Portrait of a Lady
Brian Bethel
Good morning, ghosters! (Or evening, or dead of night, or whenever you
happen to be reading. I thought the newsgroup would enjoy reading some
experiences I posted to the ever-popular Ghost Stories Discussion List
recently.
A bit o' intro: This event occurred while I was a reporter at the
Stephenville Empire-Tribune, a small Texas daily newspaper. I currently
live and work in Abilene, Texas, where I'm business/technology writer for
the Abilene Reporter-News.
With that out of the way, here goes something:
Portrait of a Lady
I don't know if this is a ghost or not, but it sure does fall into the
strange category.
Stephenville doesn't have many good restaurants. Okay, to be accurate it
doesn't have ANY good restaurants. But there are a few that are at least
passable, so they are usually crowded.
One of those restaurants was a Mexican food place on the "fashionable" end
of town. (If you've ever been to tiny little Stephenville, you know why
that's in quotes.) ;)
Anyway, I was sitting around, minding my own business and reading a book
on ghosts. (Not surprising. I'm usually reading a book on ghosts, or
magic(k) or some other topic that makes most folks roll their eyes.)
I was enjoying my food (mostly because I was starving) and was having a
pretty good time reading my book, when I noticed that the air had changed.
This, I suppose, requires some explanation. "The air has changed" is sort
of a code or expression some of my more-attuned friends and I developed to
describe the feeling we'd get just before some sort of unearthly event.
Like a storm, you can usually tell a few seconds before it hits that
something's coming, and there is a definite change (for me) in the way the
air "feels" and even the way light reflects and refracts.
I can best describe it as a feeling of great potential, like a spring has
just been coiled to the point of almost breaking and is now straining with
all of its might to become free of the tension. There's an electrical,
charged quality to the air and ambiance around you, and lights generally
seem somewhat dimmer, except on objects right in front of your face.
Basically, it's just enough time to go, "Oh, s..." before whatever is
about to happen happens. ;)
Well, the air changed. Right there in a restaurant with dozens of people
in it. My head involuntarily whipped around and my gaze fell upon a
painting on the far wall that I had never seen before.
It was one of those velvet paintings you often see in Mexican restaurants
in the Southwest. Usually they have horrid things on them like big-eyed
children, bullfighters, shy senoritas in bright colors or (perhaps one of
the greatest terrors) Elvis.
This one featured none of those time-honored subjects. Instead, I
immediately thought of good ol' depressing poet mas grande Samuel Taylor
Coleridge when he wrote in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:"
"Her skin was white as leprosy,
The night-mare life-in-death was she
That thicks men's blood with cold ..."
I was an English/journalism double major and spent many hours hmmming and
aaahing over STC in Dear Old Dr. Lacy's class, "English Romantic Poets and
Other Dead People You'll Never Meet."
But if Sam Taylor himself had been there, he couldn't have come up with
better words on the spot to describe the woman entrapped in that dark
velvet.
I blinked, looked again and felt the crash as reality shifted. It does
that, you know.
There before me truly was a nightmare born of brush and pigment. I gripped
the book in my hands tightly and stared. Then it got worse.
Before I use my meager powers to try to describe what happened, I must
mention that usually these velvet paintings are not of high quality at
all. They're more-or-less mass produced, and the brush strokes and
shortcuts used to create them are obvious.
If its canvas had not been velvet this painting could have indeed been
hung and admired somewhere as a work of art. But only in some dark
cathedral would its icy beauty have been appreciated -- and perhaps
welcomed.
Rendered before me was an exquisitely beautiful woman. Rather than the
bright, warm tones that its counterparts were composed of, there were only
two primary shades in evidence: Black and white.
Her face was alabaster-white, and the artist had taken great pain to
produce (from my vantage point) strikingly real highlights and shadows. A
crown of dark hair flowed like a reversed halo around her features. Her
cheeks seemed slightly sunken.
But it was her eyes and her lips that drew one in and threatened to never
let go.
Both were coal-black. Along her lips the same attention to detail was in
evidence, with subtle white highlights giving an incredible illusion of
depth.
But no highlights lit her dark, dark, eyes. Only black portals, like
pieces ripped from a sky with no stars, stared out and through me.
She looked like a very beautiful woman, alive mere moments before, now
cold and dead. That may sound disturbing. It was. I can't describe to you
how much it was.
And then, as I said, it got worse.
Once more, I had to blink. Certain my eyes were creating some dark
illusion for my benefit, I tried to clear them of the soul-draining vision
in front of me.
Her lips moved soundlessly. I strained, trying to hear words that I knew
could not and should not come. Realizing the impossibility of what I was
seeing, I tried to turn my head and to my increasing terror found I could
not.
And yet she continued to "speak," her lips moving soundlessly. Each
movement was articulate and incredibly, the highlights and other details
of the painting adjusted themselves. It was like watching some dark
teleplay set in a frame of old, seemingly brittle wood.
I felt increasingly drawn toward her eyes, and I knew somehow that to gaze
into them would complete whatever was happening -- and I felt it would not
to be my benefit. Focusing my will against that of the force that had
seemingly robbed my body of motion, I ripped my gaze away from
the painting.
Right before I turned, I saw her flesh melt away. A bare, white skull, its
teeth chattering in some night-spawned chant I could neither hear nor
comprehend, was the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes at last.
I got up, paid and left. The cashier looked at me strangely. I was sure as
if I looked as if I had seen ... Well, you get the idea.
I walked out into the evening sun and noticed the fingernail marks dug
into the cover of the book I had clutched during the entire ordeal. In
somewhat of a daze, I walked to my car and drove home.
I called the office and told them if they needed me I wasn't feeling well
at all. I hoped they would understand.
About three weeks later, I decided to go back. I asked to be seated in a
booth that did not have a view of the painting. I ate my meal quietly,
building resolve, then stood up and walked to where it was.
The portrait was gone.
I stopped my waitress, who I knew at least in passing, as she walked by. I
asked her what happened to the painting.
"Painting, sir?"
"Yes, the one that used to be on the wall right there."
Uncomfortable pause.
"It was taken down."
"I see. Why?"
"I don't know, sir ..."
A conversation along those lines continued briefly. Finally, she looked at
the wall and then at me.
"I don't know what they did with it. It was ... It was disturbing to some
customers."
She paused again.
"And to me."
She walked away, and I paid and left.
I still wonder about the source of the painting, whose portrait was on it
and where it now rests.
And I wonder what might have happened had I not had the strength to tear
my gaze away from those staring eyes and soundless lips.
Wherever it is, I hope it *does* rest -- in pieces. I would prefer that
was burned away to nothing but ash and cinders, then scattered to be
devoured by the cleansing earth.
In any case, I pray I'll never see it again.
Talk to you guys later,
Brian
Ghosts: The Page that Goes Bump in the Night
http://www.camalott.com/~brianbet/ghosts.html
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