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Week 3: Ecco
Jul. 9th, 2025 12:38 pm“Where did you get this?” Elijah asked.
“I found it in the basement of a property I just bought. I think it used to be a church or a monastery or something like a thousand years ago,” Joel replied. “This painting looks like it’s been down there for decades—”
“At least,” Elijah murmured.
He walked around the triptych, studying it closely. Each panel was roughly eight feet high and fifteen feet long. It was massive. Dirt and grime had rendered the painting largely opaque, but on the center panel, he was able to make out the figure of Christ. A small brass plate was affixed to the wooden frame. Using his thumb, he wiped away enough of the grime to read the inscription.
“Ecco la mia vendetta,” he read. “Behold my vengeance.”
“That’s ominous,” Joel said with a frown.
“Yeah. A lot of things back then were.”
“What language is that anyway?”
“Italian,” Elijah replied. “Makes me think this triptych is Renaissance-era.”
“Renaissance-era is good. Renassaince-era means big money," he said. "Can you fix it?”
“I’m not sure, man.”
“Come on, Elijah. You’re the best art restorer I know.”
“I’m the only art restorer you know.”
He laughed. “That’s fair. Doesn’t mean you’re not the best though.”
Elijah walked around the panels again. His skin prickled and he shuddered, as if a cold breeze had just blown through. But all the windows in his studio were closed. There was a strange energy in the air. He shook his head and pushed it away.
“What are you going to do with it if I restore it for you?” he asked.
“Sell it,” he replied. “It looks really old. I’m sure somebody will pay top dollar for it.”
“That seems sacrilegious.”
“That’s capitalism at work, baby,” he replied. “So, will you do it?”
Elijah flashed him a grin. “Speaking of capitalism, what are you offering?”
* * * * *
He arrived the next morning and sat on a stool, staring at the triptych as he enjoyed his morning cup of coffee. In his mind’s eye, he was picturing something like Bosch’s, “Garden of Earthly Delights,” or van der Goes’ “Portinari Altarpiece,” or perhaps some undiscovered Renaissance-era masterpiece. The idea that he might be discovering something unseen by human eyes for centuries sent an electric thrill surging through his veins.
He set his coffee cup down then turned on his Bluetooth speaker and scrolled through his playlists. Unable to decide on what he wanted to listen to, he settled on a random classical station. He smiled as Vivaldi began to play.
“That’ll work,” he said.
Elijah walked to painting and gently ran his fingertips across the canvas. As he did, he felt a crackle and pop like static electricity and quickly pulled his hand back, giving it a shake, a frown on his lips. he smiled and silently chastised himself. He wasn’t a man prone to fits of the heebie-jeebies, but he couldn’t deny the strange energy that filled his studio. It was probably having something so old taking up space. Most of his restorations didn’t have that kind of history.
Letting the music fill his ears and his soul, he set to work. It was slow and painstaking, but by mid-afternoon he’d manage to uncover the face of Christ in the center panel of the triptych, just like he’d thought. But it was unlike any image of Christ he’d ever seen before. This version of him looked… angry. It was the eyes though, that captivated Elijah. They looked almost… alive. He took a step back and admired it.
“Exquisite,” he said breathlessly.
Energized, Elijah set to work on another section of the center panel. On the ground beneath him was a figure, broken and torn, a dark pool of blood all around him. The face of the figure was twisted with pain. He had no idea who the artist was, but they were amazing. He was about to move on, but something stopped Elijah short. He leaned forward and studied the face of the bloodied figure he’d uncovered and frowned.
“What the hell?”
Elijah sat back, staring at the face of the bloody figure on the ground. It looked just like Tony, his ex-brother-in-law. He knew it was probably just pareidolia but still… it was uncanny. Shaking his head, Elijah got to his feet and stretched his back. It had been a long day, and he’d done enough. He was beat. Grabbing some sheets, he covered the canvases and cleaned up, done for the day.
* * * * *
After a fitful night’s sleep, Elijah returned to the studio to continue his work. After removing the sheets, he sat on his stool, admiring the work for a moment. The air around him felt heavy and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Shaking it off, he scrolled Facebook as he sipped his coffee. He was just about to close out when something caught his eye.
Setting his coffee down, he stood up and read the post a friend had put up last night. His ex-brother-in-law, Tony, had apparently died sometime last night. He read the post once. Then twice. Then a third time. But the words didn’t change. Tony had been driving drunk after a work event and was involved in a fatal car wreck. It made no sense. Tony was maddeningly cautious and didn’t take foolish chances like that.
The man he’d known would have never gotten behind the wheel drunk. And yet, he apparently had. Maybe the man he’d known wasn’t the man he was today. People changed. His ex-wife had certainly taught him that lesson. It wasn’t as if he and Tony had been particularly close. In truth, he couldn’t stand the man. But still… news of his passing was shocking.
He briefly considered calling Miranda to offer his condolences but thought better of it. She didn’t want to hear from him any more than he wanted to talk to her.
Shaking it off, Elijah turned on his music—Wagner today—and got back to work. He spent most of the morning uncovering the work on the lower half of the center panel. Like a lot of Renaissance-era works, this was heavily religious and gruesomely violent. It was exceptional. He just wished he knew how it had come to be in Southern California and not in a museum somewhere in Europe where it belonged.
He’d been at it all day and his back and arms were aching. Elijah was just finishing up a section of the panel, uncovering yet another grisly tableau. This one of a man hanging upside down by his ankles with spears and swords being thrust into his belly. He wiped his hands on a rag and studied the face of the man, that ominous sense of familiarity stealing over him once more.
“No way,” he whispered.
The face of the hanging, impaled man looked like his old boss. The man who’d tormented him for years before finally firing him. Even now, the sight of the man’s face stoked the flames of rage that still burned within Elijah. He shook his head, knowing it had to be a coincidence. But just as before with the face that looked like Tony, the similarity between the face in the painting and Reginald was uncanny.
A dark shudder passed through him and Elijah quickly covered the panels with sheets, cleaned up, and bugged out for the day.
* * * * *
The next morning, he walked into the studio, his heart hammering in his chest and his throat bone dry. With a trembling hand, reached out and tentatively uncovered the panels. His eyes scanned the canvases as if he expected that they’d somehow changed during the night. But everything looked exactly the same as it had when he left last night. It looked the same, but Elijah knew something had changed.
As he was getting ready to come into the studio that morning, he’d received a text from an old co-worker letting him know that Reginald had died during the night—the victim of a home-invasion robbery gone wrong. He’d been shot more than a dozen times. His old co-worker had sent the news along with a thumbs-up emoji, figuring Elijah would be happy to hear the news. And there was a time when he thought he’d be elated to hear of Reginald’s passing too.
But not today. Not now.
He stared at the triptych and felt a heaviness in the air around him. Something dark and foreboding settled around his shoulders, making him shudder. Elijah’s stomach churned and the back of his throat was coated in a thick, greasy bile. He thought he was going to be sick. But he stood rooted to his spot, unable to move, unable to do anything but stare at the painting, his gaze drifting to the small brass plaque.
“Ecco la mia vendetta,” he whispered to himself.
The urge to destroy the triptych swept over him. His mind screamed at him to douse it in paint thinner and set it ablaze. Elijah took a step toward his workbench but paused. As great as the desire to destroy the painting was, the compulsion to continue the work on the canvases was even greater. He felt drawn to it. As if the painting held its own gravitational pull and he was caught in the event horizon. With his mind howling, his body picked up his supplies and got back to work.
Elijah felt like a passenger in his own mind as he worked swiftly but with care, revealing more of the dark, grisly painting. He revealed the body of some poor soul whose body had been subjected to ungodly torments. And when he uncovered the face, he sighed. Looking into those sparkling blue eyes that looked bright and alive, Elijah knew it had been inevitable. Knew all along that this would be coming.
“Miranda,” he whispered, his voice harsh and strained.
* * * * *
Elijah sat on his stool in stunned silence. staring at the panels of the triptych. The news of Miranda’s murder the night before hadn’t surprised him when he’d gotten it that morning. He’d been expecting it. He didn’t have the details, but he didn’t need them. Judging by the torment of the woman he’d uncovered in the painting, it had been gruesome. Painful. A single tear spilled from the corner of his eye and raced down his cheek.
Was this somehow his fault? Had he caused this? Had his work on the painting somehow resulted in these deaths. Ecco la mia vendetta… yes, he harbored dark feelings for these people. Yes, it could be said that he even hated them. But he certainly never would have wished these fates upon them. He never wished for their deaths.
Not consciously.
As the two words passed through his mind, his eyes grew wide. Had the painting somehow picked up on some desire buried so deep within him that Elijah didn’t even recognize it? It was a thought that turned his stomach but one he couldn’t dismiss. He’d known there was something dark, something sinister about this painting the moment he’d laid eyes on it. Was that dark energy somehow causing all this death and misery? And was he responsible for feeding it?
As fresh tears flowed down his face, he got to his feet and stared at the panels of the painting. He was going to destroy it before it killed anybody else. Before… he killed anybody else. Elijah snatched up a nearby boxcutter and advanced on the panels, his jaw clenched, his entire body taut as a bowstring. But as he closed in on it, his vision wavered and he felt lightheaded. Then his stomach dropped as if he was falling from some great height and his mind grew hazy…
* * * * *
… Elijah shook his head and came back to himself. He felt nauseous and his heart was racing, but he was otherwise all right. He looked down at his hands and instead of seeing the boxcutter he’d picked up, he was holding his restoration tools.
“What the fuck?”
He picked himself up off the floor and turned to the painting. A gasp burst from his mouth when he saw that he’d not only failed to destroy it, he’d restored another large section. His entire body trembling, he stepped closer to the canvas and studied the figures he’d uncovered. One, a man dressed in brown robes, like a monk, stared out from the painting as if he was staring straight through Elijah’s soul. In his hand was a parchment with lettering he could read clearly.
“La vendetta non vien mai senza prezzo,” he whispered, his voice trembling as hard as his body. “Vengeance never comes without a price.”
Elijah’s eyes drifted to the broken, bloody man at the monk’s feet. He’d been disemboweled. Dismembered. The man’s face was etched with sheer agony, his mouth hanging open in a silent, eternal scream. A tear raced down his cheek, and he fell to his knees as he recognized the face of the man at the monk’s feet.
It was him.
“I found it in the basement of a property I just bought. I think it used to be a church or a monastery or something like a thousand years ago,” Joel replied. “This painting looks like it’s been down there for decades—”
“At least,” Elijah murmured.
He walked around the triptych, studying it closely. Each panel was roughly eight feet high and fifteen feet long. It was massive. Dirt and grime had rendered the painting largely opaque, but on the center panel, he was able to make out the figure of Christ. A small brass plate was affixed to the wooden frame. Using his thumb, he wiped away enough of the grime to read the inscription.
“Ecco la mia vendetta,” he read. “Behold my vengeance.”
“That’s ominous,” Joel said with a frown.
“Yeah. A lot of things back then were.”
“What language is that anyway?”
“Italian,” Elijah replied. “Makes me think this triptych is Renaissance-era.”
“Renaissance-era is good. Renassaince-era means big money," he said. "Can you fix it?”
“I’m not sure, man.”
“Come on, Elijah. You’re the best art restorer I know.”
“I’m the only art restorer you know.”
He laughed. “That’s fair. Doesn’t mean you’re not the best though.”
Elijah walked around the panels again. His skin prickled and he shuddered, as if a cold breeze had just blown through. But all the windows in his studio were closed. There was a strange energy in the air. He shook his head and pushed it away.
“What are you going to do with it if I restore it for you?” he asked.
“Sell it,” he replied. “It looks really old. I’m sure somebody will pay top dollar for it.”
“That seems sacrilegious.”
“That’s capitalism at work, baby,” he replied. “So, will you do it?”
Elijah flashed him a grin. “Speaking of capitalism, what are you offering?”
He arrived the next morning and sat on a stool, staring at the triptych as he enjoyed his morning cup of coffee. In his mind’s eye, he was picturing something like Bosch’s, “Garden of Earthly Delights,” or van der Goes’ “Portinari Altarpiece,” or perhaps some undiscovered Renaissance-era masterpiece. The idea that he might be discovering something unseen by human eyes for centuries sent an electric thrill surging through his veins.
He set his coffee cup down then turned on his Bluetooth speaker and scrolled through his playlists. Unable to decide on what he wanted to listen to, he settled on a random classical station. He smiled as Vivaldi began to play.
“That’ll work,” he said.
Elijah walked to painting and gently ran his fingertips across the canvas. As he did, he felt a crackle and pop like static electricity and quickly pulled his hand back, giving it a shake, a frown on his lips. he smiled and silently chastised himself. He wasn’t a man prone to fits of the heebie-jeebies, but he couldn’t deny the strange energy that filled his studio. It was probably having something so old taking up space. Most of his restorations didn’t have that kind of history.
Letting the music fill his ears and his soul, he set to work. It was slow and painstaking, but by mid-afternoon he’d manage to uncover the face of Christ in the center panel of the triptych, just like he’d thought. But it was unlike any image of Christ he’d ever seen before. This version of him looked… angry. It was the eyes though, that captivated Elijah. They looked almost… alive. He took a step back and admired it.
“Exquisite,” he said breathlessly.
Energized, Elijah set to work on another section of the center panel. On the ground beneath him was a figure, broken and torn, a dark pool of blood all around him. The face of the figure was twisted with pain. He had no idea who the artist was, but they were amazing. He was about to move on, but something stopped Elijah short. He leaned forward and studied the face of the bloodied figure he’d uncovered and frowned.
“What the hell?”
Elijah sat back, staring at the face of the bloody figure on the ground. It looked just like Tony, his ex-brother-in-law. He knew it was probably just pareidolia but still… it was uncanny. Shaking his head, Elijah got to his feet and stretched his back. It had been a long day, and he’d done enough. He was beat. Grabbing some sheets, he covered the canvases and cleaned up, done for the day.
After a fitful night’s sleep, Elijah returned to the studio to continue his work. After removing the sheets, he sat on his stool, admiring the work for a moment. The air around him felt heavy and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Shaking it off, he scrolled Facebook as he sipped his coffee. He was just about to close out when something caught his eye.
Setting his coffee down, he stood up and read the post a friend had put up last night. His ex-brother-in-law, Tony, had apparently died sometime last night. He read the post once. Then twice. Then a third time. But the words didn’t change. Tony had been driving drunk after a work event and was involved in a fatal car wreck. It made no sense. Tony was maddeningly cautious and didn’t take foolish chances like that.
The man he’d known would have never gotten behind the wheel drunk. And yet, he apparently had. Maybe the man he’d known wasn’t the man he was today. People changed. His ex-wife had certainly taught him that lesson. It wasn’t as if he and Tony had been particularly close. In truth, he couldn’t stand the man. But still… news of his passing was shocking.
He briefly considered calling Miranda to offer his condolences but thought better of it. She didn’t want to hear from him any more than he wanted to talk to her.
Shaking it off, Elijah turned on his music—Wagner today—and got back to work. He spent most of the morning uncovering the work on the lower half of the center panel. Like a lot of Renaissance-era works, this was heavily religious and gruesomely violent. It was exceptional. He just wished he knew how it had come to be in Southern California and not in a museum somewhere in Europe where it belonged.
He’d been at it all day and his back and arms were aching. Elijah was just finishing up a section of the panel, uncovering yet another grisly tableau. This one of a man hanging upside down by his ankles with spears and swords being thrust into his belly. He wiped his hands on a rag and studied the face of the man, that ominous sense of familiarity stealing over him once more.
“No way,” he whispered.
The face of the hanging, impaled man looked like his old boss. The man who’d tormented him for years before finally firing him. Even now, the sight of the man’s face stoked the flames of rage that still burned within Elijah. He shook his head, knowing it had to be a coincidence. But just as before with the face that looked like Tony, the similarity between the face in the painting and Reginald was uncanny.
A dark shudder passed through him and Elijah quickly covered the panels with sheets, cleaned up, and bugged out for the day.
The next morning, he walked into the studio, his heart hammering in his chest and his throat bone dry. With a trembling hand, reached out and tentatively uncovered the panels. His eyes scanned the canvases as if he expected that they’d somehow changed during the night. But everything looked exactly the same as it had when he left last night. It looked the same, but Elijah knew something had changed.
As he was getting ready to come into the studio that morning, he’d received a text from an old co-worker letting him know that Reginald had died during the night—the victim of a home-invasion robbery gone wrong. He’d been shot more than a dozen times. His old co-worker had sent the news along with a thumbs-up emoji, figuring Elijah would be happy to hear the news. And there was a time when he thought he’d be elated to hear of Reginald’s passing too.
But not today. Not now.
He stared at the triptych and felt a heaviness in the air around him. Something dark and foreboding settled around his shoulders, making him shudder. Elijah’s stomach churned and the back of his throat was coated in a thick, greasy bile. He thought he was going to be sick. But he stood rooted to his spot, unable to move, unable to do anything but stare at the painting, his gaze drifting to the small brass plaque.
“Ecco la mia vendetta,” he whispered to himself.
The urge to destroy the triptych swept over him. His mind screamed at him to douse it in paint thinner and set it ablaze. Elijah took a step toward his workbench but paused. As great as the desire to destroy the painting was, the compulsion to continue the work on the canvases was even greater. He felt drawn to it. As if the painting held its own gravitational pull and he was caught in the event horizon. With his mind howling, his body picked up his supplies and got back to work.
Elijah felt like a passenger in his own mind as he worked swiftly but with care, revealing more of the dark, grisly painting. He revealed the body of some poor soul whose body had been subjected to ungodly torments. And when he uncovered the face, he sighed. Looking into those sparkling blue eyes that looked bright and alive, Elijah knew it had been inevitable. Knew all along that this would be coming.
“Miranda,” he whispered, his voice harsh and strained.
Elijah sat on his stool in stunned silence. staring at the panels of the triptych. The news of Miranda’s murder the night before hadn’t surprised him when he’d gotten it that morning. He’d been expecting it. He didn’t have the details, but he didn’t need them. Judging by the torment of the woman he’d uncovered in the painting, it had been gruesome. Painful. A single tear spilled from the corner of his eye and raced down his cheek.
Was this somehow his fault? Had he caused this? Had his work on the painting somehow resulted in these deaths. Ecco la mia vendetta… yes, he harbored dark feelings for these people. Yes, it could be said that he even hated them. But he certainly never would have wished these fates upon them. He never wished for their deaths.
Not consciously.
As the two words passed through his mind, his eyes grew wide. Had the painting somehow picked up on some desire buried so deep within him that Elijah didn’t even recognize it? It was a thought that turned his stomach but one he couldn’t dismiss. He’d known there was something dark, something sinister about this painting the moment he’d laid eyes on it. Was that dark energy somehow causing all this death and misery? And was he responsible for feeding it?
As fresh tears flowed down his face, he got to his feet and stared at the panels of the painting. He was going to destroy it before it killed anybody else. Before… he killed anybody else. Elijah snatched up a nearby boxcutter and advanced on the panels, his jaw clenched, his entire body taut as a bowstring. But as he closed in on it, his vision wavered and he felt lightheaded. Then his stomach dropped as if he was falling from some great height and his mind grew hazy…
… Elijah shook his head and came back to himself. He felt nauseous and his heart was racing, but he was otherwise all right. He looked down at his hands and instead of seeing the boxcutter he’d picked up, he was holding his restoration tools.
“What the fuck?”
He picked himself up off the floor and turned to the painting. A gasp burst from his mouth when he saw that he’d not only failed to destroy it, he’d restored another large section. His entire body trembling, he stepped closer to the canvas and studied the figures he’d uncovered. One, a man dressed in brown robes, like a monk, stared out from the painting as if he was staring straight through Elijah’s soul. In his hand was a parchment with lettering he could read clearly.
“La vendetta non vien mai senza prezzo,” he whispered, his voice trembling as hard as his body. “Vengeance never comes without a price.”
Elijah’s eyes drifted to the broken, bloody man at the monk’s feet. He’d been disemboweled. Dismembered. The man’s face was etched with sheer agony, his mouth hanging open in a silent, eternal scream. A tear raced down his cheek, and he fell to his knees as he recognized the face of the man at the monk’s feet.
It was him.
