The Nightmare Factory

by Thomas Ligotti

  For almost a year he worked secretly, and alone, in an old, empty factory building located in an open field many miles from the nearest city. And into this building he brought a motley array of equipment—objects, devices, and machinery that belonged to quite different times and places, diverse worlds of human creation. There were of course the most modern machines and instruments of science, some of which had only come into being since Dr Haxhausen’s disappearance. But there were also items of far earlier historical periods and a few imported from cultures that would not be considered very far along the path of technological progress. Thus, Dr Haxhausen unpacked several oddly shaped vessels decorated with strange glyphs and primitive images. And these clumsy vessels he rested upon a table among elegant containers of nearly invisible glass. Then he pieced together something that resembled a dirty drainspout or an old stovepipe. And he placed it, for the moment, upon the immaculate metal surface of a computer, which was the color and texture of an eggshell.

  More exotic or antiquated paraphernalia were revealed slumbering in crates and boxes: cauldrons, retorts, masks with wide-open mouths, alembics, bellows of different sizes, crusted bells that rang with dead voices, and rusted tongs that squeaked when manipulated; a large hourglass, a small telescope, shining swords and dull knives, a long wooden pitchfork with two hornlike prongs and a tall staff with marvelously embellished headpiece; miniature bottles of very thick glass plugged with stoppers in the shape of human or animal heads, candles in ivory holders with curious carvings, bright beads, beautiful convex mirrors of perfect silver, golden chalices engraved with intricate designs and powerful phrases; huge books with brittle pages, a skull and some bones; doll-like figures made of dried vegetables, puppet-like figures made of wax and wood, and various little dummies composed of obscure materials. Finally, there was a shallow crate from which Dr Haxhausen removed a vaguely circular object that seemed to be a flat stone, but a stone that was translucent and mottled like an opal with a spectrum of soft hues. And all these things the scientist brought together within his dim and drafty laboratory: each, in his mind, would play its part in his design. Clearly his ideas about the practice of science had taken an incredible leap, though whether the direction was forward or backward remained to be seen.

  For months he worked with a mechanical industriousness and without worry or doubt, as though following some foreordained plan of assured success. Slowly his invention began to take form out of the chaos of materials he had united in his experiment, a miscegenation that would give birth to a revolutionary artifact, a cross-bred assemblage of freakish novelty. And the result of his labors at last stood before him upon the cold and dusty floor of that factory, and he was pleased by the sight of it.

  To the average eye, granted, Dr Haxhausen’s invention might have appeared as no more than a bizarre scrapheap, a hybrid of some inscrutable fancy. Dense and unbeautiful, it branched out wildly in every direction, a mad foliage of ragged metal. And it seemed just barely, or not all, integrated into a whole. Through dark hollows within the chaotic tangle of the apparatus, the faces of dolls and puppets peeked out like malicious children in hiding. Incorporated into the body of the invention, their dwarfish forms mingled with its circuitry; these figures alone, by their very presence, might have bred doubts as to the validity of the scientist’s creation. And, as must already be apparent, the eccentricities of the machine did not end with a few idiotic faces.

  Nevertheless, there was a certain feature of the invention that did appear to suggest some definite purpose. This was the long black tube projecting from the midst of the debris, rising from it in the manner of a cobra set for the attack. But in place of the cobra’s pair of fascinating eyes, this artificial serpent was equipped with a single cyclopean socket in which was fixed a smooth disc of beautifully blended colors. When Dr Haxhausen turned a dial on the remote control unit resting in his palm, the dark metallic beast reared back its head and, with a sinister grinding sound, directed its gaze up toward a grimy skylight. For years this window on the heavens had remained sealed. But that night, through the efforts of the inexhaustible scientist, it was opened. And the spectral light of a full moon shone down into the old factory, pouring its beams into the opalescent eye of Dr Haxhausen’s machine. Later, when it seemed the beast was sated with its lunar nourishment, Dr Haxhausen confidently flicked a switch on the remote control unit. And the moonlight, which had been digested and transmuted in the bowels of the beast, was now given back to its source, spewing forth as a stream of lurid colors into the blackness, a harsh spectrum which one witness later described to authorities as an “awful rainbow quivering across the night.” In the doctor’s own description, this was called his Sacred Ray.

  With the first stage of his project successfully completed, Dr Haxhausen moved out of his secluded laboratory. His machine, along with other things, was loaded on a truck by some hired laborers. Thus, it could easily be transported from one place to another, to be exhibited before the eyes of any who would come to see it. And this is exactly what the scientist had in mind. Abandoning obscurity and breaking his silence, he once again allowed himself to be known to the world. Naturally there was a great deal of publicity, none of which was complimentary to the worth of the scientist’s revelations, though some of which paid sad homage to the former glory of his delicate mind. But public reaction was of no concern to him. His task would in any case be carried out: the world was to be given notice, the annunciation made. So he continued to travel here and there: in rented halls and auditoriums of many cities, he demonstrated the powers of his machine and spread the word to those who would hear it.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he began a typical performance in a typically out-of-date movie theater in a typical town. Standing alone on stage, Dr Haxhausen was wearing an old dark suit; as if to simulate formal attire, he added a new bow tie. His hair was greased and combed but had been allowed to grow far too long to convey a well-groomed image. And his black-framed eyeglasses now seemed far too large on the face of a man who had lost so much weight in the past year or so. Their thick lenses glinted in the glare of the footlights, which cast Dr Haxhausen’s gigantic and twisted shadow upon the threadbare curtain behind him.

  “Some of you,” he continued, “are perhaps aware of who I am and may have an idea of why I am here tonight. Others of you may be curious to discover the meaning of those handbills which have lately appeared around your town or possibly were intrigued by the marquee outside this theater which touts the ‘World Famous Dr Haxhausen.’ Like many important events in human history, my exhibition has been somewhat accurately reported as far as its superficial aspects are concerned, yet remains sadly misrepresented in its substance. Allow me at this point to disabuse you of a few false conceptions which may have affected your powers of judgment.

  “First, I do not claim to be either the Almighty Himself or His incarnation come down to earth; nor, in fact, am I one or the other of these things. Second, I nevertheless do claim that in the course of my recent travels, what the world has called my ‘disappearance,’ I was granted certain revelations directly from the Creator and in no uncertain terms received an itinerary of action from this same source. Third, and last, I am indeed the scientist known as Francis Henry Haxhausen and not, as can be conclusively proved, an imposter. As an appendix to my previous statements, I should say that my exhibition is not the absurd extravaganza of scientific farce some have portrayed it to be, but a simple agenda consisting of a brief lecture followed by a practical demonstration of a device I have recently constructed. At no point do I attempt, either as an illusion or in fact, to work permanent damage on the body or soul of any member of my audience. That would be contrary to the Creator’s law and the truth of His nature. And that is all I have to state in the way of a preamble to what I hope you will find an entertaining and enlightening attraction.

  “I would like to open my lecture with the following anecdote. There is a legend, and I hasten to underline the word legend, that
I learned while I was traveling here and there. It seems there was a sorcerer, or an alchemist or something along those lines, who dreamed of transforming the world through the creation of an artificial man. This man, the sorcerer dreamed, would not be subject to the flaws and limitations of the former type, but would instead live through many lifetimes, accumulating the knowledge and wisdom it would one day use to serve and improve the human race. The sorcerer, like all dreamers of this kind, was intent upon his vision and not particularly concerned with its ramifications in a larger scheme of things. Thus, he set about employing all his thaumaturgical arts in the creation of his ‘new man.’ First, a physical form was made out of the simple materials of wood and wax, resulting in a grotesque thing rather like a gigantic ventriloquist’s dummy. Next, the sorcerer practiced a secret chemistry and a hermetic linguistics to elevate this lifeless effigy into a rather admirable semblance of human life—fatefully admirable, I might add. Without wasting a moment glorying in his own achievement, uttering not a single word of self-praise, the sorcerer engaged his creature in a course of learning that would enable it to function and evolve toward its destiny after the sorcerer’s death. However, it was not long after this regimen had begun that the Omnipotent One realized what the sorcerer was intending to do. And so it happened that the creature, strong and well-coordinated but still a child in its mind, was awakened in the dead of night by a voice that cursed it as a blasphemy and an abomination. The voice bid the creature to go to its foul maker in the attic where he had sequestered himself among evil books and impure devices. Confused and terrified, the creature ascended several stairways and entered the attic. And there he found the sorcerer, motionless and hung upon the wall like something in a puppet-maker’s workshop, his dark robe grazing the dusty floor and his head drooping down. Acting on a mechanical impulse beyond dread or despair, the creature raised up his master’s head and saw that it was now no more than wood and wax. The sight was a maddening one, and it did not take long for the creature to find the rope with which it hung itself from the rafters of the attic. Thus was concluded the judgment passed upon the house of the sorcerer.”

  There was a pause in the scientist’s flow of words. Calmly, he pulled a handkerchief from the inner pocket of his coat and wiped his face, which was perspiring in the heat of the footlights. Then he briefly scanned the faces of his audience, many of which bore dumbfounded expressions, before resuming his lecture.

  “Who can know the intentions of the Creator? That which is suited to human designs may not suit His. With these rather unquestionable premises in mind, what conclusions might be drawn from the example of the sorcerer? By way of exegesis, I would say that the sorcerer, in conceiving a creature of limitless promise for good and none for evil, had violated a mysterious law, transgressed against a secret truth. And how had he strayed from this law and this truth? Simply in this manner: he had failed to provide for the corruption of his creation, not merely as a possibility but as a fate. And it was precisely by this oversight that the sorcerer fell out of step with the Creator’s own design. It is the vision of this Great Design that I have been privileged to see, and that is why I am here tonight. As a footnote, however, I should state that even before I was granted certain divine insights, I had already been traveling toward them, approaching their truth in the unconscious or accidental manner of great scientific discoveries. And I thus found myself somewhat in readiness to receive and accept the proffered vision.

  “Let me explain that I have spent nearly all my life as a scientist in a methodically frantic pursuit of perfection, driven by the dream of utopia, by the idea that I indeed contributed to an earthly paradise in the making. But slowly, very slowly, I began to notice certain things. I noticed that there were mechanisms built into the system of reality that nullified all our advancements in this world, that rerouted them into a hidden laboratory where these so-called blessings were cancelled out altogether, if not converted into formulas for our collapse. I noticed that there were higher forces working against us and working through us at the same time. On the one hand, our vision has always been of creating a world of perpetual vitality, despite our grudging recognition of death’s ‘necessity.’ On the other hand, all we have constructed is an elaborate facade to conceal our immortal traumas, a false front that hides the perennial ordeals of the human race. Oh, the human race. And I began to see that perfection has never been the point, that both the lost paradise of the past and the one sought in the future were merely convenient pretexts for our true destiny of…disintegration.

  “As a scientist I have had the opportunity to observe the workings of the world at close quarters and over a relatively extended stretch of time, not to mention space. And after careful observation and painstaking verification I was forced to this conclusion: the world thrives on its faults and strives, by every possible means, to aggravate them, while at the same time to mask them like a congenital deformity. The signs are everywhere, though I could not always read them.

  “But if vitality and perfection are not the aim of this world, what in heaven’s name is? That, my dear ladies and gentlemen, is the thrust of the second part of my exhibition, consisting of more comments by myself, a demonstration of my machine, and an entertaining display of what I might describe as a tableau mort. While I prepare things backstage, there will be a brief intermission. Thank you.”

  Dr Haxhausen walked off the stage with sluggish dignity and, as soon as he was out of sight, the audience began chattering all at once, as if they had been simultaneously revived from a hypnotic trance. Most of them, in outrage, left the theater; some, however, stayed for the finale. And both reactions, as well as these relative proportions, were typical at each exhibition that Dr Haxhausen held. Those who prematurely left the performance were content to believe they had been witnesses to nothing more than the interior theater of a madman. The others, intellectuals or neurotic voyeurs, had convinced themselves that the former genius deserved a full hearing before the inevitable condemnation, while secretly dreading that something he had to show them would reverberate, however faintly, with truth.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Dr Haxhausen, who seemed to reappear on stage out of nowhere. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he repeated more quietly, and then fell silent for a rather extended moment. And no one was whispering in the audience; no one said a word.

  “There are holy places in this world, and I have been to some of them. Places where the presence of something sacred can be felt like an invisible meteorology. Always these places are quiet, and often they are in ruins. The ones that are not already at some stage of dilapidation nonetheless display the signs and symptoms, the promise of coming decay. We feel a sense of divinity in ruined places, abandoned places—shattered temples on mountaintops, crumbling catacombs, islands where a stone idol stands almost faceless. We never have such feelings in our cities or even in natural settings where the flora and fauna are overly evident. This is why so much is atoned for in wintertime, when a numinous death descends on those chosen lands of our globe. Indeed, winter is not so much the holiest time as it is the holiest place, the visible locus of the divine. And after winter, spring; thus turns the carousel of our planet, and all the others. But need it turn forever? I think not. For the ultimate winter draws near, ladies and gentlemen: the cycle of seasons, so the Creator has told me, is about to stop.

  “He first spoke to me on a night which I had spent wandering the tattered fringes of a city. It might have been a city like this one, or any city. What matters is the mute decrepitude I found there among a few condemned buildings and vacant lots gone wild. I had all but forgotten my own name, who I was and what world I belonged to. And they are not wrong who say that my reason perished in the radiant face of unattainable dreams for the future. False dreams, nightmares! And then, in that same place where I had traveled to hang myself, I heard a voice among the shadows and moonlight. It was not a peaceful voice or a consoling voice, but something like an articulate sigh, a fabulously eloquent moan.
There was also a man-like shape slumped down in a corner of that sad room which I had chosen for my ultimate refuge. The legs of the figure lay bent like a cripple’s upon the broken floor, the moonlight cutting across them and leaving the rest of the body in darkness—all except two eyes that shone like colored glass in the moonlight. And although the voice seemed to emanate from everything around me, I knew that it was the voice of that sad thing before me, which was the Creator’s earthly form: a simple department store manikin.

  “I was the chosen one, It said. I would carry the message which, like every annunciation from on high, would be despised or ignored by mankind. Because I, at that moment, could clearly read the signs which had been present everywhere in the world since the beginning. I had already noted many of the hints and foreshadowings, the prophecies, and knew them as inspired clues the Creator had planted, prematurely revealing the nature of His world and its true destiny. And I felt the sacred aura radiated by the crumpled figure in the corner, and I understood the scripture of the Great Design.

  “It was written in the hieroglyphics of humble things, things humble to the point of mockery. All the lonesome pathetic things, all the desolate dusty things, all the misbegotten things, ruined things, failed things, all the imperfect semblances and deteriorating remnants of what we arrogantly deign to call the Real, to call…Life. In brief, the entire realm of the unreal—wherein He abides—is what He loves like nothing in this world. And haven’t we ourselves at some time come face to face with this blessed realm? Can you recall ever having traveled down a deserted road and coming upon something like an old fairground: a desolate assemblage of broken booths and sagging tents, all of which you glimpsed through a high arcing entranceway with colors like a rusted rainbow? Didn’t it seem as if some great catastrophe had struck, leaving only lifeless matter to molder in silent anonymity? And were you sad to see a place of former gaiety lying in its grave? Did you attempt to revive it in your imagination, start up the dead machinery, and fill the midway once again with fresh colors and laughing faces? We have all done this, all attempted to resurrect the defunct. And this is precisely where we have separated ourselves from the law and the truth of the Creator. Were we in harmony with Him, our gaze would fall upon a thriving scene and perceive nothing there but ruins and the ghosts of puppets. These, ladies and gentlemen, are what delight His heart. This much He has confided to me.