coffee that actually tasted like something. The world had returned to a strange new normal. The returned people were in therapy, trying to understand what had happened. The museum had been permanently closed. And Maya had resigned from the force—she'd seen too much, existed between too many moments.
"Do you remember it?" Lily asked. "Being... there?"
Maya nodded. "Gray rooms. The same moment, repeating forever. Time passing but not passing. And that thing, feeding on our trapped lives, growing stronger with each person it caught."
"Evelyn knew," Lily said. "She designed the geometry deliberately. Tried to create a perfect trap, one that would contain that thing forever. But it was too smart. It used her trap to pull people in, building power for the day it could break free."
"She spent thirty years in there," Maya said quietly. "Painting everyone who got caught, trying to communicate, trying to warn us. She's the one who showed me how to change the geometry from inside."
They sat in silence for a moment.
"The portrait of you is still down there," Lily finally said. "In that basement. They can't move it. Every time they try, the walls start bleeding paint."
Maya smiled grimly. "Some doors need to stay sealed. The geometry's stable now, the trap holding. But my portrait is part of that seal. A reminder. A warning."
"A sacrifice."
"A choice." Maya stood, stretching. "I think I'll travel for a while. See the world. Live in the moments I have."
Lily hugged her sister. "Forty-three people got those moments back because of you."
After Lily left, Maya returned to the museum. She'd been given a key—certain people needed access to that basement, just to check the seals, to make sure the trap still held.
She descended the stairs alone.
Her portrait hung on the wall now, the only painting in that octagonal room. In it, she stood in a gray room, smiling that fierce smile, paintbrush in hand. And behind her, trapped forever in impossible geometry, a shadow writhed and raged.
But her painted eyes looked directly out of the canvas, watching. Guarding. Making sure that nothing ever came through that door again.
Maya saluted her own portrait, then climbed back into the world above.
Some prisons needed guards.
And some guards lived forever, trapped in paint and time, holding the door closed.
She could live with that.
Post a Comment