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Elizabeth fingered the broken thread from one of the missing buttons.

“No, Mother, I wasn’t raped. I—tripped, that’s all. That path was rather muddy.” The chill moved from her lungs, giving Elizabeth a chance to catch her breath, and made itself comfortable in her untouched womb. “I’m fine.”

“Oh.” With a sigh, her mother dropped her hand and busied herself with the casserole. “Well, dinner is probably ruined thanks to your tardiness. I try to make sure everything is timed perfectly and you think nothing of wandering in whenever it pleases you.”

“1 didn’t plan on being late, Mother.”

“That’s no excuse, Elizabeth. Now, go into the kitchen and wash your hands before the stew gets any colder than it already is.” Sitting herself at the head of the table, her mother began ladling out the steaming chunks of meat and vegetables. “I’ll not wait for you if you don’t mind.”

“No,” Elizabeth said, nodding as she walked to the kitchen. “Of course not, Mother. I wouldn’t expect you to.”

Her mother grunted something in reply, but Elizabeth decided to not notice.

The water, though only lukewarm, stung the abrasions on Elizabeth’s hands as she scrubbed them clean. For all of her life her mother had taught her that
pain
was the only thing you could truly believe. If whatever it was you did didn’t hurt somehow, then it wasn’t worth the effort.

Her mother had not been a good mother
.

The chill in her womb rolled over lazily, like a kitten stretching in the sun, when Elizabeth turned off the taps and dried her hands.
Her mother didn’t know
how
to be a good mother
.

Arms straight out in front, fingers pointing to the ceiling, Elizabeth turned her palms toward her and then back. And sighed.

Her poor hands were clean, but the flesh was red and swollen from the vigorous washing and two nails had snapped off at bizarre angles. She’d have to file and mend them before the Kindergarten’s Story Hour in the morning.

The older children wouldn’t notice, but the little ones … the
babies
, they saw everything. She had to be so careful around the babies.

My
Precious One
.

There was the clank and clatter of metal upon china from the dining room—her mother’s subtle way of telling Elizabeth she was taking
much
too long at the assigned task.

But the clinking and clatter didn’t stop when Elizabeth got back to the table.

“You didn’t bring the dinner rolls, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth let her throbbing hands settle against the chill in her womb.
Her mother was not a good mother … but she’d show her, she’d show her
. “I didn’t know I was supposed to, Mother.”

Her mother’s fork hit the side of the dinner plate and made it sing. “Well, isn’t that just like you? I would have thought a grown woman, a supposedly
mature
woman would have taken it upon herself to notice if the dinner rolls were on the table or not and do something about it … without having her
Mommy
have to tell her. My God, Elizabeth, don’t you notice anything?”

Not until today, Mother
.

Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile as she turned and walked back to the kitchen.

“And don’t forget the butter,” her mother whined. “You know I like butter on my rolls. And bring the jam. Strawberry. Not the marmalade like last night. Strawberry is for supper, marmalade is for breakfast. It’s not that difficult a thing to remember, so I don’t understand how you manage to forget so often.”

Elizabeth picked up the jar with the bright red, plumb strawberries—
I
forget because I don’t like strawberry jam
—and dropped it into the sink.

“Oops.”

“What was that?”

“I dropped the jam, Mother. I’m sorry.” The jar of marmalade felt cool against her palm as she carried it, the rolls and butter back to the table. “I’ll pick some more up tomorrow. And don’t worry about the kitchen, I’ll clean it up after dinner. Would you like me to butter you a roll, Mother?”

Her mother glared at her from across the table. “How could you be so clumsy?”

Elizabeth ignored the question and spooned a large dollop of the honey-gold marmalade onto a roll.

“Mother, have you ever heard of a grave out in the woods?”

“What?”

“A grave … a child’s grave in the woods. Near the stream. Have you ever heard mention of it?”

“Of course not,” her mother said, ignoring the offered rolls and butter as she returned her attention to the stew. “There are no graves in the woods. Why would you ask such a thing, Elizabeth?”

“No reason,” Elizabeth answered as she brought the marmalade-laden roll toward her lips. “I heard a rumor.”

“Rumors are just that,” her mother growled. “I’m surprised you paid it any notice.”

The chill in Elizabeth’s womb reached up and touched her heart.

“I am, too, Mother.”

Her mother had stayed up past her usual ten o’clock bedtime just to be difficult—puttering around the house in her robe and slippers and
refusing
to go to bed when Elizabeth suggested it.

A good mother would have gone to bed when she was supposed to. A good mother would have
known
when to leave her child alone
.

“I’ll know,” Elizabeth said as she carefully unfolded the mud-stained handkerchief that had been tucked away in the bottom of her purse. “I’ll be a good mother.”

“Isn’t that right? My Precious One.”

The tiny skull, with its brittle fringe of dark brown hair and patina of leathery flesh, fell onto its side when Elizabeth lifted it toward her face. Presenting a cheek to be kissed.

So Elizabeth did. The way a good mother would.

The grave in the woods had been old, very old; its tiny occupant all but gone to dust. Elizabeth had tried to be gentle, but the moment her trembling hands touched the stained baby blanket
(pink, for girls)
the body beneath crumbled.

She’d only managed to save the skull. Nothing else.

But that was enough.

“Poor little thing,” Elizabeth whispered, and watched the baby hair tremble under her breath like summer wheat. “You’ve been alone for so long.”

She kissed it again, to let it know it was loved. The feel of the dried skin against her lips wasn’t that unpleasant, no more so than any other kiss she’d ever had to give; and away from the confines of the grave and stench of decay, her Precious One only smelled a bit musty … like a well-loved book.

But still it wasn’t a
baby
smell. Babies weren’t supposed to smell like books, they were supposed to smell sweet like candy, like flowers, like …

Elizabeth smiled as she stood up and hurried them both to her dressing table. Cupping her Precious One gently in one palm, she began to dig through the mounds of white panties and bras for the tiny indulgence she’d treated herself to. And hidden. Years ago.

The bottle of perfume was still sealed, still perfect; the price sticker still attached. Untouched, until now. Unloved. Until now.

Her mother didn’t approve of perfume, but her
mother
wasn’t going to be the one wearing it.

The scent of gardenias filled the room the moment Elizabeth lifted off the white cap. Unlike the day of her father’s funeral, the fragrance made her happy. Humming softly, she held the bottle over her Precious One’s forehead and let a crystal drop fall. It clung like dew to the sparse hair, but then a second drop, larger than the first and not expected, missed its target and fell onto the linen dresser scarf.

Leaving a mark. Leaving a stain.

Elizabeth gasped as the perfume bottle slipped from her fingers. It bled its clear, fragrant blood across the top of her dressing table and died.

The stench of gardenias was overpowering. Her mother would smell it. Her mother would find out.

And it was all her Precious One’s fault.

“Bad baby!” Elizabeth hissed, and pinched the little chin between her thumb and forefinger; squeezed and saw the tiny right ear fall like a spent blossom.

How could she be a good mother to such a child?

“Now look what you’ve done. Can’t you behave for just one moment?”

Elizabeth brushed the mummified skin off onto the floor and quickly mopped up the spilled perfume with the already soiled scarf. The air was thick with the cloying scent and she almost gagged before she got the soaked linen into the laundry hamper.

It was only after she could catch her breath and breathe again that Elizabeth looked down at her baby. Another small flake of skin, perhaps the beginnings of an eyebrow, had fallen off.

“What am I going to do with you?”

Without waiting for an answer, Elizabeth took the tiny head in both hands and shook it. Something rattled inside the skull, but she knew she wasn’t hurting her Precious One. She was only teaching it right from wrong, the way a
good
mother was supposed to.

“What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t teach you?” she asked when she finally stopped, looking deep into the sunken, empty sockets. “Not a very good one, and I want to be a good mother. I have to be. Now, are you sorry you made such a mess? Yes, I’m sure you are.”

Elizabeth leaned down to kiss the wrinkled forehead.

“Yes. All is forgiven. All right, time for bed. And no back talk … young lady.”

Yes, she remembered.
Pink was for girls. Her Precious One was a girl
. How wonderful. She’d always wanted a daughter.

Her Precious One didn’t utter so much as a whimper when Elizabeth, good mother that she was, carried her to the antique toy cabinet at the far end of the room to pick out a body.

There was really only one choice among the china dolls Elizabeth had collected since her own childhood—the cupid-faced infant in the long, imported lace christening gown.

It was supposed to be very expensive and very old, her mother had told her … but
her
mother had never been a
good
mother, not like Elizabeth was going to be, so it didn’t matter what she’d said.

Elizabeth smashed the doll’s head against the side of the cabinet and smiled at the pattern the china pieces made on the rug.

“Look,” she said, holding her Precious One up to see, “like snow-flakes. All right, don’t move and it won’t hurt. Mother promises.”

Her Precious One’s withered neck slipped effortlessly onto the wooden dowel the doll’s head had been molded around.

“Oh, my,” Elizabeth said, tucking the lace collar in around the hardened flesh. Her Precious One’s head wobbled a bit, but not much. “Oh, don’t you look beautiful? Yes, you do … you look beautiful.”

Elizabeth tickled and kissed and cooed and waltzed them both around the room that had been hers since birth. That would now be both of theirs.

Her mother’s shout ended the dance. Like always.

“Elizabeth! It’s almost midnight! Go to bed this instant … you have work in the morning.”

Elizabeth stopped too quickly. Her Precious One’s head tipped forward, chin against the embroidered yoke of the gown.

“Yes, Mother. Sorry, Mother,” she shouted to her mother, then hissed to her child, “Sit up straight! A lady never slumps. I said sit up!”

Elizabeth shook her Precious One and watched the baby’s head loll backwards. She was being obstinate. She was being a bad baby.

Her Precious One
wasn’t so precious after all. Maybe there had been a reason for the lonely grave in the woods. Maybe Elizabeth had been chosen to find it because she was the only one who could handle such a spoiled child.

Her Precious One had to be taught. A good mother had to teach her baby.

“I’m only doing this because I love you,” Elizabeth said as she lay her Precious One over one arm and lifted her free hand into position.

“I’m going to be a
good
mother to you, but that means you have to be a
good
baby to me. It’s only fair.”

Elizabeth smiled. Her Precious One knew. Her Precious One understood.
She
was
a good mother
.

“Be brave,” she whispered as she lifted her hand. “This will hurt me more than it will you.”

When it didn’t, Elizabeth consoled herself with the knowledge that there would be other occasions to prove she was a good mother.

Many
occasions in the years to come.

Thomas Ligotti

THE SHADOW, THE DARKNESS

I’m convinced that without E-mail this book would have been vastly different—and taken twice as long to produce. The plain fact is, writers will respond to E-mail but not to telephone calls or written letters or, especially, home visits (there’s a story behind that one). There’s something at once impersonal and personal about E-mail; it’s safe and at the same time intimate, providing instant access with a leisurely response (say, hours or at most a day) that seems, by snail-mail standards, lightning fast. I would compare it to the long-dead practice of multiple daily mail deliveries—remember how Sherlock Holmes was always getting and sending letters, all day long? Computers in general might be a pain in the arse, and the Internet might indeed prove to be evil, but without E-mail and the delete key on my word processor, I honestly don’t know how Yd get anything done anymore
.

Which brings me, in a fashion, to Thomas Ligotti, whom I was able to bother and remind and just plain keep in touch with because of E-mail. He was a pleasure to work with, won the Bram Stoker Award in 1997 for his story “The Red Tower,” and is the author of the short story collection
The Nightmare Factory,
which was itself nominated for a Stoker
.

Possibly because of E-mail, he has provided us with one of the stories in this book you wont be able to get out of your head
.

I
t seemed that Grossvogel was charging us
entirely
too much money for what he was offering. Some of us, we were about a dozen in all, blamed ourselves and our own idiocy as soon as we arrived in that place which one neatly dressed old gentleman immediately dubbed the “nucleus of nowhere.” This same gentleman, who a few days before had announced to several persons his abandonment of poetry writing due to the lack of what he considered proper appreciation of his innovative practice of the “Hermetic lyric,” went on to say that such a place as the one in which we found ourselves was exactly what we should have expected, and probably what we idiots and failures deserved. We had no reason to expect anything more, he explained, than to end up in the dead town of Crampton, in a nowhere region of the country—of the world, in fact—during a dull season of the year that was pinched between such a lavish and brilliant autumn and what promised to be an equally lavish and brilliant wintertime. We were trapped, he said, completely stranded for all practical purposes, in a region of the country, and of the entire world, where all the manifestations of that bleak time of year, or rather its
absence
of manifestations, were so evident in the landscape around us, where everything was absolutely stripped to the bone, and where the pathetic emptiness of forms in their unadorned state was so brutally evident. When I pointed out that Grossvogel’s brochure for this excursion, which he deemed a “physical-metaphysical excursion,” did not strictly misrepresent our destination, I received only evil looks from several of the others at the table where we sat, as well as from the nearby tables of the small, almost miniature diner in which the whole group of us were now packed, filling it to capacity with the presence of exotic out-of-towners who, when they stopped bickering for a few moments, simply stared with a killing silence out the windows at the empty streets and broken-down buildings of the dead town of Crampton. The town was further maligned as a “drab abyss,” the speaker of this phrase being a skeletal individual who always introduced himself as a “defrocked academic.” This self-designation would usually provoke a query as to its meaning, after which he would, in so many words, elaborate on how his failure to skew his thinking to the standards of, as he termed it, the “intellectual marketplace,” along with his failure to conceal his unconventional studies and methodologies, had resulted in his longtime inability to secure a position within a reputable academic institution, or within any sort of institution or place of business whatever. Thus, in his mind, his failure was more or less his ultimate distinction, and in this sense he was typical of those of us who were seated at the few tables and upon stools along the counter of that miniature diner, complaining that Grossvogel had charged us entirely too much money and to some degree misrepresented, in his brochure, the whole value and purpose of the excursion to the dead town of Crampton.

Taking my copy of Grossvogel’s brochure from the back pocket of my trousers, I unfolded its few pages and laid them before the other three people who were seated at the same table as I. Then I removed my fragile reading glasses from the pocket of the old cardigan I was wearing beneath my even older jacket in order to scrutinize these pages once again, confirming the suspicions I had had about their meaning.

“If you’re looking for the fine print—” said the man seated to my left, a “photographic portraitist” who often broke into a spate of coughing whenever he began to speak, as he did on this occasion.

“What I think my friend was going to say,” said the man seated on my right, “was that we have been the victims of a subtle and intricate swindle. I say this on his behalf because this is the direction in which his mind works, am I right?”

“A
metaphysical swindle”
confirmed the man on my left, who had ceased coughing for the moment.

“Indeed, a metaphysical swindle,” repeated the other man somewhat mockingly. “I would never have imagined myself being taken in by such a thing, given my experience and special field of knowledge. But this, of course, was such a subtle and intricate operation.”

While I knew that the man on my right was the author of an unpublished philosophical treatise entitled
An Investigation into the Conspiracy Against the Human Race
, I was not sure what he meant by the mention of his “experience and special field of knowledge.” Before I could inquire about this issue, I was brashly interrupted by the woman seated across the table from me.

“Mr. Reiner Grossvogel is a fraud, it’s as simple as that,” she said loud enough for everyone in the diner to hear. “I’ve been aware of his fraudulent character for some time, as you know. Even before his so-called metamorphic experience, or whatever he calls it—”

“Metamorphic recovery,” I said by way of correction.

“Fine, his metamorphic recovery, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Even before that time I could see that he was somebody who had all the makings of a fraud. He only required the proper conjunction of circumstances to bring this trait out in him. And then along came that supposedly near-fatal illness of his that he says led to that, I can barely say it,
metamorphic recovery
. After that he was able to realize all his unused talents for being the fraud he was always destined to be and always wanted to be. I joined in this farcical excursion, or whatever it is, only for the satisfaction of seeing everyone else find out what I always knew and always maintained about Reiner Grossvogel. You’re all my witnesses,” she finished, her wrinkled and heavily made-up eyes scanning our faces, and those of the others in the diner, for the affirmation she sought.

I knew this woman only by her professional name of Mrs. Angela. Until recently she had operated what everyone among our circle referred to as a “psychic coffeehouse.” Among the goods and services offered by this establishment was a fine selection of excellent pastries that were made off the premises by Mrs. Angela herself, or so she claimed. Unfortunately, the business never seemed to prosper either on the strength of its psychic readings, which were performed by several persons in Mrs. Angela’s employ, or on the strength of its excellent pastries and somewhat overpriced coffee. It was Mrs. Angela who first complained about the quality of both the service and the modest fare being offered to us in the Crampton diner. Not long after we arrived that afternoon and immediately packed ourselves into what seemed to be the town’s only active place of business, Mrs. Angela called out to the young woman whose lonely task it was to cater to our group. “This coffee is incredibly bitter,” she shouted at the girl, who was dressed in what appeared to be a brand-new white uniform. “And these doughnuts are stale, every one of them. What kind of place is this? I think this whole town and everything in it is a fraud.”

When the girl came over to our table and stood before us I noticed that her uniform resembled that of a nurse more than it did an outfit worn by a waitress in a diner. Specifically it reminded me of the uniforms that I saw worn by the nurses at the hospital where Grossvogel was treated, and ultimately recovered, from what appeared at the time to be a very serious illness. While Mrs. Angela was berating the waitress over the quality of the coffee and doughnuts we had been served, which were included in the travel package that Grossvogel’s brochure described as the “ultimate physical-metaphysical excursion,” I was reviewing my memories of Grossvogel in that stark and conspicuously out-of-date hospital where he had been treated, however briefly, some two years preceding our visit to the dead town of Crampton. He had been admitted to this wretched facility through its emergency room, which was simply the rear entrance to what was not so much a hospital, properly speaking, but more a makeshift clinic set up in a decayed old building located in the same neighborhood where Grossvogel, and most of those who knew him, were forced to live due to our limited financial means. I myself was the one who took him, in a taxi, to this emergency room and provided the woman at the admittance desk with all the pertinent facts of his identification, since he was in no condition to do so himself. Later I explained to a nurse—whom I could not help looking upon merely as an emergency room attendant in a nurse’s uniform, given that she seemed somehow lacking in medical expertise—that Grossvogel had collapsed at a local art gallery during a modest exhibit of his works. This was his first experience, I told the nurse, both as a publicly exhibited artist and as a victim of a sudden physical collapse. However, I did not mention that the art gallery to which I referred might have been more accurately depicted as an empty storefront that now and then was cleaned up and used for exhibitions or artistic performances of various types. Grossvogel had been complaining throughout the evening of abdominal pains, I informed the nurse, and then repeated to an emergency room physician, who also struck me as another medical attendant rather than as a legitimate doctor of medicine. The reason these abdominal pains increased throughout that evening, I speculated to both the nurse and the doctor, was perhaps due to Grossvogel’s increasing sense of anxiety at seeing his works exhibited for the first time, since he had always been notoriously insecure about his talents as an artist and, in my opinion, had good reason to be. On the other hand there might possibly have been a serious organic condition involved, I allowed when speaking with the nurse and later with the doctor. In any case, Grossvogel finally collapsed on the floor of the art gallery and was unable to do anything but groan somewhat pitifully and, to be candid, somewhat irritatingly since that time.

After listening to my account of Grossvogel’s collapse, the doctor instructed the artist to lie down upon a stretcher that stood at the end of a badly lighted hallway, while both the doctor and the nurse walked off in the opposite direction. I stood close by Grossvogel during the time that he lay upon this stretcher in the shadows of that makeshift clinic. It was the middle of the night by then, and Grossvogel’s moaning had abated somewhat, only to be replaced by what I understood at that time as a series of delirious utterances. In the course of this rhetorical delirium the artist mentioned several times something that he called the “pervasive shadow.” I told him that it was merely the poor illumination of the hallway, my own words sounding somewhat delirious to me due to the fatigue brought on by the events of that night, both at the art gallery and in the emergency room of that tawdry hospital. But Grossvogel—in his delirium, I supposed—only gazed about the hallway, as if he could not see me standing there or hear the words I had just spoken to him. And yet he now placed his hands over his ears, as though to shut out some painful and deafening sound. Afterwards I just stood there listening to Grossvogel murmur at intervals, no longer responding to his delirious and increasingly more elaborate utterances about the “pervasive shadow that causes things to be what they would not be” (and later: “the all-moving darkness that makes things do what they would not do").