Free Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti

deep in your blood-you now awake." 
    Pushing himself up from the sofa, Plomb staggered forward a few steps and wiped his bloodied palm on the front of his shirt, as if to wipe away the ,visions. He shook his head vigorously once or twice, but the spectacles remained secure. 
    "Is everything all right?" I asked him. 
    Plomb appeared to be dazzled in the worst way. Behind the spectacles his eyes gazed dumbly, and his mouth gaped with countless unspoken words. However, when I said, "Perhaps I should remove these for you," his hand rose toward mine, as if to prevent me from doing so. But his effort was half-hearted. Folding their wire stems one across the other, I replaced them back in their box. Plomb now watched me, as if I were performing some ritual of great fascination. He seemed to be still composing himself from the experience. 
    "Well?" I asked. 
    "Dreadful," he answered. "But ... "
    "But?" 
    "But I. . ." 
    "You?" 
    "What I mean is where did they come from?" 
    "Can't you imagine that for yourself?" I countered. And for a moment it seemed that in this case, too, he desired some simple answer, contrary to his most hardened habits. Then he smiled rather deviously and threw himself down upon the sofa. His eyes glazed over as he fabricated an anecdote to his fancy. 
    "I can see you," he said, "at an occultist auction in a disreputable quarter of a foreign city. The box is carried forward, the spectacles taken out. They were made several generations ago by a man who was at once a student of the Gnostics and a master of optometry. His ambition: to construct a pair of artificial eyes that would allow him to bypass the obstacle of physical appearances and glimpse a far-off realm of secret truth whose gateway is within the depths of our own blood." 
    "Remarkable," I replied. "Your speculation is so close to truth itself that the details are not worth mentioning for the mere sake of vulgar correctness." 
    In fact, the spectacles belonged to a lot of antiquarian rubbish I once bought blindly, and the box was of unknown, or rather unremembered, origin-just something I had lying around in my attic room. And the knife, a magician's prop for efficiently slicing up paper money and silk ties. 
    I carried the box containing both spectacles and knife over to Plomb, holding it slightly beyond his reach. I said, 
    "Can you imagine the dangers involved, the possible nightmare of possessing such 'artificial eyes'?" He nodded gravely in agreement. "And you can imagine the restraint the possessor of such a gruesome artifact must practice." His eyes were all comprehension, and he was sucking a little at his slightly lacerated palm. "Then nothing would, please me more than to pass the ownership of this obscure miracle on to you, my dear Plomb. I'm sure you will hold it in wonder as no one else could." 
    And it was exactly this wonder that it was my malicious aim to undermine, or rather to expand until it ripped itself apart. For I could no longer endure the sight of it. 
    As Plomb once again stood at the door of my home, holding his precious gift with a child's awkward embrace, I could not resist asking him the question. Opening the door for him, I said, "By the way, Plomb, have you ever been hypnotized?" 
    "I ... " he answered.
    "You," I prompted. 
    "No," he said. "Why do you ask?" 
    "Curiosity," !replied. "You know how I am. Well, good-night, Plomb." 
    And I closed the door behind the most willing subject in the world, hoping it would be some time before he returned. "If ever," I said aloud, and the words echoed in the hollows of my home. 

    2. 
    But it was not long afterward that Plomb and I had our next confrontation, though the circumstances were odd and accidental. Late one afternoon, as it happens, I was browsing through a shop that dealt in second-hand merchandise of the most pathetic sort. The place was littered with rusty scales that once would have given your weight for a penny, cock-eyed bookcases, dead