Alberto D. Hetman
11-14-2008, 03:52 PM
[Note: This is a work of fiction. I have no means to know what Ligotti dreams, or has dreamed before. However, my copy of the Silver Scarab Press edition has Ligotti's own corrections on same pages, and those three words are obviously crossed out.]
"A true vampire"
Thomas Ligotti in his copy of his first book "Songs of a Dead Dreamer," Silver Scarab Press, 1986, crossed out the following three words on page 132, "a true vampire." Being these three words in the paragraph:
"...But Count Dracula, a true vampire, one of the true children of the night from which all things are born, has no soul."
omitted in his book from 1994, "Gothic Tales." But why? That night Ligotti may have had a nightmare that led to his (otherwise inexplicable) decision, which allow me to reduce to these few ephemeral lines, vain, and perhaps wrong.
When Dracula died...
A handful of starved vultures flew over the castle and the surroundings. Those who have seen them assert that they had the rigid face of the gargoyles, and the look of the murderers.
A child woke up crying at night calling for his dead mother. His sob was similar to that of the lepers that know that there is no hope whatsoever.
Some old madwomen surrendered to the obscene pleasure of young lovers.
A son beheaded his father and drank his blood.
A virgin woman was raped.
Many dead came back to life as in the days of Christ. Many died suddenly with languid and anaemic faces, aging decades in just seconds.
Dead wild pigs appeared heaped up like dry logs on the side of a church. The same church that would be abandoned over the years, decades, centuries.
The lifeless body of a peasant appeared crucified upside down and no one knew why or by whom.
The belfry of the Church suddenly began to be beaten by invisible hands following designs perhaps demonic, and as absurd as life. Those who claim that he died at night also say that there was no moon.
Women bled although it was not the day nor it was full moon.
The gums of the oldest ones bled as if all their teeth were pulled out at the same time.
Some saw the most horrific nightmares in the black eyes of the most beautiful virgins.
The sun turned black as if in mourning at the hour he died.
The twilight was wrapped up in some livid, melancholic, sickening clouds. The afternoon was almost warm, at times as cold as the harshest of winters.
Some children turned their hair grey, without growing old without dying, as if life had abandoned them without mercy.
Dogs barked all night long and at the early dawn of the following day. The night seemed so long that it was believed that it would not be day again in the world.
A stranger comet in these lands was seen in the sky. Its tail was so long that it covered one fourth of the firmament.
(and perhaps the last thing) Charon, sunken in the deepest darkness, stood in his boat immersed himself in thought looking to the sides again and again wondering who would be the next unfortunate son of Man that would force him to row one more time.
Can you believe it? Some say that his death was fast, practically immediate, and he simply closed his eyes and died. Others that invent legends say that then his face brightened like the sun at noon, his body was burned by a fire that was born from his bowels, and his charred bones were later dispersed by malignant or sinister winds, such as those that it would be in Hades. Will it be true? But let us go back to Ligotti’s nightmare...
Dracula right after impaling alive hundreds of servants, and a multitude of peasants, trying to scare with such horror his enemies camped at the gates of the castle, did not die like those two slaves at the hands of their own knives. Dracula was a coward. Then he escaped by a secret passageway that connected the castle with a little stream nearby. But just fleeing, solitary, perhaps the last defender of a dynasty that fell to pieces, he realized that he was mortally wounded. When, where, how? He did not know the answer to any of these three questions. He stopped when fatigue, and the loss of all that blood that he would have drunk in his life gushed out from his body. Rats, certainly smelling a sure death nearby, came to feast themselves, without waiting for Dracula to die. He shouted, but nobody would hear it, so far from the castle, so in the deep, surrounded by a persistent murmur of water trickling in haste. The rats ate him alive. A rat stuck its teeth in that heart while it still beat. Many years later, when his name was already a legend, his bones were taken away by the current of a flood that afflicted these lands, toward the stream where some say that some peasants found some putrefied bones, nibbled by a myriad of tiny teeth.
But perhaps Ligotti slept placidly that night, and his dreams have not been but so innocent and free of sin like the ones of a newborn baby, that wants to open his hands to touch the world for the first time.
"A true vampire"
Thomas Ligotti in his copy of his first book "Songs of a Dead Dreamer," Silver Scarab Press, 1986, crossed out the following three words on page 132, "a true vampire." Being these three words in the paragraph:
"...But Count Dracula, a true vampire, one of the true children of the night from which all things are born, has no soul."
omitted in his book from 1994, "Gothic Tales." But why? That night Ligotti may have had a nightmare that led to his (otherwise inexplicable) decision, which allow me to reduce to these few ephemeral lines, vain, and perhaps wrong.
When Dracula died...
A handful of starved vultures flew over the castle and the surroundings. Those who have seen them assert that they had the rigid face of the gargoyles, and the look of the murderers.
A child woke up crying at night calling for his dead mother. His sob was similar to that of the lepers that know that there is no hope whatsoever.
Some old madwomen surrendered to the obscene pleasure of young lovers.
A son beheaded his father and drank his blood.
A virgin woman was raped.
Many dead came back to life as in the days of Christ. Many died suddenly with languid and anaemic faces, aging decades in just seconds.
Dead wild pigs appeared heaped up like dry logs on the side of a church. The same church that would be abandoned over the years, decades, centuries.
The lifeless body of a peasant appeared crucified upside down and no one knew why or by whom.
The belfry of the Church suddenly began to be beaten by invisible hands following designs perhaps demonic, and as absurd as life. Those who claim that he died at night also say that there was no moon.
Women bled although it was not the day nor it was full moon.
The gums of the oldest ones bled as if all their teeth were pulled out at the same time.
Some saw the most horrific nightmares in the black eyes of the most beautiful virgins.
The sun turned black as if in mourning at the hour he died.
The twilight was wrapped up in some livid, melancholic, sickening clouds. The afternoon was almost warm, at times as cold as the harshest of winters.
Some children turned their hair grey, without growing old without dying, as if life had abandoned them without mercy.
Dogs barked all night long and at the early dawn of the following day. The night seemed so long that it was believed that it would not be day again in the world.
A stranger comet in these lands was seen in the sky. Its tail was so long that it covered one fourth of the firmament.
(and perhaps the last thing) Charon, sunken in the deepest darkness, stood in his boat immersed himself in thought looking to the sides again and again wondering who would be the next unfortunate son of Man that would force him to row one more time.
Can you believe it? Some say that his death was fast, practically immediate, and he simply closed his eyes and died. Others that invent legends say that then his face brightened like the sun at noon, his body was burned by a fire that was born from his bowels, and his charred bones were later dispersed by malignant or sinister winds, such as those that it would be in Hades. Will it be true? But let us go back to Ligotti’s nightmare...
Dracula right after impaling alive hundreds of servants, and a multitude of peasants, trying to scare with such horror his enemies camped at the gates of the castle, did not die like those two slaves at the hands of their own knives. Dracula was a coward. Then he escaped by a secret passageway that connected the castle with a little stream nearby. But just fleeing, solitary, perhaps the last defender of a dynasty that fell to pieces, he realized that he was mortally wounded. When, where, how? He did not know the answer to any of these three questions. He stopped when fatigue, and the loss of all that blood that he would have drunk in his life gushed out from his body. Rats, certainly smelling a sure death nearby, came to feast themselves, without waiting for Dracula to die. He shouted, but nobody would hear it, so far from the castle, so in the deep, surrounded by a persistent murmur of water trickling in haste. The rats ate him alive. A rat stuck its teeth in that heart while it still beat. Many years later, when his name was already a legend, his bones were taken away by the current of a flood that afflicted these lands, toward the stream where some say that some peasants found some putrefied bones, nibbled by a myriad of tiny teeth.
But perhaps Ligotti slept placidly that night, and his dreams have not been but so innocent and free of sin like the ones of a newborn baby, that wants to open his hands to touch the world for the first time.