The Nightmare Factory Read Free Page A

and their impending demolishment.
    But we can’t maintain it; only a saint of doom could. Hope leaks into our lives by way of spreading cracks we always meant to repair but never did. (Oddly enough, when the cracks yawn their widest, and the promised deluge comes at last, it is not hope at all that finally breaks through and drowns us.)
    Interlude: see you later, consolations of doom
    So when a fictional state of absolute doom no longer offers us possibilities of comfort—what’s left? Well, another stock role casts one not as the victim of a horror story but as its villain. That is, we get to be the monster for a change. To a certain extent this is supposed to happen when we walk onto those resounding floorboards behind the Gothic footlights. It’s traditional to identify with and feel sorry for the vampire or the werewolf in their ultimate moment of weakness, a time when they’re most human. Sometimes, though, it seems as if there’s more fun to be had playing a vampire or werewolf at the height of their monstrous, people-maiming power. To play them in our hearts, I mean. After all, it would be kind of great to wake up at dusk every day and cruise around in the shadows and fly on batwings through the night, stare strangers in the eye and have them under your power. Not bad for someone who’s supposed to be dead. Or rather, for someone who can’t die and whose soul is not his own; for someone who—no matter how seemingly suave—is doomed to ride eternity with a single and highly embarrassing obsession, the most debased junkie immortalized.
    But maybe you could make it as a werewolf. For most of a given month you’re just like anybody else. Then for a few days you can take a vacation from your puny human self and spill the blood of puny human others. And once you return to your original clothes size, no one is any the wiser…until next month rolls around and you’ve got to do the whole thing again, month after month, over and over. Still, the werewolf’s lifestyle might not be so bad, as long as you don’t get caught ripping out someone’s throat. Of course, there might be some guilt involved and, yes, bad dreams.
    Vampirism and lycanthropy do have their drawbacks, anyone would admit that. But there would also be some memorable moments too, moments humans rarely, if ever, have: feeling your primal self at one with the inhuman forces around you, fearless in the face of night and nature and solitude and all those things from which mere people have much to fear. There you are under the moon—a raging storm in human form. And you’ll always be like that, forever if you’re careful. Being a human being is a dead end anyway. It would seem that supernatural sociopaths have more possibilities open to them. So wouldn’t it be great to be one? What I mean, of course, is: is it a consolation of horror fiction to let us be one for a little while? Yes, it really is; the attractions of this life are sometimes irresistible. But are we missing some point if we only see the glamour and ignore the drudgery in the existence of these free-spirited nyctophiles? Well, are we?
    The last test
    Test cancelled. The consolation is patently a trick one, done with invisible writing, mirrors, and camera magic.
    Substitute consolation: “The Fall of the House of Usher, or Doom Revisited”
    Did you ever wonder how a Gothic story like Poe’s masterpiece can be so great without enlisting the reader’s care for its characters’ doom? Plenty of horrible events and concepts are woven together; the narrator and his friend Roderick experience a fair amount of fear. But unlike a horror story whose effect depends on reader sympathy with its fictional victims, this one doesn’t want us to get involved with the characters in that way. Our fear does not derive from theirs. Though Roderick, his sister, and the visiting narrator are fascinating companions, they do not burden us with their individual catastrophes. Are we sad for Roderick and his