The Collected Short Fiction

by Thomas Ligotti

  'How long are you going to be in there?' Dalha asked through the door of the lavatory. 'I hope you're not sick, because if you're sick you'll have to go somewhere else.'

  I called out that there was nothing wrong (quite the opposite) and a moment later emerged from the lavatory. I was about to ask for details of the art performance tape I had just heard, anxious to know about the artist and what it would cost me to own the work entitled The Bungalow House, as well as any similar works that might exist. But the phone began ringing again. Dalha answered it with her customary greeting as I stood by in the back section of the art gallery, which was a dark, though relatively uncluttered space that now put me in mind of the living room of the bungalow house that I had heard described on the tape-recorded dream monologue. The conversation in which Dalha was engaged (another non-arrangement call) seemed interminable, and I was becoming nervously aware how long past my lunch break I had stayed at the storefront art gallery.

  'I'll see you tomorrow,' I said to Dalha, who responded with a look from her emerald eyes while continuing to speak to the other party on the telephone. And she was smiling at me, like muted laughter, I remember thinking as I passed through the curtained doorway into the front section of the art gallery. I glanced at the tape recorder standing on the plastic table but decided against taking the audiocassette back to the library (and afterward home with me). It would be there when I visited on my lunch break the following day. Hardly anyone ever bought anything out of the front section of Dalha's art gallery.

  For the rest of the day—both at the library and at my home—I thought about the bungalow house tape. Especially while riding the bus home from the library, I thought of the images and concepts described on the tape, as well as the voice that described them and the phrases it used throughout the dream monologue on the bungalow house. Much of my commute from my home to the library, and back home again, took me past numerous streets lined from end to end with desolate-looking houses, any of which might have been the inspiration for the bungalow house audiotape. I say that these streets were lined from 'end to end' with such houses, even though the bus never turned down any of them, and I therefore never actually viewed even a single street from 'end to end.' In fact, as I looked through the window next to my seat on the bus—on either side of the bus I always sat in the window seat, never in the aisle seat—the streets I saw appeared endless, vanishing from my sight toward an infinity of old houses, many of them derelict houses and a great many of them being dwarfish and desolate-looking houses of the bungalow type.

  The tape-recorded dream monologue, as I recalled it that day while riding home on the bus and staring out the window, described several features of the infested bungalow house—the dusty window blinds through which the moonlight shone, the lamps with all their lightbulb sockets empty, the threadbare carpet, and the dead or barely living vermin that littered the carpet. Thus, I was afforded an interior view of the bungalow house by the voice on the tape, not a view from the exterior. Conversely, the houses I gazed upon with such intensity as I rode the bus to and from the library were seen by me only from an exterior perspective, their interiors being visible solely in my imagination. Of course my sense of these interiors, being entirely an imaginative projection, was highly vague, lacking the precise physical layout provided by the bungalow house audiotape. Similarly, the dreams I often had of these houses were highly vague. Yet the sensations and the mental state created by my imaginative projections into and my dreams of these houses perfectly corresponded to those I had experienced at Dalha's art gallery when I listened to the tape entitled The Bungalow House. That feeling of being in a trance while occupying, all alone, the most bleak and pathetic surroundings of an old bungalow house was communicated to me in the most powerful way by the voice on the tape, which described a silent and secluded world where one existed in a state of abject hypnosis. While sitting on the floor of the art gallery listening to the voice as it spoke through those enormous headphones, I had the sense that I was not simply hearing the words of that dream monologue but also reading them. What I mean is that whenever I have the occasion to read words on a page, any words on any page, the voice that I hear saying these words in my head is always recognizable in some way as my own, even though the words are those of another. Perhaps it is even more accurate to say that whenever I read words on a page, the voice in my head is my own voice as it becomes merged (or lost) within the words that I am reading. Conversely, when I have the occasion to write words on a page, even a simple note or memo at the library, the voice that I hear dictating these words does not sound like my own—until, of course, I read the words back to myself, at which time everything is all right again. The bungalow house tape was the most dramatic example of this phenomenon I had ever known. Despite the poor overall quality of the recording, the distorted voice reading this dream monologue became merged (or lost) within my own perfectly clear voice in my head, even though I was listening to its words over a pair of enormous headphones and not reading the words on a page. As I rode the bus home from the library, observing street after street of houses so reminiscent of the one described on the tape-recorded dream monologue, I regretted not having acquired this artwork on the spot or at least discovered more about it from Dalha, who had been occupied with what seemed an unusual number of telephone calls that afternoon.

  The following day at the library I was anxious for lunchtime to arrive so that I could get over to the art gallery and find out everything I possibly could about the bungalow house tape, as well as discuss terms for its acquisition. Entering the art gallery, I immediately looked toward the corner where the tape recorder had been set on the small plastic table the day before. For some reason I was relieved to find the exhibit still in place, as if any artwork in that gallery could possibly have come and gone in a single day.

  I walked over to the exhibit with the purpose of verifying that everything I had seen (and heard) the previous day was exactly as I remembered it. I checked that the audiocassette was still inside the recording machine and picked up the little business card on which the title of the exhibit was given, along with instructions for properly operating the tape-recorded artwork. It was then that I realized that this was a different card from the first one. Printed on this card was the title of a new artwork, which was called The Derelict Factory with a Dirt Floor and Voices.

  While I was very excited to find a new work by this artist, I also felt intense apprehension at the absence of the bungalow house dream monologue, which I had planned to purchase with some extra money I brought with me to the art gallery that day. Just at that moment in which I experienced the dual sensations of excitement and apprehension, Dalha emerged from behind the curtain separating the back and front sections of the art gallery. I had intended to be thoroughly blasé in negotiating the purchase of the bungalow house artwork, but Dalha caught me off-guard in a state of disoriented conflict.

  'What happened to the bungalow house tape that was here yesterday?' I asked, the tension in my voice betraying desires that were all to her advantage.

  'That's gone now,' she replied in a frigid tone as she walked slowly and pointlessly about the gallery, her emerald skirt and scarves dragging along the floor.

  'I don't understand. It was an artwork exhibited on that small plastic table.'

  'Yes,' she agreed.

  'Now, after only a single day on exhibit, it's gone?'

  'Yes, it's gone.'

  'Somebody bought it,' I said, assuming the worst.

  'No,' she said, 'that one was not for sale. It was a performance piece. There was a charge, but you didn't pay.'

  A sickly confusion now became added to the excitement and disappointment already mingling inside me. 'There was no notice of a charge for listening to the dream monologue,' I insisted. 'As far as I knew, as far as anyone could know, it was an item for sale like everything else in this place.'

  'The dream monologue, as you call it, was an exclusive piece. The charge was on the back of the card on
which the title was written, just as the charge is on the back of that card you are holding in your hand.'

  I turned the card to the reverse side, where the words 'twenty-five dollars' were written in the same hand that appeared on all the price tags around the gallery. Speaking in the tones of an outraged customer, I said to Dalha, 'You wrote the price only on this card. There was nothing written on the bungalow house card.' But even as I said these words I lacked the conviction that they were true. In any case, I knew that if I wanted to hear the tape recording about the derelict factory I would have to pay what I owed, or what Dalha claimed I owed, for listening to the bungalow house tape.

  'Here,' I said, removing my wallet from my back pocket, 'ten, twenty, twenty-five dollars for the bungalow house, and another twenty-five for listening to the tape now in the machine.'

  Dalha stepped forward, took the fifty dollars I held out to her, and in her coldest voice said, 'This only covers yesterday's tape about the bungalow house, which was clearly priced at fifty dollars. You must still pay twenty-five dollars if you wish to listen to the tape today.'

  'But why should the bungalow house tape cost twenty-five dollars more than the tape about the derelict factory?'

  'That is simply because this is a less ambitious work than the one dealing with the bungalow house.'

  In fact the tape recording entitled The Derelict Factory with a Dirt Floor and Voices was of shorter duration than The Bungalow House (Plus Silence), but I found it no less wonderful in picturing the same 'infinite terror and dreariness.' For approximately fifteen minutes (on my lunch break) I embraced the degraded beauty of the derelict factory—a narrow ruin that stood isolated upon a vast plain, its broken windows allowing only the most meager haze of moonlight to shine across its floor of hard-packed dirt where dead machinery lay buried in a grave of shadows and languished in the echoes of hollow, senseless voices. How utterly desolate, yet all the same wonderfully comforting, was the voice that communicated its message to me through the medium of a tape recording. To think that another person shared my love for the icy bleakness of things. The satisfaction I felt at hearing that monotonal and somewhat distorted voice speaking so intimately of scenes and sensations that perfectly echoed certain aspects of my own deepest nature—this was an experience that even then, as I sat on the floor of Dalha's art gallery listening to the tape through enormous headphones, might have been heartbreaking. But I wanted to believe that the artist who created these dream monologues about the bungalow house and the derelict factory had not set out to break my heart or anyone's heart. I wanted to believe that this artist had escaped the dreams and demons of all sentiment in order to explore the foul and crummy delights of a universe where everything had been reduced to three stark principles: first, that there was nowhere for you to go; second, that there was nothing for you to do; and third, that there was no one for you to know. Of course I knew that this view was an illusion like any other, but it was also one that had sustained me so long and so well—as long and as well as any other illusion and perhaps longer, perhaps better.

  'Dalha,' I said when I had finished listening to the tape recording, 'I want you to tell me what you know about the artist who made these dream monologues. He doesn't even sign his works.'

  From across the front section of the art gallery Dalha spoke to me in a strange, somewhat flustered voice. 'Well, why should you be surprised that he doesn't sign his name to his works—that's how artists are these days. All over the place they are signing their works only with some idiotic symbol or a piece of chewing gum or just leaving them unsigned altogether. Why should you care what his name is? Why should I?'

  'Because,' I answered, 'perhaps I can persuade him to allow me to buy his works instead of sitting on the floor of your art gallery and renting these performances on my lunch break.'

  'So you want to cut me out entirely,' Dalha shouted back in her old voice. 'I am his dealer, I tell you, and anything he has to sell you will buy through me.'

  'I don't know why you're getting so upset,' I said, standing up from the floor. 'I'm willing to give you a percentage. All I ask is that you arrange something between myself and the artist.'

  Dalha sat down in a chair next to the curtained doorway separating the front and back sections of the art gallery. She pulled her emerald shawl around herself and said, 'Even if I wished to arrange something I could not do it. I have no idea what his name is myself. A few nights ago he walked up to me on the street while I was waiting for a cab to take me home.'

  'What does he look like?' I had to ask at that moment.

  'It was late at night and I was drunk,' Dalha replied, somehow evasively it seemed to me.

  'Was he a younger man, an older man?'

  'An older man, yes. Not very tall, with bushy white hair like a professor of some kind. And he said that he wanted to have an artwork of his delivered to my gallery. I explained to him my usual terms as best I could, since I was so drunk. He agreed and then walked off down the street. And that's not the best part of town to be walking around all by yourself. Well, the next day a package arrived with the tape-recording machine and so forth. There were also some instructions which explained that I should destroy each of the audiotapes before I leave the art gallery at the end of the day, and that a new tape would arrive the following day and each day thereafter. No return address is provided on these packages.'

  'And did you destroy the bungalow house tape?' I asked.

  'Of course,' said Dalha with some exasperation, but also with insistence. 'What do I care about some crazy artist's work or how he conducts his career? Besides, he guaranteed I would make some money on the deal, and here I am already with seventy-five dollars.'

  'So why not sell me this dream monologue about the derelict factory? I won't say anything.'

  Dalha was quiet for a moment, and then said, 'He told me that if I didn't destroy the tapes each day he would know about it and that he would do something. I've forgotten exactly what he said, I was so drunk that night.'

  'But how could he know?' I asked, and in reply Dalha just stared at me in silence. 'All right, all right,' I said. 'But I still want you to make an arrangement. You have his money for the bungalow house tape and the tape about the derelict factory. If he's any kind of artist, he'll want to be paid. When he gets in touch with you, that's when you make the arrangement for me. I won't cheat you out of your percentage. I give you my word on that.'

  'Whatever that's worth,' Dalha said bitterly.

  But she did agree that she would try to arrange something between myself and the tape-recording artist. I left the art gallery immediately after these negotiations, before Dalha could have any second thoughts. That afternoon, while I was working in the Language and Literature department of the library, I could think about nothing but the derelict factory that was so enticingly pictured on the new audiotape. The bus that takes me to and from the library each day of the working week always passes such a structure, which stands isolated in the distance just as the artist described it in his dream monologue.

  That night I slept badly, thrashing about in my bed, not quite asleep and not quite awake. At times I had the feeling there was someone else in my bedroom who was talking to me, but of course I could not deal with this perception in any realistic way, since I was half-asleep and half-awake, and thus, for all practical purposes, I was out my mind.

  Around three o'clock in the morning the telephone rang. In the darkness I reached for my eyeglasses, which were on the nightstand next to the telephone, and noted the luminous face of my alarm clock. I cleared my throat and said hello. The voice on the other end was Dalha's.

  'I talked to him,' she said.

  'Where did you talk to him?' I asked. 'On the street?'

  'No, no, not on the street,' she said, giggling a little. I think she must have been drunk. 'He called me on the telephone.'

  'He called you on the telephone?' I repeated, imagining for a moment what it would be like to have the voice of that artist speak to m
e over the telephone and not merely on a recorded audiotape.

  'Yes, he called me on the telephone.'

  'What did he say?'

  'Well, I could tell you if you would stop asking so many questions.'

  'Tell me.'

  'It was only a few minutes ago that he called. He said that he would meet you tomorrow at the library where you work.'

  'You told him about me?' I asked, and then there was a long silence. 'Dalha?' I prompted.

  'I told him that you wanted to buy his tape recordings. That's all.'

  'Then how did he know that I worked at the library?'

  'Ask him yourself. I have no idea. I've done my part.'

  Then Dahla said good-bye and hung up before I could say good-bye back to her.

  After talking to Dalha I found it impossible to sleep anymore that night, even if it was only a state of half-sleeping and half-waking. All I could think about was meeting the artist of the dream monologues. So I got myself ready to go to work, rushing as if I were late, and walked up to the corner of my street to wait for the bus.

  It was very cold as I sat waiting in the bus shelter. There was a sliver of moon high in the blackness above, with several hours remaining before sunrise. Somehow I felt that I was waiting for the bus on the first day of a new school year, since after all the month was September, and I was so filled with both fear and excitement. When the bus finally arrived I saw that there were only a few other early risers headed for downtown. I took one of the back seats and stared out the window, my own face staring back at me in black reflection.