"Pickman's Model" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Miskatonic University

In the year 1909 in Arkham, Massachusetts, Will Thurber sketches a naked Rebecca in her bedroom before climbing out her window, rushing down the trellis and to his bike to avoid being caught by her father. He returns to Miskatonic University for class, joining his fellow artists as they prepare for a lesson. Their professor makes some announcements first, however, claiming that the deadline for this year's student art project is looming. The student whose art is voted best will be put on display in Arkham Gallery. Thruber won last year's competition, so he knows full well.

The additional announcement is that a new student has joined the class; Mr. Pickman is introduced before he takes an empty space around the circle. Their model takes a seat and the students begin their fifteen minutes of drawing. Though the work is straight-forward enough, Thurber is shocked to find that Mr. Pickman appears to be drawing something grotesque on the other side of the room, an almost monstrous rendition of the model before them.

Answer: The cemetery

Heading to the pub after class, Thurber and some of his colleagues discuss Pickman and his history. Knowing him to be an older gentleman, they speak on his oddities, claiming he comes from old New England money. His mother came from Arkham, but she died of a grisly suicide when he was a boy and his father went mad shortly after. His inheritance has allowed him to travel Europe in pursuit of the arts for a decade. Now that he's back in the States, he's been seen sketching in the local cemetery.

And the cemetery is where Thurber finds Pickman sketching a dead cat at one of the gravesites. Thurber asks about the piece in Bosworth's class and whether or not Pickman is interested in the art prize, but the new student acknowledges he's more interested in depicting the darkness and corruption of the world. He shows his sketchbook and Thurber calls it powerful work. It's why he goes home to paint and finds that he struggles to make anything with quite as much meaning.

Answer: A sorceress

Thurber returns to school without an art piece in hand for the museum prize, finding that others' morales are low. Pickman is in with the judges when he arrives and soon after, the men storm out in a hurry. Thurber investigates and finds Pickman sealing away his art, believing that he's put his piece in front of the wrong audience. The latter doubts that these men have anything to teach. Thurber invites Pickman out to commiserate over the bad critique, but Pickman instead invites him to his apartment to show off his work. It's an offer Thurber can't refuse.

When they arrive at Pickman's apartment, Thurber finds a small living space filled with disturbing images and art pieces; it's likely stronger than what he's seen, Pickman reminds. His family, Pickman claims, has been in the region since before the Salem witch trials; his great-grandmother's great-grandmother, Lavinia, was branded a hex and a sorceress and burned at the stake, allegedly having killed her husband during a rite and served him, warm, to her coven. As Thurber gazes at the picture in a state of distress, he seems to see it undulating and changing before his eyes. Pickman claims that on some nights, he can hear them making noise beneath the earth.

Answer: Rebecca's father

Thurber leaves Pickman's apartment abruptly, throwing up in the alley behind his place, disturbed by what he's seen. As a carriage rolls by, he believes he sees its occupants engaged in carnal acts, decrepifying before his very eyes. The vehicle stops and the occupants beckon him over and, following his curiosity, Thurber approaches with caution. What he finds when he nears it, however, is a terrifying woman who emerges from the darkness and claws at his chest, raking across it with her talon-like claws. It's then that he awakens from his awful nightmare...finding that his shirt is torn.

Thurber arrives slightly late for his lunch engagement with Rebecca and attempts to hide his distress. He's quickly introduced to Rebecca's aunt, Lizzy, who asks him about his affinity for portraits, but he finds he's distracted by the almost fantastical spectre of a woman skirting along the edges of the party in his periphery. He excuses himself to start drinking moments before Rebecca introduces her father, Charles. He happens to be the man he saw in the carriage the night before.

Rebecca can only ask Thurber what's wrong, but he can't seem to explain himself rationally. She instead asks him to leave.

It's why Thurber returns to Pickman's seeking answers. What he finds when he arrives, however, is that Pickman's apartment has been cleared out save for a handful of eerie sketches on the walls.

Answer: Thurber himself

In 1926, seventeen years after crossing paths with Pickman at Miskatonic University, Thurber continues to work in the art world, but now resides with Rebecca and their son, James, in their resplendent house. As he walks in the door from a night out, he sees a package, wrapped at the door, and moves past it to see his family.

That evening, Thurber awakens to find himself in another home. Unsettling pictures adorn the walls while music and peoples' voices can be heard behind closed doors. He proceeds to the main floor to investigate, crossing through the threshold to find a feast being served. There, at the table, appears to be Lavinia and her coven. The table writhes with living and dead creatures. As the party turns to look at him, the main course opens its eyes.

It's then that Thurber awakens, heading downstairs to look at the package. What he finds is another Pickman piece, this one roiling in otherworldly power. Rebecca enters the room before her husband can shove a blade through his forehead to shop the voices, and he seals it away before she can see. As they leave the room, she says that the man who delivered it, is back in town and claimed to know him. Neither watch as their son enters the room and takes a peek.

Answer: Spiritualism

Thurber has Pickman's painting sealed away and shipped back to the artist but the effects are already rooted within his family. While his son has trouble sleeping, Thurber attends a meeting amongst fellow artists and finds that one of his colleagues, Joe, has invited Pickman to show off his work for the others, intending to fill a gallery with his paintings. Thurber is hesitant to let others see the pieces, but he's accused of being a bad sport in light of this.

Thurber heads home through the cemetery and begins to have unnerving visions of beast-like creatures, like those in the painting, racing through the shadows. The situation worsens when he returns home, finding that his family has a guest-- Pickman himself, who's in the sitting room drawing with James.

Over dinner, Pickman explains that his art is about the ancient. Rebecca alludes to the idea of spiritualism being nothing more than games though she has been spooked by the implications of an ineffable darkness. Both Rebecca and Pickman relate over a certain, unnatural buzzing they've experienced in the presence of this force, but soon their discussion shifts to the gallery debut and the night comes to an end.

Answer: Special, like him

Before Pickman leaves dinner, he invites Thurber to come see his art, insisting that others wouldn't really get it quite the same. He asks that Rebecca be thanked for dinner and James be thanked for a chat they had before Thurber's return home; Pickman calls him a special boy, not unlike he was as a child, before departing.

The dinner leads Thurber and Rebecca to argue and she worries that he may be changing for the worse. She feels like he's disappearing from her life and asks if he's been drinking again. He explains to her, with honesty, that Pickman's work bothers him and that the darkness always seems to have a way of catching up with him.

That night, Thurber has a nightmare in which he's strapped to his bedposts and watched upon by Lavinia and her coven. She takes a hacksaw and tears at his neck before he awakens to James' screams. James rambles about mouths as he regains consciousness, and as Thurber looks to the window, he sees the dark wisps of black smoke. It's then that he locates his gun.

Answer: Comes to his home and sees his new paintings

After Thurber's dreams intensify he heads out to find Pickman in the cemetery and confront him. Thurber worries that whatever Pickman told James set him down the wrong path, but Pickman is only really interested in Thurber's approval of his art, begging him to see his gallery show. Pickman boils it down to his own ultimatum-- if Thurber comes to his house right away, he'll not only pull out of the show, but destroy his art and stay away from his family forever.

The request is enough to convince Thurber to stop by and the two proceed into Pickman's messy abode. They walk past the dining room, the doors of which Thurber recalls from his own dreams, and into the halls of Pickman's personal gallery space before Pickman advances on his own, appearing to have words with unearthly sounds beyond the threshold. Thurber eventually lets himself in, descending into a cavernous cellar where the artworks writhe on their canvases.

With Pickman nowhere to be seen, at least for the moment, Thurber grabs a can of turpentine and soaks the paintings. Pickman asks him to stop, but Thurber knows that the art is causing his madness. As Pickman attempts to show him something that will make it all make sense, but as he spins to reveal the item, Thurber takes out his gun and fires it.

Answer: No

After Thurber fires the gun, Pickman collapses to the ground and whispers to him that artists should paint what they see and what is familiar to them. The entities in his art are real and they are close to him-- family portraits. The paintings don't come from his head, but from his life. As shadows move in the cellar around them, Thurber tosses a kerosene lamp on the turpentine. Pickman warns that it's time for Thurber to meet what awaits them all in the darkness before he succumbs to his wound...and that's when the creature sealed into the cellar's well emerges to meet him, letting out a bellowing roar before claiming the body and returning to the darkness with it. Thurber flees while he can still escape.

The next day, Thurber takes his family to the gallery and lets them wander the halls in time for the exhibition. What he's shocked to find, however, is that one of his colleagues has placed the finishing touches on Pickman's gallery show, harming himself in the process, succumbing to the madness that they inflict. He rushes to stop Rebecca and James from proceeding any further, has the gallery owner dispose of the artworks (without looking at them, of course), and takes Joe to get medical help.

Answer: A feast

Thurber returns home after handling the issues at the gallery to find his house quiet. He locates Rebecca in the kitchen, making dinner at the cutting board, and comments that it smells delicious. He apologizes for how he's been while she neglects to respond. As he nears her, however, he realizes that something is horribly wrong.

When Rebecca turns around, she states that she knows where fear lives and the reveals that she's removed her eyes from her face. As something burns in the oven, Thurber realizes that he has yet to see where their son has gone. She has made the feast that was foretold. As she turns to continue chopping, she tells him that he will soon see how glorious it is.

Heading to the oven, Thurber opens the door to find James' head, the main course of the coven's meal, prepared as it was in Pickman's paintings.