Selections by Other Authors

Notebook of the Night The Demon Dreams I. Notebook of the Night The master's eyes shining with secrets Salvation by doom New faces in the city Autumnal One may be dreaming Death without end The unfamiliar The career of nightmares The physic The demon man The puppet masters The spectral estate Primordial loathing The nameless horror Invocation to the void The mocking mystery The interminable equation The eternal mirage The order of illusion II. Notebook of the Night The Master’s Eyes Shining with Secrets The Inquisitor New Faces in the City Autumnal One May Be Dreaming Suicide by Imagination The Unfamiliar The Career of Nightmares The Premature Transfiguration The Demon Man The Puppet Masters The...

The Oblong Music-Box Amid the narrative, the narrative of The Abyss Laughs, the absence and fugue swirls as prolific, sterling, screaming stars. Found amidst singing looking-glasses, spirals ebullient, ebony, the stranger within. In the place of peculiar supellectiles, there dwells the extraordinary gardeviance. Hours, decrepit, senescent, and jewelled, a music box dancing of some ebony wood , which looks as if it has that hardness of a jewel and is florid with strange designs that beguile, at once distinct and impossible to focalize. It is a small music box, like a miniature treasure chest, made of some dark wood which looks as if it has the hardness of a jewel. This surreal object is antediluvian, very old...

Seeking refuge from the interminable hum of profitless commerce that, like some ominous massing of spectral insects, penetrated every corner of the depraved and decayed town, Grinderman found himself trudging along the path that led through the forest - somewhat thoughtlessly, as if his feet were carrying him along of their own accord, in revolt against the routine perambulations of his everyday existence. Around him, shrubberies, copses and other arboreal affairs conducted themselves in their usual swaying, mindless fashion, obeying the dictates of the wind and, perhaps, other, even less tangible masters. Grinderman's botanical knowledge was scant, but he noted that, though it was still mid-summer, a nearly indescribable autumnal...

Christmas, you tell me, comes but once a year. One place it never comes, and that is here. Here, in these pages no good wishes spring, No well-worn greetings tediously ring-- For Christmas greetings are like pots of ore: The hollower they are they ring the more. Here shall no holly cast a spiny shade, Nor mistletoe my solitude invade, No trinket-laden vegetable come, No jorum steam with Sheolate of rum. No shrilling children shall their voices rear. Hurrah for Christmas without Christmas cheer! No presents, if you please--I know too well What Herbert Spencer, if he didn't tell (I know not if he did) yet might have told Of present-giving in the days of old, When Early Man with gifts propitiated The chiefs whom most he doubted, feared...

In our manner of observing Christmas there is much, no doubt, that is absurd. Christmas is to some extent a day of meaningless ceremonies, false sentiment and hollow compliments endlessly iterated and misapplied. The observances "appropriate to the day" had, many of them, their origin in an age with which our own has little in common and in countries whose social and religious characteristics were unlike those obtaining here. As in so many other matters, America has in this been content to take her heritage without inquiry and without alteration, sacredly preserving much that once had a meaning now lost, much that is now an anachronism, a mere "survival." Even to the Christmas vocabulary we have added little. St. Nicholas himself, the...

Suicide Watch (Dedicated to Julie W.) “My strength is withered, Vishnu, and my peace.” The Bhagavad Gita “I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.” Kevin Carter [BREAK]Since a certain age, my life has been, mainly, one long – too long – attempt to write the perfect suicide note. I have felt, like a stab wound, the certainty that I could not die without doing so. The perfect suicide note, of course, must be read, and the reader must care. Perhaps the most difficult part of all this has been trying to bring about – or helplessly waiting for – the right conditions. The greatest enemy of art and of suicide is the world’s indifference, though, in another sense, this is precisely what drives a person towards both. [TAB][TAB]I...

Old Bergamo lay on the summit of a low mountain, hedged in by walls and gates, and New Bergamo lay at the foot of the mountain, exposed to all winds. One day the plague broke out in the new town and spread at a terrific speed; a multitude of people died and the others fled across the plains to all four corners of the world. And the citizens in Old Bergamo set fire to the deserted town in order to purify the air, but it did no good. People began dying up there too, at first one a day, then five, then ten, then twenty, and when the plague had reached its height, a great many more. And they could not flee as those had done, who lived in the new town. There were some, who tried it, but they led the life of a hunted animal, hid in ditches...

Lovecraft’s Lament In high summer, after a season of weird composition and the contemplation of vast, interstellar horrors, Lovecraft sought out the soothing and familiar architecture of Providence. It calmed his nervous disposition and the gnawing gestations of an ill-fated heredity. At the apex of a hillside, where the horizon met the sky, in the cool air just before the twilight time of dreams, he encountered a structure heretofore unseen in his usual journeys. Elongated and compressed between its neighbors as if it had somehow just appeared there, it was not quite a witch house, yet its angles were all wrong. Its whitewash had been peeled away by the curious hands of the wind and the rain, revealing deep scars and splinters of...

Chapter One of "Toll Booth" is presented here as a preview of the story, as provided by the author. [TAB][TAB]Anemia: a condition in which the blood is deficient in red blood cells, in hemoglobin, or in total volume. [TAB][TAB]My name is James Raybeck, and if you are reading this message I am already dead. [TAB][TAB]It most probably took about two weeks to work through all the young hard-asses, younger jackasses, and older disbelievers trying to make it all night in the booth just once for the thrill of it. It probably took another pair of weeks to put feelers out past Westville and come up absolutely empty in a serious search for long term toll collectors to work the graveyard shift. I would estimate it was another three or four...

- Dedicated to Bob Bloch Most lives terminate in a tomb. Sekhmet’s began there. “You are from the Census then? After all, that is why I let you in. You’ve driven out to see me in well over a foot of January snow. Odd. Very odd. You’re just one step ahead of the taxman this year, aren’t you? Still, it is a good way for a private citizen to make a few extra bucks. Although, even most common folks can afford white wall tires.” The stranger whom he addressed was a clean shaven, short-haired, Anglo-Saxon attired in a tan trench coat, charcoal suit, white shirt, black tie and loafers. He carried a portmanteau. “Your face is familiar. I do believe that I’ve seen you before. Was it in early August? You rang my front bell with one hand...

Stepping lightly from the looking glass, Alice did not return alone. Does something else speak through her or are her words her own? December’s double moon prophesized the demise of not only the year but a decade, resolving itself in a duplicitous image of inverted correspondences, a hieroglyphic code on the corrugated wall of Nightmare. Erudite absorption consumed the isotopes of collective being as it glided over a dreamscape of ashes, for the intensity of its touch set Chronis to cinders. Like many of you, Chance was a dreamer and seeker after arcane knowledge and power. He often found inspiration in the weather. It had been a ravenous storm. Throughout the night, snow fell like feathers torn from swans by timber wolves. Seen by...

Halloween’s withered pumpkin became Thanksgiving pie with the linear procession of lichen thoughts swelling between the masonry of time and resolving itself in the Feast of Numbered Days; for despite the warmth of sunrise, the guling tombstone remained ice cold to the touch. A singular chut of smiley-spade in the ground grave evidenced nothing other than a brief thief had begun to dig and wisely changed their mind. Perhaps an occasional someone or something frightened them away. “That’s it. Pack up. We’re leaving.” Wobble-wheels go squeak-squeak-squeak. * * * At the Art Institute in June, Anna stood with Chance before a two hundred year old mirror in the Colonial furniture gallery. Being young, she was impressed with antiquity...

The cobble was slick with rain, but Johnny managed to elbow his way through the excited crowd. Voluminous in atmosphere, he eyed the prize closely: covers, spine, thread, pages and words. It was a book much like others before it but for the happenstance that it had fallen from out-of-the-blue. It was also quite heavy. “The Other gods heaved it from their sky window. Koo’by no clab!” a personage with walrus mustache proclaimed. Johnny struggled with his newfound burden, hoisting it up between his crabs. “Good thing it didn’t land on anyone’s head. It would have flattened them for sure.” The herd began to chant, “Koo’by no clab! Koo’by no clab! Koo’by no clab!” *** Unlike his stomach, his napkin was full . . . of words. “Why you...

Beyond the parking lot of the factory, there was a treeless field covered with grass, what is called a Prairie in the Midwest. Surrounded by mundane blacktop streets and brick bungalows, this wild patch of land became an oasis of the Imagination for a young boy, a foreboding jungle, where Tarzan or Conan replayed endless adventures, or the desolate wasteland of a distant Martian planet. Chance always felt rejuvenated, taken back in time, whenever he gazed on it behind the chain linked fence. Unsure of its expanse, it might have only been a mere city block or maybe it extended forever. Rather than being ultimately disappointed, he preferred to leave its geography a mystery. Although at the end of another day’s drudgery, many times, he...

It Wasn’t Quite Halloween While visiting the haunted house, one of the teenage ghouls stumbled forward from the shadows and inadvertently knocked off Mother’s wig. It was easily reappointed. Unfortunately, seven year old Chance thought it was her head that had been severed, so he screamed and ran blindly back outside into the parking lot. Believing he had become suddenly orphaned, it was the first time that terror took up residence in an alveolus of his brain. The shocking incident became, over time, a vintage memory of Halloween. Mother had bought it for him to calm him down. The balloon was black with orange outlined caricatures of cats and bats and ghosts. From the edges of astronaut covers, Chance watched as it circulated from...

huddled in rags in a Kingsport alley . . . for Julia She, Eva a slight few named her, O (for Object) to the (many) others who used her and cast her out, sleeps outside of poison-clad doorways. The black and white and grey and sick-green world blur by—flicker—journey to The End . . . She, bitten by traitors and knives—and unwholesome inventings, remains . . . Cold. alone Slight. Worn thin, barely frail. A scar surrounded by cracked, empty bottles and unusable things and the venereal residue of desiccated words . . . and crawling maggots . . . The graininess here responds to nothing . . . The arsenal of faces, carnival monsters with siren-bullhorn throats erupt—Cough—Wail—Belch and bluster—Call out for proof, but...

Among Family The photograph was found in the back of the old bookcase along with two pairs of tiny shoes and two little ties. A group family photo, it seemed: Grandmother, grandfather, father, mother, and many children. Maybe some aunts and uncles included. One woman wore an apron and cap. The furniture was Victorian. Everyone except the obvious servant was dressed as if they were about to go to a wedding. No one smiled. My wife had purchased the bookcase during a trip to New Hampshire, a few summers ago with her twin sister, Ruthie. Now we were sitting in my cottage by the lake in Nova Scotia. All present were my wife and me, and Ruthie and her husband, drinking red wine. The fireplace was blazing while watery snow struck the window...

Uncommon Places W. H. Pugmire, Esq. IX. We stood before the door to the garret room and I felt a keen sense of adventurous expectancy. The withered beldame hesitated before pushing the key into its lock. "It is strange, Monsieur. I always feel -- I do not like to disturb the quiet of this room -- his room. I spent many years in your country, when the legend of his painting was beginning to -- spin. That was many years ago, and still the legend grows. And now you tell me that you are writing a book on Honore Radin!" "A novel, Madame Dupin. The success of the recent horror film related to his famous painting and its supposed curse has generated much interest in the artist himself. I'm unqualified to write a biography -- fiction is my...

(written in 1994, published in 2002, translated from the Dutch by the author) Man in shopping trolley. Why should that particular image be flailing again before my mind's eye... A child in a shopping trolley is sufficiently well-known – in front, little hands on the bar between the biggies of its pushing mother, little legs through the apertures, now full of life, now tongue-tied (slice of cheese, slice of sausage), the tide of other products rising incessantly in its little back. The one pinned down, the other pinned up, a child in a shopping trolley is like Christ on His cross. But seeing a male, richly adult, stuffed into that rolling pit, his face nothing but a grilled scream, I’ll make you wobbly at the knees belted out by the...

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