Books Teen Horror Time Machine When Art Imitates Death: Deadly Visions and The Face The line between art and murder is surprisingly fine. By Alissa Burger | Published on August 21, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Art has the power to move us, often with beautiful images that capture the imagination or present a new perspective. Every artist has their own unique vision of the world, an endless font of new possibilities and horizons, while no two viewers will see a piece of art in exactly the same way. As a result, considering a work of art is a bit like a conversation, a negotiation between the artist’s intent and the viewer’s interpretation. In Diane Hoh’s Nightmare Hall book Deadly Visions (1995) and R.L. Stine’s Fear Street book The Face (1996), these intersections between art, artist, and viewer reveal darker secrets, including murder.  In Hall’s Deadly Visions, Rachel Seaver finds herself at one of Salem University’s student art gallery openings not because she has any interest in or knowledge about art (she doesn’t) but because she has a crush on one of the artists, Aidan McKay. Aidan hardly seems worth the trouble and his first move is to tell Rachel she has no idea what she’s talking about, saying “I didn’t believe you when you said you didn’t know much about art, Rachel. Now, I think maybe you were telling the truth” (2). While this might be a joke-y, relatively innocuous comment, it becomes more problematic as the novel goes on, setting a pattern in which Aidan dismisses and demeans Rachel repeatedly when she starts seeing things in the art on display that no one else perceives. This is uncomfortably balanced with his demand that Rachel be a subject for his art, which happens to be life masks where he pours plaster over people’s faces, an idea that Rachel is not onboard with, though that doesn’t stop him from insistently pressuring her to do it even after she has clearly and repeatedly told him no. So Rachel is out of her depth in the art world, made fun of by the art students she hangs out with, and objectified by Aidan, who sees her more as a subject of his own inspiration rather than an actual person whose untrained thoughts about art might have some insight and value.  Rachel is drawn to a seascape oil painting that the other art students have all dismissed as poorly executed and unworthy of consideration. Aidan and Joseph prefer oil paint, Samantha specializes in pastels, and Paloma makes jewelry; they all have different artistic aesthetics, but the one thing they seem to agree on is that the seascape is bad. However, Rachel is certain she sees something they’re all missing: “She was absolutely convinced that amid the turquoise and kelly green and azure blue she saw a figure struggling in the storm-tossed waves … The arms were no more than blobs, flailing wildly above the water, the head an elongated dab of pinkish-colored paint, the eyes dark daubs, the mouth a slash of red … But the eyes were wild with fear, the mouth, if that was what it was, open in a scream of terror” (4). She tries to show the others what she sees, but no one believes her or shares in her vision. Rachel is insistent, saying “I may not know anything about art … but I know what I see, and what I see is someone drowning,” to which Aidan’s response is “No, you don’t” (5). (Seriously, what does Rachel see in this guy??). Everyone ignores Rachel and life goes on … except for Ted Leonides, who is pushed into a river while fishing near campus, goes over a waterfall, and drowns. It could all be a coincidence, though this theory starts to feel a lot less likely when Rachel returns to the gallery, looks at a watercolor of a vase of flowers, and sees a hidden image of someone falling down the stairs, and later that night, Milo Keith is pushed down the fire escape following a party at Nightmare Hall. But once again, no one else sees what Rachel sees and no one believes there’s any connection to her unconventional art appreciation and the terrible “accident” that puts Milo in a coma.  The two paintings that concealed hidden horrors did not have the artist’s name on them, and Rachel decides to check out the studios in the art building to see if she can find any clues that might indicate who made those pieces. She’s on a stack of piled boxes looking at some paintings on a shelf when an unseen assailant pushes her, she sustains a bloody head injury in the fall, and is then locked in the supply closet. There’s a dumbwaiter in the closet that the students use for ferrying supplies up to the tenth floor and her only way out is to cram herself in there and manually use the rope to lower herself down to the ground floor and the gallery below, where “A crowd of horrified spectators watched as out of the small doorway emerged a figure with a blood and tearstained face, a nasty gouge across her forehead, and bloody palms” (105). She tells them about her terrifying encounter and once again, THEY DON’T BELIEVE HER. Her friends’ explanation is that she must have hit her head, gotten confused, and shut herself in the closet; they’re not even entirely willing to concede that Rachel was locked in the closet at all, because when they go up to the tenth floor, the closet door is unlocked and open. After the attack that nearly kills Milo, Rachel receives an anonymous gift left outside her dorm room: another painting of flowers, this one with a hidden image of terrified girl with her face covered with a death mask, accompanied by a note that says “YOU WILL NEVER SEE ANOTHER MONDAY” (129). Even if the others still can’t see what Rachel sees in the painting (they can’t), the death threat is pretty straightforward and they have to believe Rachel’s in danger now, right? Nope. Probably just a prank, they argue; nothing to worry about. Let’s go to the mall.  But of course it isn’t a prank and Rachel is nearly killed by a falling potted plant outside the mall, and is then stalked down the dark stairwell of her residence hall. Against what should be her better judgment, Rachel goes back to the art building, is knocked unconscious, and wakes up with her hands tied, her ears and eyes covered with cotton, and about to be the model for a life (or death) mask, whether she likes it or not. Rachel has just about come to terms with the realization that the killer might actually be mask-obsessed Aidan—who she has suspected and then talked herself out of multiple times throughout the terrifying course of events with variations of “he’s cute, I bet it’s not him”—but when Rachel fights her way free, she is shocked to find that her would-be killer is Samantha, who has been the least obnoxious of her new art friends. Unlike the others, Samantha hasn’t repeatedly told Rachel that she doesn’t know a thing about art or that her perceptions of what she sees are invalid. There’s a clear sense of empathy and connection here, because like Rachel, Samantha has been the butt of the others’ jokes and on the receiving end of their abuse. As Samantha tells Rachel, “No one appreciated my work! They all said it was weak. ‘Wishy-washy pastels,’ Joseph called them” (201). If she can’t impress them with her art itself, Samantha decides she will force them to at least respect what her art can accomplish, painting scenes of death into her work and then making them come true: “I showed them, didn’t I? … Weak? Weak? When I can paint something and then make it happen? They can’t do that, none of them. I’m the only one who can. I’m the one with all the power” (201, emphasis original). Samantha chose Ted and Milo at random, a matter of convenience and opportunity, but when she realized that Rachel was the only one who could see the truth behind her art, Rachel became Samantha’s main target. Rachel fights back against Samantha, knocks her unconscious, and saves herself, but even with the truth unquestionably revealed, Rachel knows she will still have to contend with her friends’ doubts: “They wouldn’t understand about her dreams and her ability to see in Samantha’s paintings what no one else had, but that didn’t matter. Not really” (208). But maybe it should. No one believed Rachel and in the book’s final lines, she decides that “Monday seemed like a good day to begin learning about art” (208), determined to make herself into a person her friends will like rather than worrying about why she can’t get those friends to believe her when she tells them someone’s trying to kill her.  While Rachel sees the hidden truth in Rachel’s paintings, in Stine’s The Face, Martha Powell is both artist and viewer, finding herself drawing the same face over and over again, with no idea of what it means. Something terrible happened, but Martha can’t remember what: she has lost her memories of a trip she and her friends took to a cabin last winter and her psychiatrist Dr. Sayles is insistent that the memories come back on their own. Her friends Justine, Laura, and Adriana, Adriana’s brother Ivan, and Martha’s boyfriend Aaron were all there at the cabin, but none of them will tell her what happened. They’re all keeping a close eye on Martha, and saying ominous things about how horrible it’s going to be for her when she remembers what happened, but they keep the truth to themselves. Then one afternoon when Martha sits down to work on some sketches for an art portfolio she needs to submit soon for a summer program and she draws a young man’s face, with dark hair and eyes and a thin scar running through one eyebrow. Martha is puzzled, thinking “He didn’t look at all familiar” (30), but knowing his likeness had to come from somewhere. From that point forward, no matter what she tries to draw—a self-portrait, her cat—all that appears on her paper is this boy’s face.  Martha’s memory begins to come back in fragmentary pieces, first of a snowball fight at the cabin that turned unexpectedly hostile and later, of this mysterious boy kissing her, but the meaning of these images continues to evade her. Now that she has seen the boy’s face, his presence is inescapable: Martha worries that she’s starting to lose her grip on reality when she sees his face everywhere she looks, including on the faces of the entire basketball team during a game she goes to with Adriana and Laura. Out of nowhere she remembers that his name was Sean and he was with them at the cabin when whatever horrific thing that happened happened. But still, no one’s telling, aside from an anonymous message on Martha’s answering machine that “You keep drawing him because you killed him” (101, emphasis original). When Martha does finally remember what happened, it’s plenty horrible but still a mystery. She and her friends went to the cabin and Sean came along with Ivan. The girls all thought Sean was cute, which resulted in some not-so-friendly competition, as well as some serious relationship stress: Ivan and Laura are dating but she breaks up with him so she can go out with Sean, and Martha can’t quite figure out why she has that fragmentary memory of kissing Sean when she was dating Aaron. After the snowball fight that got a little too aggressive, the group decided to do a bit of skiing on the hill near the cabin, and while Adriana encouraged Martha to go first, Sean took the lead while Martha struggled with her skis, and halfway down the hill, he was decapitated by a wire strung between two trees. Everyone is understandably traumatized and while the police come to investigate, there are a lot more questions than answers, and Sean’s death has thus far remained an unsolved crime.  Martha remembers kissing Sean, but as that weekend comes back to her in greater detail she also remembers pushing him away and fighting with him, in what turned out to be an assault rather than a romantic rendezvous. When she remembers his gruesome death, she figures there must be a connection, thinking “I had a fight with Sean—and then he died” (123). She decides this fight must have been her motive for murder and furthermore, since she’s the only one who lost her memory of that weekend, that she must be the only one with something to hide. Martha hastily connects these dots and though she still has no idea why or how she would have done so, she believes she murdered Sean. She calls Adriana for help and like a good friend, Adriana comes right over and affirms Martha’s most terrifying suspicions, though Martha’s confession is complicated when Ivan shows up and tells the girls that he’s the one who murdered Sean. Sean found out Ivan had stolen a car and never gotten caught and Sean blackmailed him, demanding money in exchange for not turning Ivan in. When Ivan decided that he had had enough, he strung the wire between two trees—though he only strung it at about ankle height, with the intent to trip Sean up and teach him a lesson, saying “I only wanted to knock him down. Maybe hurt him a little” (137). While Ivan never meant to kill Sean, his assumption is that the wind picked up and the snow shifted, tragically changing the height of the wire in relation to the slope, though he still holds himself responsible for what happened. But much like Martha’s returning memories, there’s more than meets the eye: both Martha and Ivan are ready to claim responsibility for Sean’s death, but it turns out it was Adriana who killed him, though she intended the bloody death for Martha herself, to eliminate her as perceived competition for Sean’s affections. In the aftermath of the accident, Adriana has also been hypnotizing Martha without her friend’s knowledge or consent, trying to make sure her real memories of what happened at the cabin stay buried, until Martha remembers just enough to confess. While Martha and Ivan blamed themselves, as the actual murderer, Adriana refuses to claim responsibility, telling Martha “The wrong person died … Because of you, the wrong person died” (145).  In both Deadly Visions and The Face, art hides deeper truths, concealing premonitions of Samantha’s violence and serving as a persistent symbol of Martha’s lost memories. But just as art itself is open to interpretation, Rachel and Martha’s experiences and their attempts to discuss them with others are contentious and a constant process of negotiation, meaning-making, and doubt. In Deadly Visions, no one believes what Rachel sees because they can’t see it themselves, and even when people start getting hurt and dying, their doubts still linger, forcing Rachel to find the truth on her own. In The Face, Adriana is actively trying to shape what Martha remembers and the narrative Martha constructs from the fragmentary memories she recovers, and while Martha can trust that the face she keeps drawing is one she has seen and a boy she knows, Adriana manipulates Martha’s perceptions of what that face means and the events that led to his death. In both cases, Rachel and Martha have to fight to prove the validity of what they know to be true and reveal the horrors behind the brush strokes and pencil lines. In the end, these young women’s real masterpieces are their reliance on their own memories despite those who are constantly questioning and doubting them and the self-efficacy that allows them to realize the truth.[end-mark] The post When Art Imitates Death: <em>Deadly Visions</em> and <em>The Face</em> appeared first on Reactor.