Episode 17 - The Transformative Nature of Art - February 23, 2025

Cast of Characters

Present

Player	Character	Background
John	Keeper	Bringer of torment and delights
Todd	Lawrence “Skinny Larry” Simons	Inventor, saxophonist, and engineer
Eric	Father Gerald “Gentleman Jerry” O’Shea	Catholic priest, former bare-knuckles boxer
Scott	Ritter Gunter “Stig” von Stiglitz	Former German POW

Sleeping it Off

Player	Character	Background
Eli	Dr. Kenneth Filmore	Wealthy medical doctor and neurosurgeon
Cyle	Aaron Winters	Occultist

Journal

From the journal of Lawrence Simons

Monday February 9, 1925

Today was the day I had planned to photograph the paintings of Miles Shipley. We took a horse drawn cab to Chelsea to see him and his mother, and paid cash. I set things up to get some good light for photographs with the aid of Stig, while the young artist continued on his absorbed artistry. Jerry made some strange hand signs to me that I didn’t quite understand at the time - something about Mrs. Shipley’s shadow. I read an article last year about the American Sign Language taught in schools for the deaf, and sometimes I wonder if it would benefit us to learn the basics, just for this sort of situation.

Jeffy offered to help Mrs. Shipley with various chores around the Shipley home. But based on past experience, I knew he was really just using that as a plausible cover to poke around.

Meanwhile, Stig and I got Mrs. Shipley to unlock the closet containing the paintings, and I spent the next couple hours taking photos. We spotted one painting in the closet that they hadn’t shown us the night before, a scene of an altar on a swampy island. Once Jerry finished his chores, he returned and we all examined the new mysterious painting.

That’s when things got weird. Stig and I were somehow transported into the painting! At first I thought it must be a hallucination, but something far stranger was at work. From “inside” the painting, we could see a giant Jerry reaching down to us. But even more bizarre, Mrs. Shipley transformed into a tall, thin serpent man.

Jerry somehow pulled Stig out of the painting back into the real world, but I remained in the scene, soaking wet from the knees down. After another try, Jerry was able to pull me out of the painting, too.

Back in the closet, the reptilian thing that we knew as Mrs. Shipley remained a reptilian thing. And we knew we must kill it, of course. But then something came over me. My hold on reality slipped, not unlike the day I read that book and felt the urge to jump out of the moving car to clean myself off in the snowbank. In my confusion, I felt that Father Jerry was the real enemy, and I tried to stab him with the weird dagger I picked up while at the swampy altar.

Fortunately, Stig got the idea to slam the painting over the serpent man, and this caused him to get sucked into the swamp scene just as we had been moments earlier.

It took me a few minutes to regain my wits once the fighting died down. But then we got the full and true story from Miles. He told us that the serpent man had eaten his mother and then transformed in shape to look like her. The serpent man showed him how to make and use special pigments that had unusual powers. Then, the serpent man made Miles get other victims to feed its hunger for human flesh.

We investigated the basement of the home, and found jars of weird liquids, and a tub containing a butchered young girl. All the bones were missing. Maybe the serpent man ate them? There was a vial of green fluid, which the serpent man had Miles inject to give him the dreams of things to paint.

My comrades and I knew we’d need to report this to the authorities, and I knew that Miles was likely to be put away in the insane asylum for a long time, assuming the justice system of England works like in America. So we gave a slightly modified story to Inspector James Barrington. In the end, we took our money back, and held on to the vial of green liquid, the original painting Kenny paid for, and the painting with the magical power to suck people in.

We met up with Mickey Mahoney, the publisher, and gave him both stories - the one we told Scotland Yard and the real one. I’m sure he’ll concoct some way to make a profit from them both. Our payment in return was that he allowed me to use the printing company’s darkroom, which is better quality than what I could have rigged up myself.

Gentleman Jerry’s Conjectures and Musings

Monday, February 9th, 1925

What a smoggy mess, is this London! Terrible! We opted for a horse-drawn buggy,

Back to Chelsea, a “working man’s neighborhood” to buy the painting and photograph the others. Bertha, Miles’ mother, beckoned us in and through the dusty first floor, up to the attic. Miles was frantically painting a new work of art, Bertha related he was inspired by dreams, books, and moving pictures.

We handed over a stack of Kenny’s bills and she tucked it into a pocket of her worn robe.

I moved the paintings from a closet (padlocked, as they had some value) out to the center where a skylight provided favorable conditions for photography. I caught a glance at Bertha’s shadow, which seemed way too tall and gangly for her, even at the odd angle the sunlight provided.

I was in the way, up in the attic, so I decided to poke around, after pantomiming that Bertha’s shadow “wasn’t right”. I made good on an offer to fix the roof of an old shed, and even shimmed its one sagging corner back to vertical. I saw a narrow basement window, and under the guise of sealing a crack that was letting water seep in the basement, I peeked into a cluttered, barely passable cellar.

Noting Bertha was shying away from the sunlight, I pulled down the dusty curtains in the living room and beat them in the backyard. Then I rolled up and beat the rug. I failed to maneuver Bertha into the sunlight, but I swept up the main level and enjoyed two ham and cheese sandwiches. Miles’ mother took the remainder up to the attic, where the snapping of the pictures had been completed.

When moving the first portraits into the closet, we saw one that had remained inside - a Permian Era swampland with an altar on an island. Larry and Stig got SUCKED INTO the picture, I could see their tiny bodies wandering around and Larry picking some tiny thing up off the altar.

Stig was pulling up plants and looking at them.

“What manner of Witchcraft is this? Miles?” I hollered, and Bertha shuddered and spasmed and turned into a tall walking Lizard - much like the creature depicted in two of the strange paintings.

She … He ? It? Tried to stab me with a knitting needle !! I grabbed a paintbrush and dabbed it in the small dollop of dark brown and tried to paint an Archway next to the island, but instead, I plunged my hand into the painting damned near up to my elbow!

I felt the brush shake, so while I couldn’t quite make out the positioning of the brush, I surmised Larry or Stig had tried to grab it and slipped off. So I thrust a painter’s spatula in, with my left hand.

All the while, I was dodging (hard to do, with my forearms immobilized!) and that Lizard tried to stab, bite, and claw me!

I managed to heave Stig and Larry out of the painting, breathing hard and dripping smelly, slimy water. Miles was just giggling at us and telling us we were going to die. The Lizard thing sang a little song and caused Larry to stab at me with a Ritual Dagger (from the altar area)!

I have always kept from turning my back on my friends after the ordeal with Aaron in the Corbitt basement, so I dodged Larry’s thrust. I then punched the damned Lizard in the nose - because where else should I hit it? It had focused on Stig, who was sporting a few NASTY injuries.

As I danced away from Larry, Stig ran a circuitous path around the combat. Grabbing the (very large) painting and ended up kind of bringing it down upon the scaly beastie at an angle.

Once it was halfway embedded in the painting, it got sucked in, with a “pop”. We saw it scurry off the island and out of “frame”, in that weird little alternate universe.

I patched up Stig the best that I could, but I’m no Kenny. Larry had shrugged off the urge to kill his VERY BEST PAL in the world. I cuffed up Miles and punched him on the bridge of his nose. It felt better than I should admit.

Miles told us between sobs that the Lizard had eaten his “real” mother and had been injecting him with a vile green liquid that gave him hallucinations - and inspiration for his artwork. It had devoured a couple of neighbors, then convinced Miles to bring “ladies of the night” to the home, where he ate them, too.

I channeled my inner Aaron and looked for books but came up mostly empty. A bible and some Shakespeare. Finally making it to the cellar, I couldn’t find any bones but did find a laboratory hidden behind a secret door (again, shades of the Corbitt House). The three of us grabbed a vial and syringe, and some jars of emulsified goo with stuff floating in it.

The most recent kill was in a tub beneath a metal lid. Gruesome stuff. Poor lass.

We found the money the Lizard had hidden, and called Barrington at Scotland Yard and, after the interview, watched Miles get hauled away. He would be seen as mental when he started babbling about the seven-foot-tall lizard, so we left the art (except the one we liked) in hopes it might support him in the rest of his life at the asylum. I also took the magic painting off the frame and rolled it up.

To tell the truth, I had wanted to throw Miles into the painting. I will be visiting a church to admit my un-Christian urges, maybe when we make it over to Ireland.