“Sorry mister!” The dark haired kid yelled back as he ran after his friends.
Finally realising what had happened, I spun around to face the store with such speed that my neck cringed from whiplash. Pain snapped me out of my trance, and I heard two rings echo from the church down the street. My watch informed me that the time was indeed noon, yet the first ten rings seemed to have gone missing. Perhaps I didn’t hear them in the confusion, but the only way I could have missed those deafening echoes is if the bell had failed to ring. When I looked up, the pawn shop stood there as it always had. No store, no kids behind me, and just a closed music box sitting in my hand.
Worried, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should leave the box alone. Sitting at home that evening with the window cracked open just enough to let fresh air in, but keep the cold mostly at bay, I handled it carefully and examined it closely. The wood looked like oak, the hinges brass. It was big enough to have some sort of mechanism inside. Intricately carved musical notes and clefs adorned every inch of the sides. Again, I opened the lid with ease. It betrayed no signs of being jammed. As per usual, the vibration began though it wasn’t the same as last time. Though I had to strain myself, I could hear a noise this time. At least, that’s the only way to describe it. I wasn’t sure if I was hearing it with my ears, or somehow my other senses, but I could have sworn it was music. Inexplicably, it wasn’t coming from the box, I sensed it coming from outside.
Pushing the window open I dipped my head into the cold. The music was louder, and it was definitely coming from somewhere outside but I couldn’t see where. It was a soft sound, but there was something wrong with it. How I even knew it was music, I wasn’t sure. Determined to find the source I peeked around and saw swings where the church was supposed to be. The kids from before, ran around in circles. Frightened, I quickly drew my head back inside and shut the window, closing the box in the process. What the hell? Disbelieving my own eyes (and ears) I tried to rationalize it to myself, though I was certain of what I saw. It was clearly the swing set from when I was a kid. But of course that’s stupid. Yet, if the music box was somehow responsible, could it do it again? My temptation to open it up again was kept at bay by the thought of that music. It was off, I knew it was. But I couldn’t figure out how.
It’s no surprise I didn’t get any sleep. My alarm clock flashed 5:09 in bright red. Dawn. I tried to think of every explanation imaginable but nothing realistic came to me. Could I really go back and see myself as a child? If so, why shouldn’t I? Who cares about that music? I took the box outside with me in order to find the source of the music. If it wasn’t coming from the box, it had to be coming from somewhere, and I was convinced that finding the source would bring me answers. The hinges on the box had remained unjammed all night. They didn’t change once. I knew this because instead of sleeping, I had spent the time staring at them.
Once outside, next to the park, I took the utmost caution in opening the box. Trepidation and unease consumed me.
Once more the box opened, and once more the church was gone with the snow along with it. The vibration coming from the mechanism was stronger than ever. Everything looked as beautiful as I remembered it from my youth. Before I could explore, the music crept up from behind me. I looked around and saw the dense woods looming over the hills again. That was it. That’s where the music was coming from. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact source but I could definitely hear it (or sense it). Much louder than it was yesterday, it was also clearer that there really was something wrong with it. Those sounds were not only coming from the woods, but from inside me as well. Just like the strange compulsion I felt before, I felt the need to leave the box open. The remaining sane part of me knew that was a bad idea. Though due to an inkling that the boy I saw yesterday resembled myself far too much than was natural, I needed to see him again. Leaving the box open would probably grant me that, yet the horrid music would continue.
Before I could do anything about it, a whisper joined the chorus. It wasn’t a whisper speaking in any language I could understand, but I made out sounds that resembled words. No, not a whisper, more of a murmur. Together with the music, the strange susurrus dared me to keep staring into the woods.
I couldn’t help but abide, unable to break my gaze into the void that was developing between the trees. As the darkness blackened, the susurrus got louder and louder, and that strange sensation of feeling the music from somewhere inside me began to get worse. Even though I could hear the kids laughing behind me, and wanted desperately to go and join them, I couldn’t break away from the compulsion to keep staring at the hills.
Trying to make a decision, still transfixed by the woods, I hoped to get a look at the source of this noise, but all I saw was the darkness within the trees. I stared in confusion as the vibrations and music slowly increased. Snap. Somehow my hands managed to close the box on their own accord. With relief I rushed back into the house not daring to look back towards the hills, fearing I might see that void once more. Slamming the door shut, I reclined on the couch, throwing the box aside with fear. It slid across the table coming to a halt near the edge. What in god’s name just happened? I didn’t just see myself as a kid did I? And what about those woods? They were too dark. Could I be certain that it was a void I saw developing in there somewhere?
Lost in thought, I drifted off to sleep without noticing. My lack of rest the previous night finally caught up with me. Memories mixed with thoughts of the insanity that just transpired mixed into a blur. I must have been in a trance like sleep for I didn’t wake up till the following day when the church bells began to knell once more, signifying noon.
Hardly daring to look at the box as I awoke, a fear arose that it might have moved on its own, but to my relief it sat at the edge of the table like it did the day before. Finally, I welcomed clarity like an old friend. I knew exactly what to do. In the same dirty clothes as yesterday I stood up to light the fireplace. The cold had crept inside overnight and it was almost unbearable. Fresh snow had managed to pile up along the window sills outside. While there was no noise, no murmuring, no anything, I could think straight. I needed to get rid of it and take it back to where I found it. That’s where all my troubles started. The old man can deal with it. Hell, the bastard probably knew what I was getting into.
The fire started easily enough and the heat began its work immediately. That clarity of thought was re-enforced by this comforting warmth. Apprehensive, I stood up and looked out the foggy window towards the hills. Again, I feared that I might see that void, just as I had feared the box might have moved itself. Thankfully my worries were unfounded, and the sparse trees littered patches of the hills here and there once more.
I knew taking the box back would mean I’d never see the past again, (it was probably a hallucination anyway I reasoned) but it’s a sacrifice I’d happily make in order to never have to feel that noise inside me again. There was nothing else for it. No matter how badly I wanted to open it one final time, I couldn’t do it. “Come on, just for a few seconds won’t hurt anyone” I justified it to myself. No. I knew better. The compulsion wouldn’t get a hold of me this time.
I picked up the box and without even bothering to put on a coat, grabbed the door handle. This had to be done fast. The sooner I took it back, the better. With my hand resting on the handle, I hesitated.
Pausing for a moment, I realised what an idiot I was. Oh boy, what an absolute idiot! And what if I take the box back? Then what? I’ll leave it there and someone else will come along and pick it up. What if that poor sob manages to actually open it? Will the void come through the woods, and will the murmur get louder again? Will recognizable words begin to eventually form from that strange language? I couldn’t risk that. Frozen, not taking my hand off the handle, I felt the fires warmth from behind. It ignited an encouraging thought. Getting rid of it isn’t enough. It should be destroyed. No, it needed to be destroyed.
As if taunting the compulsion to get a hold of me once more, I spun a
round without thinking, and threw the music box into the fireplace. I couldn’t bear to look. I didn’t want to see it burn. The crackling of wood told me all I needed to know.
Relieved and with a desperation for some fresh air, I walked outside without noticing something was wrong. Stepping outside, I was too distracted to hear the faint music drifting from over the hills. Why didn’t I think to look back into the fire and make sure the box hadn’t opened as it fell? Not even the lack of snow outside clicked. It wasn’t until I heard the buzzing noise coming from the gate that a realization dawned on me. A single wasp flew out of the keyhole and buzzed off towards the playground across the street. I didn’t even feel my face twist into a horrible frown. Now I could hear the music, and I could hear words coming from over hills as clear as day. They definitely weren’t any normal language, but I knew what they were saying. I knew there was no point in going back inside to fish the music box out of the fire.
I was stupid enough to let it open, and now it was gone. There was no closing it now. I don’t think I would have been able to do it anyway. Not after hearing, no… feeling that voice. I couldn’t even tell if I stood there for minutes, or if hours went by. Hell it might have been days, but I wasn’t up to comprehending anything like that. It didn’t matter anymore.
Eventually, I looked around, not because I wanted to but because I needed to. There were those damned hills. But the void… the void was closer. And the louder the susurrus got, the closer the void got. And I knew.
I knew there was nothing I could do.
Having previously written horror film reviews for Australian genre/cult website ‘Digital Retribution’ and the Australian media and culture website ‘M-C Reviews’, Victor is hoping to branch out into horror fiction. After talking about and critiquing other peoples work, it is time for him to create and put forward work of his own for others to critique. A life saturated with horror films and horror literature naturally led him to write genre fiction. For contact and comments he can be reached at [email protected] .
Story illustration by Steve Santiago.
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This Inscrutable Light: A Response to Thomas Ligotti’s “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race”
by Brandon H. Bell
Everyone who reads this magazine probably knows who Thomas Ligotti is, and if you haven’t read his book The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (a non-fiction work), you really should. The article below is broken up into 8 simple (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) titled sections that explore Ligotti’s assertions in TCATHR, providing enough background for readers who have not read TCATHR. The thrust of the article is one of appreciation for Ligotti’s genius while challenging his conclusions via what is intended to be both a provocative and unexpected method of contrasting his philosophical pessimism with that of religious fundamentalism, positing an optimistic atheistic counter to Ligotti’s position. The secular article uses this contrast along with copious quotes and examinations of the concepts covered, and holds surprising positive content for non-dogmatic religious believers and nonbelievers alike.
THIS INSCRUTABLE LIGHT
“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?” –Soren Kierkegaard, Fear & Trembling
A Nobody’s Recollection on Supernatural Horror
I first encountered Ligotti in Douglas Winter’s anthology, Prime Evil. The story, Alice’s Last Adventure to my mid-teenage assessment, was Okay. I enjoyed Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity and The Juniper Tree better. Nonetheless, by the time I read Nethescurial in Weird Tales, I’d come across the news that Ligotti was the next big thing in Horror (soon after that, Robert McCammon jumped ship along with a bunch of folks playing Nietzsche to the genre.)
I picked up Songs of a Dead Dreamer and understood the hubbub. Even as horror was pronounced dead, here arrived a writer working very much in the weird tradition of Poe and Lovecraft, who yet refrained (most of the time) from bogging down in a morass of words or simply regurgitating tales of the type of monsters that now bear the label Lovecraftian. Ligotti wrote fictional lectures on Horror as horror stories. He wrote from a conceptual space, informed by a jaundiced perception of the universe. Not satisfied with parroting a milieu or method, Ligotti posited a cosmos not merely indifferent and filled with things vast and harmful, but one pernicious in its malignancy. His was a world filled with bad, be it sentient, instinctual, or the simple state of things, that tended to both awareness of and animosity toward humankind.
This is better, my younger self concluded.
By the time I finished Grimscribe, I came to a realization about Ligotti’s work: though often brilliant, sometimes florid, it existed in THAT universe. The tone didn’t vary. It addled the brain when consumed like I would writer’s work back then: reading everything they’d written to the exclusion of all else. The effect could be intoxicating.
I’m not interested in carrying the topic of Ligotti’s fiction much further. It’s good stuff, and if you haven’t read it you should. Instead it is his recent nonfiction book, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, that has me excited. I’d like to do something more audacious than I have any right to do, and offer an answer to Ligotti.
I recommend reading The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (TCATHR). The reader should be warned about this real-life King In Yellow: a work of such unremitting bleakness that will lay ruin to all that you hold dear… If you are not prepared to answer Ligotti.
When I first heard about TCATHR I thought, based on my previous reading, that I knew the sort of claims he’d make. I also suspected that mine was an uncommon philosophical position from which to call Ligotti. Call as in, I’ll meet your fiver and raise you ‘all in.’ It is all in, too, because Ligotti’s charge is a simple one.
What worth is life?
Mr. Ligotti’s answer is: nothing. In fact, life is not worth living.
Once I read the book, I took a deep breath and considered his positions. I noted a lack of actual responses to the charges Ligotti makes of existence. In looking through the reviews of the book, all that I found fell into three basic positions:
1. Ligotti’s got it right! I ‘get it’ too!
2. Ug, I read this? and
3. Waste of time except as a key for understanding his work.
No one I’ve noted has offered a considered answer to Ligott’s claims. I’d like to do that here, and I don’t need a whole book to do it. Like his fiction, TCATHR soars into brilliance only to get bogged down in the nihilism it seeks to espouse. Toward the end of the book, in all caps, the author, I guess you might say ‘exclaims,’ “EVERYTHING IN EXISTENCE IS MALIGNANTLY USELESS!”
Whoa there, kimosabe.
I will summarize Ligotti’s claims, then outline different ways we may view existence. Last we’ll look at how we’d answer Ligotti from those alternate positions and I’ll conclude with what I feel is the most robust answer.
This is perhaps The Question in one’s existence. If the reader carries this into conversation elsewhere, I’ll consider this a success. In particular, I’d like to offer a rationale for those folks who find themselves unable to latch on to the ‘Revealed Truth exists’ position I’ll describe below, but remain of the mindset that life is worth living.
Oh, and a few notes on my approach. Like Ligotti, I’m no philosopher, and while I’m happy to draw from those sources, I don’t claim to use my terms with the rigor expected of a philosopher. Due to the nature of some of Ligotti’s claims, I address him on a level I would typically consider off-limits. This is not an attack on the man, but rather an argument based on facts at hand and the position he takes. My belief is that Ligotti is a sentient being who yearns for happiness and wishes not to suffer. I fear one day I will pick up the paper and find he made good on his pron
ouncement about the value of life. That would be a tragedy. Ligotti speculates that pessimism may be chemically ordained: something one may not overcome. It is also conceivable that pessimism is a coping mechanism like any other belief system, and shouldn’t be overcome.
That acknowledged, let’s begin.
The Truth Positions
Position One: There is no revealed truth. Whatever the nature of existence, no one is talking, there may not be anyone to talk, and it is up to us to determine a functional definition of truth… or not. That too is up to us.
Position Two: There is a Revealed Truth. All questions are answered and there is no ambiguity, or what little their might be are matters of degrees/ denominational choices. One could reject the Revealed Truth but one would be wrong.
Position Three: There is Truth but it is not revealed. There is no way we can be certain to know this Truth. Our conclusions are inferences only. There are reasons we infer this Truth that remains unrevealed.
Position Four: Truth exists but there is no Revelation per se; it is revealed via experience. Some process or set of processes or practices lead to an understanding of truth. Truth, in this understanding, is not a belief, but an experience or the results of the fore-mentioned process/practice.
Ancillary to the Four Positions: I decide the Truth (or lack thereof), and so do you.
Ligotti’s Assertions
- Consciousness is an existential liability, and the source of all horror and suffering, due to the awareness of sickness, suffering, and death.
- Life, the Universe, and everything is MALIGNANTLY USELESS. All caps on that one, every time.
- Through various tactics, we are actors in the biological conspiracy against ourselves, compelling us to believe that life is worth living.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20 Page 24