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October 1, 2008
Introduction

While sitting at my computer typing this it dawns on me that my desk is far too small. Stacked above, below, and to each side of my monitor are books, compact discs, coffee mugs, notes, and assorted sundries — each piece doing its part to clutter my surroundings, and thus my mind. My floor, too, is dirty, with various scraps of lint, paper, dog hair, grass, and other mysterious fragments beckoning to me, mocking me, reminding me that, yes, the vacuum cleaner is merely four feet away nestled in the confines of the messy closet. However, it is not apathy that keeps me from my chores. On the contrary, it is my confounding schedule that prevents me from straightening up my office. What I am doing now is far too important to put off for something as mundane as house keeping.

Next to my hand-me-down office chair is a TV-tray, extending the surface area of my work space by approximately two square-feet. On this invention-of-inventions rests the objects of my attention, at least for the moment, as my attention is something that often wanders from one thing to the next with an intense fickle devotion. Stacked, in pyramid formation, are a number of books. These tomes of inquisitive content call to me, daring me to venture deep into the recesses of their imaginative prose. The books are as follows:

Teatro Grottesco, by Thomas Ligotti
The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers
Reassuring Tales, by T.E.D. Klein
The Number 121 to Pennsylvania, by Kaelan Patrick Burke
Adrift on the Haunted Seas, by William Hope Hodgeson
The Divinity Student, by Michael Cisco

It is my desire, my driving passion, to read and study each of these books during the next thirty days or so. I am curious as to what each volume holds in store for me. What will I discover about the face of fear? How do each of these authors, privy to unfathomable horrors, present to their precious readers their own unique vision of terror? As I journey through these twisted landscapes of the macabre and jot down for you, my dear reader, some of my thoughts, I can only hope that I come out with my sanity in tact; keeping madness away whilst soaking up the knowledge these books possess is something I hope to accomplish, and if I can pass on some of this knowledge to you, then all the better.

October 3, 2008
Teatro Grottesco, by Thomas Ligotti - 2008

Thomas Ligotti’s greatest enemy is not a cosmic, soul-destroying, eldritch entity yearning to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth. No, his mortal enemy is something more mundane, something more ubiquitous: obscurity. Because most of his fiction is only released in limited numbers through small press publishers, he remains an enigma, an author read only by a small dedicated following. But lucky for us all, Ligotti’s newest collection, Teatro Grottesco, has recently been widely released.

Teatro Grottesco is a haunting collection of newer and older Ligotti prose. It contains a number of mind-altering stories spanning the vast and disturbing reaches of the author’s twisted imagination. These stories touch upon the darkest regions of phantasmal landscapes pocked with bizarre absurdities and peppered with Ligotti’s unique sense of humor and perfect narrative timing.

Highlights include: “The Clown Puppet,” a story about a pharmacist who falls victim to nightly visitations by demonic marionette; “The Red Tower,” which details the inner workings of an otherworldly factory residing on the outskirts of reality (what are they building in there?); and “Our Temporary Supervisor,” an entry into Ligotti’s ongoing fascination with stories that deal with the absurd peculiarities and paranoia of the modern work place.

Ligotti’s horror is subtle, lacking tangible rationale; strange and messed up things happen just because. As an admirer of horror, I often look for reasons behind the things that scare me. In my attempt to define what is horrifying, I lessen its effectiveness. What can I do to prevent terrifying things from happening to me? Liggoti never gives an easy way out. He never offers up a simple set of rules for his characters to follow in order to shirk the horrors that invade their lives. His fiction is far more unsettling for this.

The First Appearance

It was on the evening that I finished the final tale in Ligotti’s book, while riding the bus home, that I first saw the silent children. It was a cool, gray early-fall evening, the sun already setting behind the tall buildings on the west side of Fourth Avenue in downtown Seattle. While it wasn’t raining, the threat of such an occurrence hung over the city like a damp veil. I had just finished the last page of the book, and while reaching for my satchel on the bus floor, I glanced out the window at a passing store front. Above the second story bridal shop was a grid of darkened windows, presumably an office complex already asleep for the evening. In each of the windows, staring down at the street was the pallid, mongoloid face of a child. I could see nothing else of these silent children — their bodies were shrouded in darkness. Only those faces — with their mouths twisted open in otherworldly shapes, screaming and crying out in silent terror — were visible.

October 8, 2008
The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers - 1895

In an embarrassing display of my ignorance, I must confess that, before embarking on this journey, I had always believed that the King in Yellow was an invention of our dear Mr. Lovecraft. Yes it’s true, I had never even heard of Robert W. Chambers a month ago, and I was worse off for it. I’ve read some King in Yellow themed stories by other authors before, but I had never read the genuine source of this incredible mythos.

Chambers conveys his horror in a highly poetic fashion. His grasp of the romantic relationships between his characters is far more mature and nuanced than any of the similar authors I’ve encountered thus far. More than a few times I was reminded of Alfred Hitchcock in the way that Chambers patterns his narratives. You could remove the supernatural trappings and still be left with wholly satisfying love stories.

I read five of the tales originally published in the 1895 version of Chambers’ collection. Each of these tales expands upon the mythos of The King in Yellow, a fictitious play found within these stories. This play possesses the ability to expose its readers to the dire truths of their seemingly mundane realities. Some are driven mad by its pages; others are transported into strange phantasmal realms. Like many of Chamber’s predecessors, he wrote stories detailing the discovery of arcane and taboo knowledge. This idea of a secret knowledge destroying humanity is not new; the theme can even be found in the Bible with the story of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In these kinds of tales ignorance is not only bliss, it is survival.

Of the five stories I read, “The Repairer of Reputations,” and the “Yellow Sign” were the most effective. On its surface, “The Yellow Sign” is a wonderful tale of forbidden love; I was reminded more than once of Henry James’ “Daisy Miller” in the way that Chambers patterns the dialog and actions of his characters. However, strange things begin to happen once the spine of titular book is cracked. “The Repairer of Reputations” tells about the mental deterioration of one Hildred-Rex, a man possessed by power, an ultimate power birthed from the pages of that cursed yellow tome. It is deliciously maddening, absurd, and frightening. It is one of the most effective depictions of insanity I’ve ever read, and still haunts me to this day.

The Second Appearance

The morning after finishing the stories in The King in Yellow, I again saw the silent children. It was one of the first dark and gloomy fall mornings that are common in Seattle. I was waiting at the bus stop, trying to stay dry; a light drizzle permeated the area. The street lights were still on from the night before, casting their yellowish light onto the falling drops of water, thus blanketing everything in a pale golden hue. In a moment of unworldly silence, I turned to my left and saw a strange procession. Walking towards me, like a small and well organized marching band, were two lines of cloaked and hooded figures, with no one figure standing above four feet in height. As the troupe passed me, each figure slowly turned its cloaked head in my direction, revealing in that sickly golden phosphorescence a white and twisted face frozen in a moment of silent agony. By the time the bus came to pick me up, the children had marched far out of sight.

October 13, 2008
Reassuring Tales, by T.E.D. Klein - 2006

My first experience with T.E.D. Klein’s fiction, Dark Gods, a collection of four novellas, was an amorous one. Each of the stories found in that volume are wonderfully written, full of imaginative, haunting passages, vivid imagery, and Lovecraftian atmosphere without the sometimes bothersome purple prose. I was somewhat disappointed to find that Mr. Klein’s output was decidedly sparse. While he excels as an editor of fantastic fiction, apparently he struggles immensely with writing it. Writing fiction does not come easy to him, and thus he has only written the aforementioned collection, one novel, and this collection of short stories, Reassuring Tales.

No matter the size of my disappointment in discovering how little Mr. Klein had written, it was nothing compared to the disappointment of the quality of tales in this volume. I am sorry to say that most of the stories in this collection are quite dreadful. I don’t like to be so dismissive, but these stories truly should not have been printed in an expensive volume such as this. Perhaps they would be okay to give away as a thank you for purchasing additional, better material, but at $40 I can’t help but feel a little cheated.

Most of the stories in this collection are “zingers,” or throw-away little campfire tales that might have made mediocre episodes of Tales From the Darkside. Examples include: “Camera Shy,” “Magic Carpet,” “Well-Connected,” and “One Size Eats All.” One tale in particular, “S.F.” is down right infuriating in its prose style. While the science fiction conventions used in the story are interesting, it is written as a letter from a grandmother to her grandson and contains a splattering of annoying baby-talk. Words such as “snookums,” and “Great-Granny,” are abundant, as are a number of pandering phrases stemming from the story’s narrator. It’s overly cute and coy, and incredibly frustrating.

However, there are two stories that are better than the rest, and one of them is extraordinary. The first of these is “Growing Things,” a delicious account of bad botany. “Ladder” is the real standout story of the collection, exemplary of Klein’s best. To say more, or to give away any bit of the plot would do a great disservice to this tale, and so I will leave it at that. “Ladder” is an endlessly clever and well-written exercise in literary style.

The Third Appearance

It was during the next bizarre experience that I began to understand my feelings about the silent children. It was a Friday night, a few hours after work, when my friend Paul and I met at the local pub for a beer or two. I rode the bus; he drove, and offered to take me home afterwards. I told him he could drop me off at the park just a few blocks from my house; I would walk the remaining distance. I liked walking through the park at night. Always quiet and peaceful, I would often stop at the swing-set for a dose of nostalgia. That evening, the park’s playground was in a state of total disarray. Scattered about the blacktop and sandboxes were the broken pieces of the swing-sets, jungle-gyms, monkey-bars, and wooden fort. Standing where each of the play-things used to be was one of the silent children. The look of disappointment on their faces was heartbreaking. I continued on through the destruction, quickening my pace as each of the silent children looked my way, pleading. But what could I do? What did they expect me to do?

Once home, I embraced my wife and wept on her shoulder.

October 17, 2008
The Number 121 to Pennsylvania, by Kealan Patrick Burke - 2008

Kealan Patrick Burke was a recent discovery for me. I noticed that he had written books that are considered collector’s items (namely The Turtle Boy), and so I decided to pick this up, his newest collection from Cemetery Dance. I knew nothing of the author, but my growing admiration for small press horror led me to a blind-purchase; a choice I am glad I made. Burke reminds me a lot of Stephen King mixed with a bit of Joe R. Lansdale. I know some may frown upon this comparison; King is often times disparaged amongst hardcore horror fans. However, I say this with the utmost respect given to Burke. King is popular because he a) writes interesting stories, and b) writes with an easy to understand, straightforward prose style; some may call it writing for the lowest common denominator, I say he is simply accessible. The same can be said for Mr. Burke.

The collection begins with two somber, nostalgic pieces dealing with love and loss. The first, “The Grief Frequency,” tells the melancholy story of a husband whose wife has died in a car crash. He learns of a terrible secret, is stricken with guilt, and desires to be reunited with his love. Next is the titular story, a narrative of personal significance to the author. Growing up next to and around trains, Burke is fond of these romantic vessels, and crafts an atmospheric story about a haunted railway.

After reading these two tales, I thought I knew Burke’s game. I had him pegged as a conjurer of soft-horror, a weaver of tales dealing with ghosts, love, loss, and longing. I was then hit with the one-two sucker-punch of “Mr. Goodnight,” and “Empathy.” Never in my life have I witnessed such a ferocious change in theme and tone. Good Lord! “Mr. Goodnight” is an old fashioned monster-mash reminiscent of Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest, complete with a punk-rock ending sure to delight fans of horror cinema. While the aforementioned story is frightening, it doesn’t compare to the nastiness of “Empathy.” You know those NSFW links that tempt your curiosity, those legendary websites you’ve only heard about, too nasty to describe, too disgusting to view? What if you clicked one, and witnessed a snuff film? What if that snuff film had the power to destroy your life? “Empathy” answers these questions in gruesome detail. I’ll never trust another ambiguous URL again.

Burke continues to mix and match tone throughout the rest of this incredible collection. He tackles the comedic, the sad, the romantic, the haunting, and the disturbing, and he does each exceptionally well. There are only two stories that I didn’t care for, “Underneath,” and “Saturday Night at Eddie’s.” These two read far too much like Lansdale pastiches and I’ve had enough of old Joe for the time being. However, these minor blemishes do not taint the whole, and I am looking forward to reading more from Burke.

The Fourth Appearance

Why are basements so creepy? I was sitting in my own partially-unfinished basement one evening, listening to the muffled sound of the rain dinning like a distant applause, deciding whether to watch a movie or begin reading the next book for my Gnostic journey With an ear-shattering crash, the electrical power went out; darkness enveloped me. At first I panicked. Imagine — a grown man afraid of the dark. But this darkness was preternatural, far inkier than what I knew to be physically possible. This was not just an absence of light; I could feel the darkness on my skin.

The sound of giggling startled me. But the laughter was not sinister; it had a pleasant cadence. I used the sound as a beacon, inching my way by degrees towards its source.

It was then that I remembered the cigarette lighter tucked in my pants’ pocket. With a flick of my thumb, the small flame illuminated the area. Without warning, the giggling ceased. For the briefest of moments I noticed two things: I was no longer in my basement, I had somehow been transported to a large tiled hall, the smell of chlorine hung thick in the air; and the silent children were all around me, each one reaching out as if to grab my jacket, their mouthless faces emotionless and moist. My flame went out, the giggling began anew, but it quickly, violently changed into a guttural, demonic cacophony.

I fell to my knees, covered my ears, and screwed shut my eyes. What was making that hellish sound? And then, finally, silence. The power returned, the lights came on, and I was again in my own basement, surrounded by a multitude of tiny wet footprints.

October 21, 2008
Adrift on the Haunted Seas, by William Hope Hodgeson - c. 1900-1920

Themed short story collections are a double-edged sword. While sometimes a singular vision and atmosphere is welcoming, it can also be tiresome. Unfortunately, this collection of tales falls in the later camp. There are a number a grade-A, five-star stories here, perhaps one or two of which I would call masterpieces. However, every story I read (and I only read about 3/4 of them) takes place on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Yes, the title suggests such a setting, but I was hoping for more variety in the execution.

As previously mentioned, Adrift on the Haunted Seas does contain some amazing tales of naval horror, both in prose and verse forms. I am a greenhorn when it comes to verse, and so I anticipated expanding my literary horizons. The best example is Hodgson’s epic poem, “The Palace of Storms.” Through Hodgson’s ornate style, I could practically feel the torrential winds and biting-sting of the cold water slap my face as the central characters were thrashed by the sea and attacked an awesome beast. Hodgson creates a tangible sense of action, and the imagery he conjures is both lucid and suggestive.

As for the prose stories, “The Haunted Jarvee” and “The Voice in the Dawn” each won my affection. The first of these features one of the author’s recurring characters, a ghost-busting super-sleuth by the name of Carnacki. Carnacki constantly searches out mystery and adventure, and the only thing he loves more than debunking and discovering the truths behind supernatural occurrences is relaying his tales to others.

The second story takes place in Hodgson’s mythological creation, the Sargasso Sea, an otherworldly, hidden sector of oceanic territory. Like most of the stories in this collection, “The Voice in the Dawn” is written in a documentary style; we learn of a terrible and haunting discovery made by the seamen unfortunately stranded in the ghostly waters.

H.P. Lovecraft said that “Few can match [Hodgson]…” and I think I agree. In small doses, or perhaps in large quantities with more variety, Hodgson can be spectacular. Even though he deals with a naval setting, the narratives are rarely bogged down with technical jargon (this is not Moby Dick). What he excels at is creating atmosphere by conveying loneliness through isolation. The oceans are enormous, their vastness can wreak havoc upon the minds of men: a notion exemplified with great skill in the best of these stories.

The Fifth Appearance

Late night door-knocks are never good — especially when they wake you up from a sound sleep. My small dog Simon woke up first, and ran to the door barking and growling like a rabid mongrel. My wife barely stirred, I told her not to worry, I would take care of it. I slipped on my house shoes and stumbled to the door, still half-asleep. I peeped through the spy-hole and caught a glimpse of a shadow. I called out for the shadow to identify itself, but it ignored me. Again I looked through the tiny glass lens — the shadow had vanished.

Not thinking clearly, I opened the door and stepped outside. No one was there. I reached back inside to flip on an additional light, and my silly dog bolted through the door. He had caught wind of something; he was on the hunt. I called his name — this was so unlike him. He ignored me and continued to run, crossing the main street down the block into the parking lot of the recreational center across the way. I ran after him, loosing sight of his white tail as he turned a corner of the large building that houses the community pool.

As I followed Simon around the corner I noticed a door that was ajar. I went to the door and peered in. While I couldn’t see much, I could smell the chlorine-tinged air. It stung my nose; my eyes watered. While adjusting to the darkness and the chemical assault, I heard splashing sounds — I also heard a familiar giggling. I stepped inside the pool house and saw, illuminated by a dull blue light, a group of children playing in the pool, laughing, splashing one another. But something was wrong. Another larger figure slowly emerged from the depths of the pool’s deep end, and steadily made its way towards the children. The laughter again metamorphosed into that disturbing demonic din. I watched as the figure, a crusty old woman, her face a twisted mess of melted flesh, grabbed the children by their hair and forced their heads into the water.

I tried to move — I needed to do something, yet I was hopelessly frozen.

She drowned them, one by one, as I collapsed to the floor.

I awoke some time later to Simon licking my face. I was resting pool-side; the calm, smooth waters reflected the soft light of the rising sun shining through the glass-roofed ceiling. I took Simon into my arms and walked home.

October 26, 2008
The San Veneficio Canon (containing The Divinity Student), by Michael Cisco - 1999

As fate would have it, I saved the best for last. Michael Cisco’s The Divinity Student is an absolute masterpiece of bizarre fiction. It completely overshadowed everything else I’ve read during the past month. My only other exposure to Cisco was in Secret Hours, a small collection of short stories containing his Lovecraft and Chambers pastiches. I had read that The Divinity Student was excellent, and as a winner of numerous accolades I anticipated it greatly. I was expecting more of the same, but what I got was, instead, a new bellwether of fantastic fiction — a novella brimming with the conventions of horror, fantasy, and the weird, each piece pitched to perfection.

It begins when the Divinity Student (the only name given to the main character) is struck by lightning. He dies, but is resurrected after being cut open, his guts removed and replaced with pages torn from random books. He is then sent on a quest by the seminary to become a wordfinder: a linguistic bounty hunter searching for lost words to fill the pages of a mystical dictionary, words that may form the very language of God.

Cisco weaves a tale dealing with the very nature of words in a stylish prose teeming with energy. Every sentence is structured with skill, and no space is wasted in this briskly paced novella; it is told with brevity without forsaking lucid descriptions. What struck me most is how action-packed the story is. There are fights with demons, clashes with driverless cars on crowded market streets, and moon lit chases across rooftops. It is also quite violent — splashes of gore punctuate many of the set pieces, and one character in particular, the butcher, is center stage for a series of gruesome vignettes.

The Divinity Student is completely unlike anything I’ve read before. Because of its stark imagery, it is most easily described in terms of cinema, conjuring the likes of David Lynch, Vampire Hunter D, and Mamoru Oshii. In reading reviews of the novella, I discovered its divisive nature — people either seemed to love it or hate it, with nary an opinion in between. I typically gravitate towards books like this — books that take a stand, books that, no matter what, cannot be declared mediocre. And Cisco’s tale is anything but; it is a remarkably written fantasy with a haunting atmosphere and a narrative so creative I can still scarcely believe it actually exists.

The Final Appearance

The Divinity Student left me elated. After devouring each and every delicious page of Cisco’s masterpiece, I felt as if everything I had experienced up to this point had been worth it. I knew that something dreadful had happened to those children, but I could not fathom what they expected me to do about it. It had been a few days since my last encounter, and while part of me wished for an end to it all, a larger more vocal part of me wanted to experience something that would shake the very foundation of my existence.

That night, I got both wishes.

My wife was out of town on a business trip, Simon was sleeping with the cat in the living room, and I was sleeping alone. It felt good to stretch out, naked, in our king sized bed; sleeping spread eagle is a luxury seldom afforded the married man. But I wasn’t asleep, or alone, for long. Again I found myself ensconced in a ghostly silence. The silent children surrounded me, kneeling on my bed, and each of their cold tiny hands was placed softly under me — some under each leg, arm, shoulder, and some behind my head. Their faces, while still twisted in palsied expressions, did not cause me panic.

In a flash they took to the air, me with them. We flew towards the ceiling of my bedroom and whisked through it, bursting forth through the roof into the cold night sky. Like deformed little lost boys of Neverland, the silent children led me on a flight of fancy into the heart of downtown Seattle. We flew like wingless birds, gliding, diving, climbing, looping, and zooming about in a joyous ballet of aerial acrobatics. My stomach dropped, my heart raced, my eyes teared, and my soul soared.

After a time of free-flight, I began to notice that the silent children were, in fact, directing me towards a destination. We turned east, towards First Hill, zeroing in on a large brick building, the exterior walls flooded with bright spot lights. We softly landed yards away from the building in the middle of a well-manicured lawn. Mere seconds after touchdown, the silent children began to sink away into the darkness of the surrounding trees. I turned and reached out for them, begging in silent gestures for them to stay, but it was no use.

They were gone.

I was again alone.

Naked and cold I turned back towards the building and noticed the illuminated, giant red cross centered in a white circle.

October 30, 2008
The Horrors Are Real

I read these tales and I am still living. Things have changed, grown darker, and I am now more acutely aware of the bizarre forces manipulating my once-mundane existence. The silent children have invaded my life; their reasons remain unknown to me, but I feel as though I am closing in on their secrets. The biggest change of all, though, is that I am no longer the one typing the manuscript that you now read. When she took over I cannot readily say, as this detail is veiled by an otherworldly fog. It is now only through the art of dictation that I am able to conclude this journal, for the tightly-latched constraints of this infernal mummy’s wrap prevents me from using my arms - I cannot even scratch the itch that has plagued my lower back for the last hour. Twice a day they come to loosen my jacket (as they call it, although it hardly provides a degree of warmth), allowing me to eat food that is no doubt laced with poison. The good doctor says that by completing my story I may find solace, and so he has arranged for a pretty young nurse to sit just outside the confines of my white-washed room; she listens as I speak, and types what I say.

I believe that I have noticed a deep understanding in the young nurse; the silent children are lonely, still looking for a guardian.

They’ve lost their father, perhaps it is a mother they seek.

Photography and photo-manipulation by Vance