Oscar Alarie

The portrait hung in the west hall of the Whittemore Estate, between the cracked marble bust of Lord Alfred and a tapestry depicting a hunt that, by all accounts, had never actually occurred. Visitors often paused there—not for the marble or the tapestry—but for the dog.

A Basset Hound, cloaked in deep velvet, a small crown resting crookedly between his long, drooping ears. His name, according to the brass plaque below, was Sir Reginald of Whittemore.

To most, it was an eccentric indulgence—a noble family so lost in wealth they’d commissioned a full Renaissance-style oil painting of their pet. But to the house staff, and the few who’d lived there long enough, Sir Reginald’s story was not just legend. It was inheritance.

The last Lord Whittemore had been a recluse, a widower who’d filled his cavernous home with books, clocks, and dogs. He trusted no one, except the hound who followed him from room to room, whose steady eyes seemed to listen when the old man spoke. “You’re the only one left who understands,” he would murmur, running his hand along the velvet folds of the dog’s ear.

When he died—alone, in the library—Sir Reginald had been found beside him, silent and still, as if keeping vigil. The painter who later captured that loyalty swore the dog’s eyes had changed with the light: soft and mournful by day, yet watchful, almost sentient, by night.

Years passed. The family line dwindled. The estate changed hands more times than anyone could count. Yet no caretaker had ever been able to move the painting. Those who tried claimed it “watched” them, or that they heard claws clicking on the wood floor behind them when no dogs were present.

One night, a new curator named Evelyn stayed late, cataloging the library for a museum sale. Around midnight, the power flickered. She lit a candle—and that’s when she saw it. The air shimmered faintly in front of the portrait, like heat on a road. The crown gleamed.

She stepped closer. The painted hound’s eyes, rich and brown under the artist’s chiaroscuro brush, seemed alive in the candlelight. The crown wasn’t painted gold at all—it was brass, dulled by time, fixed to the canvas surface with the tiniest nails.

And then she realized: it wasn’t nailed to the painting. It was nailed through it.

Somewhere behind the frame, a slow, muffled sound began—a scraping, a low whine, like breath through a closed door.

The flame trembled. Evelyn took a step back.

The plaque beneath the portrait caught the light just long enough for her to read the engraving anew.

“He waits where loyalty cannot die.”

• Part I – The Basset Hound
• Part II – The Labrador Retriever
• Part III – The Golden Retriever
• Part IV – The English Bulldog
• Part V – The French Bulldog
• Part VI – The German Shepherd
• Part VII – Elise Whittemore
• Epilogue – The Whittemore Portraits

The second portrait hung opposite Sir Reginald’s, the pair forming a strange symmetry at the end of the corridor. While the Basset Hound sat in solemn regality, this Labrador radiated warmth — or at least, it had once.

Painted in the same Renaissance oil style, the brown tones of the dog’s coat glowed faintly even in the corridor’s gloom. He rested on a velvet cushion, though his posture was less formal than Sir Reginald’s — head tilted slightly, eyes bright, as if listening for a command that would never come.

The plaque beneath read simply:
“Captain.”

House records said the painting had been commissioned by Lady Eleanor Whittemore after her husband’s death at sea. Captain had been his hunting companion, but rumor claimed the Labrador waited at the manor’s gates for three days after the shipwreck — until the dog was found lying in the snow, frost clinging to his fur.

Lady Eleanor refused to bury him. “He’s still waiting,” she had said. “He just hasn’t been called yet.”

It was said she locked herself in the west drawing room with the painter, demanding that every stroke capture Captain’s loyalty, his hope. The final portrait glowed with life — so much so that the household servants whispered she’d traded something of herself to achieve it.

When she died, the staff found her seated before the painting, one hand resting on the gilded frame. The room smelled faintly of salt and rain, though the windows had been shut for months.

Since then, visitors swore that on stormy nights, when thunder rolled across the valley, the scent returned — wet fur, sea air, faint traces of lavender oil. And sometimes, the faint scratch of claws echoed down the hall, followed by the sound of waves where there could be none.

Years later, when the estate was converted into a private museum, a restorer discovered a faint shimmer beneath the paint. Under infrared, another figure appeared — a man in naval attire, standing behind the dog, his hand reaching down toward its head.

But the hand stopped short. A single inch of empty canvas separated them.

The curator who uncovered it refused to retouch the piece. “The painting isn’t unfinished,” she said quietly. “It’s waiting. Just like he was.”

Across the hall, Sir Reginald’s portrait seemed to darken by a shade that night, as if the two paintings were speaking again — one mourning, the other remembering.

• Part I – The Basset Hound
• Part II – The Labrador Retriever
• Part III – The Golden Retriever
• Part IV – The English Bulldog
• Part V – The French Bulldog
• Part VI – The German Shepherd
• Part VII – Elise Whittemore
• Epilogue – The Whittemore Portraits

The third painting wasn’t hung with the others. It rested at the top of the grand staircase, facing the main landing as if greeting anyone bold enough to climb that far into the house.

The subject was a Golden Retriever — painted in radiant golds and soft umbers, his fur almost aflame under the portrait’s heavy varnish. He sat beside a grand piano, head lifted slightly, ears perked toward something unseen beyond the frame.

The plaque beneath read:
“Harper.”

No title. No dates. Just a name.

Records showed that Harper had belonged to Margaret Whittemore, the youngest of the lineage and the last child to be born in the house. She was said to be a prodigy, a pianist who could mimic any melody after hearing it once. It was Harper who sat beside her during long evenings at the keys — the dog’s tail thumping to each note, his eyes fixed on her hands as though guarding the sound itself.

When Margaret was seventeen, she disappeared. Vanished from the manor overnight. No signs of struggle, no note. Only the echo of her piano, still warm when her parents found the bench empty at dawn. Harper was never seen again either.

The painting appeared three months later. No one knew who commissioned it.

Unlike the other Whittemore portraits, this one carried light. The artist had painted sunlight spilling through the fogged windows behind her golden companion, catching dust motes mid-air like fragments of a song frozen in time. And though Harper’s face held no sorrow, his gaze was directed not at the viewer, but slightly upward — as if looking toward someone standing beside him, unseen.

When new owners of the estate first reopened the staircase decades later, they reported faint piano notes drifting through the halls — a slow nocturne, steady and mournful. The sound always came from the upper floors, always ending abruptly when someone reached the landing.

It wasn’t until a storm in ’72 that the mystery deepened. A bolt of lightning struck the estate’s east wing, scorching the walls near the landing. The fire crew arrived in time to save the portraits, but the plaster behind Harper’s frame cracked under the heat.

When the wall was removed for repairs, workers found a narrow door sealed shut from the inside — a servant’s passage long thought bricked over.

Inside was a small stool, a collapsed piano bench, and a faded ribbon.

The air smelled faintly of lavender and sea salt.

• Part I – The Basset Hound
• Part II – The Labrador Retriever
• Part III – The Golden Retriever
• Part IV – The English Bulldog
• Part V – The French Bulldog
• Part VI – The German Shepherd
• Part VII – Elise Whittemore
• Epilogue – The Whittemore Portraits

The portrait of the English Bulldog hung in the manor’s smallest room — the smoking parlor. It was an odd choice. The space was narrow and low-ceilinged, filled with the stale scent of tobacco that had somehow survived the years. The painting itself, however, felt strangely alive.

The Bulldog sat squarely on a tufted velvet chair, his posture commanding despite his size. A deep burgundy robe draped over his shoulders like that of a gentleman at rest, his jowls sculpted in layers of shadow and soft light. Behind him, the faint outline of book filled shelves, dimly lit by the flicker from the fireplace, depending on where one stood.

The name plaque read simply:
“Bartholomew.”

Unlike the others, Bartholomew’s story was well-documented. He’d belonged to Gregory Whittemore, the estate’s patriarch during the turn of the century — a man both respected and feared for his temper. Gregory had been known for his love of cigars, whiskey, and quiet dominance. He trusted no one except Bartholomew, who, according to staff, followed him everywhere and growled at anyone who dared to speak too loudly in his presence.

After Gregory’s sudden death in that very parlor, his will left strict instructions: the Bulldog was to be “immortalized in paint” before burial. Yet when the artist arrived, Bartholomew was gone. Vanished, like Margaret’s golden Harper years before. The painting was completed anyway, based on sketches and memory.

But there was something off about it. Visitors described the dog’s gaze as unsettling — too direct, too knowing. His painted eyes seemed to follow movement, not in the typical parlor-trick way of old portraits, but with awareness, like a creature assessing whether you were threat or kin.

A century later, when restorers attempted to clean the canvas, the varnish refused to lift. Even solvents failed to dull the sheen in Bartholomew’s eyes.

It was during one of these cleanings that an apprentice noticed something unusual under the right armrest of the painted chair — a small, smudged reflection. Enlarged under light, it revealed a hand resting on the armrest. A human hand, painted so faintly that it had escaped notice for decades.

The next day, the apprentice reported hearing scratching behind the panel wall where the portrait hung. When she returned with the head conservator, the sound stopped, leaving behind only the faint smell of cigar smoke and the soft crackle of cooling ash.

By the following morning, a new note had appeared beneath the painting, scrawled in charcoal across the plaster:

“Four still wait. Two yet to come.”

No one ever admitted to writing it.

And upstairs, the piano began to play again — the same haunting nocturne, steady and unbroken this time, as if someone, or something, had finally found the rhythm.

• Part I – The Basset Hound
• Part II – The Labrador Retriever
• Part III – The Golden Retriever
• Part IV – The English Bulldog
• Part V – The French Bulldog
• Part VI – The German Shepherd
• Part VII – Elise Whittemore
• Epilogue – The Whittemore Portraits

The French Bulldog portrait was the smallest of them all — only twelve inches high, its frame gilded in delicate floral motifs, more jewelry than art. It hung beside the servants’ entrance, half hidden behind a curtain of dust and cobwebs, as if it didn’t want to be seen.

The subject, however, was impossible to ignore once found. The little dog sat upright on a grand settee; the light spilled across his coat in pale amber tones. His head tilted slightly, ears sharp, eyes full of alert curiosity. He wore a velvety cloak, a crown and a small silk ribbon tied neatly at the neck.

The plaque beneath read:
“Beau.”

No one knew who Beau had belonged to. The records had gaps — entire pages missing from the Whittemore family register during the years the portrait was likely painted. The date on the back of the canvas was smudged, the signature half-removed.

What the house staff did know was this: every time the moonlight reached that corridor, the faint sound of nails on wood echoed through the hall. Not frantic scratching — a rhythmic, gentle patter, as though something small was walking just out of sight.

One winter evening, the caretaker, a quiet man named Simon, found the frame slightly askew. Thinking it had loosened, he reached to straighten it — and froze. The ribbon around Beau’s painted neck was no longer blue. It was red.

He told no one.

Over the next few weeks, Simon began noticing other changes. A faint pawprint in the dust near the back stairs. The smell of fresh paint in rooms untouched for years. And one night, when he passed the French Bulldog’s portrait after midnight, he heard a whisper — not a voice exactly, but the sound of breathing from within the wall.

That was the same week the curator found the note beneath Bartholomew’s portrait: Four still wait. Two yet to come.

Simon hadn’t known what it meant then, but when the ribbon turned red again — darker this time, as though soaked — he began counting.

Sir Reginald. Captain. Harper. Bartholomew. That made four. Beau was fifth. One yet to come.

He pulled the painting from the wall the next morning. Behind it, the plaster had cracked in a perfect circle, and beneath that, a hollow cavity large enough to fit something small. Inside lay a folded scrap of linen and, resting on it, a key. Its handle was shaped like a dog’s head.

When he touched it, the piano upstairs began to play. Not the nocturne this time — something new. A brighter melody, unfinished, hesitating between major and minor.

Simon turned toward the stairs.

And as he climbed, every portrait in the house seemed to exhale, their painted eyes glinting in the half-light, as though the house itself was waiting for him to unlock the final door.

• Part I – The Basset Hound
• Part II – The Labrador Retriever
• Part III – The Golden Retriever
• Part IV – The English Bulldog
• Part V – The French Bulldog
• Part VI – The German Shepherd
• Part VII – Elise Whittemore
• Epilogue – The Whittemore Portraits

The German Shepherd hung in the grand foyer — the only painting large enough to rival Sir Reginald’s. Unlike the others, this one had never been removed, not even for restoration. Its frame was iron-black, etched with Latin inscriptions that had rusted into unreadable scars.

The subject sat regal, poised before the painter’s gaze. The brushwork was sharper than the other portraits, more deliberate, like each stroke had been made by a trembling hand determined not to make a mistake.

Beneath it, the plaque read only:
“Guardian.”

Simon had never liked this one. Even before the strange occurrences began, he swore the dog’s eyes followed him wherever he went. It wasn’t just the artist’s technique — it was the intensity, the weight of those eyes. There was purpose in them. Judgment.

The night after finding the key behind Beau’s portrait, Simon stood before the German Shepherd. The melody upstairs had stopped hours ago, but its echo lingered, pulsing faintly through the floorboards like a heartbeat.

He examined the frame more closely and noticed something new — a faint red mark on the lower right corner, shaped like a thumbprint. The same crimson hue as Beau’s ribbon. He reached for it.

The moment his skin touched the frame, the foyer lights flickered. The books on the shelves in the painting moved. Not much — just enough for Simon to see that they no longer perfectly lined the shelves anymore.

Then, somewhere deep within the house, a low growl rumbled.

Not the sound of a dog. Something older.

Simon stumbled back, clutching the key. The growl grew louder, followed by a slow scraping, as if claws were dragging along the marble floor. But when he turned, the hall was empty.

He looked back at the painting. The German Shepherd was gone.

The books and shelves were also gone in the portrait replaced by what looked like a forest of dark, swirling brushstrokes cut in half by a narrow path winding through its center.

And from that painted forest, mist began to spill into the room — thin at first, then thicker, until it gathered near the staircase like smoke searching for lungs.

Simon followed it, step by trembling step, until he reached the door at the end of the upper hall — the one no key had ever opened.

He inserted the key shaped like Beau’s head. The lock turned.

Inside was a study. Dusty, but undisturbed. The only piece of furniture was an easel draped with a cloth. On the floor beneath it lay a single nameplate, tarnished and broken in half:

“Elise Whittemore — The Final Portrait.”

Simon lifted the cloth.

It wasn’t finished.

The painting showed a young woman — half-completed — standing between two dogs: Beau on her left, the German Shepherd on her right. Her eyes were outlines only, still waiting for color.

At the bottom of the canvas, written in faint charcoal, were six words:

“When she opens her eyes, we rest.”

And for the first time since the house had awakened, Simon realized — the final portrait wasn’t waiting to be painted.

It was waiting to be completed.

• Part I – The Basset Hound
• Part II – The Labrador Retriever
• Part III – The Golden Retriever
• Part IV – The English Bulldog
• Part V – The French Bulldog
• Part VI – The German Shepherd
• Part VII – Elise Whittemore
• Epilogue – The Whittemore Portraits

The house had gone silent.

No ticking clocks. No settling beams. Only the faint hiss of candlelight, burning with a patience that felt older than fire.

Simon stood before the unfinished painting, his breath fogging in the chill. The woman on the canvas — Elise Whittemore — was still incomplete, her eyes pale outlines in a face that should have been radiant.

But the air around the canvas was different now — charged.

He could feel it on his skin, like static before a lightning strike.

A single brush rested in a jar beside the easel. Its bristles were dry, yet when Simon picked it up, a droplet of wet gold shimmered at the tip.

The moment he lifted it, the candlelight dimmed. The portraits of the dogs on the walls — the noble beasts of the Whittemore line — seemed to turn slightly, as if every eye had shifted toward him.

He didn’t mean to move his hand, but something guided it. Slow, deliberate, graceful. The brush touched the canvas.

And Elise’s eyes opened.

They were not painted. They were alive.

Light poured out from them — soft and golden, spreading across the canvas like dawn chasing away night. Her figure shimmered, gaining detail and form, until Simon could almost hear her breathing between the strokes.

Then, the other portraits began to change.

Sir Reginald lifted his chin.
Lady Genevieve’s pearls gleamed anew.
The Labrador’s velvet cloak rippled in a breeze that did not exist.
Beau’s eyes, once mournful, now glowed like twin embers.
And the German Shepherd stepped one paw forward — its movement echoing faintly on the marble floor.

They weren’t just paintings anymore. They were witnesses.

“Elise Whittemore,” Simon whispered, though he didn’t know why.

Her gaze met his, steady and sorrowful.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said — though her lips never moved. Her voice came from everywhere at once, soft as a sigh, but heavy with centuries.

The brush fell from his hand.

“This house kept us,” she continued. “Bound in oil and pigment… every stroke a promise we could not break. The family sought immortality — and found only reflection.”

Simon stepped back as the golden light began to bleed from the painting, spilling across the floor in liquid radiance. It flowed around his boots like living paint, swirling into the cracks of the wood.

The portraits around him began to fade, one by one — the colors draining as though absorbed by the light. The noble hounds bowed their heads in quiet relief.

When the light reached Elise’s feet, her painted self-turned to look once more at Simon.

“Now,” she said. “We rest.”

And the entire room exhaled.

Every candle went out at once.

When Simon awoke, morning light poured through the windows. The easel stood empty. No painting. No portraits. Just blank walls and the faint smell of turpentine.

But on the floor, in the dust where the painting once stood, were various small prints — each one a different shape and size — leading out the door and vanishing into the sunlight.

• Part I – The Basset Hound
• Part II – The Labrador Retriever
• Part III – The Golden Retriever
• Part IV – The English Bulldog
• Part V – The French Bulldog
• Part VI – The German Shepherd
• Part VII – Elise Whittemore
• Epilogue – The Whittemore Portraits

I write this by lamplight, in a house that is quieter than it has ever been. I do not know if anyone will ever read these words, or if they even matter beyond the walls of Whittemore Estate. Perhaps they are only for myself — a record of what I witnessed, what I survived, and what I was allowed to carry forward.

When I first arrived, I thought the portraits were mere art: oddities of a wealthy family, eccentricities preserved in oil and canvas. A Basset Hound in velvet. A Labrador poised atop a velvet cushion. A Golden Retriever waiting at a piano. An English Bulldog staring with silent judgment. A French Bulldog hidden in shadows. A German Shepherd overseeing the foyer. And finally, the unfinished Elise Whittemore, a canvas suspended between life and paint.

I was wrong.

Each portrait had waited. Each had breathed. Each had carried more than pigment and varnish — the essence of loyalty, of memory, of lives interwoven with this estate, and perhaps something beyond it. I only realized this as the last strokes fell into place, when Elise’s eyes opened in the final painting and the house itself seemed to exhale for the first time in centuries.

I cannot explain what I saw. The dogs moved, not in flesh but in spirit. The halls whispered. Music drifted through empty rooms, notes neither heard nor imagined, lingering like perfume. And when the final light of the painting spread, it was not destruction I felt, but release.

The portraits are gone now. The walls are bare. No paint remains, no eyes to follow. Yet the memory of them hangs in the air — a weightless presence, patient and serene.

I walked through the house this morning, tracing where the various prints led. Seven distinct prints, each a reminder of the lives that once kept this estate alive in ways that humans could not fully comprehend. They vanish into sunlight at the garden gate, as if stepping out of one world into another.

Lady Genevieve still lingers in the quiet elegance of the rooms, her influence threaded through every brushstroke and whispered command to the artists of the past. Sir Reginald, Captain, Harper, Bartholomew, Beau, and the German Shepherd — each of them carried her care, her dignity, and the eternal patience of guardianship. And Elise… Elise has finally completed her duty. The house is theirs no longer, but it has found its peace.

I do not know if the world beyond these walls would believe me. Perhaps they should not. Some things are not meant to be understood, only felt. The Whittemore portraits were never merely paintings. They were vessels. Custodians. Witnesses.

I leave this record as proof that such devotion exists, even if invisible. And if you find yourself wandering the corridors of the Whittemore Estate one day, listen closely. Not for the ticking of clocks, or the sigh of the wind through cracked windows. Listen for loyalty. For patience. For the quiet echo of seven guardians stepping into the light, finally at rest.

— Simon, Caretaker of Whittemore Estate

• Part I – The Basset Hound
• Part II – The Labrador Retriever
• Part III – The Golden Retriever
• Part IV – The English Bulldog
• Part V – The French Bulldog
• Part VI – The German Shepherd
• Part VII – Elise Whittemore
• Epilogue – The Whittemore Portraits