The Spectacles in the Drawer by Thomas Ligotti

 


Creepy,creepy.

Oh, yes, a creepy tale about two men – a master and his disciple. Plomb is the name of the disciple and I'll bestow the name of Laff on the unnamed master who serves as the tale's narrator.

Here's the opening lines: “Last year at this time, perhaps on this very day, Plomb visited me at my home. He always seemed to know when I had returned from my habitual traveling and always appeared uninvited on my doorstep.”

Ah, yet again another visit from the irksome Plomb. Master Laff would like nothing more than to have this annoying runt out of his life forever. To this end, he comes up with a cunning stroke of genius: “The plan was simple: to feed Plomb’s hunger for mysterious sensations to the point of nausea and beyond. The only thing to survive would be a gulf of shame and regret for a defunct passion.”

Since Laff's area of mastery includes arcane knowledge revolving around the occult and hidden, magical, psychic phenomenon, for Plomb, every one of Laff's words and gestures contain a supercharged meaning.

So when Laff takes out a white box no larger than a modest jewelry case and removes two sparkling items from the drawer: a small silvery knife and a pair of old-fashioned wire-rimmed spectacles, Plomb sits up, all attention.

Laff places the wire-rimmed spectacles on Plomb's face., He asks Plomb to hold out a hand and makes a tiny cut on the palm with the razor-sharp knife. The master occultist instructs Plomb to keep watching the thin red trickle and then tells Plomb, “Your eyes are now fused with those fantastic lenses, and your sight is one with its object.” Laff goes to to elaborate on what Plomb will see: fantastic visions, overwhelming scenes, a dazzling diffusion of the known universe – all brilliant, great, alive.

Laff concludes by telling Plomb, “You feel yourself to be a witness to the most cryptic phenomenon that exist or ever could exist. And yet, somehow concealed in the shadows of what you can see is something that is not yet visible, something that is beating like a thunderous pulse and promises still greater visions.”

However, as it turns out, the narrator has much underestimated the power of suggestion and how, when giving a suggestion to a subject with an overactive and lively imagination, the suggestion can rebound back to the person who did the suggesting in the first place.

Thomas Ligotti structures his short tale in four parts. The first part consists of Plomb's visit to Lass's run down residence and departure with his new spectacles. The next three parts expand what it means to write a work of psychic terror. Again, it becomes apparent to what extent Laff has underestimated the profound impact he has had on pint-sized Plomb, a man with unbounded imagination.

The consequences? One aspect: Laff has a nightmare involving Plomb than turns into a series of nightmares over many days, leading us to ask: Did Lass also underestimate the very nature of the occult? Did he fail to judge just how much power there is between master-disciple when one specializes in arcane magic? Finally, is The Spectacles in the Drawer a tale of cosmic horror on top of the psychological?

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