The Painting by Ryan Casey

bloody lucky man. Do you realise how much is on the line now? Do you realise the… the scale of what I’m doing for you? The magnitude?”
    Donny nodded. “Just to the entrance of the woods. Just as far as you need to take me.”
    Reginald tutted. “Too bloody right just to the entrance of the woods. A wiser man would’ve sent you on your way three miles back.” He slammed the eject buckle of his seatbelt and straightened his back out, allowing his flabby belly breathing space. “How did you…”
    Donny raised his arm. A purple bruise was forming on his wrist. “The door handle.”
    Reginald looked at it. “The door handle…” he muttered, taking a mental note of it. “The door handle. Not—not bad.”
    Donny smiled and looked out at the passing trees. “You’re welcome,” he said.
    The road continued onwards. It seemed like they had been driving in a straight line for miles, as if the road was on a continuous loop to nowhere. But Donny could feel himself getting closer. The first thing he’d do when he got back is walk into a pub, order a pint, and ring Sara. He just wanted to hear her voice again. He just wanted to get back, hear her voice, and finish his novel.
    At least he wasn’t short of subject matter anymore.
    “What do I do when we get to the place?”
    Reginald gestured towards the scrunched map on his dashboard. “You follow that. It should take you to where you need to go.”
    Donny picked the map up, soggy with sweat and fatigue after years of use. On it, a red diagonal line cutting past certain ‘landmarks’. A tree shaped like a giraffe, an old barn, Vittoria House. “And it’s somewhere along this route?”
    “It should be. Nobody can say where exactly, but it should be, if what you told me is correct. The place—the place where the painting was painted. That’s Vittoria, an old B&B. It’s renowned for its view, especially in the summer. The Watching probably made it trickier by painting it in autumn.”
    “They painted the painting?”
    Reginald shrugged. “If it’s as big a part of the gap as you say, then it’s likely.”
    The car began to slow down as the road took a slight dip. The trees scraped against Reginald’s car windows, behind which Donny could see nothing but endless darkness. Just follow the path, he said. Might’ve helped to have brought a torch along.
    Inside that dark nothingness was everything that mattered to him, somewhere deep inside and behind the trees. “Why do they do it?”
    “Who?” Reginald grunted.
    “The Watching. Why do they do it?”
    Reginald shrugged his shoulders. “Why does anybody do anything? Fun? We’ve never had the pleasure of asking. Or at least, everyday people like you and I haven’t had the pleasure of asking.”
    Donny sighed as the trees closed in around the car, the woods getting denser and the road growing ever narrower. “How do you know so much?”
    Reginald began to slow the car down. “About what?”
    “Everything. You… you seem to know the ins and outs of everything. It’s like you’re a sort of conspiracy nut but, well, real.”
    Reginald chuckled. “When a man loses his wife to a messed-up chain of events, he does his research. It’s all out there: government speeches, news articles. Everything’s out there. You just have to know where to look and what you’re looking for.” He turned to Donny. “Besides, I was just one of those conspiracy nuts until you showed up.”
    “Your very own Roswell.”
    Reginald shook his head in lack of understanding and turned back to the road, easing his foot on the brake and pulling over to the side, the tires descending into the slush of damp, muddy grass.
    The pair of them sat in silence, staring down the open road. Every few seconds, Reginald took a breath as if he was preparing to say something, and then sighed. This was his life. He’d found his wife again, and she was gone. He had his closure. Now what was left for him?
    “I guess this is it,” he said. He