The Red Tower

by Thomas Ligotti

Winner of 1996 Bram Stoker Award for Long Fiction

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Surreal, Fiction, Lovecraftian, Mystery

Unknown Binding

About the author

Thomas Ligotti is a contemporary American horror author and reclusive literary cult figure. His writings, while unique in style, have been noted as major continuations of several literary genres—most prominently Lovecraftian horror—and have overall been described as works of "philosophical horror", often written as philosophical novels with a "darker" undertone which is similar to gothic fiction. The Washington Post called him "the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction"; another critic declared "It's a skilled writer indeed who can suggest a horror so shocking that one is grateful it was kept offstage."

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

"The ruined factory stood three stories high in an otherwise featureless landscape. Although somewhat imposing on its own terms, it occupied only the most unobtrusive place within the gray emptiness of its surroundings, its presence serving as a mere accent upon a desolate horizon." So begins this Ligotti tale that reads more like a journalist's essay than a conventional character-driven story.

However, I can relate to the above description for a deeply personal reason: this was EXACTLY my memory of infamous Toms River Chemical/Ciba-Geigy in New Jersey where my dad sweated it out year after tortuous year as a factory worker.

"The phenomenon of a large factory so closed off from the outside world was a point of extreme fascination to me." Damn, this brings back my own feelings as a kid when I looked from outside the guardhouse and gate that fenced off my dad's factory.

Oh, yes, I recall my dad returning home, his hands coated with red when the factory worked with red dye that day (Ciba-Geigy was the country's leading producer of epoxy resins and dyes for plastics back in the 50s and 60s). I even overheard my dad saying he would frequently piss red.

And what happened to Ciba-Geigy's chemical factory in Toms River? Eventually completely shut down amid numerous court cases involving massive pollution of lands and drinking water along with widespread instances of cancer resulting in the sickness and death of thousands of men, women and children. Keep this in mind as you read Ligotti's tale at the point where the narrator writes, "Long before the complete evaporation of machinery in the Red Tower, something happened to require the shut-down of all operations in the three floors of the factory which were above ground level."

Of course, Thomas Ligotti, master of horror, transcends anything that could be limited to the facts surrounding this factory or any other factory. Indeed, the narrator's descriptions of the subterranean levels of the Red Tower have more in common with a Hieronymus Bosch hell realm than anything we could see and record with a camera. Here are direct quotes hinting at the freakishness, morbidity and grotesquerie that must have been the Red Tower when in full operation:

"As the unique inventions of the Red Tower achieved their final forms, they seemed to be assigned specific locations to which they were destined to be delivered, either by hand or by small wagons or carts pulled over sometimes great distances through the system of underground tunnels."

"For the longest time — how long I cannot say — my morbid reveries were focused on this murky vision of a graveyard beneath the factory, a subterranean graveyard surrounded by a crooked picket fence and suffused by the highly defective illumination given off by phosphorescent paint applied to stone walls. For the moment I must emphasize the vision itself, without any consideration paid to the utilitarian purposes of this place, that is, the function it served in relation to the factory above it."

"Machines were becoming obsolete as the diseased mania of the Red Tower intensified and evolved into more experimental, even visionary projects. I have previously reported that the headstones in the factory’s subterranean graveyard were absent of any names of the interred and were without dates of birth and death."

"As implied by their designation as hyper-organisms, this line of goods displayed the most essential qualities of their organic nature, which meant, of course, that they were wildly conflicted in their two basic features. On the one hand, they manifested an intense vitality in all aspects of their form and function; on the other hand, and simultaneously, they manifested an ineluctable element of decay in these same areas."

"Yet there are indications that below the three-story above-ground factory, below the first and the second underground levels, there exists a third level of subterranean activity. Perhaps it is only a desire for symmetry, a hunger for compositional balance in things, that has led to a series of the most vaporous rumors anent this third underground level, in order to provide a kind of complementary proportion to the three stories of the factory that rise into the gray and featureless landscape above ground."

The Red Tower will surely contain additional power and horror for anyone who has been touched either directly or indirectly by the brutality and dehumanization of factories and/or factory work.


American author Thomas Ligotti, born 1953

[Raffaello · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Questa verità è stata confermata da numerosi resoconti forniti in barbugliamenti borderline."
"[...] questo dicono, tutte, le voci inquinate e nebbiose che ne parlano."

E cosa dicono, dunque, di questa Torre Rossa? Is it all in our mind?

[Emmalyn Renato · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nominated for the British Fantasy award in 1997. A horror story documenting a mysterious ruined factory, written in a style that I found long winded and repetitive.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The absolute best imagery I have ever encountered. Ligotti is a master of the surreal and bizarre and nightmarish. This reads like a direction translation of his Zappfean views, expressed in The Conspiracy Against The Human Race. It's like reading a Beksiński painting.

[Drilli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un racconto dall'atmosfera indubbiamente suggestiva, ma appartenente a un genere (o filone? stile? non so bene come chiamarlo) che, ormai l'ho capito, purtroppo non fa per me.
Si dice tanto, si evoca moltissimo - e lo si fa con stile - ma non si mostra nulla.
Ne riconosco il fascino, ma non lo subisco.
Semplicemente, non rientro nel pubblico adatto a questo tipo di narrazione.

[Cieran (I have no gender and I must scream) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another reader once described this story as "well-written" albeit "pointless, incomplete, and dull." I concur with 3 of these assessments.

[Tay Za Tun · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brutally descriptive neverending prose.
At first I wasn't into it, it felt like a canvas with thick blobs of layers and layers of paint, painting something to an unrealistic, maddening precision of whatever was in the author's mind. It felt all too much.
But in a way, I feel like I processed this story through an audiobook but the moment I turned the captions on and actually attempted to follow and read along with the stories. The layers unravelled a little at a time.
This is a story that you could read multiple times and gain more insight each cycle.
I still don't appreciate the repitition of descriptions for emphasis; "the graves have no name the graves have no name the graves have no date phosphorus paint it glows it glows."
And a more personal grievance; I read books to explore more ideas and worlds, and to write better and I wouldn't want to describe anything to this detail, without an utter purpose to me doing it.
Still. Give it a shot.

6.5/10

[Sydney · Rating 2 out of 5]

no plot but the writing was really pretty

[Nicola Serra · Rating 3 out of 5]

lovecraft? ho bisogno di rileggerlo.

[the funky longneck]

hunter: "it feels like an amazon nightmare"

[LeeAnn]

I ran into this short story in a Tale Foundry video about hellscapes. Truly it wouldn't be at all out of place in the SCP Foundation. I really do love the evocative language with words like encrimsoning and malodorous. I feel like watching the video gave me the cheat code for actually understanding the story and why it exists.

[My paraphrasing of Tale Foundry describing the Red Tower]
Generally, other mechanical hellscapes are clearly of human design. We set the machines in motion one day and we— through our mortal mistakes and flaws — set them free. However, the Red tower seems to break this pattern. It is a "version of hell, where there was never a soul to begin with". It seems to exist completely independent of us, creating things of no use to us, for reasons beyond us. And yet, the narrator explains, "Everywhere I go people are talking about it. It doesn't matter what they're saying. The red tower is embedded in their speech, their thought...". We still are the creators of this hellscape in the end, through rumors and through our imaginations. "It is an absurdity dreamt into reality by the only creatures capable of it. They are collectively imagining the worst possible hell there is".

[Julio Belmonte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the Red Tower represents fear disturbing the "peace" of the gray surrounding landscape. As a kid I loved exploring random places, and often imagined finding scary and dangerous items, especially places I had never been to. I like to think that the macabre items I feared were manufactured in the Tower, and then "shipped" throughout the world to be found by unsuspecting people.

The second subterranean level births hyper organisms: the monsters that children fear.

The third level remains undescribed, the fears of the future will comprise its contents. And the gray landscape with "fight back" in whatever way we choose to resist or overcome these new fears. If in fact we ever do.

[Oli Jacobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tale very much told in the verbose and decaying style of Thomas Ligotti, but for me lacks any certain form of narrative. As usual we get the nightmarish imagery the author is known for, but it is difficult to determine at what end it is told for. An intriguing short read, and definitely one for the fans.

[Ryan Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure what to make of this one; There’s no actual plot or characters besides the narrator and some parts were a little too repetitive, but the dreamlike nature of the story and the language used was both captivating and fuel for nightmares.

[David Spalding-Aguirre · Rating 5 out of 5]

woah

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Chris Feighery · Rating 4 out of 5]

My decayed fascination.

[Gabi · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

[Kate12341 · Rating 4 out of 5]

verbose but excellent

[Brea · Rating 3 out of 5]

trying to break into ligotti. much more strange and atmospheric, a mood piece more than anything.

[Natalie Arn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely not a traditional horror story, but still very unnerving and fascinating to read.

[FINAL GIRL · Rating 1 out of 5]

no plot this was just world salad

[sar!!! · Rating 3 out of 5]

decent short story! i loved the flowery language, but the whole story was just a little out of my element honestly.

[Lila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful

[ilovemacaroni27 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on weird realism with Lovecraftian elements here and there.

[Terrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting ideas, but on the whole not a great short story. No arc at all. The writing is repetitive and definitely edges into purple prose.

[Ry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nightmare fuel for Amazon workers

[Karin Nevermind · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow!
It was great!
I'll need to think about it A LOT, but I'll speak of the Red Tower again

[Basile Lebret · Rating 5 out of 5]

it is evident I loved this short story, for it is a lesson in narration. Will it please everyone? Certainly not, but a must-read for every aspiring writers, if only to know that it exists.