Pickman’s Other Model (1929)

"Pickman's Other Model (1929)" is a short story by Caitlin R. Kiernan that serves as a sequel to H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model". It first appeared in the March 2008 issue of Sirenia Digest, and was reprinted in Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror (2010).
The narrator of Kiernan's story, though referred to at one point as "Mr. Blackman", is identified with Eliot, the person to whom Thurber, the narrator of "Pickman's Model", tells his story. In Kiernan's continuation, Thurber has committed suicide, and now Eliot Blackman (to combine the names from each story) has become obsessed--with Richard Upton Pickman, with Thurber, and with Vera Endecott, a silent movie actress who had posed for Pickman--the "other model" of the story's title.
==Characters==
Richard Upton Pickman: The master of macabre painting, and the title character from Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model". Kiernan's narrator refers to him as "that sick bastard Richard Upton Pickman," and says that his art "had never struck me quite so profoundly as it had Thurber," but admits that he had "a great and singular talent": "I always credited his success at capturing the weird largely to his intentional juxtaposition of phantasmagoric subject matter with a starkly, painstakingly realistic style." We learn that Pickman worked in a "dank cellar studio near Battery Street" in Boston's North End, that he showed regularly in galleries from 1921 to 1925, before he was ostracized, that he was connected to "theosophical and occult societies, from Manhattan to Los Angeles," and that he disappeared in 1927. Blackman reports "whispers in the Art Club" that Pickman was gay, to which Vera Endecott retorted: “Mister, I have yet to meet the beast –- male, female, or anything in between –- that degenerate...wouldn’t have screwed, given half a chance.” 
William Thurber: Kiernan gives Lovecraft's narrator a first name, and considerable backstory--an education at the Rhode Island School of Design, participation in specific battles in World War I--as well as a relative, "the only surviving member of his immediate family, Ellen Thurber, an older sister." Blackman says that after Thurber returned from the war, he "was hardly more than a fading, nervous echo of the man I’d first met." He takes a "close, rather shabby room" on Hope Street in Providence after leaving Boston, presumably in an unsuccessful attempt to escape memories connected to Pickman. His suicide there weighs heavily on Blackman and sparks his own possibly self-destructive obsession. 
Eliot Blackman: The narrator, a fellow painter and friend of Thurber's from the Rhode Island School of Design. (Only his last name is used, and that only once, in Kiernan's story; he's repeatedly called "Eliot" in Lovecraft's story, which Kiernan apparently takes to be a first name.) Blackman reveals that the conversation with Thurber that comprises "Pickman's Model" happened in a "dingy tavern" on Chatham Street near Faneuil Hall. Blackman does not drink, leading Vera Endecott to quip: “A painter who doesn’t drink?... No wonder I’ve never heard of you.” 
Vera Marie Endecott: A silent movie star, born Lillian Margaret Snow in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Blackman compares her to "movie 'vamps' and femmes fatales as Theda Bara, Eva Galli, Musidora, and, in particular, Pola Negri," but admits there is "something quite distinct about her high cheekbones, the angle of her nose, an undeniable hardness to her countenance despite her starlet’s beauty and sex appeal." He describes her as "a woman whose loveliness might merely be a glamour concealing some truer, feral face." She was born with a tail--"a crooked, malformed thing sprouting from the base of the spine and reaching halfway to the bend of [her] knees"--which was not removed at birth because her father took pride in this sign of her "heritage". (The implication of the story is that Endecott has ghoul ancestry.)
Iscariot Howard Snow: Lillian's father, the owner of several granite quarries on Cape Ann. The wealthy and secretive Snow family "had a distinctly unsavory reputation in and around Ipswich," with rumours of "sorcery and witchcraft, incest and even cannibalism."
Make-Peace Snow: Lillian's mother, who dies giving birth to her. She came from Salem or Marblehead.
Ariadna Delgado: A sex worker from Mexico who is fatally stabbed in some kind of ritual that Endecott took part in at a house on Durand Drive in Los Angeles. 
Joseph E. Chapman: A "young and unsuccessful screenwriter" who is either a "participant" in or or a "victim" of the Durand Drive ritual. He is confined to the psychopathic ward of the LA County General Hospital, and drowns himself in the Pacific Ocean after his release. His suicide note alludes to a painting given to him by Endecott, presumably one of Pickman's.
Asa Keyes: The Los Angeles district attorney who surprisingly drops charges against Endecott. He is later indicted on corruption figure. A real historical figure, DA Keyes was indeed sent to prison for taking bribes. He is suspected to have taken a bribe to drop prosecution of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, and is accused of protecting a movie actress who supposedly killed director William Desmond Taylor.Metropolitan News Enterprise, "Ex-District Attorney Asa Keyes Becomes Prisoner No. 48,218 at San Quentin", by Roger M. Grace, November 13, 2007.
Beauchamp: The owner of the house on Durand Drive, an associate of occultist Aleister Crowley when he lived in the United States from 1914–1918. Beauchamp is said to have had "connections with a number of hermetic and theurgical organizations."
== Timeline==
As the story in "Pickman's Other Model" is told out of chronological order, a timeline may be helpful: 
*1899: Make-peace Snow gives birth to twin sons, Aldous and Edward; Edward is stillborn.
*1902: Make-peace Snow dies giving birth to Lillian Margaret Snow, who is born with a tail.
*1914-1918: Aleister Crowley visits the United States, during which time he associates with an occultist named Beauchamp.
*September 12-15, 1918: Thurber survives the Battle of Saint-Mihiel.Wikipedia, "Battle of Saint-Mihiel".
*September 26-October 26, 1918: Thurber witnesses atrocities in the Battle of the Argonne Forest.History Central, "The Battle of Argonne Forest".
*Early 1919: William Thurber returns from France, "hardly more than a fading, nervous echo" of the man he was in college.
* December 1, 1919: Charles Fort's Book of the Damned is published.Wikipedia, "The Book of the Damned".
*1921: Richard Upton Pickman begins showing regularly in galleries. Lillian Snow has her tail surgically removed in New Jersey; sometime before this, she had served as a nude model for Pickman.
*February 1922: Lillian Snow adopts the stage name Vera Endecott shortly after arriving in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
*1923 or 1924: Endecott stars in a semi-pornographic film called The Necrophile or The Hound's Daughter.
*1924: Vera Endecott lands her first substantial role, in Biograph Studios' Sky Below the Lake. Reporters start asking questions about her background.
*1925: After Endecott's starring role in Robert G. Vignola's The Horse Winter,Wikipedia, "Robert G. Vignola". The New York Evening Graphic identifies her father as Iscariot Howard Snow.
*March 27, 1925: Kidder's Weekly Art News reports that "Miss Vera Endecott of Manhattan" attended an exhibition that included some of Pickman's "less provocative" paintings.
*1926: Pickman is ostracized, and his work rarely if ever appears in galleries.
*Spring 1926: Endecott is under contract to Paramount Pictures.
* January 1927: During production of an adaptation of Margaret Kennedy's novel The Constant Nymph,Wikipedia, "The Constant Nymph (novel)". tabloids print rumours that Endecott is drinking heavily and possibly using heroin.
*May 3, 1927: Endecott is arrested after Ariadna Delgado is repeatedly stabbed during at a house on Durand Drive in Los Angeles, in an event that is variously described in newspapers as a “witches’ Sabbat” and “a decadent, sacrilegious, orgiastic rite of witchcraft and homosexuality."
* May 4, 1927: Delgado dies from her wounds.
*May 10, 1927: Endecott is arrested again, and charged with second-degree murder, kidnapping, rape, sodomy, and solicitation.
*May 11, 1927: Endecott is released on bail.
* May 15, 1927: Charges against Endecott are dropped by Los Angeles District Attorney Asa Keyes.Wikipedia, "Asa Keyes".
*Late May, 1927: Endecott returns to Manhattan after her contract with Paramount is terminated.
*Late 1927: Pickman disappears. Endecott descends into alcoholism and obscurity.
*Late 1927/Early 1928: Thurber comes to Blackman with a "wild tale of Pickman and subterranean ghouls."
* October 31, 1928: Los Angeles District Attorney Asa Keyes is indicted in a corruption scandal.The New York Times, "Indicts Prosecutor in Julian Oil Case," November 1, 1928.
* Summer 1929: Screenwriter Joseph Chapman drowns himself in the Pacific Ocean near Malibu after being released from LA County General Hospital. 
*July 1929: Thurber shoots himself with a revolver in his apartment on Hope Street in Providence.
*Late July, 1929: Blackman goes to Providence to clean out Thurber's apartment. He finds nude sketches Pickman made of Endecott and numerous clippings about the actress that Thurber had amassed. Studying them, Blackman begins his own obsession.
*August 1929: Blackman sees a private screening near Harvard Square of a semi-pornographic film starring Endecott.
*October 1929: Blackman meets Snow and gives her back the sketches that Pickman had made of her. She makes him promise to never contact her again.
*October 20, 1929: Lillian Snow found hanging from a tree in King’s Chapel Burial Ground in Boston, with her tongue cut out and her mouth sewn shut. A placard with "apostate" written on it in her own blood is hung around her neck.
*October 24, 1929: Blackman finishes writing his notes about Endecott. The fact that we are reading them, when he insists that he has no plans to ever publish, suggests that he too has come to an untimely end.
==Lovecraftian Horror==
"Pickman's Other Model" deals with the Lovecraftian theme that horrors once seen cannot be unseen. Blackman writes:
Later, he emphasizes a line from Chapman's suicide note: "How does a man forget, deliberately and wholly and forever, once he has glimpsed such sights?" 
==References==
Category:Caitlin R. Kiernan works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works