Teatro Grottesco

by Thomas Ligotti

  The antics and coy tone of the old hysteric notwithstanding, there was a meaning in his words that resonated with my experience in my apartment room and also with my perception that day of a profound change in the town near the northern border. At first I tended to conceive of the figure of Reverend Cork as a spirit of the dead, someone who had ‘disappeared’ by wholly natural means. In these terms I was able to think of myself as having been the victim of a haunting at the large rooming house where, no doubt, many persons had ended their lives in one way or another. This metaphysical framework seemed to apply nicely to my recent experiences and did not conflict with what I had been told in that narrow alley as twilight turned into evening. I was indeed here, in the northern border town with the old hysteric, and not there, in the land of the dead with Reverend Cork the demonic preacher.

  But as the night wore on, and I moved among other residents of the town who had lived there far longer than I, it became evident that Reverend Cork, whose voice I had heard ‘preaching’ the night before, was neither dead, in the usual sense of the word, nor among those who had only recently ‘disappeared,’ many of whom, I learned, had not disappeared in any mysterious way at all but had simply abandoned the northern border town without notifying anyone. They had made this hasty exodus, according to several hysterics or impostors I spoke with that night, because they had ‘seen the signs,’ even as I had seen that leathery trap door whose existence in my apartment room was previously and entirely unsuspected.

  Although I had not recognized it as such, this trap door, which appeared to lead to a cellar beneath the rooming house where I lived, was among the most typical of the so-called ‘signs.’ All of them, as numerous persons hysterically avowed, were indications of some type of threshold – doorways or passages that one should be cautious not to enter, or even to approach. Most of these signs, in fact, took the form of doors of various types, particularly those which might be found in odd, out-of-the-way places, such as a miniature door at the back of a broom closet or a door appearing on the inner wall of a fireplace, and even doors that might not seem to lead to any sensible space, as would be the case with a trap door in an apartment on the ground floor of a rooming house that did not have a cellar, nor had ever had one that could be accessed in such a way. I did hear about other such ‘threshold-signs,’ including window frames in the most queer locations, stairways that spiraled downward into depths beneath a common basement or led below ground level along lonely sidewalks, and even entrances to streets that were not formerly known to exist, with perhaps a narrow gate swinging open in temptation.

  Yet all of these signs or thresholds gave themselves away by their distinctive appearance, which, according to many of those knowledgeable of such things, was very much like that withered and leathery appearance of the trap door in my apartment room, not to mention displaying the same kind of shapes and angles that were strikingly at odds with their surroundings.

  Nevertheless, there were still those who, for one reason or another, chose to ignore the signs or were unable to resist the enticements of thresholds that simply cropped up overnight in the most unforeseen places around the northern border town. To all appearances, at that point, the demonic preacher Reverend Cork had been one of the persons who had ‘disappeared’ in this way. I now became aware, as the evening progressed into a brilliantly star-filled night, that I had not been the victim of a haunting, as I had earlier supposed, but had actually witnessed a phenomenon of quite a different sort.

  ‘The reverend has been gone since the last disappearances,’ said an old woman whose face I could barely see in the candlelight that illuminated the enormous, echoing lobby of a defunct hotel where some of us had gathered after midnight. But someone took issue with the old woman, or ‘idiot-hag,’ as this person called her. The preacher, this other person contended in exactly the following words, was old town. This was my first exposure to the phrase ‘old town,’ but before I could take in its full meaning or implications it began to undergo a metamorphosis among those gathered after midnight in the lobby of that defunct hotel. While the person who called the old woman an idiot-hag continued to speak of the ‘old town,’ where he said Reverend Cork resided or was originally from, the old woman and a few of those who sided with her spoke only about the other town. ‘No one is from the other town,’ the woman said to the person who was calling her an idiot-hag. ‘There are only those who disappear into the other town, among them the demonic preacher Reverend Cork, who may have been a ludicrous impostor but was never what anyone would call demonic until he disappeared into that trap door in the room where this gentleman,’ she said, referring to me, ‘heard him preaching only last night.’

  ‘You idiot-hag,’ said the other person, ‘the old town existed on the very spot where this northern border town now exists . . . until the day when it disappeared, along with everyone who lived in it, including the demonic preacher Reverend Cork.’

  Then someone else, who was lying deep in the cushions of an old divan in the lobby, added the following words: ‘It was a demon town and was inhabited by demonic entities of all sorts who made the whole thing invisible. Now they throw out these thresholds as a way to lure another group of us who only want to live in this town near the northern border and not in some intolerable demon town.’

  Nonetheless, the old woman and the few others who sided with her persisted in speaking not about an old town or an invisible demon town, but about the other town, which, they all agreed, never had any concrete existence to speak of, but was simply a metaphysical backdrop to the northern border town that we all knew and that was a place where many of us fervently desired to make an end of our lives. Whatever the facts in this matter, one point was hammered into my brain over and over again: there was simply no peace to be had no matter where you hid yourself away. Even in a northern border town of such intensely chaotic oddity and corruption there was still some greater chaos, some deeper insanity, than one had counted on, or could ever be taken into account – wherever there was anything, there would be chaos and insanity to such a degree that one could never come to terms with it, and it was only a matter of time before your world, whatever you thought it to be, was undermined, if not completely overrun, by another world.

  Throughout the late hours of that night the debates and theories and fine qualifications continued regarding the spectral towns and the tangible thresholds that served to reduce the number of permanent residents of the northern border town, either by causing them to disappear through some out-of-the-way door or window or down a spiraling stairway or phantom street, or by forcing them to abandon the town because, for whatever reason, it had become, or seemed to become, something quite different from the place they had known it to be, or believed it to be, for so long. Whether or not they arrived at a resolution of their conflicting views I will never know, since I left the defunct hotel while the discussion was still going strong. But I did not go back to my small apartment in one of the oldest parts of town. Instead I wandered out to the hilltop graveyard outside of town and stood among the graves until the following morning, which was as cold and overcast as the one before it. I knew then that I would not die in the northern border town, either by means of a violent misadventure or a wasting disease, or even by my own hand, and therefore I would not be buried in the hilltop graveyard where I stood that morning looking down on the place where I had lived for so long. I had already wandered the streets of the northern border town for the last time and found, for whatever reason, that they had become something different from what they had been, or had once seemed to be. This was the only thing that was now certain in my mind. For a moment I considered returning to the town and seeking out one of the newly appeared thresholds in order to enter it before all of them mysteriously disappeared again, so that I might disappear along with them into the other town, or the old town, where perhaps I might find once more what I seemed to have lost in the northern border town. Possibly there might have been something there – on the other side of
the town – that was like the dead-end street where, it was said, ‘When you hear the singing, you will know it is time.’ And while I might never be able to die in the town near the northern border, neither would I ever have to leave it. To have such thoughts was, of course, only more chaos and insanity. But I had not slept for two nights. I was tired and felt the ache of every broken dream I had ever carried within me. Perhaps I would one day seek out another town in another land where I could make an end of it, or at least where I could wait in a fatalistic delirium for the end to come. Now it was time to just walk away in silence.

  Years later I learned there was a movement to ‘clean up’ the northern border town of what was elsewhere perceived to be its ‘contaminated’ elements. On arriving in the town, however, the investigators assigned to this task discovered a place that was all but deserted, the only remaining residents being a few hysterics or impostors who muttered endlessly about ‘other towns’ or ‘demon towns,’ and even of an ‘old town.’ Among these individuals was a large and gaudily attired old woman who styled herself as the owner of a lodging house and several other properties. These venues, she said, along with many others throughout the town, had been rendered uninhabitable and useless for any practical purpose. This statement seemed to capsulize the findings of the investigators, who ultimately composed a report that was dismissive of any threat that might be posed by the town near the northern border, which, whatever else it may have been, or seemed to be, was always a genius of the most insidious illusions.

  THE DAMAGED AND THE DISEASED

  TEATRO GROTTESCO

  The first thing I learned was that no one anticipates the arrival of the Teatro. One would not say, or even think, ‘The Teatro has never come to this city – it seems we’re due for a visit,’ or perhaps, ‘Don’t be surprised when you-know-what turns up. It’s been years since the last time.’ Even if the city in which one lives is exactly the kind of place favored by the Teatro, there can be no basis for predicting its appearance. No warnings are given, no fanfare to announce that a Teatro season is about to begin, or that another season of that sort will soon be upon us. But if a particular city possesses what is sometimes called an ‘artistic underworld,’ and if one is in close touch with this society of artists, the chances are optimal for being among those who discover that things have already started. This is the most one can expect.

  For a time it was all rumors and lore, hearsay and dreams. Anyone who failed to show up for a few days at the usual club or bookstore or special artistic event was the subject of speculation. But most of the crowd I am referring to led highly unstable, even precarious lives. Any of them might have packed up and disappeared without notifying a single soul. And almost all of the supposedly ‘missing ones’ were, at some point, seen again. One such person was a filmmaker whose short movie Private Hell served as the featured subject of a local one-night festival. But he was nowhere to be seen either during the exhibition or at the party afterward. ‘Gone with the Teatro,’ someone said with a blasé knowingness, while others smiled and clinked glasses in a sardonic farewell toast.

  Yet only a week later the filmmaker was spotted in one of the back rows of a pornographic theater. He later explained his absence by insisting he had been in the hospital following a thorough beating at the hands of some people he had been filming who did not consent or desire to be filmed. This sounded plausible, given the subject matter of the man’s work. But for some reason no one believed his hospital story, despite the evidence of bandages he was still required to wear. ‘It has to be the Teatro,’ argued a woman who always dressed in shades of purple and who was a good friend of the filmmaker. ‘His stuff and Teatro stuff,’ she said, holding up two crossed fingers for everyone to see.

  But what was meant by ‘Teatro stuff’? This was a phrase I heard spoken by a number of persons, not all of them artists of a pretentious or self-dramatizing type. Certainly there is no shortage of anecdotes that have been passed around which purport to illuminate the nature and workings of this ‘cruel troupe,’ an epithet used by those who are too superstitious to invoke the Teatro Grottesco by name. But sorting out these accounts into a coherent profile, never mind their truth value, is another thing altogether.

  For instance, the purple woman I mentioned earlier held us all spellbound one evening with a story about her cousin’s roommate, a self-styled ‘visceral artist’ who worked the night shift as a stock clerk for a supermarket chain in the suburbs. On a December morning, about an hour before sun-up, the artist was released from work and began his walk home through a narrow alley that ran behind several blocks of various stores and businesses along the suburb’s main avenue. A light snow had fallen during the night, settling evenly upon the pavement of the alley and glowing in the light of a full moon which seemed to hover just at the alley’s end. The artist saw a figure in the distance, and something about this figure, this winter-morning vision, made him pause for a moment and stare. Although he had a trained eye for sizing and perspective, the artist found this silhouette of a person in the distance of the alley intensely problematic. He could not tell if it was short or tall, or even if it was moving – either toward him or away from him – or was standing still. Then, in a moment of hallucinated wonder, the figure stood before him in the middle of the alley.

  The moonlight illuminated a little man who was entirely unclothed and who held out both of his hands as if he were grasping at a desired object just out of his reach. But the artist saw that something was wrong with these hands. While the little man’s body was pale, his hands were dark and were too large for the tiny arms on which they hung. At first the artist believed the little man to be wearing oversized mittens. His hands seemed to be covered by some kind of fuzz, just as the alley in which he stood was layered with the fuzziness of the snow that had fallen during the night. His hands looked soft and fuzzy like the snow, except that the snow was white and his hands were black.

  In the moonlight the artist came to see that the mittens worn by this little man were more like the paws of an animal. It almost made sense to the artist to have thought that the little man’s hands were actually paws which had only appeared to be two black mittens. Then each of the paws separated into long thin fingers that wriggled wildly in the moonlight. But they could not have been the fingers of a hand, because there were too many of them. So what appeared to be fingers could not have been fingers, just as the hands were not in fact hands nor the paws really paws – no more than they were mittens. And all of this time the little man was becoming smaller and smaller in the moonlight of that alley, as if he were moving into the distance far away from the artist who was hypnotized by this vision. Finally a little voice spoke which the artist could barely hear, and it said to him: ‘I cannot keep them away from me anymore, I am becoming so small and weak.’ These words suddenly made this whole winter-morning scenario into something that was too much even for the self-styled ‘visceral artist.’

  In the pocket of his coat the artist had a tool which he used for cutting open boxes at the supermarket. He had cut into flesh in the past, and, with the moonlight glaring upon the snow of that alley, the artist made a few strokes which turned that white world red. Under the circumstances what he had done seemed perfectly justified to the artist, even an act of mercy. The man was becoming so small.

  Afterward the artist ran through the alley without stopping until he reached the rented house where he lived with his roommate. It was she who telephoned the police, saying there was a body lying in the snow at such and such a place and then hanging up without giving her name. For days, weeks, the artist and his roommate searched the local newspapers for some word of the extraordinary thing the police must have found in that alley. But nothing ever appeared.

  ‘You see how these incidents are hushed up,’ the purple woman whispered to us. ‘The police know what is going on. There are even special police for dealing with such matters. But nothing is made public, no one is questioned. And yet, after that morning in the alley, my
cousin and her roommate came under surveillance and were followed everywhere by unmarked cars. Because these special policemen know that it is artists, or highly artistic persons, who are approached by the Teatro. And they know whom to watch after something has happened. It is said that these police may be party to the deeds of that “company of nightmares.”’

  But none of us believed a word of this Teatro anecdote told by the purple woman, just as none of us believed the purple woman’s friend, the filmmaker, when he denied all innuendos that connected him to the Teatro. On the one hand, our imaginations had sided with this woman when she asserted that her friend, the creator of the short movie Private Hell, was somehow in league with the Teatro; on the other hand, we were mockingly dubious of the story about her cousin’s roommate, the self-styled visceral artist, and his encounter in the snow-covered alley.