Work Text:
The Thrilling Adventure Hour
Presents:
Beyond Belief
Tonight's episode:
Pickman’s Model T
Meet Frank and Sadie Doyle, toast of the upper crust, headliners on the society pages. And oh yes, they see ghosts!
Our story begins high above Park Avenue, in the famed Plaza Hotel, where Frank and Sadie Doyle meet again, after a day of separate endeavours.
“Sadie, dear” said Frank as he entered through the front door. “I have just returned from my third favourite past-time. Why don’t you hand me some of my second favourite past-time?”
“Coming right up, darling”, Sadie answered from the liquor cabinet. “Did you have fun at the auction then?”
“Ever so much! Going to auctions are something of a hobby of mine, as you well know.”
“It has been well established, yes.” Sadie remarked, her voice and her martini both teasingly dry.
“I managed to win this box containing Schrödinger’s Catflap.” Frank said, and presented a small parcel. ”If you don’t look directly at it it’s impossible to tell if it is open or closed. But I haven’t mentioned the best part yet.”
He carried a bunch of large, rectangular packages into the apartment.
“These, my dear, are a collection of obscure paintings, made by an artist called Richard Pickman.”
“They are certainly of a rather peculiar sort, these paintings, are they not?” Sadie noted.
“Why, they are positively horrific!” Frank beamed ”I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, I’ve seen my fair share of ghouls and nightmares in my days, but these creatures are some of the strangest I have ever laid eyes on. The artist must possess the most bizarre imagination.”
“They are truly remarkable. They are revolting to look at, for sure, but I wouldn’t call them crude. The rendering, proportions and compositions are simply put masterful. You know I have always had a keen eye for the fine points of fine art?”
“Eh, it has been moderately established at best...” Frank said airily.
“Episode 125, true believers,” boomed the narrator, from out of nowhere.
“I don’t think I have ever seen that many teeth in a human mouth.” Sadie mused, studying one of the weird paintings. “Or eyeballs for that matter.”
“All these paintings seem haunted, just below the surface, with some evil spirits.” Frank said.
“The only spirits I like are in our glasses!” Sadie replied, and then enthusiastically added “Clink!”
Just as the couple were about to clink their drinks together there was a sudden knock on their front door.
“Oh, no…” Sadie complained. “That’s the wrong sound entirely! I said ‘clink!’, not ‘thump-thump-thump’. Let’s try again!”
“Gladly, my dear. However, I do believe what we heard was indeed a tapping, as if someone gently rapping, rapping on our chamber door.”
“Well in that case, let’s put down our drinks - nevermore!“
The knocking continued, persistently.
“There’s nobody home,” Frank cried conspiratorially through the door. “We won’t be back until… until Sadie has put down her drink!”
The person knocking evidently got tired of doing just that, and instead attempted the door handle. The door swung open, and a man entered.
“Frank Doyle?” the man inquired, in a stressed tone. “I must speak with you immediately!”
“Must you really?” Frank asked.
“My name is Phillip Thurber. I was at the auction you just attended.”
“Ah, well then! We have been in each other’s company quite enough for one day, don’t you think? You know where the door is...”
“No, you misunderstand! You outbid me on a collection of strange paintings. I need them! The artist, you see - Richard Pickman - he was a good friend of mine.”
“Was?” Sadie inquired.
“He’s missing! Vanished without a trace! Pickman used to have a shabby studio in Harlem, where he would paint these pieces, but no one has seen him for over a week now. I fear something dreadful has happened.”
“That’s all very sad, dear,” Sadie said, “but I fail to see how all this leads up to you needing these paintings.”
“I’m convinced they contain clues as to his disappearance. They are a last trace of breadcrumbs left by Pickman himself. Here, let me show you! Look at this one: It’s a portrait of a 16th century nobleman, right? The upper half at least… Well, what if I told you this is a self portrait! And this one here: The island in the stormy sea, that isn't really an island at all. You see this tiny human leg sticking out from this orifice? Notice how this toe is slightly bent? Pickman hurt his foot in an elevator a few years back, and hit own toe is bent just like this!”
“Are you saying Pickman knew something was going to happen to him, and left obscure clues in all his paintings?”
“Exactly so!“
“A mystery!” Frank exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say so right away? I really like those, because at the end of them you are perfectly justified to go back to you drink.”
“Not that we need any justification.” added Sadie.
“Clink!” rang a sound effect, with comic timing.
“So does this mean you two will help me find Pickman?”
“Certainly, my good chap!” Frank said. “I’m halfway out the door already.”
“Door opening noise!” Sadie shouted. “This is your time!”
“Wait? The door is not open yet?” Frank asked, uncertain.
There was an obnoxiously loud creak as the front door swung open.
“Okay, yeah, now I’m exiting through the door. Here I go!”
Sounds of clamping footsteps accompanied the company as they left the Park Avenue penthouse apartment of Frank and Sadie Doyle.
“Let’s go to Pickman’s abandoned studio!”
A short while later, the three of them arrived at Richard Pickman’s old studio in Harlem.
“This looks more like a garage than an art studio.” Sadie noted, somewhat disappointed. “Nothing here but a whole collection of vintage cars.”
“Yes, in addition to being a painter, Pickman also liked to collect and restore vehicles. He was quite eccentric. The actual studio is even further downstairs, in the sub-basement.”
“Here’s one car that seems to be missing,” Frank observed. “It’s just an empty parking lot.”
“That old Ford was his favourite,” Thurber explained. “I wonder why it is missing as well...”
“Do you think it has anything to do with the disappearance of Pickman himself?” Sadie asked.
“No,” Frank said dryly, “I think this whole scene is just a cheap justification for a far-fetched pun in the title. Let’s move on.”
After a further flight of stair leading down, they arrived at the sub-basement, which was really more of a vault.
“This used to be part of the metro system,” Thurber said. “This room is really part of a tunnel, which connects to a whole network of underground vaults and caverns. All of this has been abandoned since the nineteenth century, and who knows where all these passages leads. I doubt even Pickman knew, when he sought out this place.”
“This is where he found the inspiration for his art?” Sadie wondered. ”I should say, I am not surprised!”
“Yes,” Frank agreed. “It’s very… bohemian.”
“Look over here,” said Sadie, after having looked around a bit. “There’s a whole camera set here.”
“Was Pickman a photographer too?” Franks asked in mock perplexion. “The man picks up hobbies like I pick up drinks!”
“Then he has a serious hobby problem!” Sadie added.
“Clink!” a sound effect concluded.
“No,” Thurber uttered, mystified. “I have never seen a photograph by Pickman. He was a painter. I have no idea what this photography equipment is doing here.”
“He probably used it to take pictures to use as reference material,” Sadie explained knowingly. “All those lonely cliffs and forlorn landscape are tricky to fit inside this studio.”
Suddenly there underground chamber was shaken by a low grumble, seemingly emerging from the depths.
“I thought you said they haven’t run any metro cars here since the nineteenth century,” Frank noted.
“They haven’t!” Thurber stammered, obviously distressed. “I have no idea what that was!”
“Think nothing of it, old sport!” Frank said reassuringly. “Things go bump in the night all the time, and look; we’re all still here! Well, except Pickman of course…”
“Oh, there are even more paintings over here,“ Sadie cried in delight. “New ones, that we haven’t seen before. These are even more gruesome than the ones from the auction.”
“I especially like this one,” Frank said conversationally. “Some sort of sub-human dog-creature, with fangs and a snarling snout, yet you can still perceive the consciousness in its eye. Genius!”
“It looks to be part of a series,” Sadie observed. “It starts with this self-portrait over here, and over the course of these four paintings, Pickman slowly transforms into Frank’s dog-human. You can even see traces of Pickman’s own features in the final result, if you look for them.”
“That’s madness,” Thurber scoffed, horrified. “Why would Pickman paint himself like that?”
“Here’s something for you,” Frank said, presenting as small scrap of paper he had found attached with a paperclip to one of the easels in the underground studio. “One of the photo references Sadie was describing.”
Thurber received the photograph, and after one quick glance at it let out a hellish scream of horror and threw the paper slip across the room, backing himself up against the opposite wall.
“Oh merciful God,” Thurber panted, agitation visible in the smallest wrinkle of his face. “This is the model he was using for the paintings. This isn’t a background reference after all, it shows the monstrous creature itself, and in this very studio...”
“By God!” Thurber screamed, “This is a photograph from life!”
“Well,” Frank said, after a short while, stirring his drink, which he had been carrying around ever since leaving the apartment, “that’s hardly very surprising.”
Thurber stared at the Doyles with wild, crazy eyes. “It isn’t?”
“Oh no, dear”, Sadie said comforting. “We see these kinds of things all the time.”
“In fact,” Frank said, “I’d been more surprised if Pickman had managed to invent all these fantastical creatures all by himself!”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, as they say,” Sadie noted absentmindedly, while continuing examining the dreadful paintings.
“How can you two remain so calm about this?” Thurber managed to squeeze out from his contracted lungs. “Who knows what else crawls around in these tunnels Pickman found? How can you keep on living with this knowledge?”
The Doyles exchanged a brief look and then replied in perfect unison, “Well, alcohol helps a lot, “ and clinked their glasses together.
“How could I ever ride the metro again, knowing what I now know? Or even enter a basement, where any of these things could lurk?”
“Oh, you worry too much, darling,” Sadie said. “Your life can go on just as it used to.”
“That's easy for you to say! You two live high above Park Avenue!”
“Besides,” said Frank, who had wandered off a bit, “who says Pickman’s subterranean monstrosities are so bad? See here, in the background of the last dog-man portrait: Isn't that the missing Ford Model T parked casually behind the creature?”
“It is!” Sadie chirped in delight. “And look, here are tire tracks leading straight down into the old tunnels. If you think about how almost every painting shows Pickman himself either together with these things or as one of them, you’d almost hazard a guess that he felt more at home among them than with humanity.”
“I think we should be happy for the poor chap,” Frank said wisely, “for finally finding the courage to drive off and join his underground friends!”
“In fact,” Sadie added without missing beat, ”I propose a toast!”
“Of course you do, Sadistic!”
“Clink!”
“Well, that’s another mystery solved!” Frank concluded. “Now I am perfectly justified to go home to this drink, which I have been carrying with me.”
“Wait, are you two just going to leave Pickman in there?” Thurber demanded, raw panic bubbling beneath the surface.
“Unless you have a strong desire to go down after him...” Sadie said, and made it sound like a question.
Thurber didn’t have a strong desire.
“Well old sport, you have now been properly introduced to the vast and unnamed horror with which we share an universe,” Franks said.“There’s really not much to do about it, I’m afraid. Simply carry on life with a smile, just like my wife Sadie here, who is both Lovely and Crafty!”
“A smile and a clink!”
“Clink!”
It seems Phillip Thurber stumbled upon a realization concerning the content of the cosmos, that was difficult to swallow. Quite unlike the contents of the glasses of Frank and Sadie Doyle, who know how to keep their spirits up.
Join the Doyles next time, when they once again walk Beyond Belief, in a cruel episode titled: Netflix and Kill...