The Shadow at the Bottom of the World

Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech

There is a stairway. It climbs crooked up the side of total darkness. Yet its outlines are visible, like a scribble of lightning engraved upon a black sky.

And though standing unsupported, it does not fall. Nor does it end its jagged ascent until it has reached the obscure loft where Voke, the recluse, has cloistered himself. Someone named Cheev is making his way up the stairway, which seems to trouble him somehow. Though the angular scaffolding as a whole is secure enough, Cheev appears hesitant to place his full weight on the individual steps. A victim of vague misgivings, he ascends in weird mincing movements.

Every so often he looks back over his shoulder at the stairs he has just stepped upon, as if expecting to see the imprints of his soles there, as if the stairs are not made of solid wood but molded of soft clay. But the stairs are unchanged.

Cheev is wearing a long, brightly colored coat. The huge splinters on the railing of the stairway sometimes snag his bulky sleeves. They also snag his bony hands, but Cheev is more exasperated by the destruction of expensive cloth than undear flesh. While climbing, he sucks at a small puncture in his forefinger to keep from staining his coat with blood. At the seventeenth stair above the seventeenth, and last, landing—he trips. The long tails of the coat become tangled between Cheev’s legs and there is a ripping sound as he falls. At the end of his patience, Cheev removes the coat and flings it over the side of the stairway into the black abyss. Cheev’s arms and legs are very thin.

There is only a single door at the top of the stairs. Behind it is Voke’s loft, which appears to be a cross between a playroom and a place of torture. No doubt Cheev notices this when, with five widely splayed fingers pushing against the door, he enters.

The darkness and silence of the great room are compromised only by noisy jets of blue-green light flickering spasmodically along the walls. But for the most part the room lies buried in shadows. Even its exact height is uncertain, since above the convulsive illumination almost nothing can be seen by even the sharpest pair of eyes, never mind Cheev’s squinting little slits. Part of the lower cagework of the crisscrossing rafters is visible, but the ceiling is entirely obscured, if in fact Voke’s sanctum has been provided with one.

Somewhere above the gritty floor, more than a few life-size dolls hang suspended by wires which gleam and look gummy like wetted strands of a spider web. But none of the dolls is seen in whole: the longbeaked profile of one juts into the light; the shiny satin legs of another find their way out of the upper dimness; a beautifully pale hand glows in the distance; while much closer the better part of a harlequin dangles into view, cut off at the neck by blackness. Much of the inventory of this vast room appears only as parts and pieces of objects which manage to push their way out of the smothering dark. Upon the grainy floor, a long low box thrusts a corner of itself into the scene, showing off reinforced edges of bright metal strips plugged with heavy bolts. Pointed and strangely shaped instruments bloom out of the loam of shadows; they are crusted with… age. A great wheel appears at quarter-phase in the room’s night. Other sections, appendages, and gear-works of curious machines complicate this immense gallery.

As Cheev progresses through the half-light, he is suddenly halted by a metal arm with a soft black handle. He backs off and continues to shuffle through the chamber, grinding sawdust, sand, perhaps pulverized stars underfoot. The dismembered limbs of dolls and puppets are strewn about the floor, drained of their stuffings. Posters, signs, billboards, and leaflets of various sorts are scattered around like playing cards, their bright words disarranged into nonsense. Countless other objects, devices, and leftover goods stock the room, more than one could possibly take notice of. But they are all, in some way, like those which have been described. One wonders, then, how they could all add up to such an atmosphere of… isn’t repose the word? Yes, but a certain kind of repose: the repose of ruin.

“Voke,” Cheev calls out. “Doctor, are you here?”

Within the darknesss ahead a tall rectangle suddenly appears, like a ticket-seller’s booth at a carnival. The lower part is composed of wood and the upper part of glass; its interior is lit up by an oily red glare.

Slumped forward on its seat inside the booth, as if asleep, is a well-dressed dummy: nicely-fitting black jacket and vest with bright silver buttons, a white high-collar shirt with silver cufflinks, and a billowing cravat which displays a pattern of moons and stars. Because his head is forwardly inclined, the dummy’s only feature of note is the black sheen of its painted hair.

Cheev approaches the booth a little cautiously. He fails to notice, or considers irrelevant, the inanimate character of the figure inside. Through a semi-circular opening in of the glass, Cheev slides his hand into the booth, apparently with the intention of giving the dummy’s arm a shake. But before his own arm creeps very far toward its goal, several things occur in succession: the dummy casually lifts its head and opens its eyes … it reaches out and places its wooden hand on Cheev’s hand of flesh … and its jaw drops open to dispense a mechanical laugh—yah-ha-ha-ha-ha, yah-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Wresting his hand away from the lurid dummy, Cheev staggers backward a few chaotic steps. The dummy continues to give forth its mocking laughter, which flaps its way into every niche of the evil loft and flies back as peculiar echoes. The dummy’s face is vacant and handsome; its eyes roll like mad marbles.

Then, from out of the shadows behind the dummy’s booth, steps a figure that is every bit as thin as Cheev, though much taller. His outfit is not unlike the dummy’s, but the clothes hang on him, and what there is left of his sparse hair falls like old rags across his bone-white scalp.

“Did you ever wonder, Mr. Veech,” Voke begins, parading slowly toward his guest while holding one side of his coat like the train of a gown, “did you ever wonder what it is that makes the animation of a wooden dummy so horrible to see, not to mention to hear. Listen to it, I mean really listen. Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha: a stupid series of sounds that becomes excruciatingly eloquent when uttered by the Ticket Man. They are a species of poetry that sings what should not be sung, that speaks what should not be spoken. But what in the world is it laughing about. Nothing, it would seem. No clear motives or impulses make the dummy laugh, and yet it does! Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha, just as pure and as evil as can be.

“‘What is this laughter for?’ you might be wondering, Mr. Veech. It seems to be for your ears alone, doesn’t it? It seems to be directed at every nameless secret of your being. It seems … knowing. And it is knowing, but in another way from what you suppose, in another direction entirely. It is not you the dummy knows, it is only itself. The question is not: ‘What is the laughter for,’ not at all. The question is: ‘Where does it come from?’ This is the thing of real horror, in fact. The dummy terrorizes you, while he is really the one in terror.

“Think of it: wood waking up. I can’t put it any clearer than that. And let’s not forget the paint for the hair and lips, the glass for the eyes. These too are aroused from a sleep that should never have been broken; these too are now part of a tingling network of dummy-nerves, alive and aware in a way we cannot begin to imagine. This is something too painful for tears and so the dummy laughs in your face, trying to give vent to an evil that was no part of his old home of wood and paint and glass. But this evil is now the very essence of its new home—our world, Mr. Veech. This is what is so horrible about the laughing Ticket Man. Go to sleep now, dummy. There, he has his nice silence back. Be glad I didn’t make one that screams, Mr. Veech. And be glad the dummy is, after all, just a device.

“Well, to what do I owe your presence here today. It is day, isn’t it, or very close to it?”

“Yes, it is,” replies Cheev.

“Good, I like to keep abreast of things. What’s your latest?” Voke inquires, proceeding to saunter slowly about and admiring the clutter of his loft.

Cheev leans back against a vague mound of indefinable objects and stares at the floor. He sounds drowsy. “I wouldn’t have come here, but I didn’t know what else to do. How can I tell you? The past days and nights, especially the nights, like icy hells. I suppose I should say that there is someone …”

“Whom you have taken a liking to,” Voke finishes.

“Yes, but then there is someone else …”

“Who is somehow an obstacle, someone whose existence helps to insure that your nights will be frosty ones. This seems very straightforward. Tell me, what is her name, the first someone?”

“Prena,” answers Cheev after some hesitation.

“And his, the second.”

“Lamm, but why do you need their names to help me?”

“Their names, like your name, and mine for that matter, are of no actual importance. I was just maintaining a polite interest in your predicament, nothing more. As for helping you, that assumes I have some control over this situation, which thankfully I don’t.”

“But I thought,” stammers Cheev, “the loft, your devices, you seem to have a certain … knowledge.”

“Like the dummy’s knowledge? You shouldn’t have depended on it. Nowyou just have one more disappointment to contend with. One more pain. But listen, can’t you just stick it out? For one reason or another, you could end up forgetting all about this Prena, this Lamm; you might come to realize that they are merely two shadows sewn together by their own delirium. It’s something to consider.

Anything can happen in this world of ours.”

“I can’t wait anymore, Doctor,” says Cheev in a nervous, shadowy voice.

“Well, you know what they say: Something is no worse than something or other with your own shadow. I forget exactly how it goes.”

“I am my own shadow,” Cheev replies.

“Yes, I can see that. Listen now, let us speak hypothetically for a moment. Are you familiar with the Street of Wavering Peaks? I know it has a more common name, but I like to call it that because of all those tall, slanty houses.”

Cheev nods to indicate that he too knows the street.

“Well—and I promise nothing, remember, I make no pledges or vows—but if you can somehow manage to bring both of your friends through that street tonight, I think there might be a solution to your problem, if you really want one. Do you mind what form the solution takes?”

Cheev timidly turns his head side to side, meaning he does not mind.

“You really are serious, aren’t you?”

Cheev says nothing in reply. Voke shrugs and gradually fades back to his point of origin within the deepest shadows of the room. The red light in the booth of the Ticket Man also fades like a setting sun, until the only color left in the room is the ultramarine of the flames burning on the walls. Cheev continues to gaze into the upper reaches of the loft for a few more moments, as if he can already see the slender rooftops of the houses in the Street of Wavering Peaks.

By night, facades of the houses on either side of this narrow street are fused, as if cut from a single piece of very old cardboard. Bonded by shadows and plastered together by moonlight, one house undulates into the next. Aside from their foundations and a few floors with shuttered windows, they are all roof. Splendidly they rise into the night, often reaching fantastic altitudes. At angles determined by an unknown system of forces and fixed forever on destiny’s tilt, they fall into and across the sky.

Tonight the sky is a swamp of murky clouds glowing in the false fire of the moon. From the direction of the street’s arched entranceway, three approaching figures are preceded by three elongated shadows. One figure walks ahead, leading the way but lacking the proper gestures of knowledge and authority. Behind are the shapes of a man and a woman, side by side with only a slice of evening’s soft radiance between them.

Toward the end of the street, the leading figure stops and the other two catch up with him. They are now all three standing outside one of the loftiest of the peaked houses. This house appears also to serve as a business of some kind, since a large sign, which swings a little in the wind and is muddled by shadows, displays a painted picture of the goods or services sold there: a pair of tongs, or something similar, laying crosswise upon what is perhaps a poker, or some other lengthy implement. But the business is closed for the night and the shutters are secured. A round attic window high above seems to be no more than an empty socket, though from the street—where the three figures have assumed the tentative postures of somnambulists—it is difficult to tell exactly what things are like up there. And now a fog begins to cut off their gaze from the upper regions of the Street of Wavering Peaks.

Cheev looks vaguely distressed, apparently unsure just how much longer they should loiter in this place. Not being privy to what is supposed to occur, if anything, what action should he take? All he can do at the moment is stall. But everything is soon brought to a conclusion, very quickly yet without a sense of haste or violence.

One moment Cheev is drowsily conversing with his two companions, both of them looking sternly suspicious at this point; the next moment it is as if they are two puppets who have been whisked upwards on invisible strings, into the fog and out of sight. It all happens so suddenly that they do not make a sound, though a little later there are faint, hollow screams from high above. Cheev has fallen to his knees and is covering his face with his bony hands.

Two went up, but only one comes down, suspended a few inches from the ground and swinging a little in the wind. Cheev uncovers his eyes and looks at the thing.

Yes, there is only one, but this one has too many … there is too much of everything on this body. Two faces sharing a single head, two mouths that have fallen silent forever with parted lips. The thing continues to hang in the air even after Cheev has completely collapsed on the Street of Wavering Peaks.

Voke’s next meeting with Cheev is as unexpected as the last one. There is a disturbance in the loft, and the rigid recluse lugs his bones out of the shadows to investigate. What he sees is Cheev and the Ticket Man both screaming with laughter. Their cachinnations stir up the stagnant air of the loft; they are two maniac twins crying and cackling with a single voice.

“What’s going on here, Mr. Veech?” demands Voke.

Cheev ignores him and continues his laughing duet with the dummy. Even after Voke touches the booth and says, “Go to sleep, dummy,” Cheev still laughs all by himself, as if he too is an automaton without control over his actions. Voke knocks Cheev to the floor, which seems to hit the right mechanism to shut off his voice. At least he is quiet for a few moments. Then he raises his eyes from the floor and glares up at Voke.

“Why did you have to do that to them?” he asks with a deeply stricken reproachfulness. His voice is rough from all that laughter; it sounds like grinding machinery.

“I’m hot going to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have heard about what happened, not that I should care. But you can’t hold me responsible, Mr. Veech. I never leave my loft, you know that. However, you’re perfectly free to go, if you go now. Haven’t you caused me enough trouble!”

“Why did it have to happen like that?” Cheev protests.

“How should I know? You said you didn’t mind what form the solution to your problem took. Besides, I think it all worked out for the best. Those two were making a fool of you, Mr. Veech. They wanted each other and now they have each other, so to speak, while you are free to move on to your next disaster. Wait one moment, I know what’s bothering you,” says Voke with sudden enlightenment.

“You’re distressed because it all ended up with their demise and not yours.

Death is always the best thing, Mr. Veech, but who would have thought you could appreciate such a view? I’ve underestimated you, no doubt about it. My apologies.”

“No,” screams Cheev, quivering like a sick animal. Voke now becomes excited.

“No? Noooo? What is the matter with you, young friend? Why do you set me up for these disappointments? I’ve had quite enough without your adding to the heap.

Take a lesson from the Ticket Man here. Do you see him whining? No, he is silent, he is still. A dummy’s silence is the most soothing silence of all, and his stillness is the perfect stillness of the unborn. He could be making a fuss, but he isn’t. And it is precisely his lack of action, his unfulfilled nature that makes him the ideal companion, my only true friend it seems. Deadwood, I adore you. Look at how his hands rest upon his lap in empty prayer. Look at the noble bearing of his collapsed and powerless limbs. Look at his numb lips muttering nothing, and look at those eyes—how they gaze on and on forever!”

Voke takes a closer look at the dummy’s eyes, and his own begin to lower with dark intentness. He leans against the booth for the closest possible scrutiny, his hands adhering to the glass as if by the force of some powerful suction.

Inside the booth, the dummy’s eyes have changed. They are now dripping little drops of blood, which appear black in the red haze surrounding him.

Voke pulls himself away from the booth and turns to Cheev.

“You’ve been tampering with him!” he bellows as best he can.

Cheev blinks a few leftover tears of false laughter out of his eyes, and his lips form a true smile. “I didn’t do a thing,” he whispers mockingly. “Don’t blame me for your troubles!”

Voke seems to be momentarily paralyzed with outrage, though his face is twisted by a thousand thoughts of action. Cheev apparently is aware of the danger and his eyes search throughout the room, possibly for a means of escape or for a weapon to use against his antagonist. He fixes on something and begins to move toward it in a crouch.

“Where do you think you’re going?” says Voke, now liberated from the disabling effects of his rage.

Cheev is trying to reach something on the floor that is the approximate size and shape of a coffin. Only one corner of the long black box sticks out of the shadows into the bluish green glare of the loft. A thick strip of gleaming silver edges the object and is secured to it with silvery bolts.

“Get away from there,” shouts Voke as Cheev stoops over the box, fingering its lid.

But before he can open it, before he can make another move, Voke makes his.

“I’ve done my best for you, Mr. Veech, and you’ve given me nothing but grief.

I’ve tried to deliver you from the fate of your friends … but now I deliver you to it. Join them, Cheev. “

At these words, Cheev’s body begins to rise in a puppet’s hunch, then soars up into the tenebrous rafters and beyond, transported by unseen wires. His arms and legs twitch uncontrollably during the elevation, and his screams… fade.

But Voke pays no attention to his victim’s progress. His baggy clothes flapping hysterically, he rushes to the object so recently threatened with violation. He drags it toward an open spot on the floor. The light from the walls, ghastly and oceanic, shines on the coffin’s silky black surface. Voke is on his knees before the coffin, tenderly testing its security with his fingertips. As if each accumulated moment of deliberation were a blasphemy, he suddenly lifts back the lid.

Laid out inside is a young woman whose beauty has been unnaturally perpetuated by a fanatic of her form. Voke gazes for some time at the corpse, then finally says: “Always the best thing, my dear. Always the best thing.”

He is still kneeling before the coffin as his features begin to undergo the ravages of various, obviously conflicting, phases of feeling. Eyes, mouth, the whole facial structure is called upon to perform gruesome acrobatics of expression. Ultimately an impossible task is relieved or avoided by laughter: the liberating laughter of an innocent derangement, of a virgin madness. Voke rises to his feet by the powers of his idiotic hilarity. He begins to move about in a weird dance—hopping and bouncing and bobbing. His laughter grows worse as he gyres aimlessly, and his gestures become more convulsive. Through complete lack of attention, or perhaps by momentarily regaining it, Voke makes his way out of the loft and is now laughing into the dark abyss beyond the precarious railing at the top of the crooked stairway. His final laugh seems to stick in his throat; he goes over the railing and falls without a sound, his baggy clothes flapping uselessly.

Thus the screams you now hear are not those of the plummeting Voke. Neither are they the screams of Cheev, who is long gone, nor the supernatural echoes of Prena and Lamm’s cries of horror. These screams, the ones from beyond the door at the top of the stairs, belong only to a dummy who now feels warm drops of blood sliding thickly over his lacquered cheeks, and who has been left—alone and alive— in the shadows of an abandoned loft. And his eyes are rolling like mad marbles.