REPOST: Portrait of a Lady
Brian Bethel
and I thought it might be of interest here. Some of you may have
already read it, and if so my apologies.
Brian
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
Russell Tharp
LITTLEPJoo
PJ
Scobrena
WOW! I felt a sense of panic just reading that. I can't imagine what I would
have felt had I been there. Thanks for sharing that very spooky story.
brrrrrr
Scobrena
ICQ 19055290
Kelly
pictures like that at the North Carolina Museum of Art yesterday.
Kelly
Candace
less-than-tactful velvets....I live in TX, too, why are those things so
popular around here?) but I've never seen one THAT scary...and hope I never
do!
I learned a valuable lesson here: Avoid velvet paintings at all costs.
As if I wouldn't do so, anyway...
Great story!
Candace
Brian Bethel wrote in message <36b4d14a....@cnews.newsguy.com>...
|Someone on the Ghost Story of the Day list asked me to repost this,
|and I thought it might be of interest here. Some of you may have
|already read it, and if so my apologies.
|
|Brian
|
|Good morning, ghosters! (Or evening, or dead of night, or whenever
|immediately thought of good ol' depressing poet mas grande Samuel
||