Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe (12 page)

“Let me out of these chains and I'll tell you everything,” I said.

“Forget it,” she answered. “I'm going to get someone to throw you out of here.”

“Then I'll just have to release myself.” At these words, the manacles around my ankles, my wrists, and my throat opened by themselves . . . and the chains fell away. “You can't pretend,” I continued, “that there isn't something familiar about me. After all we've meant to each other, after all we've done together, over and over and over. You see, I also know the desires of
my
clients, or so I might call them. Newscasters call them victims. They show their faces on television. I make them famous, though my part in their renown is a mystery to all. And mystery is what does it for you, is that not so? The thrill of not knowing what will happen next. But here it's all by the numbers. You've been cooped up in this silly place far too long. For someone like you, that can be deadly. You've always known you were special, don't deny it. You've always believed that someday—and it was always just around the corner, wasn't it?—great things were going to happen, rapturous adventures that weren't quite clear, yet when they happened would be real. As real as the velvet embrace of your favorite cape, the one with the silver chain that draws together its curtain-like wings across your bosom. As real as the tall candles you light on stormy nights. You love those storms, don't you, with their chains of raindrops whipping against your windows. All that pandemonium drives you wild. And the enthralling cruelties you imagine visited upon you in the candlelight by the man with the spangled eyebrows. How they make you swoon so helplessly.

“But now you're in danger of losing everything you really love, which is why I showed up tonight. You've got to get out of this tacky sideshow. This is for hicks, this is small time. You can do much better. I can take you places where the raging storms and brutal subjugations never end. Please, don't back away from me. There's nowhere to go and your eyes tell me you want the same things I do. If you're worried about the hardships of traveling to strange faraway places—don't! You're almost there now. Just fall into my arms, into my heart, into . . . There, that was easy, wasn't it?”

Now she was inside of me with all the others—the prize possession in my gallery of frail little dolls with souls given over to wild-wind nights and sadistic villains. How I loved to play with them.

After the assimilation, I retraced my steps up and down stairways and through corridors of scarlet darkness. “Goodnight, everybody!” I said to the girls in the reception room.

Back out on the street, I paused to make sure she was securely incarcerated within me. In the early stages there's always the possibility that a new internee will try to unzip me from inside, so to speak, and break out the front gate. She did in fact make an attempt to free herself. It wasn't serious, though. A drunk I passed on the sidewalk saw an arm shoot out at him from underneath my shirt, projecting chest-high at a perfect right angle to the rest of me. He staggered over and with a jolly vigor shook the hand reaching blindly between the bars of its cage. Then he proceeded on his way. And I proceeded on mine once I'd got her safely back inside her fabulous prison, a captive of my heart and its infinite chambers. What times we will have together, she and I and all the rest. I can do with them as I please and I am pleased to do much. But they won't have to endure my treatment forever. I'll be back on the road by first frost next year, needing more bodies to warm me. By then, the old ones will have melted like icicles in the dank bowels of my castle home. In the meantime, I'll be keeping a keen eye out for those who walk this world in glad submission to gloom.

As I strolled in good cheer from the House of Chains, the traffic light down that slummy street turned from amber to red—a portent of things to come for my new flame and me, now one in flesh as well as in dreams.

For much too long I have been promising to formulate my views on the writing of supernatural horror tales. Yet I've continued to put off doing so. All I can say for myself is that until now I just haven't had the time. Why not? I was too busy churning out the leetle darlings. But many people, for whatever reasons, would like to be writers of horror tales and crave advice on how to go about it. I know this. Fortunately, the present moment is a convenient one for me to share my knowledge and experience regarding this special literary vocation. Well, I guess I'm ready as I'll ever be. Let's get it over with.

The way I plan to proceed is quite simple. First, I'm going to sketch out the basic plot, characters, and various other features of a short horror story. Next, I will offer suggestions on how these raw elements may be treated in a few of the major styles which horror authors have exploited over the years. If all goes well, the novice teller of terror tales will be saved much time and agony puzzling out such things for himself. At certain spots along the way I will examine specifics of technique, come to highly biased conclusions regarding intents and purposes, submit general commentary on the philosophy of horror fiction, and so forth.

At this point I would like to state that what follows is a rough draft of a story that in its finished form was meant to appear in the published works of Gerald K. Riggers (myself in literary guise if you didn't know). However, it never came to fruition. Frankly, I just couldn't bring myself to go the distance with this one. Such things happen. Perhaps farther down the line we'll analyze such cases of irreparable failure, perhaps not. Regardless, the bare elements of this narrative are still suitable for demonstrating how horror writers do what they do. Good. Here it is, then, as told in my own words.

THE STORY

A thirtyish male protagonist, let's name him Nathan, has a date with a girl whom he deeply wishes to impress. Toward this end, a minor role is to be played by an impressive new pair of trousers he intends to find and purchase. A few obstacles materialize along the way, realistic inconveniences all, before he finally manages to secure this item of apparel, and at a fair price. They are first-rate in their tailoring, this is quite evident. So far, so good. Profoundly good, to be sure, since Nathan believes that one's personal possessions should themselves possess particular qualities and pedigrees. For example, Nathan's overcoat is a handsome and well-fabricated garment he ordered from an esteemed retailer of fine clothes, his wristwatch is the superior timepiece his grandfather bequeathed to him, and his car is a distinguished but not obtrusive vehicle. For Nathan, peculiar essences inhere not only in certain possessions but also in certain places, certain happenings in time and space, and certain modes of being. In Nathan's view, every facet of one's life should shine with these essences because they are what make an individual really real. What are these essences? Over a period of time, Nathan has narrowed them down to three: something magical, something timeless, and something profound. Though the world around him is for the most part lacking in these special ingredients, he perceives his own life to contain them in fluctuating but acceptable quantities. His new trousers certainly do; and Nathan hopes, for the first time in his life, that a future romance—to be conducted with one Lorna McFickel—will too.

So far, so good. Until the night of Nathan's first date, that is.

Miss McFickel resides in a respectable suburb but, in relation to where Nathan lives, the locale of her home requires that he negotiate one of the most dangerous sectors of the city. No problem: Nathan keeps his car well maintained. If he just keeps the doors locked and windows rolled up, everything will be fine. Worst luck, broken bottles on a broken street, and a flat tire. Nathan curbs the car. He removes his grandfather's watch and locks it in the glove compartment; he takes off his overcoat, folds it up neatly, and snuggles it into the shadows beneath the dashboard. As far as the trousers are concerned, he would simply have to exercise great care while attempting to change his tire in record time, and in a part of town known as Hope's Back Door.

Now, all the while Nathan is fixing the tire, his legs feel strange. He could attribute this to the physical labor he was performing in a pair of trousers not exactly designed for such abuse. He would just have been fooling himself, though. For Nathan remembers his legs feeling strange, though less noticeably, when he tried on the trousers at home. They didn't feel that way at the clothing store. If they had, he would never have purchased them. He would also have returned them if his date with Lorna McFickel hadn't been scheduled too soon for him to find another pair of trousers as fitting as these, which turned out to be not fitting in the least once they began going strange on him. But strange how? Strange as in being a little tingly, and even then some. A little quivery. Nonsense, he's just nervous about his date with lovely Lorna. And the complications he's presently experiencing are no help.

Adding to the troubles Nathan has already had, two scraggly juveniles are now watching him change the tire. He tries to ignore them but succeeds a little too well in this. Unseen by him, one of the ostensible delinquents edges toward the car and opens the front door. Worst luck, Nathan forgot to lock it. The audacious hoodlum lays his hands on Nathan's overcoat, and then both no-goodniks disappear into a tumbledown building.

Very quickly now. Nathan chases the hooligans into what seems to be an untenanted apartment house, and he falls down some stairs leading to a sooty basement. But it's not that the stairs were rotten, no. It
is
that Nathan's legs have given out. They just won't work anymore. The tingling and quivering have now penetrated him and crippled his body from the waist down. He tries to remove his pants but they won't come off, as if they had become part of him. Something has gone horribly wrong because of those pants of his. The following is why. A few days before Nathan purchased the pants, they were returned to the store for a cash refund. The woman returning them said that her husband didn't like the way they felt, which was true. Also true was that her husband had collapsed and died from a heart attack not long after trying on the pants. In an endeavor to salvage what she could from the tragedy, the woman put her husband into a pair of old dungarees before making another move. Poor Nathan, of course, was not informed of his pants' sordid past. And when the hooligans who stole his overcoat see that he is lying helpless in the grime of that basement, they decide to take advantage of the situation and strip him of his valuables . . . starting with those expensive-looking slacks and whatever treasures they may contain. But after they relieve a protesting and paralyzed Nathan of his pants, they do not further pursue their pillaging. Not after they see Nathan's legs, which are the putrid members of a man who is decomposing. With the lower half of Nathan rapidly rotting away, the upper must also die among the countless shadows of that condemned building. And mingled with the pain and madness of his untimely demise, Nathan abhors and grieves over the thought that, for a while anyway, Miss McFickel will think he has stood her up on the first date of what was supposed to be a long line of dates destined to evolve into a magical, timeless, and profound affair of two hearts.

Incidentally, this story, had it reached its culmination, would most likely have borne the title “Romance of a Dead Man.”

THE STYLES

As I've already stated, there is more than one way to write a horror story. And such a statement, true or false, is easily demonstrated. In this section we will examine the three primary techniques that authors have employed to produce tales of terror. They are: the
realistic
technique, the
traditional Gothic
technique, and the
experimental
technique. Each serves its user in different ways and realizes different ends, there's no question about that. After a little soul-searching, the prospective horror writer may awaken to the right technique for attaining his personal ends. Thus:

The realistic technique
.
Since the cracking dawn of consciousness, restless tongues have asked: is the world, and are its people, real? Yes, answers realistic fiction, but only when it is, and they are, normal. The supernatural, and all it represents, is profoundly abnormal, and therefore unreal. Few would argue with these conclusions. Fine. Now the highest aim of the realistic horror writer is to prove, in realistic terms, that the unreal is real. The question is: “Can this be done?” The answer is: “Of course not.” One would look silly attempting such a thing. Consequently, the realistic horror writer, wielding the hollow proofs and premises of his art, must settle for merely
seeming
to smooth out the ultimate paradox. In order to achieve this effect, the supernatural realist must really know the normal world, and deeply take for granted its reality. (It helps if he himself is normal and real.) Only then can the unreal, the abnormal, the supernatural be smuggled in as a plain brown package marked Hope, Love, or Fortune Cookies, and postmarked: the Edge of the Unknown. And of the dear reader's seat. In the end, of course, the supernatural explanation of a given story depends entirely on some irrational principle which in the real, normal world looks as awkward and stupid as a rosy-cheeked farm lad in a den of reeking degenerates. (Amend this, possibly, to rosy-cheeked degenerate . . . reeking farm lads.) Nevertheless, the hoax can be pulled off with varying degrees of success. That much is obvious. Just remember to assure the reader, at certain points in the tale and by way of certain signals, that it's now all right to believe the unbelievable. Here's how Nathan's story might be told using the
realistic
technique. Fast forward.

Nathan is a normal and real character, or at least one very close to being so. Perhaps he's not as normal and real as he would like to be, but he does have his sights set on just this goal. He might even be a little too intent on it, though without passing beyond the limits of the normal and the real. We have established that Nathan has a fetish for things
“
magical
”
(which word should really have its own pair of quotes, given that the positive connotation our protagonist intends it to carry will be negated by the end of the narrative, when a world of bad magic comes down on Nathan's head),
“
timeless
”
(again the quotes, because if time runs out for anyone, it's Nathan), and
“
profound.”
(Hmm, this one has a knottiness about it that the others don't. “Magical” and “timeless” have a cheaply ironic connection to the incidents of the story. However, “profound” doesn't work in this way. This “essence” does have an aura about it, though, at least for this writer. For now, then, we'll let it stand.)

Nathan's search for the aforesaid qualities in his life may be somewhat uncommon, but certainly not abnormal, not unreal. (And to make him a bit more real, one could supply his overcoat, his grandfather's wristwatch, and his car with specific brand names, perhaps autobiographically borrowed from one's own closet, wrist, and garage.) The triadic formula which haunts Nathan—similar to the Latinate slogans on family coats-of-arms—also haunts the text of the tale like a song's refrain, possibly in italics as the submerged chanting of our anti-hero's under-mind, possibly not. (Try not to be too artificial; one recalls this is realism.) Nathan wants his romance with Lorna McFickel, along with everything else he considers of value in existence, to be magical, timeless, and, in some vague sense, profound. To Nathan these are attributes that are really normal and really real in a helter-skelter universe where things are ever threatening to go abnormal and unreal on one, anyone, not just him.

Okay. Now Lorna McFickel represents all the virtues of normalcy and reality. She could be played up in the
realistic
version of the story as much more normal and real than Nathan. Maybe Nathan is after all quite the neurotic; maybe he needs normal and real things too much, I don't know. (If I did, maybe I could have written the story.) Whatever, Nathan wants to win a normal, real love, but he doesn't. He loses, even before he has a chance to play. He loses badly. Why? For the answer we can appeal to a very prominent theme in horror stories: be careful what you wish for, because you will certainly get the contrary. What happened was that Nathan got greedy. He wanted something that human existence does not offer—perfection. And to highlight this reality, certain
outside
supernatural forces were brought in to teach Nathan, and the reader, a lesson. (Realistic horror stories can be very didactic.) But how can such things be? This is really what a supernatural horror story, even a realistic one, is all about. In just what way, amid all the realism of Nathan's life, does the supernatural sneak past Inspectors Normal and Real standing guard at the gate? Well, sometimes it steps softly by inches until it has crashed the party.

Now in Nathan's story the source of the supernatural is somewhere inside those mysterious trousers. They are woven of a material which he has never seen the like of; they have no label to indicate their maker; there are no others like them in the store of a different size or color. When Nathan asks the salesman about them, we introduce Exhibit One: the trousers were received as if providentially by the clothier Nathan patronizes. They were not designated to be among the batch of apparel with which they came, the salesman checks. And no one else in the store at the time can tell Nathan anything about them, which is also checked and double-checked. All of these facts make the pants a total mystery in a totally realistic way. The reader now takes the hint that there is something surpassing strange about the pants and will allow that strangeness to extend into the supernatural.

At this point the alert student may ask: but even if the trousers are acknowledged as magical, why do they have the particular effect they eventually have, causing Nathan to rot away below the waist? To answer this question we need to introduce Exhibit Two: Nathan is not the original owner of the pants. Not long before they became one of his magical, timeless, and profound possessions, they were worn by a man whose wife adhered to the rule “waste not, want not” and removed the brand new pants he was wearing when he keeled over and died. But these “facts” explain nothing, right? Of course they don't. However, they may seem to explain everything if they are revealed in the right manner. All one has to do is link up Exhibits One and Two (there may even be more) within the scheme of a realistic narrative.