The Restless Frames

You ever walk into a place and feel like every pair of eyes is on you? Not just the people - who are often so absorbed in their own world that you seem to fade into the background - but something more insidious. A feeling that goes beyond what you might call natural? That's what happened when I stepped into the Voss Gallery, now legally mine, a peculiar relic I inherited from my Uncle Frank. God bless his soul; we weren't particularly close. I had practically forgotten how that scratchy old man brandished paintbrushes like weapons. Yet, here I was. The place felt oppressive, the kind of heavy you might describe by wrapping chains around your shoulders. The air inside seemed thick, crisp like leftover cigarette smoke trapped in fabric. Each wall, naturally adorned with paintings, immediately called my name without words. Pops of oil paint from obscure artists stood like sentinels on the walls. But these were no ordinary paintings. Every stroke, every stark contrast whispered tales that made the hairs on my arm stand erect. At first, I thought it was just me, battling my childhood nightmares. Dark hallways where shadows seemed to dance, echoing my internal battles with the real world. But as days turned into nights, I started to notice the unsettling. The painting that captivated me most in those initial days featured a landscape—an endless field. Yet, the dark clouds clinging to a fiercely orange-red skyline seemed agitated by an invisible storm. My mind struggled to loosen the connection—hide, cower, or flee? But consistently, it drew me near. The minimal, deliberate brush strokes that formed one heavy cloud, barely hiding a presence beneath, unnerved me. Or was it the pair of eyes, gleaming dully from within, seeming to stay with me as I tore my gaze away? Curiosity morphed into resolution after a stuttering tap on the gallery's window one evening. A stranger stood, too eager in presence and motioning an overzealous beckon. "Hey! You knew Frank?" he blurted soon after I lifted the windowsill. An unceremonious nod sufficed. "Known 'round here that the old man had a flair for the supernatural. Why d'you think these paintings are here?" The man gestured inside, eyes wide with intrigue. Mystical paintings. All reaching back; their creators, deceased."They capture fragments of your spirit. That's why he—," his voice edged to paranoid whispering, "collected only these." I stopped feeling like an intruder wishing to steal glances from the gallery. Something grisly bound the art collection tighter to me than I cared to admit. That night, restless, I returned to the gallery with a flashlight. Shadows multiplied, stretching grand, abstract limbs across the gallery. Following unfolding discoveries, I paused before the painting—the field, waves of weeping grain, a looming relentless horizon—and reached to pull it back. My breathing hitched at the sight—letters peppered the dusty slant hidden behind the frame. Cursive strokes portraying lamenting stories. Stories mirrored in my family during long-ago chaotic reunions. An unfinished thread of my uncle's life dangled beneath each crisp paragraph, in ink he'd drenched with tears, I imagine. In all those letters, revelations surfaced—confessions that the swollen heads of this land were painted not with colors from a palette, but from the shadows that stalked his sleep. White-knuckled fear transformed my perspective of Uncle Frank. More than a misanthropic artist, he was a tragic visionary. The gallery, though, remained alive—a living entity breathing in the dark. I stumbled upon the note etched within its recesses—a vow inked that solely the Voss name must unravel. An unyielding condition holding sway over my life henceforth. Days folded into each other as I pulled the gallery, piece by piece, from its cradle of suppression. But something awakened a dormant truth etched within its walls. My uncle's words: "Eyes forever follow, enclose not them but what's lost remains." Empty echoes against stubborn rebirth. For the gallery was home not just to these tactile art pieces, but to me—to Fred Voss' one-and-only niece. Standing not in fear, but understanding.