American supernatural tales

by S. T. Joshi

  A blue van glided into the lot.

  The Stop ’N Start sign dimmed, paling against the coming morning. The van braked. A man in rumpled clothes climbed out. There was a second figure in the front seat. The driver unlocked the back doors, silencing the birds that were gathering in the trees. The he entered the store.

  Macklin watched. Juano was led out. The a.m. relief man stood by shaking his head.

  Macklin hesitated. He wanted Juano, but what could he do now? What the hell had he been waiting for, exactly? There was still something else, something else . . . It was like the glimpse of a shape under a sheet in a busy corridor. You didn’t know what it was at first, but it was there; you knew what it might be, but you couldn’t be sure, not until you got close and stayed next to it long enough to be able to read its true form.

  The driver helped Juano into the van. He locked the doors, started the engine and drove away.

  Macklin, his lights out, followed.

  He stayed with the van as it snaked a path across the city, nearer and nearer the foothills. The sides were unmarked, but he figured it must operate like one of those minibus porta-maid services he had seen leaving Malibu and Bel-Air late in the afternoon, or like the loads of kids trucked in to push magazine subscriptions and phony charities in the neighborhoods near where he lived.

  The sky was still black, beginning to turn slate close to the horizon. Once they passed a garbage collector already on his rounds. Macklin kept his distance.

  They led him finally to a street that dead-ended at a construction site. Macklin idled by the corner, then saw the van turn back.

  He let them pass, cruised to the end and made a slow turn.

  Then he saw the van returning.

  He pretended to park. He looked up.

  They had stopped the van crosswise in front of him, blocking his passage.

  The man in rumpled clothes jumped out and opened Macklin’s door.

  Macklin started to get out but was pushed back.

  “You think you’re a big enough man to be trailing people around?”

  Macklin tried to penetrate the beam of the flashlight. “I saw my old friend Juano get into your truck,” he began. “Didn’t get a chance to talk to him. Thought I might as well follow him home and see what he’s been up to.”

  The other man got out of the front seat of the van. He was younger, delicate-boned. He stood on one side, listening.

  “I saw him get in,” said Macklin, “back at the Stop ’N Start on Pico?” He groped under the seat for the tire iron. “I was driving by and—”

  “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “We saw you. Out of the car.”

  He shrugged and swung his legs around, lifting the iron behind him as he stood.

  The younger man motioned with his head and the driver yanked Macklin forward by the shirt, kicking the door closed on Macklin’s arm at the same time. He let out a yell as the tire iron clanged to the pavement.

  “Another accident?” suggested the younger man.

  “Too messy, after the one yesterday. Come on, pal, you’re going to get to see your friend.”

  Macklin hunched over in pain. One of them jerked his bad arm up and he screamed. Over it all he felt a needle jab him high, in the armpit, and then he was falling.

  The van was bumping along on the freeway when he came out of it. With his good hand he pawed his face, trying to clear his vision. His other arm didn’t hurt, but it wouldn’t move when he wanted it to.

  He was sprawled on his back. He felt a wheel humming under him, below the tirewell. And there were the others. They were sitting up. One was Juano.

  He was aware of a stink, sickeningly sweet, with an overlay he remembered from his high school lab days but couldn’t quite place. It sliced into his nostrils.

  He didn’t recognize the others. Pasty faces. Heads thrown forward, arms distended strangely with the wrists jutting out from the coat sleeves.

  “Give me a hand,” he said, not really expecting it.

  He strained to sit up. He could make out the backs of two heads in the cab, on the other side of the grid.

  He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Hey. Can you guys understand me?”

  “Let us rest,” someone said weakly.

  He rose too quickly and his equilibrium failed. He had been shot up with something strong enough to knock him out, but it was probably the Dexamyl that had kept his mind from leaving his body completely. The van yawed, descending an off ramp, and he began to drift. He heard voices. They slipped in and out of his consciousness like fish in darkness, moving between his ears in blurred levels he could not always identify.

  “There’s still room at the cross.” That was the younger, small-boned man, he was almost sure.

  “Oh, I’ve been interested in Jesus for a long time, but I never could get a handle on him . . .”

  “Well, beware the wrath to come. You really should, you know.”

  He put his head back and became one with a dark dream. There was something he wanted to remember. He did not want to remember it. He turned his mind to doggerel, to the old song. The time to hesitate is through, he thought. No time to wallow in the mire. Try now we can only lose / And our love become a funeral pyre. The van bumped to a halt. His head bounced off steel.

  The door opened. He watched it. It seemed to take forever.

  Through slitted eyes: a man in a uniform that barely fit, hobbling his way to the back of the van, supported by the two of them. A line of gasoline pumps and a sign that read WE NEVER CLOSE—NEVER UNDERSOLD. The letters breathed. Before they let go of him, the one with rumpled clothes unbuttoned the attendant’s shirt and stabbed a hypodermic into the chest, close to the heart and next to a strap that ran under the arms. The needle darted and flashed dully in the wan morning light.

  “This one needs a booster,” said the driver, or maybe it was the other one. Their voices ran together. “Just make sure you don’t give him the same stuff you gave old Juano’s sweetheart there. I want them to walk in on their own hind legs.” “You think I want to carry ’em?” “We’ve done it before, brother. Yesterday, for instance.” At that Macklin let his eyelids down the rest of the way, and then he was drifting again.

  The wheels drummed under him.

  “How much longer?” “Soon now. Soon.”

  These voices weak, like a folding and unfolding of paper.

  Brakes grabbed. The doors opened again. A thin light played over Macklin’s lids, forcing them up.

  He had another moment of clarity; they were becoming more frequent now. He blinked and felt pain. This time the van was parked between low hills. Two men in Western costumes passed by, one of them leading a horse. The driver stopped a group of figures in togas. He seemed to be asking for directions.

  Behind them, a castle lay in ruins. Part of a castle. And over to the side Macklin identified a church steeple, the corner of a turn-of-the-century street, a mock-up of a rocket launching pad and an old brick schoolhouse. Under the flat sky they receded into intersections of angles and vistas which teetered almost imperceptibly, ready to topple.

  The driver and the other one set a stretcher on the tailgate. On the litter was a long, crumpled shape, sheeted and encased in a plastic bag. They sloughed it inside and started to secure the doors.

  “You got the pacemaker back, I hope.” “Stunt director said it’s in the body bag.” “It better be. Or it’s our ass in a sling. Your ass. How’d he get so racked up, anyway?” “Ran him over a cliff in a sports car. Or no, maybe this one was the head-on they staged for, you know, that new cop series. That’s what they want now, realism. Good thing he’s a cremation—ain’t no way Kelly or Dee’s gonna get this one pretty again by tomorrow.” “That’s why, man. That’s why they picked him. Ashes don’t need makeup.”

  The van started up.

  “Going home,” someone said weakly.

  “Yes . . .”

  Macklin was awake now. Crouching by the bag, he scanned th
e faces, Juano’s and the others’. The eyes were staring, fixed on a point as untouchable as the thinnest of plasma membranes, and quite unreadable.

  He crawled over next to the one from the self-service gas station. The shirt hung open like folds of skin. He saw the silver box strapped to the flabby chest, directly over the heart. Pacemaker? he thought wildly.

  He knelt and put his ear to the box.

  He heard a humming, like an electric wristwatch.

  What for? To keep the blood pumping just enough so the tissues don’t rigor mortis and decay? For God’s sake, for how much longer?

  He remembered Whitey and the nurse. “What happens? Between the time they become ‘remains’ and the services? How long is that? A couple of days? Three?”

  A wave of nausea broke inside him. When he gazed at them again the faces were wavering, because his eyes were filled with tears.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “I wish you could be here,” said the gas station attendant.

  “And where is that?”

  “We have all been here before,” said another voice.

  “Going home,” said another.

  Yes, he thought, understanding. Soon you will have your rest; soon you will no longer be objects, commodities. You will be honored and grieved for and your personhood given back, and then you will at last rest in peace. It is not for nothing that you have labored so long and so patiently. You will see, all of you. Soon.

  He wanted to tell them, but he couldn’t. He hoped they already knew.

  The van lurched and slowed. The hand brake ratcheted.

  He lay down and closed his eyes.

  He heard the door creak back.

  “Let’s go.”

  The driver began to herd the bodies out. There was the sound of heavy, dragging feet, and from outside the smell of fresh-cut grass and roses.

  “What about this one?” said the driver, kicking Macklin’s shoe.

  “Oh, he’ll do his forty-eight-hours’ service, don’t worry. It’s called utilizing your resources.”

  “Tell me about it. When do we get the Indian?”

  “Soon as St. John’s certificates him. He’s overdue. The crash was sloppy.”

  “This one won’t be. But first Dee’ll want him to talk, what he knows and who he told. Two doggers in two days is too much. Then we’ll probably run him back to his car and do it. And phone it in, so St. John’s gets him. Even if it’s DOA. Clean as hammered shit. Grab the other end.”

  He felt the body bag sliding against his leg. Grunting, they hauled it out and hefted it toward—where?

  He opened his eyes. He hesitated only a second, to take a deep breath.

  Then he was out of the van and running.

  Gravel kicked up under his feet. He heard curses and metal slamming. He just kept his head down and his legs pumping. Once he twisted around and saw a man scurrying after him. The driver paused by the mortuary building and shouted. But Macklin kept moving.

  He stayed on the path as long as he dared. It led him past mossy trees and bird-stained statues. Then he jumped and cut across a carpet of matted leaves and into a glade. He passed a gate that spelled DRY LAWN CEMETERY in old iron, kept running until he spotted a break in the fence where it sloped by the edge of the grounds. He tore through huge, dusty ivy and skidded down, down. And then he was on a sidewalk.

  Cars revved at a wide intersection, impatient to get to work. He heard coughing and footsteps, but it was only a bus stop at the middle of the block. The air brakes of a commuter special hissed and squealed. A clutch of grim people rose from the bench and filed aboard like sleepwalkers.

  He ran for it, but the doors flapped shut and the bus roared on.

  More people at the corner, stepping blindly between each other. He hurried and merged with them.

  Dry cleaners, laundromat, hamburger stand, parking lot, gas station, all closed. But there was a telephone at the gas station.

  He ran against the light. He sealed the booth behind him and nearly collapsed against the glass.

  He rattled money into the phone, dialed Operator and called for the police.

  The air was close in the booth. He smelled hair tonic. Sweat swelled out of his pores and glazed his skin. Somewhere a radio was playing.

  A sergeant punched onto the line. Macklin yelled for them to come and get him. Where was he? He looked around frantically, but there were no street signs. Only a newspaper rack chained to a post. NONE OF THE DEAD HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED, read the headline.

  His throat tightened, his voice racing. “None of the dead has been identified,” he said, practically babbling.

  Silence.

  So he went ahead, pouring it out about a van and a hospital and a man in rumpled clothes who shot guys up with some kind of super-adrenaline and electric pacemakers and night-clerks and crash tests. He struggled to get it all out before it was too late. A part of him heard what he was saying and wondered if he had lost his mind.

  “Who will bury them?” he cried. “What kind of monsters—”

  The line clicked off.

  He hung onto the phone. His eyes were swimming with sweat. He was aware of his heart and counted the beats, while the moisture from his breath condensed on the glass.

  He dropped another coin into the box.

  “Good morning, St. John’s, may I help you?”

  He couldn’t remember the room number. He described the man, the accident, the date. Sixth floor, yes, that was right. He kept talking until she got it.

  There was a pause. Hold.

  He waited.

  “Sir?”

  He didn’t say anything. It was as if he had no words left.

  “I’m terribly sorry . . .”

  He felt the blood drain from him. His fingers were cold and numb.

  “. . . But I’m afraid the surgery wasn’t successful. The party did not recover. If you wish I’ll connect you with—”

  “The party’s name was White Feather,” he said mechanically. The receiver fell and dangled, swinging like the pendulum of a clock.

  He braced his legs against the sides of the booth. After what seemed like a very long time he found himself reaching reflexively for his cigarettes. He took one from the crushed pack, straightened it and hung it on his lips.

  On the other side of the frosted glass, featureless shapes lumbered by on the boulevard. He watched them for a while.

  He picked up a book of matches from the floor, lit two together and held them close to the glass. The flame burned a clear spot through the moisture.

  Try to set the night on fire, he thought stupidly, repeating the words until they and any others he could think of lost meaning.

  The fire started to burn his fingers. He hardly felt it. He ignited the matchbook cover, too, turning it over and over. He wondered if there was anything else that would burn, anything and everything. He squeezed his eyelids together. When he opened them, he was looking down at his own clothing.

  He peered out through the clear spot in the glass.

  Outside, the outline fuzzy and distorted but quite unmistakable, was a blue van. It was waiting at the curb.

  THOMAS LIGOTTI

  Thomas Ligotti was born in Detroit in 1953. While working for Gale Research Company, he began publishing his short fiction in small-press magazines such as Nyctalops, Eldritch Tales, and Fantasy Tales, and his first volume, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, was published in 1986 with little fanfare by Silver Scarab Press, although it contained an enthusiastic introduction by British supernaturalist Ramsey Campbell. But Ligotti’s reputation slowly grew by word-of-mouth, and in 1989 his first volume was republished in an expanded edition in England. Since then, Ligotti has issued further volumes of short stories, including Grimscribe: His Lives and Works (1991), Noctuary (1994), and My Work Is Not Yet Done (2002). The Nightmare Factory (1996) is an omnibus of his first three collections.

  Ligotti, although influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and other writers of the American supe
rnatural tradition, has developed a highly original and distinctive approach to the field, fusing psychological and supernatural tropes to create a nightmarish world of terror in which almost anything can occur. His subject matter is bolstered by an idiosyncratic and occasionally difficult and obscure style that seeks to destroy the distinction between the real and the imaginary. Ligotti has professed that he cannot write horror novels and that the supernatural is in fact incapable of being cogently expressed in the novel form; accordingly, in spite of the fact that the title story of My Work Is Not Yet Done is a novella of more than thirty thousand words, Ligotti has adhered to short fiction, passing up the possibility of broader popular recognition and seemingly content with the admiration of a small band of cognoscenti. Ligotti has also written provocatively about the horror story, both in interviews and in such essays as “The Consolations of Horror” (1989). He now lives in Florida.

  “Vastarien” (first published in Crypt of Cthulhu, St. John’s Eve 1987, and included in Songs of a Dead Dreamer, 1989) is representative of Ligotti’s eccentric work in its elaboration of H. P. Lovecraft’s concept of the “forbidden book” that can lead to death or madness.

  VASTARIEN

  Within the blackness of his sleep a few lights began to glow like candles in a cloistered cell. Their illumination was unsteady and dim, issuing from no definite source. Nonetheless, he now discovered many shapes beneath the shadows: tall buildings whose rooftops nodded groundward, wide buildings whose facades seemed to follow the curve of a street, dark buildings whose windows and doorways tilted like badly hung paintings. And even if he found himself unable to fix his own location in this scene, he knew where his dreams had delivered him once more.

  Even as the warped structures multiplied in his vision, crowding the lost distance, he possessed a sense of intimacy with each of them, a peculiar knowledge of the spaces within them and of the streets which coiled themselves around their mass. Once again he knew the depths of their foundations, where an obscure life seemed to establish itself, a secret civilization of echoes flourishing among groaning walls. Yet upon his probing more extensively into such interiors, certain difficulties presented themselves: stairways that wandered off-course into useless places; caged elevators that urged unwanted stops on their passengers; then ladders ascending into a maze of shafts and conduits, the dark valves and arteries of a petrified and monstrous organism.