The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golgotha Dancers, by Manly Wade Wellman

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Title: The Golgotha Dancers

Author: Manly Wade Wellman

Release Date: May 29, 2010 [EBook #32580]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Golgotha Dancers

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 habitues
of the museum will know the one I mean when I remind them that Arnold
Boecklin's _The Isle of the Dead_ hangs on the wall of the landing.

I started down, relishing in advance the impression Boecklin'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