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The Golgotha Dancers By: Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986) |
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By MANLY WADE WELLMAN [Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales October
1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: A curious and terrifying story about an artist who sold his
soul that he might paint a living picture ]
I had come to the Art Museum to see the special show of Goya prints, but
that particular gallery was so crowded that I could hardly get in, much
less see or savor anything; wherefore I walked out again. I wandered
through the other wings with their rows and rows of oils, their Greek
and Roman sculptures, their stern ranks of medieval armors, their
Oriental porcelains, their Egyptian gods. At length, by chance and not
by design, I came to the head of a certain rear stairway. Other habitués
of the museum will know the one I mean when I remind them that Arnold
Böcklin's The Isle of the Dead hangs on the wall of the landing. I started down, relishing in advance the impression Böcklin's picture
would make with its high brown rocks and black poplars, its midnight sky
and gloomy film of sea, its single white figure erect in the bow of the
beach nosing skiff. But, as I descended, I saw that The Isle of the
Dead was not in its accustomed position on the wall. In that space,
arresting even in the bad light and from the up angle of the stairs,
hung a gilt framed painting I had never seen or heard of in all my
museum haunting years. I gazed at it, one will imagine, all the way down to the landing. Then I
had a close, searching look, and a final appraising stare from the lip
of the landing above the lower half of the flight. So far as I can
learn and I have been diligent in my research the thing is unknown
even to the best informed of art experts. Perhaps it is as well that I
describe it in detail. It seemed to represent action upon a small plateau or table rock, drab
and bare, with a twilight sky deepening into a starless evening. This
setting, restrainedly worked up in blue grays and blue blacks, was not
the first thing to catch the eye, however. The front of the picture was
filled with lively dancing creatures, as pink, plump and naked as
cherubs and as patently evil as the meditations of Satan in his rare
idle moments. I counted those dancers. There were twelve of them, ranged in a
half circle, and they were cavorting in evident glee around a central
object a prone cross, which appeared to be made of two stout logs with
some of the bark still upon them. To this cross a pair of the pink
things that makes fourteen kneeling and swinging blocky looking
hammers or mauls, spiked a human figure. I say human when I speak of that figure, and I withhold the word in
describing the dancers and their hammer wielding fellows. There is a
reason. The supine victim on the cross was a beautifully represented
male body, as clear and anatomically correct as an illustration in a
surgical textbook. The head was writhed around, as if in pain, and I
could not see the face or its expression; but in the tortured tenseness
of the muscles, in the slaty white sheen of the skin with jagged streaks
of vivid gore upon it, agonized nature was plain and doubly plain. I
could almost see the painted limbs writhe against the transfixing nails. By the same token, the dancers and hammerers were so dynamically done as
to seem half in motion before my eyes. So much for the sound skill of
the painter. Yet, where the crucified prisoner was all clarity, these
others were all fog. No lines, no angles, no muscles their features
could not be seen or sensed. I was not even sure if they had hair or
not. It was as if each was picked out with a ray of light in that
surrounding dusk, light that revealed and yet shimmered indistinctly;
light, too, that had absolutely nothing of comfort or honesty in it. "Hold on, there!" came a sharp challenge from the stairs behind and
below me... Continue reading book >>
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Genres for this book |
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Fantasy |
Horror/Ghost stories |
Literature |
Short stories |
Art |
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