In Heaven, Everything Is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch

by Thomas Ligotti

  “By the way, the results of your tests—some of which you have yet to be subjected to—are going to come back positive. If you think an intestinal virus is misery, just wait a few more months. So think fast, sir. We will arrange another meeting with you in any case. And remember—you approached us. Or was it the other way around?

  “As you might have noticed by now, all this artistic business can only keep you going so long before you’re left speechlessly gaping at the realities and functions of . . . well, I think you know what I’m trying to say. I was forced into this realization myself, and I’m quite mindful of what a blow this can be. Indeed, it was I who invented the appellative for our organization as it is currently known. Not that I put any stock in names, nor should you. Our company is so much older than its own name, or any other name for that matter. (And how many it’s had over the years—The Ten Thousand Things, Anima Mundi, Nethescurial.) You should be proud that we have a special part for you to play, such a talented artist. In time you will forget yourself entirely in your work, as we all do eventually. Myself, I go around with a trunkful of aliases, but do you think I can say who I once was really? A man of the theater, that seems plausible. Possibly I was the father of Faust or Hamlet . . . or merely Peter Pan.

  “In closing, I do hope you will seriously consider our offer to join us. We can do something about your medical predicament. We can do just about anything. Otherwise, I’m afraid that all I can do is welcome you to your own private hell, which will be as unspeakable as any on earth.”

  The letter was signed Dr. Theodore Groddeck, and its prognostication of my physical health was accurate: I have taken more tests at the backstreet hospital and the results are somewhat grim. For several days and sleepless nights I have considered the alternatives the doctor proposed to me, as well as others of my own devising, and have yet to reach a decision on what course to follow. The one conclusion that keeps forcing itself upon me is that it makes no difference what choice I make or do not make. You can never anticipate the Teatro . . . or anything else. You can never know what you are approaching or what is approaching you. Soon enough my thoughts will lose all clarity, and I will no longer be aware that there was ever a decision to be made. The soft black stars have already begun to fill the sky.

  HINTERKAIFECK AGAIN

  NICK ANTOSCA

  Rebecca asks her fiancé, What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

  They’ve been engaged two weeks. They met six months ago. He’s thirty-three, wry and careful with words, a lawyer for a nonprofit opposed to the death penalty. She’s twenty-eight, a first grade teacher, and she’s draped on him in bed after making love.

  What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

  He doesn’t answer. He seems to be thinking about other things. At certain moments, she’s learned, his presence is a kind of absence.

  I’ve been thinking about Hinterkaifeck again.

  About what?

  She’s never heard that word before. The way he says it, as if it’s something they’ve discussed, disturbs her.

  Hinterkaifeck is a farm in Germany. Or it was. The family that lived there, the Grubers, were murdered along with their maid. This was in 1922.

  Why did you say ‘again’?

  Andreas Gruber was head of the family, her fiancé says. He was sixty-three years old and his wife Cäzilia was seventy-two. Their daughter Viktoria was widowed and lived on the farm with them, and so did her two-year-old son Josef and seven-year-old daughter, also named Cäzilia.

  It was an open secret in town that Andreas was fucking Viktoria. Josef might even have been Andreas’s son by incest. But that sort of thing wasn’t so uncommon as to be completely beyond the pale. Just . . . unseemly.

  One day in March of 1922, Andreas Gruber went out to tend livestock and saw footprints in the snow. The footprints emerged from the forest and went straight to the farm—but there were no footprints going back to the forest.

  No one had seen a stranger around the farmstead, though. When Andreas mentioned the footprints to a neighbor, he mentioned something else as well: A house key had gone missing.

  Around that time, the family started to hear strange sounds, like footsteps, in the attic. They became convinced some kind of animal was nesting up there, but they were unable to find it.

  You’re very warm, Rebecca says, touching his chest, feeling heat rise through the nest of soft but wiry hair. Are you getting sick?

  Again it seems he doesn’t hear.

  On the last day of March, a new maid came to Hinterkaifeck. This was a Friday. Her name was Maria Baumgartner, and the Grubers were glad to see her. The last maid had left six months earlier, complaining that the farmstead was haunted.

  That night, a few hours after Maria Baumgartner arrived, someone lured the older family members out to the barn one by one and split their skulls with a pickaxe.

  Andreas, his wife Cäzilia, his daughter Viktoria, and his granddaughter Cäzilia were each killed with sudden, brutal blows. The killer stacked their bodies and covered them with hay.

  Then he went into the farmhouse, killed Maria Baumgartner in her bed, and covered the body with bedsheets. Josef, the two-year-old, was the last to die. The killer draped one of his mother’s dresses over his corpse.

  During the four days after the murder, neighbors saw smoke coming from the chimney at Hinterkaifeck. The postman delivered the mail. A mechanic came and fixed a motor in the barn, not knowing about the corpses hidden under hay nearby. The mechanic later said that the Grubers’ dog was tied up outside the barn, with food and water. He said it barked at him.

  When the murders were finally discovered, on Tuesday, it was noticed that the livestock weren’t hungry. The killer had remained at Hinterkaifeck over the weekend, after the murders, and fed and cared for the animals.

  The Gruber family had a stash of gold coins, but the killer hadn’t touched them.

  So what did he want? Rebecca says.

  Her fiancé sighs. He absently strokes her hair. His body is strong, warm, capable. It reminds her of armor.

  On Wednesday, her fiancé says, a court physician did an autopsy in the barn. He beheaded the corpses and sent their heads to a clairvoyant, but the clairvoyant never returned them. So the Gruber family and their maid were buried headless.

  The maid is tragic. She just started working for the wrong family on the wrong day. A week later and she would have lived.

  And they never caught the killer?

  No, they never caught anyone.

  It’s a good mystery. The footprints in the snow, the missing key. And how did he lure them out to the barn one by one? And ninety years later, they’ll never know who did it.

  I did it.

  Ha.

  I killed the Gruber family and their maid.

  Ninety years ago.

  I did. I’m absolutely certain of it.

  Stop it. That’s a weird thing to say.

  When I first read about it, I recognized the name. And over the years, memories have risen to the surface. They’re vivid, but still hazy. I don’t know why I did it, but I’ve come to believe the memories are real.

  What memories, exactly?

  I remember coming toward the house—the sound of my feet crunching in the snow. I remember stealing the key off the hook in the kitchen. The house is familiar to me. I know the Gruber family somehow. Being in the house brings up strong, complicated emotions.

  I remember hiding out in the attic for a day, then climbing out on the roof to hide when they come up after hearing sounds. After that I sneak out to the barn and stay there for another two days, watching them go about their daily business. I’ve come here to cause some sort of trouble, perhaps to have a confrontation of some kind, but I can’t bring myself to do it, or to leave without doing it. I am in a kind of purgatory. This family has some kind of hold on me.

  I remember remembering. But memories within memories are indistinct, weird. I believe—I’m not sure, but I believe, by which I mean thi
s is the story as I have reconstructed it—that I am in love with Viktoria. I believe we had some sort of affair—after she was widowed, but before she came to live at Hinterkaifeck.

  I believe I hate her, as well. She’s become her father’s mistress, had his child. It nauseates me. Every time I see her, I’m filled with complicated loathsome love. When I see him, I feel pure hate.

  I wish I could live at Hinterkaifeck in Andreas’s place, with Viktoria. I wish these animals were my animals, that these children were my children. I would like to rise in the morning before dawn and tend the livestock and feed the dog, and return to read the newspaper while my wife Viktoria makes breakfast, and my children Cäzilia and Josef scurry about my feet.

  On Friday afternoon, Maria Baumgartner arrives. She glimpses me peering out of the barn. I nod at her, hoping she’ll think I’m a hired man or something. Hoping she’ll have no reason to mention me to the Grubers. And apparently, she doesn’t.

  Viktoria still knows me. I live in the town. We have remained outwardly friendly. Late on the third evening, Friday evening, I intercept her with little Cäzilia and Josef outside the house, as if I’ve just arrived. I say I must speak to her privately. She sends Cäzilia in to put Josef to bed and goes with me to the barn. We argue. I’m not sure what about . . . maybe in a kind of delirium I ask her to run away with me. She resists. I tell her how she disgusts me. How the whole town knows about what she’s let Andreas turn her into. She tries to leave. I grab the pickaxe. Her skull splits.

  Now I’m not sure what to do. The children saw me. I go to the house and find little Cäzilia waiting for her mother in the kitchen. I ask her to go wake Andreas and tell him that her mother needs him in the barn. She must say it’s urgent and she must not tell him I’m here. We have a surprise for him.

  I split his skull easily. I am heady with it, dizzy. I clean myself off, and go back to the house and tell little Cäzilia to send her grandmother out. Once the grandmother is dead, I go and get little Cäzilia herself. I hold her hand as I walk her to the barn.

  Afterward, I go into the house and kill poor Maria Baumgartner as she sleeps, and finally little Josef in his bed. If they hadn’t seen me, I would have left them alive.

  But now everyone is dead, and I am alone with the dead.

  He’s still stroking her hair.

  You must think I’ve lost my mind, he says.

  She doesn’t reply.

  Maybe I have, he says. But I know it was me. In a different life or a different body, I don’t know. But I . . . whatever I am, whatever this entity is that’s speaking to you out of this body . . . I took those lives. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.

  She sighs. It’s late, she says in a strange voice. It’s really late. Let’s sleep.

  All right.

  He rises and leaves the room. She hears him walk down the hall to the bathroom. She sits up in bed. Through the open doorway, she can no longer see her fiancé, but when he opens the bathroom door, she sees his shadow on the hallway wall in a frame of light.

  THE IMPLIED HORROR OF DAVID LYNCH

  DAVID J

  The door is slightly ajar

  Nothing is happening

  The door is slightly ajar

  Nothing is happening

  The door is slightly ajar

  Nothing is happening

  Except. In. Your. Head!

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ANDREW WAYNE ADAMS is the author of the novella Janitor of Planet Anilingus, published as part of the Eraserhead Press New Bizarro Author Series. as well as numerous stories. He was born and raised in rural Ohio. Now he lives in Portland, Oregon, where people call him Andy.

  KIRSTEN ALENE is the author of the novels Japan Conquers the Galaxy and Unicorn Battle Squad, and the novella Love in the Time of Dinosaurs. Her fiction has appeared in Smalldoggies, New Dead Families, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband.

  NICK ANTOSCA was born in New Orleans and currently lives in Los Angeles, California. He is the author of a novel, Fires, and two novellas, Midnight Picnic and The Obese. He also writes for film and television.

  LAURA LEE BAHR is the author of the short stories “Happy Hour” and “The Liar” (available in the anthologies Demons and Psychos, edited by John Skipp and published by Black Dog & Leventhal). She is the award-winning screenwriter of the feature films Jesus Freak and the little Death. Her first novel, Haunt, received the Wonderland Book Award.

  GABRIEL BLACKWELL is the author of the books The Natural Dissolution of Fleeting-Improvised Men, Shadow Man, and Critique of Pure Reason. He is an editor for The Collagist.

  JEFF BURK is the author of Shatnerquake, Super Giant Monster Time, Cripple Wolf, and Shatnerquest. He is also the head-editor of Deadite Press. He lives in Portland, OR where he spends his time reenacting scenes from Wild at Heart with his morbidly obese cat. You can stalk him online at www.jeffburk.wordpress.com and www.facebook.com/literarystrange.

  SUZANNE BURNS’s debut short story collection, Misfits and Other Heroes, was published by Dzanc Books. She is currently working on a follow-up collection, Love and Other Monsters. Her parents let her watch The Elephant Man when she was a child. This is probably why she became a writer instead of a lawyer. Her favorite David Lynch movie is Blue Velvet. Sometimes late at night she sings “In Dreams” into her husband’s portable shop light. (You know, the one about “the candy colored clown they call the sandman.”) Her husband always stares at her with a mixture of wonder and fear. This is probably why they are still married.

  BLAKE BUTLER’s most recent books are Sky Saw (Tyrant Books, 2013) and Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia (Harper Perennial, 2012). His next novel, 300,000,000, will be released from Harper Perennial in 2014.

  MATTY BYLOOS’s first collection of short stories, Don’t Smell the Floss, was published in 2009 by Write Bloody Books. His work has appeared in Everyday Genius, Matchbook, Bomb, Dark Sky Magazine, and The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, among others. With Carrie Seitzinger, he runs Nailed Magazine from Portland, Oregon, where he lives and works. His first novel, ROPE, will be published in the summer of 2013. Learn more about him at his personal blog: www.mattybyloos.com.

  GARRETT COOK is the author of Time Pimp (forthcoming from Eraserhead Press), Archelon Ranch, the Murderland series, and Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective. He is also the co-creator of Imperial Youth Review. Garrett lives in Boston, MA.

  LIAM DAVIES’s short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies over the last few years and as a playwright he earned a M.E.N. Theatre Award nomination for best new play back in 2000. His absurd intertextual novella Bugger All Backwards and horror novel Sow and the Three Beasts of Brunlea were published by Gallows Press.

  CODY GOODFELLOW has written three novels—Radiant Dawn, Ravenous Dusk, and Perfect Union—and cowrote Jake’s Wake, Spore, and The Last Goddam Hollywood Movie with John Skipp. His short fiction has been collected in All-Monster Action and Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. He is powerless to stop living in Los Angeles.

  AMELIA GRAY is a writer living in Los Angeles, CA. She is the author of AM/PM (Featherproof Books), Museum of the Weird, (Fiction Collective 2) and THREATS (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, McSweeney’s, DIAGRAM, and Caketrain, among others.

  DAVID J was a founding member of Bauhaus, one of the most influential British bands of the 1980’s. Following their termination in ‘83, David J joined up with The Jazz Butcher for a brief stint, producing and playing in the group. Then came Love and Rockets. Another highly successful outfit, scoring a gold record with their first release, Ball Of Confusion.

  He has collaborated with various other artists, such as celebrated graphic novelist Alan Moore, renowned author Hubert Selby Jr., producer and musician T Bone Burnett, and MC5 founder Wayne Kramer. He also co-wrote “Strays,” the title track of the Jane’s Addiction album. In 2008 he contributed extensively to the soundtrack of t
he musical feature film Repo! The Genetic Opera.

  October 2011 saw the release of his eighth solo album, Not Long For This World, on Starry Records. The follow up album, An Eclipse of Ships, has just been completed and will be released in 2014. Visit him online at www.davidjonline.com

  JEREMY ROBERT JOHNSON is the Wonderland Book Award-winning author of We Live Inside You, the cult hit Angel Dust Apocalypse, the Stoker Nominated novel Siren Promised (w/Alan M. Clark), and the end-of-the-world freak-out Extinction Journals. His fiction has been acclaimed by authors like Chuck Palahniuk and Jack Ketchum and has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. In 2008 he worked with The Mars Volta to tell the story behind their Grammy-winning album The Bedlam in Goliath. He also runs indie publishing house Swallowdown Press and is at work on a host of new books. For more information you can access his techno-web presence at the cleverly-named www.jeremyrobertjohnson.com.