“the stranger stepped forward into the room. There was something indescribably odd, even horrible, about all his motions, something undefinable, that was unnatural, unhuman; it was as if the limbs were guided and directed by a spirit unused to the management of bodily machinery…”
Join us for the first evening in our Edwyrdian Season of ghostly tales of terror with an atmospheric storytelling of J. Sheridan le Fanu’s classic of creeping dread.
An aspiring young painter Godfried Schalken falls for his patron's niece, Rose, but a ghoulish stranger arrives brandishing a fortune in gold and demands her for himself. Filled with dread, Rose begs not to be wed to this horrifying figure, regardless of the riches he can provide. But that is not the world she lives in. Just as Schalken’s brush daubes hidden depths beneath the subject of his portraits the Flemish court is a battle of surface and substance —reputation, wealth, propriety— those are the things that matter. Not—character, empathy, and courage. Surely a wealthy man would make the perfect husband, providing safety and security for a young wife.
Yet deeper terrors may lurk beneath a varnish of civility. Why does the dark cloaked figure desire Rose so? And why is he in such a rush to possess her?
