Horror

Abstract

In Thomas Ligotti’s short story ‘The Clown Puppet’ first published in 1996, the anonymous protagonist is visited at night by a strange apparition at the medicine shop in which he works.1 The creature is described in meticulous detail — starting out from its having ‘all the appearances of an antiquated marionette, a puppet figure of some archaic type’2 — and the strings by which it stays suspended vanish into a blur somewhere far overhead. Of the protagonist, we come to know little except for his need for ‘distraction from the outrageous nonsense’ that would overwhelm his mind if he did not occupy it with a ridiculous routine of everyday existence, such as keeping the medicine shop open at an hour when no one would visit it, or even find the place because he keeps it ‘in almost complete darkness both outside and inside’.3 In his world, nonsense is the ruling principle of all thought, the basis of all reflection, broken only by absurd habits designed to the contrary.