Horror: The 100 Best Books (22 page)

In the 21st century, life is only bearable for the fed-up colonists on Mars if they take Can-D, a drug that allows them to enter a saccharine fantasy world populated by dolls. Palmer Eldritch -- a tycoon who may be possessed by an alien demon -- returns from a protracted trip to Proximo Centauri with alien lichens that produce a new drug to rival Can-D. Marketed as Chew-Z, Eldritch's drug can transport its consumers forever into a world of illusion. In the sixties, Dick moved away from the more-or-less conventional science fiction of his early novels and concentrated on bizarre, surreal, often drug-related, visions of frightening or disorienting alternative realities.
The Cosmic Puppets
(1957) is his sole attempt at using supernatural horror to deal with his themes, but more interesting than this competent, minor novel are the mind-twisting weirdness of
The Man in the High Castle
(1962),
Martian Time-Slip
(1964),
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
(1968, filmed as
Blade Runner
in 1982),
A Maze of Death
(1970) and
A Scanner Darkly
(1977). Dick's story "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale" became the basis of the 1990 movie
Total Recall
, also set on Mars.

***

I suppose there are people to whom a book like
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
might not seem horrifying, at least in the traditional sense. It contains almost none of the conventions of the horror genre; in fact, I can remember only one scene in the entire book that takes place at night. It is also
very
science-fictionish: people go jetting about in shuttle rockets, and much of the action takes place on moon-colonies, or in robot-driven taxicabs. Nevertheless, Dick had firm hold of something that seems to exceed the grasp of many writers who have made a career out of horror fiction, namely: there is
nothing
so frightening as the naked vulnerability of the human mind. Perhaps Philip K. Dick speaks most strongly to those who have some first-hand experience of madness, either inherent or chemically induced. The labyrinth within the skull is deeper, darker, and more desperate than any Usher, deadlier than any pendulum-pit or other worldly construction. One's own mind can inflict tortures that would leave the canny professionals of the Inquisition gaping in reluctant admiration. And as many of us have come to learn, even those who are stout-minded by nature can experience such bottomless depths with the aid of certain recreational or religious chemicals. This is not an anti-drug screed, mind you, although Dick himself certainly seemed to rue his association with the drug scene. While the psychedelic experience was ultimately a bitter one for him -- as it was for many people -- it also opened his fiction in a way that will keep it a subject of serious discussion when the work of other, more "popular" writers has long faded from notice. In a way, I could have picked any of several books by Dick that address the frailty of the rational human mind: time and time again his characters find the seemingly firm foundation of reality almost literally rotting away around them. Still, although many of Dick's books travel in this realm, there is a scene in
Palmer Eldritch
that stuck a sliver of ice into the base of my skull the first time I read it -- a sliver that, for me, has never quite melted -- and which seems to well represent the literary turf on which Dick staked out his largely uncontested claim. Leo Bulero, a smart and self-righteous man, finds himself up against something he cannot understand: the transmutation of his rival, Palmer Eldritch. When Eldritch forces the drug Chew-Z on Bulero, Leo finds himself in a bizarre and desolate fantasy world that is entirely permeated and manipulated by the mind of Eldritch. Through force of will, Bulero escapes from this induced nightmare, back to his business office on Earth. He summons his associates to tell them what he has learned. It is only after he notices a hideous, unearthly
thing
under his desk that he realizes he has never left the drugged dream at all -- that in fact he has only wandered into a more familiar-looking room within the larger maze of his hallucination. The "actual" world has become an irretrievable idea. He bemusedly dismisses his unreal associates, and surrenders himself up to Eldritch's control. This is the true nightside, and it is also where Dick cuts across the grain of most other writers who traffic in horror.
There is no way to tell what is real
. There is no talisman, no silver bullet, no sword of cold iron to separate holy from unholy. The human mind can only guess -- but, as Dick shows so well, when trying to bring rational order to the infinite vistas of both the internal as well as external universe, the mind is out of its league. The dark shadow cast by the psychedelic era's sunshine is the fragility of sanity. It is a lesson many of us cannot forget, and it was a spectre that Philip K. Dick could not exorcise, no matter how many times he wrote about it. In the latter stages of
Three Stigmata
, as the line between hallucination and reality becomes increasingly blurred, and as the characters wander in and out of both time and space in a most disturbing way, Palmer Eldritch -- who may or may not be: an alien; a transmogrified human; or even God -- manifests himself everywhere. The stigmata of the title -- Eldritch's slitted electronic eyes, steel teeth, and mechanical hand -- begin to appear on innocent bystanders, on friends and associates, and even on the protagonists themselves. Eldritch himself seems to be ubiquitous at all the levels of reality, sometimes merely speaking through the body of one of the characters, sometimes supplanting that character entirely. There is no safe haven; there is no fortified place in the mind or elsewhere where anyone can feel protected from intrusion. They cannot ever
know
beyond doubt that they are back in the "real world". A crack in reality has opened, and Palmer Eldritch is what has oozed through; his presence spreads like a disease. Perhaps it is wrong to suggest that those who have experienced some type of madness will best understand and appreciate Philip K. Dick's work. Maybe everyone, even the most placid, stable sorts, need to travel across that line of safety every now and then, to be reminded that ultimately we are all living in our own dark and solitary universes, looking desperately outward for the distant lights of other lives. The only problem is, once you have crossed that protective barrier -- even if only through literary means -- and have spun purchaseless into the void, nothing ever feels quite comfortable again. -- TAD WILLIAMS

In 1939, a six-year-old boy from a bourgeois city family in Eastern Europe is sent to a distant village to escape the war. In the turmoil of the German invasion, the boy's parents lose contact with the man into whose care they have entrusted their child, and the boy suffers the loss of the woman who was to be his foster mother. Left to wander aimlessly through the region for the next four years, the child narrator takes shelter where and with whom he can and is exposed to every breed of human cruelty and misery imaginable. In a calm, even tone of voice, he describes the ancient superstitions of the peasants among whom he lives and the repeated atrocities to which he is a mute witness. He falls in with criminals, Nazis, prostitutes, communists, savage Kamluks and liberating troops before being returned, a silent ten-year-old, to his family.
The Painted Bird
-- which in its approach is something of a precursor to J. G. Ballard's
Empire of the Sun
(1985) -- is an example of a realistic novel that deals with events so awful and awesome that it reads like a catalogue of surrealist horror.

***

Some books are read; others seem to become part of our own, private experience. Perhaps it's a function of youth, just as the music we hear during adolescence and early adulthood remains part of our intensely evocative experience. Yet I find something like that still happening: even now certain books become my own. Perhaps art enables us to overcome the ennui and cynicism of "maturity" and suspend our disbelief. Thus, we become innocents once again, opening ourselves to life.
The Painted Bird
still burns in my memory, perhaps more brightly than any of the others. It is still an experienced nightmare, a waking dream, after fifteen years. I discovered the book when I began to write fiction, when I was crossing that bridge from being reader to writer. The initial horror I remember experiencing when I first read the book has transformed itself over the years into a sensation of numinal perfection, of something magical and yet terrible, something so incandescently pure and frightening as to be insidious. So when asked to recommend my favorite novel of horror, I went back to my library to re-read
The Painted Bird
. It is a devastatingly realistic novel about the mythic journey of an eleven-year-old boy through the peasant villages of an unnamed war-torn country, most likely Hungary. What struck me upon my second reading was that the horrifying events -- the continual and almost pornographic depiction of violence and cruelty -- filtered through the mind of a boy, acquired the same magical reality as legend and fable. In fact, that is exactly what makes the book so horrifying: the real events are too terrible, too palpably real, to be interpreted realistically. Fantasy takes on the same valence as reality. Suspecting a young plowboy of a dalliance with his wife, a miller invites the plowboy to his borne for dinner. After dinner, he attacks the plowboy and plunges a spoon into his eyes. The protagonist watches as the eyeballs roll down the miller's hand to the floor, where housecats play with them as if they are marbles.

Now it seemed that the eyes were staring at me from every corner of the room, as though they had acquired a new life and motion of their own. I watched them with fascination. If the miller had not been there I myself would have taken them. Surely they could still see. I would keep them in my pocket and take them out when needed, placing them over my own. Then I would see twice as much, maybe even more. Perhaps I could attach them to the back of my head and they would tell me, though I was not quite certain how, what went on behind me. Better still, I could leave the eyes somewhere and they would tell me later what happened during my absence. Maybe the eyes had no intention of serving anyone. They could easily escape from the cats and roll out of the door. They could wander over the fields, lakes, and woods, viewing everything about them, free as birds released from a trap. They would no longer die, since they were free, and being small they could easily hide in various places and watch people in secret. Excited, I decided to close the door quietly and capture the eyes. The miller, evidently annoyed by the cats' play, kicked the animals away and squashed the eyeballs with his heavy boots. Something popped under his thick sole. A marvelous mirror, which could reflect the whole world, was broken. There remained on the floor only a crushed bit of jelly. I felt a terrible sense of loss.

The horror of this scene, and the many other scenes which carry the same weight as this one in the book, is generated by the objective reality -- what is observed to be "out there". The attending fantastic element is generated by the need to make sense of that which can be observed but not believed or understood. The protagonist is later taken to the home of the peasant Gabros for safe haven. Gabros, however, has a known history of sadism. He beats and tortures the boy constantly. Trying to defend himself from these unprovoked and irrational attacks, the protagonist concludes that the peasant's fits of rage must be caused by something subtle and mysterious.

Once or twice I thought I had detected a clue. On two consecutive occasions I was beaten immediately after scratching my head. Who knows, perhaps there was some connection between the lice on my head, which were undoubtedly disturbed in their normal routine by my searching fingers, and Gabros's behavior. I immediately stopped scratching, even though the itching was unbearable. After two days of leaving the lice alone I was beaten again. I had to speculate anew.

After overhearing a priest explaining the concept of indulgences, the boy believes he has deciphered the ruling pattern of world. The defense against Gabros's sadistic attacks is simple and obvious:

One had only to recite prayers, concentrating on the ones carrying the greatest number of days of indulgence. Then one of God's aides would immediately note the new member of the faithful and allocate to him a place in which his days of indulgence would start accumulating like sacks of wheat piled up at harvest time.

Although he prays continuously for indulgences, he is still beaten and forced to hold on to hooks in the ceiling while Gabros's dog snaps at his feet and waits for him to weaken and fall to the floor. But this kind of fantastical religious reasoning is a precursor to the boys eventual understanding of "the real rules of this world":

A man who had sold out to the Evil Ones would remain in their power all his life. From time to time he would have to demonstrate an increasing number of misdeeds. But they were not rated equally by his superiors. An action harming one person was obviously worth less than one affecting many . . . Thus, simply beating up an innocent man was worth less than inciting him to hate others. But hatred of large groups of people must have been the most valuable of all . . .

The boy whose family has sent him away from the "civilization" of Nazi Germany in hopes that he might survive in the country becomes a witness not only to the cruelty of the uneducated peasants, who are contrasted to the smooth, neatly groomed, larger-than-life German soldiers and commanders, but to the human condition itself. After peering into the mirrors of human depravity, the boy concludes that his only course is to join those who have sold out to the Evil Ones. It is then that his psychic pain disappears, then that he feels new strength and confidence.