The Nightmare Factory (61 page)

The place was very dark, though no more than in past experience, and much more populated than it first appeared to Dregler’s eyes. He paused at the doorway, slowly but unsystematically removing his gloves, while his vision worked with the faint halos of illumination offered by lamps of tarnished metal, which were spaced so widely along the walls that the light of one lamp seemed barely to link up and propagate that of its neighbor. Gradually, then, the darkness sifted away, revealing the shapes beneath it: a beaming forehead with the glitter of wire-rimmed eyeglasses below, cigarette-holding and beringed fingers lying asleep on a table, shoes of shining leather which ticked lightly against Dregler’s own as he now passed cautiously through the room. At the back stood a column of stairs coiling up to another level, which was more an appended platform, a little brow of balcony, than a section of the establishment proper. This level was caged in at its brink with a railing constructed of the same rather wiry and fragile material as the stairway, giving this area the appearance of a makeshift scaffolding. Rather slowly, Dregler ascended the stairs.

“Good evening, Joseph,” Dregler said to the man seated at the table beside an unusually tall and narrow window. Joseph Gleer stared for a moment at the old gloves Dregler had tossed onto the table.

“You still have those same old gloves,” he replied to the greeting, then lifted his gaze, grinning: “And that overcoat!”

Gleer stood up and the two men shook hands. Then they both sat down and Gleer, indicating the empty glass between them on the table, asked Dregler if he still drank brandy. Dregler nodded, and Gleer said “Coming up” before leaning over the rail a little ways and holding out two fingers in view of someone in the shadows below.

“Is this just a sentimental symposium, Joseph?” inquired the now uncoated Dregler.

“In part. Wait until we’ve got our drinks, so you can properly congratulate me.”

Dregler nodded again, scanning Gleer’s face without any observable upsurge in curiosity. A former colleague from Dregler’s teaching days, Gleer had always possessed an open zest for minor intrigues, academic or otherwise, and an addiction to the details of ritual and protocol, anything preformulated and with precedent. He also had a liking for petty secrets, as long as he was among those privy to them. For instance, in discussions—no matter if the subject was philosophy or old films—Gleer took an obvious delight in revealing, usually at some advanced stage of the dispute, that he had quite knowingly supported some treacherously absurd school of thought. His perversity confessed, he would then assist, and even surpass, his opponent in demolishing what was left of his old position, supposedly for the greater glory of disinterested intellects everywhere. But at the same time, Dregler saw perfectly well what Gleer was up to. And though it was not always easy to play into Gleer’s hands, it was this secret counter-knowledge that provided Dregler’s sole amusement in these mental contests, for

Nothing that asks for your arguments is worth arguing, just as nothing that solicits your belief is worth believing. The real and the unreal lovingly cohabit
in our terror
, the only “sphere” that matters.

Perhaps secretiveness, then, was the basis of the two men’s relationship, a flawed secretiveness in Gleer’s case, a consummate one in Dregler’s.

Now here he was, Gleer, keeping Dregler in so-called suspense. His eyes, Dregler’s, were aimed at the tall narrow window, beyond which were the bare upper branches of an elm that twisted with spectral movements under the floodlights fixed high upon the outside wall. But every few moments Dregler glanced at Gleer, whose babylike features were so remarkably unchanged: the cupid’s bow lips, the cookie-dough cheeks, the tiny gray eyes now almost buried within the flesh of a face too often screwed up with laughter.

A woman with two glasses on a cork-bottomed tray was standing over the table. While Gleer paid for the drinks, Dregler lifted his and held it in the position of a lazy salute. The woman who had brought the drinks looked briefly and without expression at toastmaster Dregler. Then she went away and Dregler, with false ignorance, said: “To your upcoming or recently passed event, whatever it may be or have been.”

“I hope it will be for life this time, thank you, Lucian.”

“What is this, quintus?”

“
Quartus
, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, my memory is as bad as my powers of observation. Actually I was looking for something shining on your finger, when I should have seen the shine of your eyes. No ring, though, from the bride?”

Gleer reached into the open neck of his shirt and pulled out a length of delicate chainwork, dangling at the end of which was a tiny rose-colored diamond in a plain silver setting.

“Modern innovations,” he said neutrally, replacing the chain and stone. “The moderns must have them, I suppose, but marriage is still marriage.”

“Here’s to the Middle Ages,” Dregler said with unashamed weariness.

“And the middle-aged,” refrained Gleer.

The men sat in silence for some moments. Dregler’s eyes moved once more around that shadowy loft, where a few tables shared the light of a single lamp. Most of its dim glow backfired onto the wall, revealing the concentric coils of the wood’s knotty surface. Taking a calm sip of his drink, Dregler waited.

“Lucian,” Gleer finally began in a voice so quiet that it was nearly inaudible.

“I’m listening,” Dregler assured him.

“I didn’t ask you here just to commemorate my marriage. It’s been almost a year, you know. Not that that would make any difference to you.”

Dregler said nothing, encouraging Gleer with receptive silence.

“Since that time,” Gleer continued, “my wife and I have both taken leaves from the university and have been traveling, mostly around the Mediterranean. We’ve just returned a few days ago. Would you like another drink? You went through that one rather quickly.”

“No, thank you. Please go on,” Dregler requested very politely.

After another gulp of brandy, Gleer continued. “Lucian, I’ve never understood your fascination with what you call the Medusa. I’m not sure I care to, though I’ve never told you that. But through no deliberate efforts of my own, let me emphasize, I think I can further your, I guess you could say, pursuit. You are still interested in the matter, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m too poor to afford Peloponnesian jaunts like the one you and your wife have just returned from. Was that what you had in mind?”

“Not at all. You needn’t even leave town, which is the strange part, the real beauty of it. It’s very complicated how I know what I know. Wait a second. Here, take this.”

Gleer now produced an object he had earlier stowed away somewhere in the darkness, laying it on the table. Dregler stared at the book. It was bound in a rust-colored cloth and the gold lettering across its spine was flaking away. From what Dregler could make out of the remaining fragments of the letters, the title of the book seemed to be:
Electro-Dynamics for the Beginner
.

“What is this supposed to be?” he asked Gleer.

“Only a kind of passport, meaningless in itself. This is going to sound ridiculous—how I know it!—but you want to bring the book to this establishment,” said Gleer, placing a business card upon the book’s front cover, “and ask the owner how much he’ll give you for it. I know you go to these shops all the time. Are you familiar with it?”

“Only vaguely,” replied Dregler.

The establishment in question, as the business card read, was
Brothers’ Books: Dealers in Rare and Antiquarian Books, Libraries and Collections Purchased, Large Stock of Esoteric Sciences and Civil War, No Appointment Needed, Member of Manhattan Society of Philosophical Bookdealers, Benjamin Brothers, Founder and Owner.

“I’m told that the proprietor of this place knows you by your writings,” said Gleer, adding in an ambiguous monotone: “He thinks you’re a real philosopher.”

Dregler gazed at length at Gleer, his long fingers abstractly fiddling with the little card. “Are you telling me that the Medusa is supposed to be a book?” he said.

Gleer stared down at the table-top and then looked up. “I’m not telling you anything I do not know for certain, which is not a great deal. As far as I know, it could still be anything you can imagine, and perhaps already have. Of course you can take this imperfect information however you like, as I’m sure you will. If you want to know more than I do, then pay a visit to this bookstore.”

“Who told you to tell me this?” Dregler calmly asked.

“It seems better if I don’t say anything about that, Lucian. Might spoil the show, so to speak.”

“Very well,” said Dregler, pulling out his wallet and inserting the business card into it. He stood up and began putting on his coat. “Is that all, then? I don’t mean to be rude but—”

“Why should you be any different from your usual self? But one more thing I should tell you. Please sit down. Now listen to me. We’ve known each other a long time, Lucian. And I know how much this means to you. So whatever happens, or doesn’t happen, I don’t want you to hold me responsible. I’ve only done what I thought you yourself would want me to do. Well, tell me if I was right.”

Dregler stood up again and tucked the book under his arm. “Yes, I suppose. But I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other. Good night, Joseph.”

“One more drink,” offered Gleer.

“No, good night,” answered Dregler.

As he started away from the table, Dregler, to his embarrassment, nearly rapped his head against a massive wooden beam which hung hazardously low in the darkness. He glanced back to see if Gleer had noticed this clumsy mishap. And after merely a single drink! But Gleer was looking the other way, gazing out the window at the tangled tendrils of the elm and the livid complexion cast upon it by the floodlights fixed high upon the outside wall.

For some time Dregler thoughtlessly observed the wind-blown trees outside before turning away to stretch out on his bed, which was a few steps from the window of his room. Beside him now was a copy of his first book,
Meditations on the Medusa
. He picked it up and read piecemeal from its pages.

The worshipants of the Medusa, including those who clog pages with “insights” and interpretations such as these, are the most hideous citizens of this earth—and the most numerous. But how many of them
know
themselves as such? Conceivably there may be an inner cult of the Medusa, but then again: who could dwell on the existence of such beings for the length of time necessary to round them up for execution?

It is possible that only the dead are not in league with the Medusa. We, on the other hand, are her allies—but always against ourselves. How does one become her
companion
…and live?

We are never in danger of beholding the Medusa. For that to happen she needs our consent. But a far greater disaster awaits those who know the Medusa to be gazing at them and long to reciprocate in kind. What better definition of a marked man: one who “has eyes” for the Medusa, whose eyes have a will and a fate of their own.

Ah, to be a thing without eyes. What a break to be
born
a stone!

Dregler closed the book and then replaced it on one of the shelves across the room. On that same overcrowded shelf, leather and cloth pressing against cloth and leather, was a fat folder stuffed with loose pages. Dregler brought this back to the bed with him and began rummaging through it. Over the years the file had grown enormously, beginning as a few random memoranda—clippings, photographs, miscellaneous references which Dregler copied out by hand—and expanding into a storehouse of infernal serendipity, a testament of terrible coincidence. And the subject of every entry in this inadvertent encyclopaedia was the Medusa herself.

Some of the documents fell into a section marked “Facetious,” including a comic book (which Dregler picked off a drugstore rack) that featured the Medusa as a benevolent superheroine who used her hideous powers only on equally hideous foes in a world without beauty. Others belonged under the heading of “Irrelevant,” where was placed a three-inch strip from a decades-old sports page lauding the winning season of “Mr (
sic
) Medusa.” There was also a meager division of the file which had no official designation, but which Dregler could not help regarding as items of “True Horror.” Prominent among these was a feature article from a British scandal sheet: a photoless chronicle of a man’s year-long suspicion that his wife was periodically possessed by the serpent-headed demon, a senseless little guignol which terminated with the wife’s decapitation while she lay sleeping one night and the subsequent incarceration of a madman.

One of the least creditable subclasses of the file consisted of pseudo-data taken from the less legitimate propagators of mankind’s knowledge: renegade “scientific” journals, occult-anthropology newsletters, and publications of various centers of sundry studies. Contributions to the file from periodicals such as
The Excentaur
, a back issue of which Dregler stumbled across in none other than Brothers’ Books, were collectively categorized as “Medusa and Medusans: Sightings and Material Explanations.” An early number of this publication included an article which attributed the birth of the Medusa, and of all life on Earth, to one of many extraterrestrial visitors, for whom this planet had been a sort of truckstop or comfort station en route to other locales in other galactic systems.

All such enlightening finds Dregler relished with a surly joy, especially those proclamations from the high priests of the human mind and soul, who invariably relegated the Medusa to a psychic underworld where she served as the image par excellence of romantic panic. But unique among the curiosities he cherished was an outburst of prose whose author seemed to follow in Dregler’s own footsteps: a man
after his own heart
. “Can we be delivered,” this writer rhetorically queried, “from the ‘life force’ as symbolized by Medusa? Can this energy, if such a thing exists, be put to death, crushed? Can we, in the arena of our being, come stomping out—gladiator-like—net and trident in hand, and, poking and swooping, pricking and swishing,
torment
this soulless and hideous demon into an excruciating madness, and, finally, annihilate it to the thumbs-down delight of our nerves and to our soul’s deafening applause?” Unfortunately, however, these words were written in the meanest spirit of sarcasm by a critic who parodically reviewed Dregler’s own
Meditations on the Medusa
when it first appeared twenty years earlier.