Foundations of Fear

by David G. Hartwell

  Unless I killed Father first. He wouldn’t mind, not really, not if he was drunk enough and I put two or three Librium in his beer so he wouldn’t feel anything. He probably would’ve killed himself a long time ago, if he’d been able to and if his mother hadn’t raised him a Catholic. I’d heard him tell Mother that a lot of times when he wanted her to really know how horrible she made him feel.

  And then the duck would go back to being just a log again and I could hide it away until I was fifteen or sixteen before I used it to get Mother. Nobody’d ever guess what it was if I kept it hidden someplace dark.

  Only what if when the other police came all they found were my footprints and they took the log in to examine it because maybe they found blood on it? If they didn’t figure out what it really was they might blame me and then be sure it was me when I got Mother later, and if they did figure out what it was they wouldn’t blame me but I wouldn’t be able to use it again. And all they’d have to do was pick it up and they’d know it was too heavy to be a real log.

  But what if they never found his body, he just disappeared, like those ducks that my duck pulled under out in the lake?

  What did it do with their bodies? Why hadn’t I ever found even a feather with a piece of skin attached to it?

  The thing that came out of my duck’s stomach looked like some sort of cross between a drill and a meatgrinder. Maybe it ground up their bodies so small there weren’t any pieces left.

  He wouldn’t feel anything if there was enough Librium in his beer and he drank enough beer. Or if he did it wouldn’t be much, not much worse than it was like for him every day just to be alive anyway.

  And with him gone Mother wouldn’t be angry with me all the time, wouldn’t always be finding something else for me to do around the house so she could go get away from him. She might even go back to being more like she was before, the way he told me she’d been when she married him.

  And if she didn’t, I’d still have the duck. But I had to find out what happened to the bodies of the ducks my duck pulled under when it killed them.

  Father was watching a football game turned up loud. I went into the living room, refilled his beer bottle.

  The duck was still back in the shed. I went into the bathroom and checked. It was in the corner of the house, with big windows on each side and a skylight Father’d put in when he first bought the house. There’d be bright sunlight in it for the rest of the afternoon.

  I opened the windows as wide as possible, so the glass wouldn’t screen out any of the sunlight in case that made a difference like it did when you wanted to get a tan, then got the sack out of the shed and dumped the log out of it into the bathtub. It was a big, big bathtub, all long and deep, made out of that white stuff they use for sinks and bathtubs and toilet bowls. The only metal in it was the faucet and the drain plug.

  Maybe forty-five minutes later the duck was floating at the far end of the tub. It didn’t seem bothered at all by the walls around it. Maybe they were pushing the same on it from all four sides so it didn’t have to try to go anywhere else.

  I put the headless goose in the microwave until it got hot, then tossed it in the tub. I used the curtain hook to pull the curtain for the skylight, then quick went back out into the hall and closed the bathroom door. I ran out the back door and around and closed the shutters for both windows, not quite all the way because I didn’t want the duck to think it was nighttime, but enough so there wasn’t very much light coming in.

  And my duck dipped its bill in the water like it was taking a drink, then dived down under the goose, grabbed it in its meathook-claws and used its meatgrinder drill to rip it into tiny, tiny pieces. It took about five minutes, and then the duck left what was left of the goose on the bottom of the tub like some sort of mud and went back to floating at the other end.

  I opened the shutters wide to let the sun in, then got the hoe so I could hold the metal between me and the duck, even though I didn’t think it would attack me with the sun shining on it. I went back in the bathroom and pulled back the skylight curtain with the curtain hook, then kept the duck at the far end of the tub with the hoe while I pulled the bathtub plug.

  What was left of the goose drained out of the tub with the water, all except a few small fragments of bone. And when I picked them up they weren’t at all hard and brittle like they should’ve been, they were all sort of soft and rubbery, like pieces of cauliflower. So the duck had to have something, some kind of poison or acid it used, to make sure that even the little pieces that were left dissolved.

  But if it could do that I didn’t know why it left the headless ducks floating on the surface of the water every night. Unless it was James Patrick Dubic’s way of making sure that when he got out of jail he could come back to the park and watch his robot duck killing ducks for him even if what they’d done to him made it so he couldn’t touch the ducks to kill them himself.

  I ran the water down the drain for a few minutes. It didn’t seem to be stopped up.

  I went back into the living room. Father was still watching his football game. His bottle was empty. I emptied his urine bag, refilled the bottle with beer, added four Librium. He was still half-awake when he finished the bottle, though he was passing out fast, so I gave him three more Librium by telling them they were vitamins he was supposed to take. He was too groggy to wonder why I wanted him to take them.

  I went back to the bathroom and filled the tub two-thirds full of water. With him in it it would be all the way full. Then I pushed his wheelchair into the bathroom and got him out of it into the tub the way I always did.

  The duck stayed down at the other end of the tub, away from him.

  I pulled the skylight curtains closed, went outside and shut the shutters. Not all the way, just enough to cut down the light like it was a cloudy day. I didn’t look, just walked around the yard looking up at the sky, out at the fences, over them to the neighbors houses, anywhere but at the bathroom windows.

  Then I closed the shutters completely but I still didn’t look in through them. I went back inside the house, turned off the television, turned it back on, walked around, finally opened the bathroom door and turned on the light so I could see what had happened.

  The bottom of the tub was covered with red-brown mud. The log was half-buried in it.

  I pulled the plug, watched the sludge drain out of the tub. I kept the water running a lot longer to make sure the drain wasn’t going to get plugged up, then pushed the log under the running water so I could clean the last of the sludge off it. When it was clean I picked it up and put it in the sack again, then took the sack and hid it out under the floorboards of the shed.

  I poured some Draino down the hole to make sure nothing got clogged up and washed the tub with cleanser, then put the wheelchair and the urine bottle and all of Father’s clothes back in the living room and turned the TV on. There was another football game going, a replay of some sort of championship from a few years back.

  I called up Beth and asked her if I could come over and go swimming with her for a while. She said yes. We swam for a while and then I said maybe it would be a good idea it we went back down to my house, I had some money back there and we could buy some ice cream or maybe go get some hamburgers at McDonalds, and anyway I still owed her for that time she’d bought me milk and given me half her sandwich.

  So we rode our bikes back down to my house and when we found Father gone I called Sergeant Crowder and told him I was scared, Father was gone but his wheelchair was still there and I didn’t know what had happened to him, whether they’d taken him to the hospital or somebody’d kidnapped him or what.

  He said he’d send somebody right over.

  Julie: 1991

  That was three years ago. I’m fourteen now. A year after Father disappeared Mother married Don but even without Father to take care of she was as bad as ever, maybe even worse, and he divorced her less than a year later. The duck’s still back under the shed and it still works—I took it out to c
heck it a little over a week ago, when Mother was gone for a weekend somewhere, and it turned from a log back into a duck in the morning, and then back from a duck into a log when it got dark out. So I can use it on Mother whenever I want. It would be better if I could wait two years but I don’t think I can stand it that much longer. It might be better just to have them put me in a foster home for a year or two.

  And anyway, I don’t know if I can wait any longer at all, now. Three weeks ago Judge Hapgood disappeared and a week ago Thom Homart, the one that wrote those articles in the RAG that Dubic’s lawyers sued them for, also disappeared. And The Forbidden City—the Chinese restaurant that changed their name from The Ivory Pagoda after they were convicted of buying sea gulls and cats from Dubic ten years ago—burned down and its owner died in the fire just last week.

  I’ve been going down to the lake to feed the ducks almost every day now since Father disappeared. It’s not so much that I’ve learned to like them or anything, though I guess I like them a lot better than I used to, but just that I wanted to be there watching in case another robot duck like my mallard ever appeared.

  There’s another one there now. A mallard, but a female this time, brown with black speckle-marks with bright blue on its sides—what the bird books call its mirror or speculum—and an orange and brown bill. It’s been there almost a month. And every day now, for just a little over a month and a half, a skinny middle-aged man comes down to sit on a bench and watch the ducks. He comes down early in the morning and he never leaves until dark and he never, never feeds the ducks or swans or pigeons, even though he spends all day watching them.

  Mother tells me that James Patrick Dubic was released from prison three months ago. So that has to be him, down there watching his robot killing the ducks he can’t kill for himself anymore. I don’t know what he thinks happened to his other robot.

  And while he’s sitting there on his bench watching the ducks, or maybe at night after he drives away, he’s killing all the people who helped put him in jail. I don’t know how, maybe with a robot person or taxicab or something else that works just like the ducks.

  Mother’s one of those people, so if he gets to her before I do he’ll save me a lot of trouble and I won’t have to worry about getting caught. And in a way it’s a good thing to know that if I don’t get her he’ll get her for me for sure.

  But the thing is, I’m another one of the people who helped put him in jail. Maybe even the main person, except for Mother, especially if you believe what all the newspaper articles they wrote about me said. And from the way the skinny man watches me sometimes when I’m feeding the ducks I’m sure he knows who I am and that he’s watching me.

  But he’s too smart to try to get us all at the same time, at least not unless he’s figured out enough different ways to kill us all so that nobody’ll see the connection between all our deaths. So he’s probably going to want to wait a while before he tries to get me or Mother. And I’ve still got his duck, and I’ve spent years now thinking about the best ways to use it.

  So I think what I’m going to do is put a lot of the Librium I had after Father disappeared in Mother’s whisky glass tonight if she’s alone, or tomorrow night or the night after if she’s not, so that she’ll still be knocked out the next morning when it’s light enough out for me to get her into the bathtub with the duck. Only this time it won’t be like Father and I want to watch it all happen.

  And then that same evening when the sun’s going down and before Dubic has a chance to find out about Mother I’ll take the duck down to the park and watch it jump on him and cut his head off with its scissors.

  I’ve got it all figured out and I’m not really scared at all.

  This time it’s going to be fun.

  Thomas Ligotti

  Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story

  Thomas Ligotti is the most startling and talented horror writer to emerge in recent years. Exclusively a short story writer thus far in his career, he published all of his early stories in semiprofessional and small press genre magazines for several years, remaining obscure. An American writer, his first trade collection of stories, Songs of a Dead Dreamer (1990), was published in England, the result of a gradually growing reputation among the avid genre readers. His second collection, Grimscribe (1991), was published at the end of 1991. Perhaps the most startling thing about his work, aside from the extraordinary stylistic sophistication (one is reminded of the polished prose and effects of Robert Aickman’s strange stories), is his devotion to horror, which is positively Lovecraftian—as is his bent for theory and knowledge of the history of the literature. This present piece selected is his masterpiece to date. “Few other writers,” says Ramsey Campbell, “could conceive a horror story in the form of notes on the writing of the genre, and I can’t think of any other writer who could have brought it off.” It is no less than an instructional essay on the writing of horror, transformed by stylistic magic and artful construction into a powerful work of fiction. Writing students I have taught have found it a revelation. It is included for your delight and instruction.

  For much too long I have been promising to formulate my views on the writing of supernatural horror tales. Until now I just haven’t had the time. Why not? I was too busy churning out the leetle darlings. But many people, for whatever reasons, would like to be writers of horror tales, I know this. Fortunately, the present moment is a convenient one for me to share my knowledge and experience regarding this special literary vocation. Well, I guess I’m ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s get it over with.

  The way I plan to proceed is quite simple. First, I’m going to sketch out the basic plot, characters, and various other features of a short horror story. Next, I will offer suggestions on how these raw elements may be treated in a few of the major styles which horror writers have exploited over the years. Each style is different and has its own little tricks. This approach will serve as an aid in deciding which style is the right one and for whom. And if all goes well, the novitiate teller of terror tales will be saved much time and agony discovering such things for himself. We’ll pause at certain spots along the way to examine specific details, make highly biased evaluations, submit general commentary on the philosophy of horror fiction, and so forth.

  At this point it’s only fair to state that the following sample story, or rather its rough outline form, is not one that appears in the published works of Gerald K. Riggers, nor will it ever appear. Frankly, for reasons we’ll explore a little later, I just couldn’t find a way to tell this one that really satisfied me. Such things happen. (Perhaps farther down the line we’ll analyze these extreme cases of irreparable failure, perhaps not.) Nevertheless the unfinished state of this story does not preclude using it as a perfectly fit display model to demonstrate how horror writers do what they do. Good. Here it is, then, as told in my own words. A couple-three paragraphs, at most.

  The Story

  A thirtyish but still quite youthful man, let’s name him Nathan, has a date with a girl whom he deeply wishes to impress. Toward this end, a minor role is to be played by an impressive new pair of trousers he intends to find and purchase. A few obstacles materialize along the way, petty but frustrating bad luck, before he finally manages to secure the exact trousers he needs and at an extremely fair price. They are exceptional in their tailoring, this is quite plain. So far, so good. Profoundly good, to be sure, since Nathan intensely believes that one’s personal possessions should themselves possess a certain substance, a certain quality. For example, Nathan’s winter overcoat is the same one his father wore for thirty winters; Nathan’s wristwatch is the same one his grandfather wore going on four decades, in all seasons. For Nathan, peculiar essences inhere in certain items of apparel, not to mention certain other articles small and large, certain happenings in time and space, certain people, and certain notions. In Nathan’s view, yes, every facet of one’s life should shine with these essences which alone make things really real. What are they? Nathan, over a period of t
ime, has narrowed the essential elements down to three: something magic, something timeless, something profound. Though the world around him is for the most part lacking in these special ingredients, he perceives his own life to contain them in fluctuating but usually acceptable quantities. His new trousers certainly do; and Nathan hopes, for the first time in his life, that a future romance—to be conducted with one Lorna McFickel—will too.

  So far, so good. Luckwise. Until the night of Nathan’s first date. Miss McFickel resides in a respectable suburb but, in relation to where Nathan lives, she is clear across one of the most dangerous sectors of the city. No problem: Nathan’s ten-year-old car is in mint condition, top form. If he just keeps the doors locked and the windows rolled up, everything will be fine. Worst luck, broken bottles on a broken street, and a flat tire. Nathan curbs the car. He takes off his grandfather’s watch and locks it in the glove compartment; he takes off his father’s overcoat, folds it up neatly, and snuggles it into the shadows beneath the dashboard. As far as the trousers are concerned, he would simply have to exercise great care while attempting to change his flat tire in record time, and in a part of town known as Hope’s Back Door. With any luck, the trousers would retain their triple traits of magicality, timelessness, and profundity. Now, all the while Nathan is fixing the tire, his legs feel stranger and stranger. He could have attributed this to the physical labor he was performing in a pair of trousers not exactly designed for such abuse, but he would have just been fooling himself. For Nathan remembers his legs feeling strange, though less noticeably so, when he first tried on the trousers at home. Strange how? Strange as in a little stiff, and even then some. A little funny. Nonsense, he’s just nervous about his date with lovely Lorna McFickel.