The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

A. C. Wise is the author of numerous short stories, which have appeared in publications such as Shimmer, Apex, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction. Her debut collection, The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again, was published by Lethe Press in 2015. In addition to her fiction, she co-edits Unlikely Story, and contributes a monthly column — “Women to Read: Where to Start” — to SF Signal.

Wise’s favorite Lovecraft story has always been “The Color Out of Space.” With “I Dress My Lover in Yellow,” she pays tribute to “the idea of color itself as a malignant, haunting force. I also wanted to salute the tradition spawned by Lovecraft’s works, of authors swapping and mashing-up mythos, and ‘playing’ in each other’s fictional worlds. To that end, I couldn’t resist throwing in references to Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, another personal favorite that lies on the periphery of Lovecraft.”

I Dress My Lover in Yellow

It is likely Blaine Roderick’s career as an artist would be largely unremembered today if it were not for one extraordinary painting or, rather, the lack of a painting.

Little is known about Blaine Roderick. His earliest surviving works date from 1869, just six years before his disappearance. These works consist primarily of commissioned portraits, along with the odd landscape, and are considered largely derivative of his contemporaries while lacking their best qualities. It is known Roderick supplemented his portrait work with irregular teaching stints, the last of which was his position at St. Everild’s University.

One painting falls completely outside the pattern established by the artist’s early works. This is Roderick’s famous (or infamous) lost masterpiece, “Mrs. Aimsbury in a Yellow Dress,” known colloquially as “I Dress My Lover in Yellow, I Dress My Lover in Ruin.”

By most accounts, “Yellow” is not only Roderick’s masterpiece, but far surpasses those contemporaries he is so often accused of imitating, though many claim the painting is elevated solely by the mystery surrounding it. Alas for history, judging the matter is impossible. All that remains of the work is the original frame and a handful of accounts written prior to its disappearance.

Even these primary descriptive sources are considered problematic among scholars, going beyond the subjective and ranging from extreme praise to outright condemnation. Their unreliability, in all cases deemed to be tainted by personal bias, has led many scholars to believe some accounts may be deliberately false.

Regardless, the majority of these accounts focus on the feelings evoked by the work, rather than its content, making them of questionable value to begin with. An example of one such account was penned by Giddeon Parson, one of Roderick’s aforementioned contemporaries. Parson calls “Yellow,” “a vile piece of filth fit for nothing but the fire, though I suspect even flame would disdain to touch it.”

A slightly more tempered account is offered by Vincent Calloway, a frequent contributor to the society pages of the Tarrysville Herald, who had occasion to see the work at a fundraiser to benefit the university:

Regardless of what one thinks of Blaine Roderick’s skill as a painter, the mastery of his brushwork, his use of light, and the startling effect of his palette cannot be called in to question here. However, one must question his powers of observation. As a personal friend of both Mrs. Aimsbury and her husband, Dean Howard Aimsbury, the portrait struck me as executed by someone who had never laid eyes on its subject. From whence did Roderick draw the wan coloring of Mrs. Aimsbury’s cheeks? Never have I known her features to be so sharply sunken. It is most unsettling; one can almost see the skull beneath the flesh.

If the effect is meant to be satirical, it misses the mark, and is furthermore an unwise choice for an unknown artist relying upon the Dean not only for his commission, but his continued employment at the university. The less said about the lewd manner in which Roderick paints the dress slipping from Mrs. Aimsbury’s shoulder, the better.

Colorful descriptions aside, a few incontrovertible facts remain. The subject of the painting was Charlotte Aimsbury (nee Whitmore). The portrait, commissioned by Charlotte Aimsbury’s husband, Dean Howard Aimsbury, was full-length, oil on canvas, measuring 103¾ by 79 inches. That is where the certainty ends.

The supposed masterpiece either depicts Mrs. Aimsbury clothed in a formal yellow gown, partially clothed in the same, or nude, having just stepped out of the gown pooled at her feet. She either faces the viewer, stands in profile, or looks back over her shoulder. Her expression is one of fear, as though she intends to flee; surprise, as if the viewer has intruded upon her private chambers; or suggestive, as though the viewer is fully expected and welcome.

Most accounts describe the background as largely obscured, as though prematurely stained by a patina of smoke. Those descriptions that purport to be able to make it out chiefly describe indistinct figures, or a city shrouded by fog or blowing sand. However other accounts have the backdrop as nothing but a series of doors receding down a hallway, all closed save for one.

One account — most outlandish and therefore likely false — claims the backdrop depicts an abattoir. This description, as preposterous as it may be, has led some to speculate Roderick reused his canvas, painting Mrs. Aimsbury atop a wholly different scene meant to be a commentary upon the deplorable conditions faced by immigrant workers in America’s slaughterhouses.

Beyond its physical appearance, the ultimate fate of “Yellow” is a matter of much debate as well. Later in his life, long after the disappearance and presumed deaths of both Blaine Roderick and Charlotte Aimsbury, Dean Aimsbury admitted to cutting the portrait from its frame and burning it. However, when questioned, the Dean’s housekeeper, Mrs. Templeton claimed if evidence of such a burning existed she would have found it. She is further reported to have said the Dean was “poorly” and “prone to confusion and fits of imagination” at the time of this confession.

Amidst this confusion, one thread of commonality does exist across all accounts of the painting: the mention of the artist’s use of color, in one form or other. Here again we find equal parts praise and damnation, everything from “brilliant, pure genius” to “having the appearance of a palette mixed by a blind imbecile, producing an effect not unlike physical illness.” But every account does mention color, with at least one calling Roderick’s use of it “near-supernatural, for good or for ill.”

If we are to follow slavishly in the footsteps of Isaac Newton, Moses Harris, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, we are left with only the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors upon the wheel, leaving no room for the creation of truly transcendent art. While theirs are serviceable models, they admit no space for otherness, for the ethereal, the cosmic, that which goes beyond the veil.

What of ecstatic experience? What of true seeing, but also in the act of seeing, being seen? What is needed from a new theory of color is a way to go between the shades we accept as representing the full spectrum. There are cracks through which we must pass to appreciate the fullness of the universe.

But yellow is problematic. What yellow? Not the color of daffodils, sunlight, or the delicacy of a canary’s wing. No. The yellow of bruises, aged bone, butter on the cusp of spoiling. There’s a taste to it. Slick with rot just starting to creep in. Yellow is joy, hope, life, but its underbelly is cowardice, madness, pestilence. They are not mutually exclusive; they are but two sides of the same skin. Pierce one, and you pierce the other as well.

There are shades between shades, hues that exist on the periphery of common understanding. Purple bleeds if you slice it deeply enough. I have seen such a color, printed on my eyelids. It is an infection, this color, a fever. Hungry. It means to devour me whole.

I want

Yellow remains problematic.

Why yellow? Because she must be dressed so. She is saddled with a husband she cannot possibly love. Too old. The yellow in the pouches under his eyes is common age, weariness. Is the shade I offer any better? Aging slowly toward death would be far kinder. More natural, certainly. But we are not natural creatures, Charlotte and I.

I’ve seen bones in the desert, scoured by sand. A shadow walks from the horizon, tattered by the wind. His darkness is the space between stars. It is not black. It is a color for which I have not yet discovered a name.

The wheel, were we to rearrange it, swap red for orange, yellow for the lighter shade of blue, would at first seem an affront to the artistic eye. But it brings us closer to what is needed for a true understanding of color. One must break to build. See how the meaning of color is changed as it is brought into contact with its opposite and its mate?

It is not simply a color, it is a door. She is a door. I know she has dreamed as I have. She has seen the lost city, where we are all hungry. She has seen our king in terrible rags, fluttering like flame in the wind. I tried to speak of it to her, but Charlotte looked so frightened when I touched her shoulder. (Yet I fear she understands far better than I. She will run ahead and I will be left behind.) I only meant to rearrange her into a better angle of light. It left an imprint on her skin, an oval the size and shape of my thumb. I have dreamed the dress in tatters, like the wrappings of the dead.

I met Mr. Roderick today, the artist my husband has commissioned to paint my portrait. First impressions do count for something so I will say this: I do not care for him. The whole time I sat for Mr. Roderick, he never touched charcoal or paper. He simply stared at me in the hideous dress he . . . Well, I cannot imagine where he found it, whether he had it made, or whether he purchased it somewhere. Whatever the case, how is it that the dress fits me so well? Mr. Roderick would not answer my questions. He only insisted I wear it, and that I have always worn it. I could not make sense of him.

He was so insistent, growing flushed and agitated, I finally agreed, though I did not enjoy wearing the dress. There is a weight to it. The feel of it is wrong. It is . . . unearthly. I cannot give it a better word than that. It is compelling and repulsive at once, and yet, for all the madness of Mr. Roderick’s words, it is familiar. I do not pretend to understand how such a thing could be possible, but I do believe the dress is mine, and that Mr. Roderick has it in his possession because I must wear it. I have always worn it.

Yet, I feel horrid with it on my person. The silk whispers whenever I move. At times it is like the wind, or sand moving over stone. Other times, I feel there are actual voices inside the dress.

Even if this were not so, Mr. Roderick’s gaze alone would be bad enough. I felt like a cut of meat, sitting so still while Mr. Roderick examined me, and he the butcher. I finally asked him if something were wrong, and he snapped at me, commanded (his word, not mine) me not to speak.

I would be tempted to cancel the entire undertaking, but Mr. Aimsbury is set on this idea and it would displease him greatly if I were to protest. As for myself, I have no desire for formal portraiture. Such paintings survive long after one has passed, and all future generations will know of you is the expression you happened to be wearing that day, the way you tilted your head or lifted your hand. Everything you were is gone.

I expressed my aggravation concerning the portrait to Mr. Aimsbury. He convinced me to reconsider.

It has been weeks of sitting, and I know nothing more of Mr. Roderick than I did the first day. It’s as though he’s a different person each time we meet. One day he is moody and sullen, the next all charm. Two days ago he kissed my hand and spent the whole sitting contriving excuses to touch me, arranging my chin this way, my hair that. Yesterday he seized my shoulders as if to shake me, then immediately stepped back as though I’d struck him.

Yet my own sensibilities concerning Mr. Roderick are conflicted. I say I do not know him, but there are times I feel I know Blaine very well. But it’s not a comforting sort of knowing. Or being known.

Today I asked him about it. “Of course we’ve met,” he said. “The color can only be painted on you. Don’t you remember? In the desert? In the city?”

It seemed he would say more, but he stopped as though he’d forgotten how to speak entirely. There was an intensity about him, as though he were in a fever.

He leaned toward me. I thought he meant to kiss me, but he only put his hands on either side of my face and said, “There are colors that hunger, Charlotte. There is a word for them the same shade as hearts heavy with sin.”

I hadn’t the faintest idea what he meant. Except, I almost did.

Today, Mr. Roderick spoke barely a word. We sat in silence and I felt I was being crushed to death under the weight of all that horrid silk. It does not breathe. I feel as if I will suffocate. And why yellow? At times, I feel as though the color itself is draining the life from me. Is that possible, for a color to be alive? No, alive is not the correct word. There is nothing of life about it. I am not even certain it is yellow. I cannot explain it, but there are moments when the dress gives the distinct impression of being some other color, merely masquerading as yellow. Whatever color it may be in actuality, I do not believe there is a name for it.

How can I explain the horror of something that seems so simple by daylight? There was nothing monstrous in the dream. The dream itself was monstrous.

I dreamt of a hallway going on forever. I was terrified. But of what? A door opening? A door refusing to open?

It is irrational to be afraid of nothing. But in the dream, it was the very nothingness that frightened me. The unknown. The sense of waiting. Wanting. Is it possible fear and desire are only two sides of the same skin? To pierce one with a needle is to pierce both. Then one only needs follow the stitching to find the way through.

Blaine forbade me from looking at the painting until it is finished. But I caught a glimpse today. It was an accident, only a moment. Perhaps it was my imagination? A trick of my overtired mind? I haven’t been sleeping well, after all.

I saw the hallway. The one full of doors. The one from my dreams. Blaine painted it behind me. I never breathed one word of it to him, but still, there it was.

He means to leave me in that terrible place, a doorway to step through and never think on again.

I will not let him. After dreaming that hallway every night, I know it far better than he ever can. I will learn its tricks and secrets. I will run its length forever, if I must, but he will not catch me and pin me down.

Gentlemen,

It is with a heavy heart that I tender my formal resignation from St. Everild’s University. I have had occasion to speak with each of you privately, and I am certain you understand this is in the best interests of all concerned.

I have given over twenty years of my life to this institution, but I cannot—

I cannot.

It is said time heals all wounds, but I have yet to find a thread strong enough to sew mine closed. The past two years since my wife’s disappearance have taught me hauntings are all too real. They exist between heart and gut, between skin and bone. No amount of prayer can banish them.

I believed the dismissal of Blaine Roderick would purge any lingering pain. But all it did was limit his access to me and slow the tide of unpleasant — and occasionally quite public — altercations he attempted to instigate.

As I’m sure you know, gentlemen, throughout this ordeal, I have had no care for my personal reputation. I care only for the reputation of St. Everild’s. Upon my resignation, I trust you will do your best to repair any damage I have done to the good name of this fine school.

As for myself, what could Blaine Roderick say of me that I have not thought of myself? He made me complicit. He was ever the shadow, the puppet master, steering my hand. I am not blameless, but his will always be the greater share of the blame.

I am not without heart. Nor am I so vain that I cannot sympathize with the notion of a younger woman, married to a man nearly twice her age seeking companionship amongst her peers. If Charlotte . . . I would not blame her. Whatever the truth of their relationships, whatever Blaine Roderick may have felt for Charlotte, I do believe this: He hated her by the end. He feared her. Yet he was ever the coward. He could not bear to do the deed himself, and so he drove me to it.

Gentlemen, you know me. You know I did not, could not, commit violence against my wife. I cherished her.

And yet, in the depths of my soul I know there might have been a chance for her to, somehow, return. If the painting still existed.

Charlotte’s hope for life, for return, is now in ashes. My hand did the deed, but Blaine Roderick bears the blame.

I am weary, gentlemen. If this letter seems improper, I am certain you will forgive me.

Called to examine Charlotte Aimsbury today. Cause of condition uncertain.

(I have known Charlotte since she was a little girl, and I have never found her to be prone to fits of hysteria like so many of her sex. She has a good head on her shoulders. She is a most remarkable woman.)

Patient claims no memory of collapse. Can only surmise exhaustion the cause.

(I do not blame Charlotte. While I make a point of rising above such things, talk, when persistent enough, often cannot be avoided. Being the subject of so many wagging tongues would be enough to weary even the strongest spirit.

Not that I believe there’s any truth to even half of what is said. Having met Mr. Roderick, I cannot imagine Charlotte succumbing to his charms, few as they are. Roderick is brusque, rude, and highly distractible. I see little to draw Charlotte’s eye. Yet, I suppose it is no great wonder that many would gossip.

In my own admittedly biased opinion, Charlotte is a very moral and upstanding woman. I refuse to believe her the faithless type.)

Final diagnosis: Exhaustion. Odd pattern of bruising evident on patient’s skin determined to be symptom of collapse, not cause. Other physical signs bear out diagnosis — pallor, shading beneath eyes indicating lack of sleep; prominence of bones may indicate a loss of weight. Patient complained of nightmares. Calmative prescribed.

(I pray that will be the end of it.)