by Laird Barron
John brought his marionettes because we were going to witness (and witness is the best way to describe it) a public reading by the reclusive horror author formerly known as Tom L, or simply L to his small, yet fervent cult of devotees. L featured puppets and marionettes in his tales, alluding to humanity's suffering at the whim of the gods, and owned an exquisite selection of the things, each handcrafted by master designer W. Lindblad, a native Texan bookseller renowned for his macabre dolls and enormous collection of rare and banned volumes of perverse occult lore. Also renowned for being a career felon, but that didn't usually come up until whoever mentioned his name was as drunk as were getting at the moment.
I assumed John hoped for an autograph, maybe a few words of kinship from L. I wasn't quite clear. Nor did I understand his obsessive fascination with the guy. L was a skilled, if obscure, author of weird tales, operating within the precincts of such classical masters as Lovecraft and Robert Aickman, tempering these influences with his own brand of dread and showmanship, much of it fueled by a loathing of corporate life, and, if one took him at his word, life itself. He'd written dozens of horror and dark fantasy tales over the years, the bulk of them collected in a tome entitled Enemy of Man. The book had sold well enough to warrant several foreign editions and garnered almost every award in the field. It was, as the Washington Post proclaimed, an instant classic.
I owned a cheap paperback reprint of the original immaculate hardcover, albeit mine contained lengthy story notes and a preface by the author. My impression of L's work was lukewarm as I found his glib poohpoohing of the master Robert Aickman as a formative influence of his disingenuous considering their artistic similarities, and L's reduction of human characters to ciphers a trifle off-putting. L the author was vastly more interested in the machinations of malign forces against humanity than the individuals involved in said struggle. Nonetheless, his skill with allegory, simile, atmosphere and setting was impeccable and his style unique despite its debt to classical literary ancestry. His gloom and groan regarding the Infernal Bureaucracy wasn't my cup of tea, yet it possessed a certain resonance among the self loathing, chronically inebriated, perpetually persecuted set. However, there was the man himself, and it was L the man that turned me cold.
L dwelt in a moribund American Heartland city (although independent confirmation of his residence and bona fides were lacking) that had been abandoned by most of the citizenry and at least half the rats. Afflicted by a severe mood disorder, he maintained few contacts among the professional writing community, albeit his associates were erudite men, scholars and theorists such as himself. Perhaps this hermit-philosopher persona is what eventually cemented his status as a quasi-guru whose fictive meditations upon cosmic horror and Man's minuteness in the universe gradually shifted to relentless proselytizing of antinatalist propaganda in the form of email interviews, random tracts produced on basement presses, and one full-blown trade paperback essay entitled Horror of Being, or HoB as his acolytes dubbed it. That book was published to much clamor amongst his fans and a tentative round of golf claps by the critics who weren't certain which way to jump when it came to analyzing L's eerily lucid lunacy. Nobody enjoyed receiving death threats or dead rats in the post. On the other hand, endorsing such maxims as "The kindest and most noble act any sapient being may commit is to never procreate" and "Consciousness is an abomination" wasn't too spiffy on a journalist's credentials.
John continued: "We stumbled back to the hotel eventually, although I don't recall how we got there, and sat around the lounge comforting Paul about a terrible Strange Vistas shellacking of his novel. Somebody on staff had it in for him, no two ways about it. Once HBO bought it for a series, the asshats sweetened right up about his new books and SV begged him on bended knee for an interview. How convenient, eh?"
"Screw SV and that knob job who runs feature reviews," I said and grabbed the flask for another swig. I'd always had the luck of the Irish when it came to press, but Strange Vistas was notorious for the suspect quality of its reviews department, mainly because it was helmed by a blithering idiot who desperately wanted to be his generation's John Clute, and was instead doomed to a life of disappointment and neglect, which while typical and deserved fare for much of the Brit Lit scene, no doubt stung like a motherfucker. Among the ezine's handful of reputable freelance contributors dwelt a rotten core of ankle biters who would savage a book like a terrier shaking a rat on the principle that bile drove traffic and brought some, yea any, attention to themselves that would be otherwise lacking if dependent upon their own merits. Look at me! For the love of God! reviewers. Fortunately, no one actually read the rag but friends, family, proofreaders, chronic masturbators, and the aggrieved authors themselves.
"Holy shit, don't utter such heresy near me!" John made a sign in the air. "The woods have eyes, the fields ears. That effing bastard Niall-whatever who edits the thing will have me killed or blackballed, whichever is worse."
"Niall is so famous and respected he needs no surname. He has never heard of you."
"You'll be singing a different tune if he gets a hold of your next book, you ham-fisted hack. I don't know why he called you ham-fisted. They're rather delicate, actually."
"Speaking of coconuts," I said.
"Oh, yeah. Here we go."
"When I was a young stud, I'd dated this girl for a few weeks. It was all new and mysterious. We went to the ocean with another couple, had a fire on the beach, drank some wine, all that tediously romantic sort of crap. On the way home, me and the guy are up front in his car, discussing rock versus heavy metal, the girls giggling and bickering in the back. I hear the distinctive snap of a bra coming undone, more giggling, then smell coconut scent. The guy's eyes pop out of his head and he almost swerves into the ditch trying to adjust the rearview mirror. I turn around and by thunder, the ladies have peeled off their tops and are giving each other a coconut lotion rubdown for no logical reason whatsoever, except for our viewing pleasure."
"My god."
"Whomever. Trust me, words don't do the scene justice."
"Nothing like that ever happens to me." There was a world of bitterness in that admission.
"I have lived a varied life," I said. "Short, but varied."
"Great, now I got sidetracked with visions of gleaming breasts and…Yeah, there was a point to the bit about Scotland. If I could only concentrate…"
"L was in the house?" An easy guess on my part, but something in my brain shifted with the rightness of it as the words were uttered. The phantom click of a pistol's hammer cocking.
"Yes! The fabulous bastard materialized at the edge of the lounge near the bar. The lights were low and he looked ghostly with his wild hair and strange eyes. He wore an old-fashioned suit with a white carnation in the lapel. And he carried a blackthorn cane. A twisted, sinister accouterment, that cane. I bet there was a cavalry saber hidden inside." John's expression was as wistful as Bob's eyes were blue.
"I thought he avoided conventions. Ruin his image. Le Hermit and all."
"So they say. Although there are rumors. People know people who spotted him at the bar sipping Ardbeg at World Horror in '89, haunting the hotel terrace at the World Science Fiction Convention in '97, sitting in the back of a horror lit panel at Comicon whenever. Jack swore they had a ten minute conversation in the green room at Readercon in 2007. There was a power outage and they sat in the dark and smoked a joint and discussed the suicide cults in Japan. There's a haunted forest at the base of Mt. Fuji. College students off themselves in droves every year. Suicide Mecca. Japanese government tries to keep it hushed up, but y'know."
"For a man who loathes existence, you'd think he'd be even more on board with suicide. It's right for others, not him…"
"Oh, L is definitely against. Antinatalists abhor suicide. Goes counter to the code."
"Right, ending their miserable existences would trump the much greater joy of pissing and moaning about their miserable existences."
'That, and it's big fun to inflict
one's contrarian views upon the hapless."
"Hapless and gullible. Some people are born looking for a crock of shit to get their head stuck in. Jack didn't tell me he met L."
"He only mentioned it to me a few months before he died, disappeared, whatever."
"That's unsettling," I said.
"I have to agree," John said. "But it's a coincidence. L didn't clip Jack. Hell, Jack probably didn't even really meet L. He got high and dreamed the whole thing. Plus the dude was a hell of a liar." He laughed and had a drink by way of genuflection. One simply didn't take Jack's name in vain.
"No, man," I said. "It's unsettling because Jack was obviously hallucinating at the end. That's a sign of way too many drugs, or mental illness. Maybe he was bipolar. We could've helped him." I tried not to wince at the irony of my observation.
"Sorry, I'm not gonna kick my own ass over what happened to Jack. For your information, I really did spot L. Michael C was sitting next to me. He saw the guy too, before he walked away. I ran over to see if I could flag him down. L was gone baby gone, of course."
"Of course," I said. "That's how men of mystery roll. And ghosts. And leprechauns."
"Michael's taking us for a few drinks before the show. You can ask him yourself. He's keen on the subject. Actually knows L from the old days. Calls 'em the cat food days instead of salad days."
The last thing either of us needed were more drinks. On the other hand, who was I to turn down a chance to booze with Michael C, an author nearly as cultish and reclusive as the inimitable L? Besides, Michael only drank the finest single malt, expense be damned.
The train rattled into a tunnel and darkness. By the faint plastic glow of the interior lights I had a rush of vertigo that tricked my body into believing the passenger car no longer moved laterally, but had shifted to the vertical plane and was descending at tremendous velocity, an express elevator to the pits. Streaks of red flickered against the windows. The kid with the earphones glanced at me. His earphones resembled the curved horns of a ram. His eyes reflected the void. He smiled. His smile was the void.
I gave him the finger.
***
Michael C awaited us at Grand Central Station. We immediately repaired to a hole in the wall with an Irish house band and a sexy bartender decked in a leather bustier. Thank Jesus, Mary, and the Saints for those.
Most of the clientele were faux bikers and imitation punk rockers. I suspected their tattoos peeled and peacock-hued mohawks combed over to make office dress code come Monday morning. The garage music banged and wheedled with stops and gaps that hurt my brain. I ordered a round of Glenrothes and we toasted good old dead Jack one more time.
Michael was clad in black, as ever. Black silk shirt and string tie, black slacks and black wingtips. His hair was black and curled spring-tight. He was pale, gaunt of cheek, and wiry as a hound, ever restless without actually twitching or fidgeting. His eyes, though. They shivered and crackled. He proved quite pleased to discuss Tom L.
"Sure, we saw him in Glasgow. Dude was there, scoping the joint. I recognized him right away."
"What does he do? For a living, I mean." Anybody who knows anything knows writers don't survive off earnings from writing. We all have real jobs such as being teachers, dish washers, drug dealers, and crack whores.
"Works as an underwriter. Or writes technical manuals for research and development at an auto plant. Or he heads a lab at a defense contractor. Point is, nobody knows what he does outside of writing because he says something different to whomever asks. Wilum and S.T. told me L bought several blocks of abandoned properties for a dollar and that he lives completely alone. Pushes a shopping cart to and from an outlet store like a bag lady. Spends evenings on the stoop in a pair of John Lennons and a peacoat, smoking foreign cigarettes and watching kids smash in the windows of wrecked cars. Sleeps in a king-sized poster-bed in the penthouse of a historic brownstone that used to be a famous hotel where all the Mo-Town singers and execs held court. Just him now, and the things that go bump in the night." Michael had snagged Poe and was experimenting with the marionette's strings as he talked, causing Poe to strut and lurch on the tabletop in a creepy pantomime of moonwalking, then spinning like a 1970s break-dance king performing a herky-jerky tarantella. In sixty seconds Michael had gotten more of the hang of it than John had in a whole year. John shrugged and cheerfully kept at his scotch, hugging Bob in the crook of his elbow like the protective father he was.
I said, "Didn't Nathan B post an expose on his blog? Exploding the Myth of L?"
Michael nodded. "As a joke, yes. A tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of the L mystique. Nathan thinks, or at least he likes to think, L doesn't exist. His theory is a few writers got together during the 1980s and created their very own Richard Bachman. He even went so far as to out that British hack, Mark S, as one of the original instigators, although that's a mighty generous accusation considering Mark S's best ideas were all previously written by Lovecraft, Aickman."
"Yeah, I read something by Mark S-The White Paws. That was his bestseller. Moved thirty-six copies at the British Fantasy Convention when everybody got drunk and thought they were signing up for a charity drive."
"The White Paws was followed closely by The Man Who Collected Barbara Cartland," John said. "But it didn't do so hot, alas."
"Kicked ass in the Commonwealth," I said.
"Does that even count?"
"Nah, not really. I apologize."
I hadn't thought much of Mark S's The White Paws. The sorry bastard worshipped at the altar of L and his work came off all the worse by way of comparison. L lite, so to speak.
Sadly, he'd been famously murdered by another author, an English lady he'd cyberstalked for ages. They'd had an ongoing feud over a metafictional story good ol' woman-hating S wrote that painted her in an unflattering light. Then the female author had the audacity to go and win the British Fantasy Award a few times while S was passed over without comment, as usual. Despite his public disdain for industry laurels and accolades, he snapped and began haunting internet message boards the lady frequented, and posting pseudo-anonymous rants about how girls like her only won awards because they looked fetching in a skirt.
He finally crossed the line by rummaging through trash bins outside her apartment one night and she, having lost her wits due to S's relentless fear campaign, sneaked upon him and cracked his skull with a ball peen hammer, cut off his head and stored it in the freezer behind a frozen Butterball turkey, or whatever the fuck brand they sell in jolly old England. She was currently finishing up a remarkably short stint at a women's prison and her book sales were sensational.
I'd heard that S's funeral reception was attended by exactly one person: feared and dreaded genre editor S Jones who'd show up for anything that offered free alcohol and who'd once infamously hailed Mark S as the savior of British horror, much to everyone's eternal chagrin. At least Jones sprang for the wreath. HOCUS, the science fiction industry magazine, gave S a one-sentence obituary, which was more than they'd given any of his books at least. All very lurid, as befitted the community.
Michael said, "Anyway, Nate hypothesized the L Syndrome was a sophisticated long con. A masterful grift. Dead letter drops, fake email addresses, phony author bios, author photo of some guy dead since the Roaring Twenties. Started as a game, each of them penning gibberish and sending it to Space & Time, Horror Show, Night Cry, etc., etc. It got out of hand and editors actually bought the stuff and next thing you know, Tom L is a hot property, a horror wunderkind, the underground antidote to Stephen King and Dean Koontz, the Jack Spicer headbutt to Rod McKuen's yammering gob that is category horror. The gig got stale years ago, but now these pranksters are stuck with carrying on the charade. Hard to let go of those royalty checks. Nathan is wrong, of course. I've corresponded with L since 1988. We were pen pals on Usenet for a while before he got so reclusive. Met him on five other occasions. Went to his house once. The man is real as real gets."
"You visited his house? Goddamn it!" Jo
hn pounded the table with his big fist and our shot glasses jumped. "That pisses me off more than the story you told me on the train." He glared at me.
"Today is the day to face the fact you are a frustrated and unfulfilled sonofabitch," I said. "And if you'd rather ogle L's house than coconut oil dripping off a perfectly formed breast, well, I am not certain what kind of friend you are."
"There's no reason I can't do both!"
Michael continued patiently. "It was just an apartment L stayed in after his wife died. Or disappeared. Similar to the Jack situation. Whatever the case, L camped for a while before he picked up and moved to where he is now. Nothing special, that apartment. Neat as you please, though. Sterile as a gynecologist's office."
"What, no copies of the Necronomicon lying on the coffee table?" I said. Probably sarcastically.
"Just something about the history of puppets. No bodies hanging in the closet either."
I didn't ask the obvious: what L was like, because I really didn't give a shit. So I asked about our good buddy Nathan instead. "Where's Nathan? He's in town, right?" Nathan had been a bartender in New Orleans during the aughts. He got out right before the hurricane and the floods. His daughter was thirteen and working on a PhD in nuclear physics at Cal Tech. Meanwhile, he lived in a shack in South Carolina and wrote the most delicately horrific short stories I'd ever read. Another recluse. Damn, we all had at least that much in common with Tommy L.
