Read The Painted Darkness for Free Online

must be, he knows he never completed step number five in the twice-a-day boiler maintenance program. He didn’t turn the unit back on. It sits down there, hungry and empty, and the house has sucked in the chill of the winter storm blowing through the valley. His skin is like ice.
    Then the pain in his right hand comes roaring into his brain and Henry screams. In this moment he doesn’t care about the temperature; he envies the cold. He wants the cold to wrap around his skin again and extinguish the fire raging in his fingers.
    Henry rolls onto his side, through the congealing blood from the wound on his forehead, and he pushes himself to his knees. He gets to his feet and flips the light switch. His hand is badly burned: red and purple and nearly black in places, the skin loose and flabby. Another scream rises in his throat.
    Be calm, his father’s voice whispers in Henry’s mind. Maybe this should alarm Henry, but it isn’t the first time he’s heard his father since the old man died. He often remembers his father’s words of wisdom in his father’s own voice and he finds this to be soothing. Be calm and take things one step at a time.
    Henry does not scream again. The voice is right. He knows how to treat burns; he can handle this. He breathes in deeply and thinks through the process.
    The first step is to soak the affected area. He stumbles to the sink, knocks the stopper in place with his good hand, and starts a stream of cool water. This will hurt at first, but then it will help. He gently lowers his aching hand as the water rises. He grits his teeth and looks away. The window above the sink is covered with frost and the big snowflakes are still falling.
    “It’s dark,” Henry says, reaffirming how much time has passed since…since when? He has no idea how he came to be in this state. He recalls working on a painting and then running downstairs to feed the boiler and then…what?
    Henry reaches for the cabinet next to the window and retrieves the bottle of extra strength aspirin. He pops the bottle open with his thumb and swallows four of the white pills without a drink.
    After a few minutes, he lifts his hand from the water and gently pats the wound dry. Next he applies his wife’s aloe vera cream from the same cabinet where he got the aspirin. The affected area aches, but the immediate burning sensation and the howling pain have dimmed.
    After he wraps a gauze bandage around his hand again and again, Henry surveys the room. There is a puddle of blood on the floor where he had been laying. He touches his forehead, feels the stickiness on his scalp.
    “I’m a mess,” he says. “What the hell did I do?”
He still can’t remember what happened, but he cleans the small gash on his forehead, washing the wound and patting it dry with a clean paper towel. The bleeding has stopped, but he applies a large bandage to be safe. He probably needs to visit the emergency room, but that’s a good thirty minute drive in the best of weather, and this is not the best of weather.
The back door’s window is coated with ice and frost. Henry unlocks the deadbolt and opens the door, but a gust of frigid winter wind knocks him backwards. Snow is blowing hard across the glacial winter landscape; the sight is beautiful in a ferocious kind of way. There’s at least two feet of snow with several inches of ice mixed in for good measure.
Henry isn’t driving anywhere. Even if he did venture across the lawn to the snowpacked garage under the big tree, his little Honda isn’t up to the challenge. He wouldn’t get out of the garage, let alone through the snow dunes between him and the two-lane road that won’t be plowed until morning.
Henry closes the door, locks it. The winter wind gusts against the house and the coldness pushes deeper into his core. The aching in his bones isn’t just from his wounds. The winter chill is inside the house, gnawing into him.
The cold jogs his memory. The thumping of the boiler. The twice-a-day