Another neglected American horror legend from Balladeer’s Blog to help celebrate Halloween Month.
KILLIAN HEYLIGER’S PORTRAIT
Back when New York was still New Amsterdam Killian Heyliger was a vicious figure whose wealth protected him from the consequences of his actions. Today he would be considered a serial killer but back then with law enforcement technology in such a primitive state Heyliger had no problem getting rid of all traces of his victims.
Heyliger had financed an inn as an investment and lorded it over the establishment no matter what the actual management felt about it. Killian took any woman he wanted from the staff and befriended any men he wanted from the guests and would party and gamble with them all night in his private suites upstairs.
Various well-to-do women fell victim to his charms, too, if they caught his eye and were traveling unaccompanied – a true rarity in those times.
Heyliger worked away for years on a self-portrait and that picture of him – sword in hand and surrounded by diamond jewels adorned the wall of his luxurious bedroom in the inn long after he had passed away. Nothing but occassional whispers about Killian’s true nature surfaced and by the early 1700s New Amsterdam was under Great Britain and was now New York, and the inn was under new management.
The new manager was plagued by dreams of Killian Heyliger. He saw visions of his murders and the macabre way he mixed the victims’ blood in with the paints used on his self-portrait. Eventually he was visited in a dream by Killian himself and a dreadful bargain was struck.
Whenever the new innkeeper could, he would put up a poor, penniless and unfamilied wretch overnight in Heyliger’s former bedroom. While the poor, friendless creature slept Killian’s figure would step down from the life-sized portrait and slake his long-denied blood-lust on them.
Killian’s form would leave one of the diamonds from the portrait on the pillow for the innkeeper and return to the portrait. The innkeeper would get rid of the mutilated body for his spectral accomplice and cash in the diamond.
This arrangement worked well for years until there came a particularly long stretch of time with no victim of the right description happening to present themselves. In dreams Heyliger began warning the innkeeper that if he got no victim offered up to him very soon he would use his sword on the innkeeper himself.
In desperation the keeper went searching the streets for an acceptable victim. Finding a seemingly suitable indigent he took him back to his inn, treated him to a fine meal and put him up in Killian Heyliger’s old bedroom.
The indigent was playing the innkeeper just as that man was playing him. When he was supposed to be sleeping the guest instead stole whatever finery he could from the room and snuck out the window to get hard currency for his acquisitions.
When morning arrived the innkeeper crept into the room expecting to find the usual diamond on a pillow next to the usual dismembered corpse. Instead he saw a burgled room and that the figure of Killian Heyliger was missing from the life-sized portrait.
He turned around just in time to see the infuriated Heyliger bringing his sword down to claim his long-denied victim.
Years later the inn burned to the ground but it is not known if any of the other innkeepers struck up a similar bargain with the supernatural portrait of the monstrous figure named Killian Heyliger. +++
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