The Nightmare Factory

by Thomas Ligotti

  “Though neither is it of any other world,” said the mage in the same quiet voice.

  “But I have also had visions of butchering the angels,” replied the madman, as if to argue the absolute hopelessness of his mania.

  “You have envisioned precisely what you believe you have not envisioned. But how could you have known this, when it is the nature of what you have seen—this anima mundi of the oldest philosophers and alchemists—to deceive and to pose as the soul of another world, not the soul of the world we know? There is only one world and one soul of that world, which appears in beauty or in boredom or in madness according to how deeply anima mundi has revealed itself to you. It is something which is not there when you look and there again when you look away.”

  “You speak as if it were a god or demon.”

  “There is no other or truer way. Like god or demon, it is an assemblage of ourselves though not of ourselves alone. But no further words now,” finished the mage.

  He then instructed the madman to seat himself at the table of arcane designs and to wait there with his eyes calmly closed. And for what remained of that moonless night the mage worked secretly in another part of his house, returning to the wretched dreamer just before dawn. In one of his hands was the product of his labors: a pair of strangely darkened spectacles, as if they had shadows sealed within them.

  “Do not open your unhappy eyes, my friend, but listen to my words. I know the visions you have known, for they are visions I was born to know. There are eyes within our eyes, and when these others open all becomes confusion and horror. The meaning of my long life consists of the endeavor to seize and settle these visions, until my natural eyes themselves have altered in accordance with them. Now, for what reasons I cannot say, anima mundi has revealed itself to you in its most savage aspect; which is to say, its secret face. Thus, your life will never again be as you have known it. All the pleasures of the past are now defiled, all your hopes violated beyond hope. There are things which only madmen fear because only madmen may truly conceive of them. Your world is presently black with the scars of madness, but you must make it blacker still in order to find any soundness or peace. You have seen both too much and not enough. Through the shadow-fogged lenses of these spectacles, you will be blinded so that you may see with greater sight. Through their darkly clouded glass the lesser madness of anima mundi will diffuse into the infinite, all-penetrating vision of things in which madness is the sole substance and thereby becomes absent and meaningless for its very ubiquity and absolute meaning. But what would murder another man’s mind will bring yours peace, while making you a puppet of peace rather than its prince.

  “Henceforth, all things will be in your eyes a distant play of shadows that fretfully strive to impersonate something real, ghosts that clamor to pass themselves as flesh, masks that desperately flit about to conceal the stillness of the void behind them—henceforth, all things will be reduced in your eyes to their inconsequential essence. And all that once shined for you—the steel, the stars, the eyes of another—will lose its luster and take its place among the other shadows. All will be dulled in the power of your vision, which will give you to see that the greatest power, the only power, is to care for nothing.

  “Please know that this is the only way I may help you, for my life has taught me that no single soul may be restored where there is no hope of restoring the soul of the world itself. One final word: you must never be without these spectacles or your furies will return to you. There, now you may open your eyes.”

  Faliol sat very still for some time. At first he did not notice that one of the mage’s own eyes was closed, covered by a sagging eyelid. What at last he saw this and perceived the sacrifice, he said, “And how may I serve you, wise man?”

  In the window behind the two seated figures, the dull light of dawn was grappling with the darkness of the past night, with the shadows that seemed almost to be clinging to the window’s glass, or were sealed within it.

  III Anima Mundi

  While the revelers in the streets of Soldori remedied their discontents by throwing off the everyday face of orthodoxy, those attending the masquerade at the duke’s palace found their deliverance by donning other faces, other bodies, and perhaps other souls. The anonymity of that night—no unmasking was expected to be held—enabled a multitude of sins against taste, from the most subtle to the most grotesque indiscretions. The society of the court had transformed itself into a race of gods or monsters, competing at once with the brightest and highest of stars and the strangest of the world’s lower creatures. Many would undoubtedly spend the succeeding days or weeks in darkened rooms behind closed doors, so that the effects their disguises had wrought on their bodies might be known to none. For a few rare spirits, this by necessity would be their last appearance in the eyes of the court before a final seclusion. All were quite clearly arrayed as if something unparalleled, and possibly conclusive, was to occur that night. Musicians played in several of the palace’s most sumptuous and shimmering halls, glittering glasses were filled by fountains of unnaturally colored wine, and maskers swarmed about like living gargoyles freed from the cathedral’s stone. All, or nearly all, were straining from some unheard of antic, suffering the pleasures of expectancy.

  But as the hours passed, hopes dissolved. The duke—in essence a simple man, even a dull one—took no initiative to unloose the abundant possibilities of the masquerade; and, as if secretly aware of these perilous directions, he restrained the efforts of others to pursue them, to digress from the night’s steadily unwinding course. No coaxing could sway him: he allowed several odd witticisms to pass unacknowledged, and he feigned that certain dubious suggestions and proposals were obscure to his mind. Unnourished by any source in the duke’s own nature, every attempt at innovation curled at its colorful edges and died. The initial strangeness of the masked gathering went stale: voices began to sound as though they were transacting business of some tedious sort, and even the sight of a jester, albeit one with darkness within the eyes of his mask, offered no special merriment to this sullen assembly.

  Accompanying the jester, who made no lively movements, was a knight out of armor, dressed in radiant blues and golds, a crusader’s cross emblazoned upon his chest, and over his face a white silk mask of blandly noble expression. The odd duo progressed from room to dazzling, crowded room of the palace, as if they were negotiating a thick wood in search of something or someone. The knight appeared nervous, his hand too obviously ready to go for the sword at his side, his head patrolling with skittish alertness the bizarre world around him. The jester, on the other hand, was altogether more composed and methodical, and with excellent reason: he knew, as the knight did not, that their purpose was not a difficult one, especially as they would enjoy the complicity of Wynge himself, whom the knight had called the Sorcerer and whom the jester addressed as a wise man mage. Had Faliol not been invited to Soldori by a certain messenger who served two masters? And was not Wynge eager to release himself from the unhappy girl who had sought his advice in a certain matter (such innocence he could hardly believe still existed in the world) and who became a pawn in her father and the duke’s game? For himself he was unconcerned, but they had also placed the girl’s fate in his hands. Once she was out of the scene, these two men, both emulous of a god’s glory, would lose the power with which they manipulated the mage, whose retorts and formulas they wanted to provide them with magical riches. Under the present circumstances, the knight might easily regain his beloved, and the jester would finally make good a debt, settling the price he owed for a pair of spectacles.

  The two characters paused at the hugely arched entrance to the last, and most intimate, of the masquerade’s many rooms. Pulling at the knight’s golden sleeve, the jester angled his pointed, sneering muzzle toward a costumed pair in the far corner. These distant figures were impersonating two monarchs of the old days, a king and queen in ancient robes and stoles and many-horned crowns.

  “How can you be sure that th
ey are the ones?” whispered the knight to the buffoon at his side.

  “Boldly approach and take her hand. You will be sure, but say nothing until you have led yourselves back through these rooms and to freedom.”

  “But the Sorcerer,” objected the knight. “He could have us both executed.”

  “All is safe. While I engage him as the king’s jester, you will make off with the queen. Trust that what I tell is true.”

  “I do trust you,” said the knight, as he surreptitiously stuffed a jeweled pouch twice the size of the first into the belt of the jester.

  The two characters separated and merged with the murmuring crowd. A few moments later, the jester arrived first at their destination. From a distance he seemed to speak a few words into the king’s ear and then suddenly leaped back to play the fool before him, hopping about wildly. The knight bowed before the queen and then without ostentation led her away to other rooms. Although her masked face smothered all expression, the manner in which she placed her hand upon his appeared to reveal her knowledge of the knight’s identity. After they had gone, the jester ceased his antics and approached the stern and statue-like king.

  “I shall watch the duke’s men around us, who may have been watching you, wise man.”

  “And I shall see that our two little babes find their way through the forest,” replied the mock-monarch, who abruptly strode off.

  But that was not part of your design, thought Faliol. And neither was the pseudo-king’s playful voice that of the solemn mage. The dark eyes of the jester’s mask followed the movements of the imposter, until he passed through the hugely arched entrance and became lost in the dreamlike throng of the next room. Faliol had just started in pursuit when a strange commotion in another part of the palace swiftly conveyed its anxieties and rumors through all the rooms of the masquerade.

  But now that something unheard of had finally occurred, it seemed neither to delight nor relieve any of those same souls who had wished for a unique happening on that carnival night.

  The disturbance originated in the centermost room of that labyrinth of rooms composing the arena of the masquerade. To the surrounding as well as the peripheral rooms, including the one in which Faliol was now caught by the crushing crowd, there first traveled sounds of sudden amusement. These were quickly transformed, however, into ambiguous outbursts of surprise, even shock. Finally, the uproar took on the character of intense horror—all voices in alarm and confusion, all movements alarmed and confused. Word passed rapidly, though less and less reliably, from mouth to mouth, room to room. Something terrible had happened, something which had begun, or was initially perceived, as a fabulous hoax. No one knew exactly how it was possible, but there suddenly appeared in the midst of the most populated room some outlandish spectacle: two gruesome figures whose costumes went far beyond anything previously displayed at the masque. Someone said they were most closely akin to giant leeches or worms, for they did not walk upright but writhed along the floor. Another had heard that the creatures possessed countless tiny legs, and thus more properly resembled centipedes of some type. Still others contributed further characteristics—many-taloned claws, reptilian tails, near-human faces—which made up the composition of the fantastic beasts. But whatever may have been the initial reaction to these, presumably artificial, creatures—at some point they inspired the crowd with unreasoning panic. And however the subsequent actions may have transpired, the consequence was that these bizarre intruders were hacked and torn and trampled beyond recognition by the frenzied, nightmarish gathering.

  Tragically, once the massacre was accomplished, it was not the slaughtered remains of two uncanny monsters that the masqueraders—their masks removed—looked down upon. Instead, it was two of their own—a knight and queen of the old days—whose blood was spreading across the intricate designs of the palace floor. Their bodies, once so far from each other, were now all but indistinguishable.

  Throwing off his jester’s face, Faliol worked himself near enough to the scene to confirm the horror with his own shaded eyes, merely to confirm it. For the image delivered to his mind immediately took its place among the seamless and unending flow of hellish eidola which constituted anima mundi and which, in his vision, was a monotonous tapestry of the terrible ceaselessly unfurling itself in the faintest tones of shadowy gray. Thus, the appalling tableau he now witnessed was neither more nor less sinister in his sight than any other which the world might show him.

  “Look again, Fa-fa-faliol,” said a voice behind him, as a forceful boot propelled him within inches of the carnage.

  But why was everything painted so brilliantly now, when a moment ago it seemed so dull, so unspectacular? Why did every piece of severed flesh quiver with color? And even more vividly than their red-smeared forms did the horrible fates of these unhappy beings affect Faliol’s mind and feelings. He had been hired to save them and he could do…nothing. His thoughts were now careening wildly through crimson corridors within him, madly seeking solutions but falling at every turn into blind corners and flailing hopelessly against something immovable, impossible. He pressed his hands over his face, hoping to blacken the radiant scene. But everything remained invincibly there before his eyes—everything save his spectacles.

  Now the duke’s voice broke the brief lull of the dazed and incredulous assembly. It shouted orders, demanded answers. It proclaimed the ruler’s prophetic misgivings concerning the masquerade and its dangers: he had long known that something of this nature might occur, and had done what he could to prevent its coming to pass. On the spot, he outlawed all future occasions of this kind and called for arrests and interrogations, the Torture of the Question to be liberally implemented. Exodus was instantaneous—the palace became a chaos of fleeing freaks.

  “Faliol!” called a voice that sounded too clear, within all the confusion, to have its origin outside his own mind. “I have what you’re looking for. They’re with me now, right here in my hand, not lost forever.”

  When Faliol turned around, he saw the masked king standing some distance away, unmolested by the frantic mob. The king’s hand was holding out the spectacles, as if they were the dangling head of a conquered foe. Fighting his way toward the unknown persecutor, Faliol continued to remain several steps behind him as he was led by this demon through all the rooms where the masquerade once flourished, and then deeper into the palace. At the end of a long silent corridor, the gaudy, flapping train of a royal robe disappeared into a doorway. Faliol followed the fluttering bait and at last entered a dim chamber with a single window, before which stood the mummer in a sparkling silk mask. The spectacles were still held by the velvet fingers of a tightly gloved hand. Watching as the dark lenses flashed in the candlelight, Faliol’s eyes burned as much with questions as with madness.

  “Where is the mage?” he demanded.

  “The mage is no more. Quickly, what else?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Wasted question, you know who I am. What else?”

  “What are you?”

  “Another one like the other. Say I’m a sorcerer, very well?”

  “And you killed the mage as you did the others.”

  “The others? How could you have not heard that rattling pantomime, all those swords and swift feet? Didn’t you hear that there was a pair of leviathan leeches, or something in that way, menacing the guests? True, I had a hand in the illusion, but my hand contained no gouging blade. A shambles, you saw it with your own eyes.”

  “In their fate you saw your own future. Even a sorcerer may be killed.”

  “Agreed, even a sorcerer with three eyes, or two eyes, or one.”

  “Who are you to have destroyed the mage?”

  “In fact, he destroyed himself—an heroic act, I’m sure—some days ago. And he did it before my own eyes, as if in spite. As for myself, I confess that I’m disappointed to be so far beneath your recognition. We have met previously, please remember. But it was many years past, and I suppose you became forgetful as we
ll as dim-sighted once you put those pieces of glass over your eyes. You see why the mage had to be stopped. He ruined you as a madman, as my madman.

  “But you might recall that you had another career before the madness took you, did you not? Buh-buh-brave Faliol. Don’t you remember how you were made that way? Don’t you wish to remember that you were Faliol the dandy before we met on the road that day? It was I—in my role as a charmseller—who outfitted you with that onyx-eyed amulet which you once wore around your neck, and which made you the skillful mercenary you once were. That you loved to be.

  “And how everyone else loved you that way: to see a weakling transformed into a man of strength and of steel is the stuff of public comment, of legend, of the crowd’s amusement. And how much more do they love to witness the reverse of this magical process: to see the mighty laid low, the lord of the sword made mad. This was the little drama I had planned. You were supposed to be my madman, Faliol, not the placid fool of that magician—a real lost soul of torments in red and black, not a pathetic monk chanting silent psalms in pale breaths. Don’t you understand? It was that Wynge, or whatever his name was, who ruined you, who undid all my schemes for your tragic and colorful history. Because of him I had to change my plans and chase you down to this place. Blame him, if anyone, for the slaughter of those innocents and for what you are about to suffer. You know my ways, we are not strangers.”

  “No, demon horror, we are not. You are indeed the foul thing the wise man described to me, all the dark powers which we cannot understand but can only hate.”

  “Powers? At least the magician spoke of me as a being, albeit a type of god or demon. But I might even be regarded as a person of sorts, someone who is just like everybody else, but not quite like anyone. I honor him for his precise vision, as far as it went. But you’re wrong to contend that no one understands me; and as for hating the one who stands before you—nothing, in truth, could be farther from truth. Listen, do you hear those brawling voices in the streets beyond the window. Those are not voices filled with hate. In fact, they could not possibly hold a greater love for me. And reciprocally I love them, every one of them: all I do is for them. Did you think that my business was the exceptional destinies of heroes and magicians, of kings and queens, saints and sinners, of all the so-called great? Such extravagant freaks come and go, they are puppets who dance before the eternal eyes of my true children. Only in these multitudes do I live, and through their eyes I see my own glory.”