Confronting the nightmare on a daily basis and on a conscious level is just not something people are wont to do as a rule. A small number of us, however, have become devout researchers of all types of nightmares and, perhaps due to some fluke or flaw of character, wish to release our findings in the form of what have become casually known as horror stories. The following observations are drawn from my own studies in this area of human experience.
However frightening nightmares may be, plain old horror is not the entirety of their essence, nor is it that of the horror story. Of course, there must be something horrific about them, whether it is being stalked by someone through dark streets or groping your way through an ever-narrowing tunnel or finding yourself receiving a ghostly visitation as mentioned earlier. Yet the quality of a nightmare lies neither in these nor in any other hypothetical horrors as such. What makes a nightmare nightmarish is the sense that something is happening that should not be. While nightmares are the most convenient reference point for this sense of the impossible, the unthinkable, as something that is actually happening, it is not restricted to our sleeping hours.
To give a relatively common example, we might consider the plot of a traffic accident, an event that is commonly experienced as dreamlike in the beginning, as you find yourself suddenly moving along a track of time quite different from the one you knew before the accident began. You may be traveling along slippery roads and then, without warning, find yourself sliding across several lanes of oncoming traffic. You know in principle that such things can easily happen. They may even have happened to you on a prior occasion. You know that they happen to other people all the time. Nevertheless, this accident was not in your plans, which is why it is called an accident. It seems like a mistake, even if it could be explained by a cause-and-effect confluence of circumstances. It was a mistake because you had an idea of how things were supposed to be that day, as you do every day, and spinning helplessly in your car while others try to avoid a collision with you, perhaps unsuccessfully, was not part of your schedule. One moment you had a firm grip on things; the next moment you are careening toward who knows where. You are not filled with horror, not yet at least, as you spin along the pavement that is slick with rain or snow. At this point, everything is all strangeness. You have been taken to a different place from where you were, and you are no longer in control. Anything could happen now. That is the suspicion that creeps into your thoughts as a nightmare begins. Nothing is safe and nothing is off limits. All of a sudden something was set into motion that changed everything into that which was not meant to be, at least according to your deluded conception of your life and its “meaningful” trajectory. Yet these things happen, as everyone knows. They have always happened and are always happening.
But we isolate the nightmare by calling it imaginary and denying it a place in our real life; we anchor ourselves in a place far away from it, where such “realities” as God and Country rule the wavelengths; we distract ourselves from it by confining our minds to places where it is not; and we sublimate the nightmare by placing it in stories and paintings and other devisings that we may put away at will. If we neglected to do this, we would be living at all times in a world of nightmare… a world that was not meant to be and yet is so. And thus we conspire with ourselves and against ourselves to deny the most obvious facts of the nightmare—death, disease, damage, and derangement. The horror story, by obeying the terms of the nightmare, is a way that, deviously, some people use to think about the unthinkable, to face what we otherwise would not choose to look upon, and, more importantly, to control and give meaning to that which can neither be controlled nor harbors any meaning. It is a perverted mode of defending ourselves from what would demean and destroy us, from what cannot be helped and should never have been—life itself in all its inane grotesquerie. However, for all our efforts to overwrite what has been written, to remake what had been made, to change what cannot be changed, and accept what is unacceptable, we have succeeded only in making a bad situation worse. No matter how many paper monsters we face down, no matter how many nightmares we shake off, the best we can do is open the pages of Poe and recite—with a resigned and sardonic calm, if we can manage it—those words from “The Conqueror Worm” that tell us a story in which there is “much of Madness, and more of Sin And Horror the soul of the plot.”
Variations on a Theme
This section contains alternate versions of Ligotti's works. Ligotti tends towards revising works when reprints take place. The first section of this anthology contains the latest available version of each story—presumably the one Ligotti considers to currently be the 'directors cut'. Earlier versions, including details of sources where possible, are contained here. This section is not complete.
Les Fleurs (1981)
This is the original version taken from Dark Horizons - the 1989 version from Songs Of A Dead Dreamer is available here.
April 17th. Flowers sent out today in the a.m.
May 1st. Today—and I thought it would never happen again—I have met someone about whom, I think, I can be hopeful. Her name is Daisy. She works in a florist shop! The florist shop, I might add, where I quietly paid a visit to gather some sorrowful flowers for Clare, who to the rest of the world is still a missing person. At first, of course, Daisy was politely reserved when I asked about some lilting blossoms for a loved one's memorial. I soon cured her, however, of this unnecessarily detached manner. In my deeply shy and friendly tone of voice I asked about some of the other flowers in the shop, ones having nothing to do with loss, if not everything to do with gain. She was quite glad to take me on a trumped up tour of hyacinths and hibiscuses. I confessed to knowing next to nothing about commercial plants and things, and remarked on her enthusiasm for the study, hoping all the while that at least part of her animation was on account of me. "Oh, I love working with flowers," she said. "I think they're real interesting." Then she asked that did I know there were plants having flowers which opened only at night, and that certain types of violets bloomed only in darkness underground. My inner flow of thoughts and sensations paused briefly. Though I had already sensed she was a girl of special imagination this, I think, was the first overt hint I received of just how special it was. I judged my efforts to know her better would not be wasted, as they have been before. "That's real interesting about those flowers," I said, smiling a hothouse warm smile. There was a pause which I filled in with my name. She then told me hers. "Now what kind of flowers would you like," she asked. I sedately requested an arrangement suitable for the grave of a long late grandmother. Before leaving the shop I told Daisy I might need to stop by again to satisfy some future floral needs. She seemed to have no objection to this. With the vegetation nestled in my arm I songfully walked out of the store. I then proceeded directly to Chapel Gardens cemetary. For a while I sincerely made the effort to find a headstone that might by coincidence display my lost one's name. And any dates would just have to do. I thought she deserved this much at least. As things transpired however, the recipient of my floral memorial had to be someone named Clarence.
May 16th. Daisy visited my apartment for the first time and fell in love with its quaint refurbishments. "I adore well-preserved old places," she said. It seemed to me she really did. I thought she would. She remarked what decorative wonders a few plants, hanging and otherwise, would do for the ancient rooms. She was obviously sensitive to the absence of natural adornments in my bachelor quarters. "Night-blooming cereuses?" I asked, trying not to mean too much by this and give myself away. A mild grin appeared on her face, but it was not an issue I thought I could press at the time, and even now I only delicately press it within these scrapbook pages. She wandered about the apartment some more. I watched her, seeing the place with new eyes. Then suddenly I realised I had regrettably overlooked something. She looked it over. The object was positioned on a low table before a high window and between its voluminous curtains. It seemed so vulgarly prominent to me then, especially since I hadn't intended to ler he
r see anything of that kind so early in our friendship. "What is this?" she asked, her voice expressing a kind of outraged curiosity bordering on plain outrage. "It's just a sculpture. I told you I do things like that. It's not very good. Kinda dumb." She examined the piece more closely. "Watch that," I warned. She let out a tiny, unserious "Ow." "Is it supposed to be a kind of cactus or something?" she inquired. For a moment, a hopeful one on my part, she seemed to express a genuine interest. "It has little teeth," she observed, "on those big tongue things." They do look like tongues; I'd never thought of that. Rather ingenious comparison, considering. I hoped her imagination had found fertile earth and would grow, but instead she next revealed a kind of moribund disgust. "It looks more like some kind of animal than a sculpture of a plant. It's got a velvety kind of fur and looks like it might crawl away." I felt like crawling away myself at that point. I asked her, as a quasi-botanist, if there were not plants resembling birds and other animal life. This was my feeble attempt to exculpate my creation from any charges of unnaturalness. It's strange how you're sometimes forced to take a different point of view through borrowed eyes. Finally I mixed some drinks and we went on to the other things. I put on some music.
Soon afterward, however, the bland harmony of the music was undermined by another unfortunate dissonance. The detective (Briceberg, I think) arrived for an unexpected second interview with me. Fortunately I was able to keep him and his questions out in the hallway the entire time. We reviewed the previous dialogue we'd had. I reiterated to him that Clare was just someone I worked with and with whom I was professionally friendly. It appeared that some of my co-workers, unidentified, suspected that Clare and I were romantically involved. "Office gossip," I countered, knowing she was one girl who knew how to keep certain secrets, even if she could not be trusted with others. She was not much else, though. No, I said, I definitely had no idea where she could have disappeared to. I did manage to subversively hint, however, that I would not be overly surprised if in a sudden flight of neurotic despair she had finally set out for her secret dreamland. I myself had despaired to find within Clare's dark and promisingly moody borders lay a disappointing dreamland of white picket fences and flower-printed curtains. No, I didn't tell that to the detective. Besides, I further argued, it was well known in the office that Clare had begun dating someone approximately seven to ten days (my personal estimation of the span of her disloyalty) before her disappearance. So why bother me? This, I found out, was the reason: he had also been informed, he informed me, of my belonging to a certain offbeat organisation. I replied that there was nothing offbeat in serious philosophical study; furthermore, I was an artist, as he well knew, and as anybody knows, artistic personalities have a perfectly natural tendency toward such things. I thought he would understand if I put it that way. He did. The man appeared satisfied with my every statement. Indeed, I suspect he was predisposed to be satisfied with almost anything I might have said, short of outright confession of the foulest kind of play. "Was that about the girl in your office?" Daisy asked me afterward. "Mm-hm," I noised. I was brooding and silent for a while, hoping she would attribute this to my inward lament for that strange girl at the office and not to the lamentably imperfect evening we'd had. "Maybe I'd better go," she said, and very soon did. There was not much to salvage of the evening anyway. After that I got very drunk on a liqueur tasting of flowers from open fields, or so it seems. I also took this opportunity to re-read a story about some men who visit the white waste wonderlands of the polar regions. I don't expect to dream tonight, having had all I need in my frigidly dreaming wakefulness. Brotherhood of Paradise offbeat indeed!
May 21st. Day came up to the office of Glacy Regan Advertising Agency to meet me for lunch. I introduced her around the department to the few people I get along with, and definitely not to those who spread rumors about me. I showed her my little corner of commercial artistry and what I was working on. "Oh, that's lovely," she said when she spied a picture of a nymph with flowers in her freshly-shampooed hair. "That's really nice." That "nice" remark almost spoiled my day. I asked her to look closely at the flowers mingling freshly in the fresh locks of the nymph. It was barely noticeable that one of the flower stems was growing out of, or perhaps into, the creature's head. Day didn't seem to appreciate the craftiness of my craft very much. And I thought we were making such progress along "offbeat" paths. (Damn that Briceberg!) Perhaps I should wait until we return from out trip before showing her any of my paintings. I want her to be prepared. Everything is all prepared for our vacation, at least; Day finally found someone to take care of the cat living at her flat.
June 10th. Good-bye diary. See you when I get back.
September 1st. I remember, with pleasure and anxiety, a particular episode from Day's an my tropical sojourn. Before too many more estranging weeks have passed, I would like to take the opportunity to record this adventure. I'm not sure whether the circumstances here represent an impasse or a turning point. Perhaps there is some point that I have still to entirely get. As yet I am, not surprisingly, in the dark. Here, nevertheless, is a fragment from our vacation interlude. A Hawaiian paradise; at night. Actually we were just gazing upon the beachside luxuriance from out hotel veranda. Day was benighted by several exotic drinks that wore flowers on their foamy heads. I was in a similar condition to hers. A few moments of heady silence passed, punctuated by an occasional sigh from Day. We heard the flapping of invisible wings whipping the warm air in darkness. We listened closely to the sounds of black orchids growing, even if there were none. "Mmmmm," hummed Day. We were ripe for a whim. I had one, not knowing yet if I could pull it thoroughly off. "Can you smell the mysterious cereus?" I asked, placing one hand on her far shoulder and dramatically passing the other in a horizontal arc before the jungle beyond. "Can you?" I hypnotically repeated. "I can," said a game Day. "But can we find them, Day, and watch them open in the moonlight?" "We can, we can," she chanted giddily. We could. Suddenly the smooth-skinned leaves of the night garden were brushing against our smooth-skinned selves. Day paused to touch a flower that was orange or red but smelled of a deep violet. I encouraged us to press on across the flower-bedded earth. We plunged deeper into the dream garden. Faster, faster, faster the sounds and smells rushed at us. It was easier than I thought. As some point, with almost no effort at all, I successfully managed our full departure from known geography, and our transition from a sub- into a superlunary realm. "Day, Day," I shouted in the initial confusion and excitement. "We're here. I've never shown this to anyone. It's been such a hard secret, Day. I've wanted to tell you for so long, and show you, show you. No, don't speak. Look, look." The thrill, the thrill of seeing this dark paradise with new eyes. With doubled intensity would I now see my world. My world. She was somewhere near me in the darkness. I waited, seeing her a thousand ways in my mind before actually gazing at the real Day. I looked. "What's wrong with the stars, the sky?" was all she said. she was trembling.
At breakfast the next morning I subtly probed her thoughts for impressions and judgements of the night before. She was badly hung over and had only a chaotic recall of this wacky expedition we made the previous night through somebody's backyard. Oh, well.
Since our return I have been working on a painting entitled "Sanctum Obscurum". Though I have done this kind of work many times before I am including in this one elements that I hope will stir Day's memory and precipitate a conscious recollection of not only a very particular night in the islands but of all the subtle and not so subtle hints and suggestions I have put to her in various ways throughout our friendship. I only pray she will understand.
September 14th. Stars of disaster! Earthly and not unearthly asters are all that fill Day's heart with gladness. She is too much a lover of natural flora to be anything else. I know this now. I showed her the painting, and even imagined she anticipated seeing it with some excitement. But I think she was just restless over what kind of fool I would make of myself next. She sat on the sofa, scraping her lower lip with a nervous fo
refinger. Opposite her I let a little cloth drop. She looked up as if there had been a startling noise. I was not wholly satisfied with the painting myself, but this exhibition was designed to serve an extra-aesthetic purpose. I searched her eyes for a reflection of understanding, a ripple of empathetic insight. "Well?" I asked, the necessity of the word tolling doom. Her gaze told me all I needed to know, and the clarity of the message was reminiscent of another girl I knew once. She gave me a second chance, looking at the picture with a heavily theatrical scrutiny. The picture itself? An inner refuge, cozily crowding about the periphery of a central window of leaded glass. The interior beams with a honeyed haze, as of light glowing evenly through a patterned tapestry. Beyond the window too is a sanctuary of sorts, but not of man or terrestrial nature. Outside is an over-opulent kingdom of glittering, velvety jungle-shapes. Their hyper-radiant colours are calmed by the glass, so that this strange radiance contrasts with but does not threaten the chromatic integrity of the orderly world inside. Some stars, coloured from an even more spectral edge of the spectrum, blossom in the high darkness. The outer world glistens in stellar light and also gleams from within. And there is the back view of a lone figure more distinctly reflected than anything else upon the window's surface.
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