Free Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti Page A

for a repeat performance? Since when does reading a story constitute an incantation calling up its imagery before the body’s eyes and not the mind’s?
    Something’s backward here. Backward into a corner:
checkmate
.
    Now, perhaps this seems like merely a cry of wolf, however sincere I may be. I can’t actually say that it isn’t. I can’t say that what I’m hearing right now isn’t some Hallowe’en trick of my besotted brain.
    The giggling out in the hallway, I mean. That demonic giggling I heard at the library. Even when I concentrate, I’m still not able to tell if the sound is inside or outside my head. It’s like looking at one of those toy pictures that yield two distinct scenes when tilted this way or that, but, at a certain angle, form only a merging blur of them both. Nonetheless, the laughing is there, somewhere. And the voice is so familiar.
    Aaaaa heh-heh-heh-heh-heh
.
    Exhibit Four
(the shadows again). They’re all over my face in the window. Stripping away, as in the story. But there’s nothing under that old mask; no child’s face there, Preston. It
is
you, isn’t it? I’ve never heard your laughter, except in my mind. Yet that’s exactly how I imagined it would sound. Or has my imagination given you, too, a hand-me-down, inherited laugh?
    My only fear is that it isn’t you but some impostor. The moon, the clock, the drink, the window. This is all very much your style, only it’s not being done in fun, is it? It’s not funny at all. Stop it, Preston, or whoever you are. And who is it? Who could be doing this? I’ve been good. I just got old, that’s all. Please stop. The shadows in the window are coming out. No, not my face. Not my little moon face.
    I can’t see
    anymore
    I can’t see.
    Help me
    Father

DREAM OF A MANIKIN
    Once upon a Wednesday afternoon a girl stepped into my office for her first session. Her name was Amy Locher. (And didn’t you once tell me that long ago you had a doll with this same given name?) Under the present circumstances I don’t think it too gross a violation of professional ethics to use the subject’s real name in describing her case to you. Certainly there’s something more than simple ethics between us,
ma chère amie
. Besides, I understood from Miss Locher that you recommended me to her. This didn’t seem necessarily ominous at first; perhaps, I speculated, your relationship with the girl was such that made it awkward for you to take her on as one of your own patients. Actually it’s still not clear to me, my love, just how deeply you can be implicated in the overall experience I had with the petite Miss L. So you’ll have to forgive any stupidities of mine which may crudely crop up in the body of this correspondence.
    My first impression of Miss Locher, as she positioned herself almost sidesaddle in a leather chair before me, was that of a tense but basically self-possessed young woman. She was outfitted, I noticed, in much the classic style you normally favor. I won’t go into our first-visit preliminaries here (though we can discuss these and other matters at dinner this Saturday if only you are willing). After a brief chat we zeroed in on what Miss Locher called the “motivating factor” for consulting me. This involved, as you may or may not know, a recurring dream she had been having over the period of about a month. What will follow are the events of that dream as I have composed them from my tape of Miss Locher’s September 10th session.
    In the dream our subject has entered into a new life, at least to the extent that she holds down a different job from her waking one. Miss Locher had already informed me that for three years she has worked as a loan processor at a local financial firm. However, her working day in the dream finds her as a long-time employee of a fashionable clothing shop. Like those witnesses for the prosecution