Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe

by Thomas Ligotti

The indistinct happiness of the future glowed inside her along with the alcohol; she was gravid with pleasant prophecies.

conventional behaviors of an aging soul (nervous breakdown, divorce, remarriage, alcoholism, widowhood, stoic tolerance of a second-rate reality)

In the right surroundings our entire being is made of eyes that dilate to witness the haunting of the universe.

Yet at any time and in any place, our bunkers of banality may begin to rumble.

No horror, no joy was the equal of the abysmally vibrant sensations known in this place that was elsewhere, this spellbinding retreat where all experiences were interwoven to compose fantastic textures of feeling, a fine and dark tracery of limitless patterns.

I tried to follow it—through the yellowish haze of the room and deep into the darkness that pressed against the walls, and then deeper into the darkness between the walls, then through the walls and into the unbordered spaces where those silvery tones ascended and quivered like a swarm of insects. There was still beauty in this vision, however tinged it was with the sinister. Even at that point I felt I could lose myself in the vastness spreading about me, a tenebrous expanse rich with unknown exploits. But then something began stirring, irrupting like a disease, poking its horribly colored head through the cool blackness . . . and chasing me back to my body.

The lamps upon the mantle shone with a piercing light that cut shadows out of the cloth of blackness around us.