Parker Walnut was a curious fellow who spent too many hours in the museums around town, and always seemed fairly distracted by the world around him. Too distracted to normally function, too distracted to make friends. He was young, and would be handsome if it were not for the look on his face that always seemed to scream “HELP” in screeching tones. Most days, Parker was found sitting silently on the wooden benches of the busy art museum, seemingly admiring the talent. In a city as big as this, though, no one seemed to pay him much mind. There was always something bigger, stranger, more questionable going on. I asked Parker Walnut a question one day, and got to know him better than anyone else had in his life, I am sure of that. I asked him, ‘Do you like it?’ He responded instantly. No. I saw him in the museum at least four days a week, and, as of late, he had been stationed in front of this particular painting. A dark wooded abbey rotting in the woods. Oak trees tangled nakedly above solid humps of grave stone. I let him be.

Parker was one of those guys who enunciated the t’s at the ends of words. So his last name was something like “Wal-nutuh.” It made him even more peculiar and made me want to talk to him even more. He talked smart and rude but he certainly was not unlikeable. After a lunch break one afternoon, I found Parker sitting rooted in his spot of the week. In front of the abbey. His eyes gazed into the oil paint, like he was taking a visual X-ray. 

I sat next to him, quietly, as not to disturb. He acknowledged my presence, but did not quite feel the need to make it verbal. 

“I’ve noticed you like Friedrich’s work?” I whispered, as a question, rather than as a statement. He pulled his eyes from the painting and panned them to me, glancing sideways as he spoke.

“I don’t like it.” And that was that. Parker grimaced as though a plane was passing over too close for comfort, but the gallery was silent as ever.

I followed his gaze back to the painting. It gave off the feeling of dismay, and despair. The colors alone evoked moments of melancholy and the shrouded figures in the palatial distance could make the hairs on your neck rise. I rubbed my hands over my five o’clock shadow, evoking a scraping noise across my chin. 

“I’m Timothy, I’m a curator here.” I extended for a shake and was met, just briefly. “I see you here often.” 

“Parker Walnut.”

He shot his eyes downwards and squeezed them shut, his body barely showing any sign of rejection.

“Nice to meet you, Parker.”

My presence did not seem to disturb or upset him, in fact, he almost looked like he had something he wanted to scream at me. I watched him slight once more. 

“A curator? I studied conservation science in University. I loved art.” 

“Loved?” I leaned forward on my elbows to catch sight of his face, still staring entranced at the abbey.

“It seems like you still do.” I chucked and gestured to the painting. Parker’s hand shot out to grab my wrist, lowering my hand back to my knee.

“Don’t do that. Don’t wave your hands at them that way.” 

A smile still fighting my lips, I leaned to one elbow. “Them?”

Parker seemed agitated now. His lips pursed and his hands folded and unfolded and cracked knuckle after knuckle in his lap. 

“Yes, them. You work here, they must speak to you.” Parker spat it like I was dumb.

“I mean, of course the paintings speak to me. I appreciate the art we have in the museum. My focus area is antiquities, specifically the beautiful limestone statuar—“ 

“No, no.” Parker cut me off, and turned his head on me, accusingly. “You hear them. The sick scrape.” He winced. “The scrape of a palette knife on canvas, thinly wiping layer on layer of emotion, turmoil. What the artist experienced.” 

My head was telling me to give him a hard clap on the shoulder for messing with me. The hair on my neck and the goosebumps popping on my arms told me otherwise. I fell silent.

“I hear the..” He swallowed, looked like he was going to be sick. “..the sick slurping beat of boot in heavy oil and thick acrylic. The monks-“ Parker looked to the canvas, “-are marching ever closer. Eight of them, all in black. Parading in slow motion through the pigment, carrying the coffin.” 

I was enraptured by his speaking. His tale, unbelievable, but told with the conviction of a man on trial for murder. 

“You can…see them?” I asked, breathless, heart suspended in my chest.

“No, no, I cannot *see* them, just hear them. And I know they are getting closer. Every day I come they’re closer.”

“To us? To the surface?”

Parker breathed hard, eyes wild.  “To *me*, they’re coming to me. They've already passed the open grave.”

I studied the painting, and indeed, the monks stood yards behind a freshly dug cold grave. Emerging from the ruined walls of abbey stone. 

“The monks want me. They’re angry, and they want me.”

“Why? How?” I, too, was now caught up in the painting. Straining my eyes for movement, tuning my ears for any sound.

“I hear them when I sleep. No words, but I can feel their anger. They want me.”

“For what, Parker?” I nearly whispered.

“For the coffin, Timothy. It’s empty.”