The Shadow at the Bottom of the World

by Thomas Ligotti

  The other Alice is the one who’s really comfortable with kids and kiddish things. How else could she have written Preston and the Laughing This or Preston and the Twitching That? So when it comes time to do this reading every year, I try to put her onstage as much as possible, something that’s becoming more difficult with the passing years. Oddly enough, it’s my grown-up’s weakness for booze that allows me to do this most effectively. Each drink I had this afternoon peeled away a few more winters, and soon I was ready to confront the most brattish child without fear. Which leads me to introduce: Episode Two. Place: The Car in the Driveway. Time: A Radiant Twilight.

  With a selection of Preston stories on the seat beside me (I was still undecided on which to read, hoping for inspiration), I was off to do my duty at the library. A routine adjustment of the rearview mirror straightened the slack-mouthed angle it had somehow assumed since I’d last driven the car. The image I saw in the mirror was also routine. Across the street and staring into my car by way of the rear window was the odious and infinitely old Mr. Thompson.

  (Worse than E. Nesbit’s U. W. Ugli, let me assure you.) He seemed to appear out of nowhere, for I hadn’t seen him when I was getting into the car. But there he was now, ogling the back of my head. This was quite normal for the lecherous old boy, and I didn’t think anything of it. While I was adjusting the mirror, however, a strange little trick took place. I must have hit the switch that changes the position of the mirror for night driving, flipping it back and forth very quickly like the snap of a camera. So what I saw for an instant was a nighttime, negative version of Mr. Thompson as he stood there with his hands deep in his trousers pockets. What a horrendous idea. The unappealingly lubricious Thompson on this side of reality is bad enough without tfnfr-Thompsons running around and harassing me for dates. (Thank goodness there’s only one of everybody, I thought.) I didn’t pull out of the driveway until I saw Thompson move on down the sidewalk, which he did after a few moments, leaving me to stare at my own shriveled eye sockets in the rearview mirror.

  The sun was going down in a pumpkin-colored blaze when I arrived at the little one-story library. Some costumed kids were hanging around outside: a werewolf, a black cat with a long curling tail, and what looked like an Elvis Presley, or at least some teen idol of a bygone age. And coming up the walk were two identical Tinkerbells, who I later found out were Tracy and Trina Martin. I had forgotten about twins.

  So much for the comforting notion that there’s only one of everybody.

  I was actually feeling quite confident, even as I entered the library and suddenly found myself confronted with a huddling mass of youngsters. But then the spell was broken maliciously when some anonymous smart aleck called out from the crowd, saying: “Hey, lookit the mask she’s wearing.” After that I propelled myself down several glossy linoleum hallways in search of a friendly adult face.

  (Someone should give that wisecracker a copy of Struwwe/peter; let him see what happens to his kind of kid.)

  Finally I passed the open door of tidy little room where a group of ladies and the head librarian, Mr. Grosz, were sipping coffee. Mr. Grosz said how nice it was to see me again and introduced me to the moms who were helping out with the party.

  “My William’s read all your books,” said a Mrs. Harley, as if she were relating a fact to which she was completely indifferent. “I can’t keep him away from them.”

  I didn’t know whether or not to thank her for this comment, and ended up replying with a dignified and slightly liquorish smile. Mr. Grosz offered me some coffee and I declined: bad for the stomach. Then he wickedly suggested that, as it was starting to get dark outside, the time seemed right for the festivities to begin. My reading was to inaugurate the evening’s fun, a good spooky story “to get everyone in the mood.” First, though, I needed to get myself in the mood, and discreetly retired to a nearby ladies’ room where I could refortify my fluttering nerves. Mr. Grosz, in one of the strangest and most embarrassing social gestures I’ve ever witnessed, offered to wait right outside the lavatory until I finished.

  “I’m quite ready now, Mr. Grosz,” I said, glaring down at the little man from atop an unelderly pair of high heels. He cleared his throat, and I almost thought he was going to extend a crooked arm for me to take. But instead, he merely stretched it out, indicating the way to an old woman who might not see as well as she once did.

  He led me back down the hallway toward the children’s section of the library, where I assumed my reading would take place as it always had in the past.

  However, we walked right by this area, which was dark and ominously empty, and proceeded down a flight of stairs leading to the library’s basement. “Our new facility,” bragged Mr. Grosz.

  “Converted one of the storage rooms into a small auditorium of sorts.” Down at the end of the hallway, two large green doors faced each other on opposite walls. “Which one will it be tonight?” asked Mr. Grosz while staring at my left hand. “Preston and the Starving Shadows,” I answered, showing him the book I was holding. He smiled and confided that it was one of his favorites. Then he opened the door to the library’s new facility.

  Over fifty kids were sitting (quietly!) in their seats. At the front of the long, narrow room, a big witch was outlining the party activities for the night; and when she saw Mr. Grosz and me enter, she began telling the children about a “special treat for us all,” meaning that the half-crocked lady author was about to give her half-cocked oration. Walking a very straight line to the front, I took the platform and thanked everyone for that nice applause—most of it, in fact, coming from the sweaty hands of Mr. Grosz. On the platform was a lampbearing podium decorated with wizened cornstalks. I fixed my book in place before me, disguising my apprehension with a little stage patter about the story everyone was going to hear. When I invoked the name of Preston Penn, a few kids actually cheered, or at least one did. Just as I was ready to begin reading, however, the lights went out, which was rather unexpected. And for the first time I noticed that facing each other on opposite sides of the room were two rows of jacko’-lanterns shining bright orange and yellow in the darkness. They all had identical faces—triangular eyes and noses, wailing O’s for mouths— and could have been mirror reflections of themselves. (As a child, I was convinced that pumpkins naturally grew this way, complete with facial features and phosphorescent insides.) Furthermore, they seemed to be suspended in space, darkness concealing their means of support. Since that darkness also prevented my seeing the faces of the children, these jack-o’-lanterns became my audience.

  But as I read, the real audience asserted itself with giggles, whispers, and some rather ingenious noises made with the folding wooden chairs they were sitting in. At one point, toward the end of the reading, there came a low moan from somewhere in the back, and it sounded as if someone had fallen out of his seat. “It’s all right,” I heard an adult voice call out. The door at the back opened, allowing a moment of brightness to break the spooky spell, and some shadows exited. When the lights came on at the end of the story, one of the seats toward the back was missing its occupant.

  “Okay, kids,” said the big witch after some minor applause for Preston, “everyone move their chairs back to the walls and make room for the games and stuff.”

  The games and stuff had the room in a low-grade uproar. Masked and costumed children ruled the night, indulging their appetite for movement, sweet things to eat and drink, and noise. I stood at the periphery of the commotion and chatted with Mr. Grosz.

  “What exactly was the disturbance all about?” I asked him.

  He took a sip from a plastic cup of cider and smacked his lips offensively. “Oh, nothing, really. You see that child there with the black-cat outfit? She seemed to have fainted. Not entirely, of course. Once we got her outside, she was all right. She was wearing her kitty mask all through your reading, and I think the poor thing hyperventilated or something like that. Complained that she saw something horrible in her mask and was very frightened fo
r a while. At any rate, you can see she’s fine now, and she’s even wearing her mask again. Amazing how children can put things right out of their minds and recover so quickly.”

  I agreed that it was amazing, and then asked precisely what it was the child thought she saw in her mask. I couldn’t help being reminded of another cat earlier in the day who also saw something that gave her a fright.

  “She couldn’t really explain it,” replied Mr. Grosz. “You know how it is with children. Yes, I daresay you do know how it is with them, considering you’ve spent your life exploring the subject.”

  I took credit for knowing how it is with children, knowing instead that Mr.

  Grosz was really talking about someone else, about her. Not to overdo this quaint notion of a split between my professional and my private personas, but at the time I was already quite self-conscious about the matter. While I was reading the Preston book to the kids, I had suffered the uncanny experience of having almost no recognition of my own words. Of course, this is rather a cliche with writers, and it has happened to me many times throughout my long career.

  But never so completely. They were the words of a mind (I stop just short of writing soul) entirely alien to me. This much I would like to note in passing, never to be mentioned again.

  “I do hope,” I said to Mr. Grosz, “that it wasn’t the story that scared the child. I have enough angry parents on my hands as it is.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t. Not that it wasn’t a good scary children’s story. I didn’t mean to imply that, of course. But you know, it’s that time of year. Imaginary things are supposed to seem more real. Like your Preston. He was always a big one for Hallowe’en, am I right?”

  I said he was quite right and hoped he would not pursue the subject. The reality of fictional characters was not at all what I wanted to talk about just then. I tried to laugh it away. And you know, Father, for a moment it was exactly like your own laugh, and not my usual hereditary impersonation of it.

  Much to everyone’s regret, I did not stay very long at the party. The reading had largely sobered me up, and my tolerance level was running quite low. Yes, Mr. Grosz, I promise to do it again next year, anything you say; just let me get back to my car and my bar.

  The drive home through the suburban streets was something of an ordeal, made hazardous by pedestrian trick-or-treaters. The costumes did me no good. (The same ghost was everywhere.) The masks did me no good. And those Prestonian shadows fluttering against two-story facades (why did I have to choose that book?) certainly did me no good at all. This was not my place anymore. Not my style. Dr. Guardsman, administer your medicine in tall glasses… but please not looking-ones.

  And now I’m safe at home with one of the tallest of those glasses resting full and faithful on my desk as I write. A lamp with a shade of Tiffany glass (circa 1922) casts its amiable glow on the many pages I’ve filled over the past few hours. (Although the hands of the clock seem locked in the same V position as when I started writing.) The lamplight shines upon the window directly in front of my desk, allowing me to see a relatively flattering reflection of myself in the black mirror of the glass. The house is soundless, and I’m a rich, retired authoress-widow.

  Is there still a problem? I’m really not sure.

  I remind you that I’ve been drinking steadily since early this afternoon. I remind you that I’m old and no stranger to the mysteries of geriatric neuroticism. I remind you that some part of me has written a series of children’s books whose hero is a disciple of the bizarre. I remind you of what night this is and to what zone the imagination can fly on this particular eve.

  (But we can discount this last one, owing to my status as an elderly cynic and disbeliever.) I need not, however, remind you that this world is stranger than we know, or at least mine seems to be, especially this past year. And I now notice that it’s very strange—and, once again, untidy.

  Exhibit One. Outside my window is an autumn moon hanging in the blackness. Now, I have to confess that I’m not up on the lunar phases (“loony faces,” as Preston might say), but there seems to have been a switch since I last peeked out the window—the thing looks reversed. Where it used to be concaving to the right, it’s now comparing in that direction, last quarter changed to first quarter, or something of that nature. But I doubt Nature has anything to do with it; more likely the explanation lies with Memory. And there’s really not much troubling me about the moon, which, even if reversed, would still look as neat as a storybook illustration. The trouble is with everything else below, or at least what I can see of the suburbanscape in the darkness. Like writing that can only be read in a mirror, the shapes outside my window—trees, houses, but thank goodness no people—now look awkward and wrong.

  Exhibit Two. To the earlier list of reasons for my diminished competence, I would like to add an upcoming alcohol withdrawal. The last sip I took out of that glass on my desk tasted indescribably strange, to the point where I doubt I’ll be having any more. I almost wrote, and now will, that the booze tasted inside out. Of course, there are certain diseases with the power to turn the flavor of one’s favorite drink into that of a hellbroth. So perhaps I’ve fallen victim to such a malady. But I remind you that although my mind may be terminally soused, it has always resided in corpore sano.

  Exhibit Three (the last). My reflection in the window before me. Perhaps something unusual in the melt of the glass. My face. The surrounding shadows seem to be overlapping it a little at a time, like bugs attracted to something sweet. But the only thing sweet about Alice is her blood, highly sugared over the years from her drinking habit. So what is it, then? Shadows of senility? Or those starving things I read about earlier this evening come back for a repeat performance, another in a yearlong series of echoes? But whenever that happens, it’s always the reflection, the warped or imaginary image first… and then the real-life echo. Since when does reading a story constitute an incantation calling up its imagery before the body’s eyes and not the mind’s?

  Something’s backward here. Backward into a corner: checkmate.

  Now, perhaps this seems like merely another cry of wolf, the most elaborate one so far. I can’t actually say that it isn’t. I can’t say that what I’m hearing right now isn’t some Hallowe’en trick of my besotted brain.

  The laughing out in the hallway, I mean. That childish chuckling. Even when I concentrate, I’m still not able to tell if the sound is inside or outside my head. It’s like looking at one of those toy pictures that yield two distinct scenes when tilted this way or that, but, at a certain angle, form only a merging blur of them both. Nonetheless, the laughing is there, somewhere. And the voice is extremely familiar. Of course, it is. No, it isn’t. Yes, it is, it is!

  Aaaaa ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

  Ex. 4 (the shadows again). They’re all over my face in the window. Stripping away, as in the story. But there’s nothing under that old mask; no child’s face there, Preston. It’s you, isn’t it? I’ve never heard your laughter, except in my imagination, but that’s exactly how I imagined it sounds. Or has my imagination given you, too, a hand-me-down, inherited laugh?

  My only fear is that it isn’t you but some impostor. The moon, the clock, the drink, the window. This is all very much your style, only it’s not being done in fun, is it? It’s not funny. Too horrible for me, Preston, or whoever you are.

  And who is it? Who could be doing this to a harmless old lady? Too horrible. The shadows in the window. No, not my face.

  I cant see anymore

  Help me Father cant see

  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 unab
le 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; thin ladders ascending into a maze of shafts and conduits, the dark valves and arteries of a petrified and monstrous organism.

  And he knew that every corner of this corroded world was prolific with choices, even if they had to be made blindly in a place where clear consequences and a hierarchy of possibilities were lacking. For there might be a room whose shabby and soundless decor exudes a desolate serenity which at first attracts the visitor, who then discovers certain figures enveloped in plush furniture, figures that do not move or speak but only stare; and, concluding that these weary mannikins have exercised a bizarre indulgence in repose, the visitor must ponder the alternatives: to linger or to leave?

  Eluding the claustral enchantments of such rooms, his gaze now roamed the streets of this dream. He scanned the altitudes beyond the high sloping roofs: there the stars seemed to be no more than silvery cinders which showered up from the mouths of great chimneys and clung to something dark and dense looming above, something that closed in upon each black horizon. It appeared to him that certain high towers nearly breached this sagging blackness, stretching themselves nightward to attain the farthest possible remove from the world below. And toward the peak of one of the highest towers he spied vague silhouettes that moved hectically in a bright window, twisting and leaning upon the glass like shadow-puppets in the fever of some mad dispute.