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diff --git a/79401-h/79401-h.htm b/79401-h/79401-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b3b35e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/79401-h/79401-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,632 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Pickman's Model | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } +hr.full {width: 95%; margin-left: 2.5%; margin-right: 2.5%;} +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +x-ebookmaker-drop {display: none;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.right {text-align: right;} + +.smcap { font-variant:small-caps; } + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +.caption p +{ + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0; + margin: 0.25em 0; + font-weight: bold; +} + +div.titlepage { + text-align: center; + page-break-before: always; + page-break-after: always; +} + +div.titlepage p { + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + font-weight: bold; + line-height: 1.5; + margin-top: 3em; +} + +.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } +.ph1 { font-size: x-large; margin: .83em auto; } + +.ph2 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } +.ph2 { font-size: medium; margin: .83em auto; } + + </style> +</head> + +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79401 ***</div> + + +<div class="titlepage"> + +<h1>Pickman's Model</h1> + +<p class="ph1">By H. P. Lovecraft</p> + +<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br> +Weird Tales, October 1927.]</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap"> + +<p>You needn't think I'm crazy, Eliot—plenty of others have queerer +prejudices than this. Why don't you laugh at Oliver's grandfather, who +won't ride in a motor? If I don't like that damned subway, it's my own +business; and we got here more quickly anyhow in the taxi. We'd have +had to walk up the hill from Park Street if we'd taken the car.</p> + +<p>I know I'm more nervous than I was when you saw me last year, but you +don't need to hold a clinic over it. There's plenty of reason, God +knows, and I fancy I'm lucky to be sane at all. Why the third degree? +You didn't use to be so inquisitive.</p> + +<p>Well, if you must hear it, I don't know why you shouldn't. Maybe you +ought to, anyhow, for you kept writing me like a grieved parent when +you heard I'd begun to cut the Art Club and keep away from Pickman. Now +that he's disappeared I go around to the club once in a while, but my +nerves aren't what they were.</p> + +<p>No, I don't know what's become of Pickman, and I don't like to guess. +You might have surmised I had some inside information when I dropped +him—and that's why I don't want to think where he's gone. Let the +police find what they can—it won't be much, judging from the fact that +they don't know yet of the old North End place he hired under the name +of Peters. I'm not sure that I could find it again myself—not that I'd +ever try, even in broad daylight! Yes, I do know, or am afraid I know, +why he maintained it. I'm coming to that. And I think you'll understand +before I'm through why I don't tell the police. They would ask me to +guide them, but I couldn't go back there even if I knew the way. There +was something there—and now I can't use the subway or (and you may as +well have your laugh at this, too) go down into cellars any more.</p> + +<p>I should think you'd have known I didn't drop Pickman for the same +silly reasons that fussy old women like Dr. Reid or Joe Minot or +Bosworth did. Morbid art doesn't shock me, and when a man has the +genius Pickman had I feel it an honor to know him, no matter what +direction his work takes. Boston never had a greater painter than +Richard Upton Pickman. I said it at first and I say it still, and I +never swerved an inch, either, when he showed that <i>Ghoul Feeding</i>. +That, you remember, was when Minot cut him.</p> + +<p>You know, it takes profound art and profound insight into nature to +turn out stuff like Pickman's. Any magazine-cover hack can splash +paint around wildly and call it a nightmare or Witches' Sabbath or a +portrait of the devil, but only a great painter can make such a thing +really scare or ring true. That's because only a real artist knows the +actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear—the exact +sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts +or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper color contrasts and +lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness. I don't +have to tell you why a Fuseli really brings a shiver while a cheap +ghost-story frontispiece merely makes us laugh. There's something those +fellows catch—beyond life—that they're able to make us catch for +a second. Doré had it. Sime has it. Angarola of Chicago has it. And +Pickman had it as no man ever had it before or—I hope to heaven—ever +will again.</p> + +<p>Don't ask me what it is they see. You know, in ordinary art, there's +all the difference in the world between the vital, breathing things +drawn from nature or models and the artificial truck that commercial +small fry reel off in a bare studio by rule. Well, I should say that +the really weird artist has a kind of vision which makes models, or +summons up what amounts to actual scenes from the spectral world +he lives in. Anyhow, he manages to turn out results that differ +from the pretender's mince-pie dreams in just about the same way +that the life painter's results differ from the concoctions of a +correspondence-school cartoonist. If I had ever seen what Pickman +saw—but no! Here, let's have a drink before we get any deeper. Gad, I +wouldn't be alive if I'd ever seen what that man—if he was a man—saw!</p> + +<p>You recall that Pickman's forte was faces. I don't believe anybody +since Goya could put so much of sheer hell into a set of features or +a twist of expression. And before Goya you have to go back to the +medieval chaps who did the gargoyles and chimeras on Notre Dame and +Mont Saint-Michel. They believed all sorts of things—and maybe they +saw all sorts of things, too, for the Middle Ages had some curious +phases. I remember your asking Pickman yourself once, the year before +you went away, wherever in thunder he got such ideas and visions. +Wasn't that a nasty laugh he gave you? It was partly because of +that laugh that Reid dropped him. Reid, you know, had just taken up +comparative pathology, and was full of pompous "inside stuff" about +the biological or evolutionary significance of this or that mental or +physical symptom. He said Pickman repelled him more and more every day, +and almost frightened him toward the last—that the fellow's features +and expression were slowly developing in a way he didn't like; in a way +that wasn't human. He had a lot of talk about diet, and said Pickman +must be abnormal and eccentric to the last degree. I suppose you told +Reid, if you and he had any correspondence over it, that he'd let +Pickman's paintings get on his nerves or harrow up his imagination. I +know I told him that myself—then.</p> + +<p>But keep in mind that I didn't drop Pickman for anything like this. +On the contrary, my admiration for him kept growing; for that <i>Ghoul +Feeding</i> was a tremendous achievement. As you know, the club wouldn't +exhibit it, and the Museum of Fine Arts wouldn't accept it as a gift; +and I can add that nobody would buy it, so Pickman had it right in his +house till he went. Now his father has it in Salem—you know Pickman +comes of old Salem stock, and had a witch ancestor hanged in 1692.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>I got into the habit of calling on Pickman quite often, especially +after I began making notes for a monograph on weird art. Probably it +was his work which put the idea into my head, and anyhow, I found him +a mine of data and suggestions when I came to develop it. He showed me +all the paintings and drawings he had about; including some pen-and-ink +sketches that would, I verily believe, have got him kicked out of the +club if, many of the members had seen them. Before long I was pretty +nearly a devotee, and would listen for hours like a school-boy to art +theories and philosophic speculations wild enough to qualify him for +the Danvers asylum. My hero-worship, coupled with the fact that people +generally were commencing to have less and less to do with him, made +him get very confidential with me; and one evening he hinted that if +I were fairly close-mouthed and none too squeamish, he might show me +something rather unusual—something a bit stronger than anything he had +in the house.</p> + +<p>"You know," he said, "there are things that won't do for Marlborough +Street—things that are out of place here, and that can't be conceived +here, anyhow. It's my business to catch the overtones of the soul, and +you won't find those in a parvenu set of artificial streets on made +land. Back Bay isn't Boston—it isn't anything yet, because it's had +no time to pick up memories and attract local spirits. If there are +any ghosts here, they're the tame ghosts of a salt marsh and a shallow +cove; and I want human ghosts—the ghosts of beings highly organized +enough to have looked on hell and known the meaning of what they saw.</p> + +<p>"The place for an artist to love is the North End. If any esthete +were sincere, he'd put up with the slums for the sake of the massed +traditions. God, man! Don't you realize that places like that weren't +merely <i>made</i>, but actually <i>grew</i>? Generation after generation lived +and felt and died there, and in days when people weren't afraid to +live and feel and die. Don't you know there was a mill on Copp's +Hill in 1632, and that half the present streets were laid out by +1650? I can show you houses that have stood two centuries and a half +and more; houses that have witnessed what would make a modern house +crumble into powder. What do moderns know of life and the forces +behind it? You call the Salem witchcraft a delusion, but I'll wager my +four-times-great-grandmother could have told you things. They hanged +her on Gallows Hill, with Cotton Mather looking sanctimoniously on. +Mather, damn him, was afraid somebody might succeed in kicking free of +this accursed cage of monotony—I wish someone had laid a spell on him +or sucked his blood in the night!</p> + +<p>"I can show you a house he lived in, and I can show you another one he +was afraid to enter in spite of all his fine bold talk. He knew things +he didn't dare put into that stupid <i>Magnalia</i> or that puerile <i>Wonders +of the Invisible World</i>. Look here, do you know the whole North End +once had a set of tunnels that kept certain people in touch with each +other's houses, and the burying ground, and the sea? Let them prosecute +and persecute above ground—things went on every day that they couldn't +reach, and voices laughed at night that they couldn't place!</p> + +<p>"Why, man, out of ten surviving houses built before 1700 and not +moved since I'll wager that in eight I can show you something queer +in the cellar. There's hardly a month that you don't read of workmen +finding bricked-up arches and wells leading nowhere in this or that +old place as it comes down—you could see one near Henchman Street +from the elevated last year. There were witches and what their spells +summoned; pirates and what they brought in from the sea; smugglers; +privateers—and I tell you, people knew how to live, and how to enlarge +the bounds of life, in the old times! This wasn't the only world a bold +and wise man could know—faugh! And to think of today in contrast, +with such pale-pink brains that even a club of supposed artists gets +shudders and convulsions if a picture goes beyond the feelings of a +Beacon Street tea-table!</p> + +<p>"The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to +question the past very closely. What do maps and records and guidebooks +really tell of the North End? Bah! At a guess I'll guarantee to lead +you to thirty or forty alleys and networks of alleys north of Prince +Street that aren't suspected by ten living beings outside of the +foreigners that swarm them. And what do those Dagoes know of their +meaning? No, Thurber, these ancient places are dreaming gorgeously and +overflowing with wonder and terror and escapes from the commonplace, +and yet there's not a living soul to understand or profit by them. Or, +rather, there's only one living soul—for I haven't been digging around +in the past for nothing!</p> + +<p>"See here, you're interested in this sort of thing. What if I told +you that I've got another studio up there, where I can catch the +night-spirit of antique horror and paint things that I couldn't even +think of in Marlborough Street? Naturally I don't tell those cursed old +maids at the club—with Reid, damn him, whispering even as it is that +I'm a sort of monster bound down the toboggan of reverse evolution. +Yes, Thurber, I decided long ago that one must paint terror as well as +beauty from life, so I did some exploring in places where I had reason +to know terror lives.</p> + +<p>"I've got a place that I don't believe three living Nordic men besides +myself have ever seen. It isn't so very far from the elevated as +distance goes, but it's centuries away as the soul goes. I took it +because of the queer old brick well in the cellar—one of the sort I +told you about. The shack's almost tumbling down, so that nobody else +would live there, and I'd hate to tell you how little I pay for it. +The windows are boarded up, but I like that all the better, since I +don't want daylight for what I do. I paint in the cellar, where the +inspiration is thickest, but I've other rooms furnished on the ground +floor. A Sicilian owns it, and I've hired it under the name of Peters.</p> + +<p>"Now if you're game, I'll take you there tonight. I think you'd enjoy +the pictures, for as I said, I've let myself go a bit there. It's no +vast tour—I sometimes do it on foot, for I don't want to attract +attention with a taxi in such a place. We can take the shuttle at the +South Station for Battery Street, and after that the walk isn't much."</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Well, Eliot, there wasn't much for me to do after that harangue but to +keep myself from running instead of walking for the first vacant cab +we could sight. We changed to the elevated at the South Station, and +at about 12 o'clock had climbed down the steps at Battery Street and +struck along the old waterfront past Constitution Wharf. I didn't keep +track of the cross streets, and can't tell you yet which it was we +turned up, but I know it wasn't Greenough Lane.</p> + +<p>When we did turn, it was to climb through the deserted length of the +oldest and dirtiest alley I ever saw in my life, with crumbling-looking +gables, broken small-paned windows, and archaic chimneys that stood +out half-disintegrated against the moonlit sky. I don't believe there +were three houses in sight that hadn't been standing in Cotton Mather's +time—certainly I glimpsed at least two with an overhang, and once I +thought I saw a peaked roof-line of the almost forgotten pre-gambrel +type, though antiquarians tell us there are none left in Boston.</p> + +<p>From that alley, which had a dim light, we turned to the left into +an equally silent and still narrower alley with no light at all; and +in a minute made what I think was an obtuse-angled bend toward the +right in the dark. Not long after this Pickman produced a flashlight +and revealed an antediluvian ten-paneled door that looked damnably +worm-eaten. Unlocking it, he ushered me into a barren hallway with what +was once splendid dark-oak paneling—simple, of course, but thrillingly +suggestive of the times of Andros and Phips and the Witchcraft. Then he +took me through a door on the left, lighted an oil lamp, and told me to +make myself at home.</p> + +<p>Now, Eliot, I'm what the man in the street would call fairly +"hard-boiled," but I'll confess that what I saw on the walls of that +room gave me a bad turn. They were his pictures, you know—the ones he +couldn't paint or even show in Marlborough Street—and he was right +when he said he had "let himself go." Here—have another drink—I need +one anyhow!</p> + +<p>There's no use in my trying to tell you what they were like, because +the awful, the blasphemous horror, and the unbelievable loathsomeness +and moral fetor came from simple touches quite beyond the power of +words to classify. There was none of the exotic technique you see in +Sidney Sime, none of the trans-Saturnian landscapes and lunar fungi +that Clark Ashton Smith uses to freeze the blood. The backgrounds were +mostly old churchyards, deep woods, cliffs by the sea, brick tunnels, +ancient paneled rooms, or simple vaults of masonry. Copp's Hill Burying +Ground, which could not be many blocks away from this very house, was a +favorite scene.</p> + +<p>The madness and monstrosity lay in the figures in the foreground—for +Pickman's morbid art was preeminently one of demoniac portraiture. +These figures were seldom completely human, but often approached +humanity in varying degrees. Most of the bodies, while roughly bipedal, +had a forward slumping, and a vaguely canine cast. The texture of the +majority was a kind of unpleasant rubberiness. Ugh! I can see them now! +Their occupations—well, don't ask me to be too precise. They were +usually feeding—I won't say on what. They were sometimes shown in +groups in cemeteries or underground passages, and often appeared to be +in battle over their prey—or rather, their treasure-trove. And what +damnable expressiveness Pickman sometimes gave the sightless faces of +this charnel booty! Occasionally the things were shown leaping through +open windows at night, or squatting on the chests of sleepers, worrying +at their throats. One canvas showed a ring of them baying about a +hanged witch on Gallows Hill, whose dead face held a close kinship to +theirs.</p> + +<p>But don't get the idea that it was all this hideous business of theme +and setting which struck me faint. I'm not a three-year-old kid, and +I'd seen much like this before. It was the <i>faces</i>, Eliot, those +accursed <i>faces</i>, that leered and slavered out of the canvas with the +very breath of life! By God, man, I verily believe they were alive! +That nauseous wizard had waked the fires of hell in pigment, and his +brush had been a nightmare-spawning wand. Give me that decanter, Eliot!</p> + +<p>There was one thing called <i>The Lesson</i>—heaven pity me, that I ever +saw it! Listen—can you fancy a squatting circle of nameless doglike +things in a churchyard teaching a small child how to feed like +themselves? The price of a changeling, I suppose—you know the old myth +about how the weird people leave their spawn in cradles in exchange +for the human babes they steal. Pickman was showing what happens to +those stolen babes—how they grow up—and then I began to see a hideous +relationship in the faces of the human and non-human figures. He was, +in all his gradations of morbidity between the frankly non-human and +the degradedly human, establishing a sardonic linkage and evolution. +The dog-things were developed from mortals!</p> + +<p>And no sooner had I wondered what he made of their own young as +left with mankind in the form of changelings, than my eye caught a +picture embodying that very thought. It was that of an ancient Puritan +interior—a heavily beamed room with lattice windows, a settle, and +clumsy Seventeenth Century furniture, with the family sitting about +while the father read from the Scriptures. Every face but one showed +nobility and reverence, but that one reflected the mockery of the +pit. It was that of a young man in years, and no doubt belonged to a +supposed son of that pious father, but in essence it was the kin of the +unclean things. It was their changeling—and in a spirit of supreme +irony Pickman had given the features a very perceptible resemblance to +his own.</p> + +<p>By this time Pickman had lighted a lamp in an adjoining room and was +politely holding open the door for me; asking me if I would care to +see his "modern studies", I hadn't been able to give him much of my +opinions—I was too speechless with fright and loathing—but I think he +fully understood and felt highly complimented. And now I want to assure +you again, Eliot, that I'm no mollycoddle to scream at anything which +shows a bit of departure from the usual. I'm middle-aged and decently +sophisticated, and I guess you saw enough of me in France to know I'm +not easily knocked out. Remember, too, that I'd just about recovered my +wind and gotten used to those frightful pictures which turned colonial +New England into a kind of annex of hell. Well, in spite of all this, +that next room forced a real scream out of me, and I had to clutch at +the doorway to keep from keeling over. The other chamber had shown a +pack of ghouls and witches overrunning the world of our fore-fathers, +but this one brought the horror right into our own daily life!</p> + +<p>Gad, how that man could paint! There was a study called <i>Subway +Accident</i>, in which a flock of the vile things were clambering up from +some unknown catacomb through a crack in the floor of the Boylston +Street subway and attacking a crowd of people on the platform. Another +showed a dance on Copp's hill among the tombs with the background +of today. Then there were any number of cellar views, with monsters +creeping in through holes and rifts in the masonry and grinning as they +squatted behind barrels or furnaces and waited for their first victim +to descend the stairs.</p> + +<p>One disgusting canvas seemed to depict a vast cross-section of Beacon +Hill, with antlike armies of the mephitic monsters squeezing themselves +through burrows that honey-combed the ground. Dances in the modern +cemeteries were freely pictured, and another conception somehow shocked +me more than all the rest—a scene in an unknown vault, where scores of +the beasts crowded about one who held a well-known Boston guidebook and +was evidently reading aloud. All were pointing to a certain passage, +and every face seemed so distorted with epileptic and reverberant +laughter that I almost thought I heard the fiendish echoes. The title +of the picture was, <i>Holmes, Lowell, and Longfellow Lie Buried in Mount +Auburn</i>.</p> + +<p>As I gradually steadied myself and got readjusted to this second room +of deviltry and morbidity, I began to analyze some of the points in my +sickening loathing. In the first place, I said to myself, these things +repelled because of the utter inhumanity and callous cruelty they +showed in Pickman. The fellow must be a relentless enemy of all mankind +to take such glee in the torture of brain and flesh and the degradation +of the mortal tenement. In the second place, they terrified because of +their very greatness. Their art was the art that convinced—when we +saw the pictures we saw the demons themselves and were afraid of them. +And the queer part was, that Pickman got none of his power from the +use of selectiveness or bizarreric. Nothing was blurred, distorted, or +conventionalized; outlines were sharp and lifelike, and details were +almost painfully defined. And the faces!</p> + +<p>It was not any mere artist's interpretation that we saw; it was +pandemonium itself, crystal-clear in stark objectivity. That was it, +by heaven! The man was not a fantaisiste or romanticist at all—he did +not even try to give us the churning, prismatic ephemera of dreams, +but coldly and sardonically reflected some stable, mechanistic, +and well-established horror-world which he saw fully, brilliantly, +squarely, and unfalteringly. God knows what that world can have been, +or where he ever glimpsed the blasphemous shapes that loped and trotted +and crawled through it; but whatever the baffling source of his images, +one thing was plain. Pickman was in every sense—in conception and in +execution—a thorough, painstaking, and almost scientific <i>realist</i>.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>My host was now leading the way down cellar to his actual studio, and I +braced myself for some hellish effects among the unfinished canvases. +As we reached the bottom of the damp stairs he turned his flashlight +to a corner of the large open space at hand, revealing the circular +brick curb of what was evidently a great well in the earthen floor. We +walked nearer, and I saw that it must be five feet across, with walls +a good foot thick and some six inches above the ground level—solid +work of the Seventeenth Century, or I was much mistaken. That, Pickman +said, was the kind of thing he had been talking about—an aperture of +the network of tunnels that used to undermine the hill. I noticed idly +that it did not seem to be bricked up, and that a heavy disk of wood +formed the apparent cover. Thinking of the things this well must have +been connected with if Pickman's wild hints had not been mere rhetoric, +I shivered slightly; then turned to follow him up a step and through a +narrow door into a room of fair size, provided with a wooden floor and +furnished as a studio. An acetylene gas outfit gave the light necessary +for work.</p> + +<p>The unfinished pictures on easels or propped against the walls were +as ghastly as the finished ones upstairs, and showed the painstaking +methods of the artist. Scenes were blocked out with extreme care, and +penciled guide lines told of the minute exactitude which Pickman used +in getting the right perspective and proportions. The man was great—I +say it even now, knowing as much as I do. A large camera on a table +excited my notice, and Pickman told me that he used it in taking scenes +for backgrounds, so that he might paint them from photographs in the +studio instead of carting his outfit around the town for this or that +view. He thought a photograph quite as good as an actual scene or model +for sustained work, and declared he employed them regularly.</p> + +<p>There was something very disturbing about the nauseous sketches and +half-finished monstrosities that leered around from every side of the +room, and when Pickman suddenly unveiled a huge canvas on the side away +from the light I could not for my life keep back a loud scream—the +second I had emitted that night. It echoed and echoed through the dim +vaultings of that ancient and nitrous cellar, and I had to choke back a +flood of reaction that threatened to burst out as hysterical laughter. +Merciful Creator! Eliot, but I don't know how much was real and how +much was feverish fancy. It doesn't seem to me that earth can hold a +dream like that!</p> + +<p>It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it +held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as +a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, +and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present +prey and seek a juicier morsel. But, damn it all, it wasn't even the +fiendish subject that made it such an immortal fountain-head of all +panic—not that, nor the dog face with its pointed ears, bloodshot +eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips. It wasn't the scaly claws nor the +mold-caked body nor the half-hooved feet—none of these, though any one +of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness.</p> + +<p>It was the technique, Eliot—the cursed, the impious, the unnatural +technique! As I am a living being, I never elsewhere saw the actual +breath of life so fused into a canvas. The monster was there—it glared +and gnawed and gnawed and glared—and I knew that only a suspension of +nature's laws could ever let a man paint a thing like that without a +model—without some glimpse of the nether world which no mortal unsold +to the Fiend has ever had.</p> + +<p>Pinned with a thumb-tack to a vacant part of the canvas was a piece of +paper now badly curled up—probably, I thought, a photograph from which +Pickman meant to paint a background as hideous as the nightmare it was +to enhance. I reached out to uncurl and look at it, when suddenly +I saw Pickman start as if shot. He had been listening with peculiar +intensity ever since my shocked scream had waked unaccustomed echoes in +the dark cellar, and now he seemed struck with a fright which, though +not comparable to my own, had in it more of the physical than of the +spiritual. He drew a revolver and motioned me to silence, then stepped +out into the main cellar and closed the door behind him.</p> + +<p>I think I was paralyzed for an instant. Imitating Pickman's listening, +I fancied I heard a faint scurrying sound somewhere, and a series of +squeals or bleats in a direction I couldn't determine. I thought of +huge rats and shuddered. Then there came a subdued sort of clatter +which somehow set me all in gooseflesh—a furtive, groping kind of +clatter, though I can't attempt to convey what I mean in words. It was +like heavy wood falling on stone or brick—wood on brick—what did that +make me think of?</p> + +<p>It came again, and louder. There was a vibration as if the wood had +fallen farther than it had fallen before. After that followed a sharp +grating noise, a shouted gibberish from Pickman, and the deafening +discharge of all six chambers of a revolver, fired spectacularly as +a lion-tamer might fire in the air for effect. A muffled squeal or +squawk, and a thud. Then more wood and brick grating, a pause, and the +opening of the door—at which I'll confess I started violently. Pickman +reappeared with his smoking weapon, cursing the bloated rats that +infested the ancient well.</p> + +<p>"The deuce knows what they eat, Thurber," he grinned, "for those +archaic tunnels touched graveyard and witch-den and seacoast. But +whatever it is, they must have run short, for they were devilish +anxious to get out. Your yelling stirred them up, I fancy. Better be +cautious in these old places—our rodent friends are the one drawback, +though I sometimes think they're a positive asset by way of atmosphere +and color."</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Well, Eliot, that was the end of the night's adventure. Pickman had +promised to show me the place, and heaven knows he had done it. He led +me out of that tangle of alleys in another direction, it seems, for +when we sighted a lamp-post we were in a half-familiar street with +monotonous rows of mingled tenement blocks and old houses. Charter +Street, it turned out to be, but I was too flustered to notice just +where we hit it. We were too late for the elevated, and walked back +downtown through Hanover Street. I remember that walk. We switched from +Tremont up Beacon, and Pickman left me at the corner of Joy, where I +turned off. I never spoke to him again.</p> + +<p>Why did I drop him? Don't be impatient. Wait till I ring for coffee. +We've had enough of the other stuff, but I for one need something. +No—it wasn't the paintings I saw in that place; though I'll swear they +were enough to get him ostracized in nine-tenths of the homes and clubs +of Boston, and I guess you won't wonder now why I have to steer clear +of subways and cellars. It was—something I found in my coat the next +morning. You know, the curled-up paper tacked to that frightful canvas +in the cellar; the thing I thought was a photograph of some scene he +meant to use as a background for that monster. That last scare had come +while I was reaching to uncurl it, and it seems I had vacantly crumpled +it into my pocket. But here's the coffee—take it black, Eliot, if +you're wise.</p> + +<p>Yes, that paper was the reason I dropped Pickman; Richard Upton +Pickman, the greatest artist I have ever known—and the foulest being +that ever leaped the bounds of life into the pits of myth and madness. +Eliot—old Reid was right. He wasn't strictly human. Either he was born +in strange shadow, or he'd found a way to unlock the forbidden gate. +It's all the same now, for he's gone—back into the fabulous darkness +he loved to haunt. Here, let's have the chandelier going.</p> + +<p>Don't ask me to explain or even conjecture about what I burned. Don't +ask me, either, what lay behind that mole-like scrambling Pickman +was so keen to pass off as rats. There are secrets, you know, which +might have come down from old Salem times, and Cotton Mather tells +even stranger things. You know how damned lifelike Pickman's paintings +were—how we all wondered where he got those faces.</p> + +<hr class="chap"> + +<div class="figcenter"> + <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""> + <div class="caption"> + <p>"He had painted a monstrous being on that awful canvas."</p> + </div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap"> + +<p>Well—that paper wasn't a photograph of any background, after all. What +it showed was simply the monstrous being he was painting on that awful +canvas. It was the model he was using—and its background was merely +the wall of the cellar studio in minute detail. But by God, Eliot, <i>it +was a photograph from life</i>.</p> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79401 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/79401-h/images/cover.jpg b/79401-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e777a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/79401-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/79401-h/images/illus.jpg b/79401-h/images/illus.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1230dce --- /dev/null +++ b/79401-h/images/illus.jpg |
