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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 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. "What are you doing? And what's that picture doing?" I started so that I almost lost my footing and fell upon the
speaker--one of the Museum guards. He was a slight old fellow and his
thin hair was gray, but he advanced upon me with all the righteous,
angry pluck of a beefy policeman. His attitude surprised and nettled me. "I was going to ask somebody that same question," I told him as
austerely as I could manage. "What about this picture? I thought there
was a Böcklin hanging here." The guard relaxed his forbidding attitude at first sound of my voice. "Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. I thought you were somebody else--the man
who brought that thing." He nodded at the picture, and the hostile glare
came back into his eyes. "It so happened that he talked to me first,
then to the curator. Said it was art--great art--and the Museum must
have it." He lifted his shoulders, in a shrug or a shudder. "Personally,
I think it's plain beastly." So it was, I grew aware as I looked at it again. "And the Museum has
accepted it at last?" I prompted. He shook his head. "Oh, no, sir. An hour ago he was at the back door,
with that nasty daub there under his arm. I heard part of the argument. He got insulting, and he was told to clear out and take his picture with
him. But he must have got in here somehow, and hung it himself." Walking
close to the painting, as gingerly as though he expected the pink
dancers to leap out at him, he pointed to the lower edge of the frame. "If it was a real Museum piece, we'd have a plate right there, with the
name of the painter and the title." I, too, came close. There was no plate, just as the guard had said. But
in the lower left-hand corner of the canvas were sprawling capitals,
pale paint on the dark, spelling out the word _GOLGOTHA_. Beneath these,
in small, barely readable script:

_I sold my soul that I might paint a living picture._

No signature or other clue to the artist's identity. The guard had discovered a great framed rectangle against the wall to
one side. "Here's the picture he took down," he informed me, highly
relieved. "Help me put it back, will you, sir? And do you suppose," here
he grew almost wistful, "that we could get rid of this other thing
before someone finds I let the crazy fool slip past me?" I took one edge of _The Isle of the Dead_ and lifted it to help him hang
it once more. "Tell you what," I offered on sudden impulse; "I'll take this _Golgotha_
piece home with me, if you like." "Would you do that?" he almost yelled out in his joy at the suggestion. "Would you, to oblige me?" "To oblige myself," I returned. "I need another picture at my place." And the upshot of it was, he smuggled me and the unwanted painting out
of the Museum. Never mind how. I have done quite enough as it is to
jeopardize his job and my own welcome up there.