Smile...

During my teenage years, my parents brought me to Italy on a family trip. We stayed in a beautiful, rustic village. One of the nights while staying there, my parents decided to leave our hotel and leave me to do as I pleased. They told me I could leave the cramped, aged inn, and take a stroll amongst the seemingly ancient town with some cash to squander on whatever trinkets and sugary treats I could find. Today, I wish that I had instead chosen to stay in the hotel room, but I grabbed my large camera off of the nightstand by my bed, putting the lanyard around my neck, walked out the door, and strolled into town. I was eager to explore the city. This was my first time leaving the States, and I couldn’t wait to get a taste of European life. I was ready to take some nice pictures, buy some food, and experience something I never would back home - if only I knew. I decided to find some especially nice places in town to take some pictures for my portfolio and to impress my photography teacher. I had some mental images of what I wanted in the pictures; some nice, dark, artsy shots of Italy. Maybe find some abandoned village area with some broken windows and collapsed walls to take some black-and-white shots. I found one particularly dark street – perfect for the shots I was going for. There was no road, but more of an alleyway. The crumbling brick below my feet stretched between two buildings, and the farther I walked, the closer the buildings became. It induced a kind of strange claustrophobia, even though I’ve never experienced that kind of feeling before. In the darkest, coldest part of this alleyway, there were a few old wooden chairs, some sewage grates and stacks of barrels – most likely filled with wine bottles. I looked up at the small stretch of sky not hidden by the stone building tops. It was nearly dark, and I knew I had to get a few more photos in before I no longer could. To my right, there were some dirty windows, surrounded by crumbling brick. There were several broken two-by-fours dangling from the corners of a few of the windows, pinned into the clay with rusty, bent nails. I put my hand over my eyes as a sort of visor, and peered into the window, hoping nobody inside was looking right back at me. I couldn’t even see what was on the other side, the windows were so dirty. I lifted my camera from the red and black lanyard around my neck, shivering from the cutting cold, and placed my finger on the button. As the flash went off, I saw something in the window. Something I’ll never forget, as long as I live; something that still haunts my dreams. Looking back at me was a stark white face, bearing an enormous grin. The image is still burned into my mind, and I shudder every time I think about it. I can clearly remember its beady, black eyes, and nearly nonexistent nose – just two nostrils, almost cut into the area above the mouth, which practically curled up to its eyes, bearing black, bloody gums. Needless to say, I was extremely startled by it, and I jumped back a foot and gasped loudly. I didn't even end up taking the picture. I immediately released my finger from the button and dropped my camera, which dangled from the lanyard, pulling on my neck as it fell. I stood in the alleyway and clutched my chest, breathing quickly and heavily, ready to run back to the hotel. I slowly looked back at the window after regaining my breath, and there was nothing there. I didn’t even try looking through the dirty black and brown glass. I jumped again as I heard a raspy, piercing voice down the alleyway from me. It sounded like an old man. His voice struck me like Styrofoam rubbing against a blackboard. I turned to locate the source of the inquisition. "Would you like to purchase a caricature?" The Italian accent was heavy. I looked down the alleyway, fixating my view on a man, sitting on a stool. He was very old, with a sagging, wrinkled face, and a long, black coat. I still don't understand how I hadn't noticed him while walking through the alleyway. Next to him was a large easel with a canvas on it. Drawn on the canvas in black pencil was a caricature of him. It wasn't over-exaggerated like other caricatures, but more accurate and lifelike. It even bore the same somber expression that he did. Across from the man was another empty chair. He repeated himself; "Would you like to purchase a caricature?" I shook off my shock and approached him. I figured that I had a bit more money left, and I thought of the wall on my room back home, and how it was lacking... well... anything interesting. I decided to buy one from him, figuring that he probably didn’t get very many customers, and I handed him 12 Euros – the price scrawled in cursive in the corner of his caricature. I handed him the money, noticing that my hands were still shaking. He gestured for me to sit down, and I did. He then grabbed a canvas from the ground next to him and told me to pose. I smiled and kept my head as still as possible. He reached his hand to my head to position me in a way that he could get a better drawing angle. As he put his hands on my face, I noticed that they were cold. Extremely cold. I shivered as goose bumps covered my body. I'd never felt anything like it. I could feel my entire body tense up. Thankfully, he finished positioning my head in only a few seconds, and he began to draw me. I held my smile for several minutes while he furiously scribbled on canvas, although his facial expression didn’t change once. He barely looked at the picture for five seconds. He stared at me almost the entire time. I grew uneasy. It felt as if he was staring into my soul. I tried to avoid his gaze and stare past him at the stone wall, or at the ground. I felt cold again. Finally, he finished, and rotated the easel to show me the result. It looked very much like me, down to every freckle. He gave the drawing a big toothy grin, and cheerful eyes. I thought it was hilarious, and began to chuckle. I thanked him, grabbed the picture off the easel, and left, laughing the whole way at this hilarious caricature. It helped take my mind off the earlier incident in the alleyway. I made one more stop at an old shop to pick up some candy and returned to my hotel room, deciding to read a book. When my parents returned, they laughed at the caricature as well. I told them I would never take it off my wall once it was up. If only I knew… When our family returned home a few days later, I was exhausted, but that didn’t stop me from running up to my room and hanging the caricature on my wall before doing anything else. I was happy to have it on my wall. I kept smirking at it for days, simply amused by the comical expression it bore. Looking back, I can’t imagine how I did. After a few days, the excitement died down a bit, I accepted that it was getting old, but I still liked it on my wall. A few weeks passed and I didn't even find the humor in it anymore. I no longer saw what I thought was so hilarious about it. Some nights, I would wake up from a nightmare, in a cold sweat. I would look over at the caricature and feel like it was sneering at me. It usually looked cheerful and happy, but it seemed to be almost laughing at me, mocking, pleased by my uneasiness. After a few nights like those, the caricature always looked like that to me; just a sneer on its face – its eyes less cheerful than before, now angry. I knew it was just my imagination that it was growing more menacing, but it seemed... real. Because of this, I moved it so that I couldn't see it from my bed. Eventually, the caricature seemed to be taunting me; its grin wider than ever, its eyes angry and intense. When I would be in a bad mood from school or relationship troubles, I would look at it and say, “Shut up.” as if it was laughing at me, gazing into my very soul. I didn't like this caricature anymore. It became creepy – morbid, even. I would avoid its gaze every time I entered my room. I would look at the floor, and every time I made eye contact with it I would have a miniature panic attack. I didn't want to move it, because that would involve touching it and approaching it. I didn't want to go anywhere near it. I thought that I would wait a few days. That’s when I began having a recurring dream – a nightmare that I still have it to this very day. In the dream, I’m standing in a white room. The room is perfectly circular, with an infinitely high ceiling. The walls simply expand upwards to the point that I can’t see how high they reach. They converge at a single point above me. I stand there in the middle of this room – if you can even call it that – struggling to escape chains holding my feet to the ground, feeling miniscule and trapped. I stand there, struggling for nearly a minute, until I look up and a crack starts forming on the wall. I watch as the crack spreads outwards from its starting point, forming a shape. The crack soon forms a face. A white face with empty, black eyes and an enormous smile. The face begins to laugh at me and taunt me from the walls, sometimes yelling incomprehensible things, as if in another language. Some other-worldly dialect that could drive me to the brink of insanity. The crack doesn’t stop there, however. It begins to speed up, spiraling upwards around the entire wall, spreading, and forming more and more new cracks, which in turn form duplicates of the same face. Eventually, I become surrounded by thousands of the same white countenance – almost a perfect hybrid between the face I saw in the alleyway, and that damned caricature. They are all laughing at me, yelling the same things… I always wake up in a cold sweat, with tears in my eyes. Eventually, I mustered up the courage to move it off my wall. I walked up to it with my eyes closed, and lifted it off its nail. When I touched it, I nearly had an anxiety attack, and my arms began to shake. I could see the face in my mind, swirling around. Every hair on my body stood on end and I started to tear up and sob. It was as if shards of ice were flowing through my blood. I brought the caricature into my closet, and buried it behind a bunch of old clothes on the floor way in the back, where it would never be found. I went downstairs to grab some food and celebrate and let out a sigh of relief. I could finally spend time in my room happily, without Satan himself staring at me. I arrived home from school one day, more than a year after I took down the caricature. I had a pretty good day at school, from what I can remember. I dropped my backpack onto one shoulder and pushed open the door to my room. I looked straight forward and let out a meek, terrified sound, and dropped my backpack to the floor with a hearty “THUD”. The caricature was on the wall again. It looked pure evil, its smile taking up a third of its face, its larger than ever black eyes staring at me. I could hear it laughing maniacally. More like feel it. I bolted downstairs, sobbing and asked my mother if she put the caricature back up. She said she had no idea what I was talking about. She hadn't seen that caricature in a long time. She completely forgot about it. I had my friend come over and burn it for me, throwing away any remains. He said it looked perfectly normal to him, and didn’t understand why I was so disturbed by it. I didn’t care what he said. It was finally over. At least, I thought it was… Several weeks ago, I returned to Italy to find out what the Hell happened to me. I still have nightmares about that damn caricature all the time, and I wanted to see if the man was still there. I could tell him about my experience that has haunted me for over a decade. Maybe ask him why the drawing became so terrifying. I doubted that he was still alive, or still running his business in the same place, but I didn’t care. If it meant putting these questions to rest, I had to find him. After a little over an hour of searching the town, I was positive that I found the street where the man used to be. I walked down the alleyway, recalling the last time I was there, trying not to think about it all too much. There was nobody in the alleyway. It was completely deserted, except for two wooden chairs to my left, by a pile of old barrels. The windows to my right were boarded up. I exited the alleyway and entered a café, in need of a coffee. I asked the man behind the counter about the alley, the old man, and why the windows in the alleyway were boarded up. I even told him the story I just told here, to some extent. He told me that he thought I was crazy. He started to slowly say something to me, struggling to form sentences in English - obviously not his native language - but then sighed, and said, “My English is not so good”. He pulled a small piece of paper from a pad on the desk, and began writing something. He stopped and said, “Come back in one hour” and walked out of sight, into the back of the café. I sat down at a table, pulled out my laptop, and proceeded to get some work done. A little over an hour later, he approached the front desk, as did I upon seeing him with the paper in his hand. He handed me the paper, uttered the word, “translate”, and told me to have a nice day. I sat back down at my table and reopened my laptop so I could translate the Italian message the employee wrote for me. It was a rather long note. I’ll paraphrase it here, as I have it safely tucked away somewhere I’d rather not access right now. There was a local artist living in the same area in Italy centuries ago. He became cold, withdrawn from society and eventually insane. He boarded up his windows, leading people to forget he even lived where he did. He would invite people into his home during the night to sketch them, promising his depictions of them would be beautiful. Locals were reported missing, and several years after he became withdrawn from society, his home was investigated by the local police. They entered his home to find dried puddles of blood, and blood-spattered drawings scattered around the emptiness of the home. All of the sketches had the same beady eyes and unnaturally wide grin. The officers broke down the door to a locked bedroom, and nearly vomited upon seeing its contents. There were bloodied bodies in all corners of the room, carelessly piled on top of each other. Their eyes were gouged out - some replaced with dark stones and marbles, and some left empty, and their mouths were slashed and stitched into twisted smiles. In the middle of the room, there hung the elderly artist, dangling above a wooden chair turned on its side. He was swaying back and forth by the dusty noose around his neck, bearing an extremely wide, contorted smile that nearly reached his cold, black eyes.