Strange Tales of Secret Lives

by Jeff VanderMeer

  As she strides down the hall on Pan Macmillan’s third floor, strong as an ox, she laughs to herself, just daring one of them, just one of them, to challenge her to a fight. For they know not who they tangle with.

  They call her “Stef the Editor” in London. They call her “The Alligator Wrestler” in Florida.

  Who is to say which is the more difficult profession? For no writer alive is so unwary as to be put to sleep by a dandelion rubbed under the chin . . .

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  REBECCA SAUNDERS

  Rebecca Saunders works for the Tor UK imprint of Pan Macmillan in the Pan Macmillan building in London. She works with the secretive Peter Lavery and the devious Stefanie Bierwerth. Rebecca hails from Australia, a frank and forthright country, entirely above suspicion of any kind. During her time off, Rebecca visits exotic locations such as Iceland and Egypt, the Czech Republic and Sweden. There, to those who meet her, she is the perfect tourist—polite and knowledgeable, self-effacing yet witty, fair but not an easy mark.

  “Australians make such great tourists,” more than one hotel clerk has been known to say after one of her visits.

  Little do they know that Rebecca is a spy, an expert in espionage, and comes from a long line of spies. What more perfect cover than working for a publishing house and being an Australian citizen?

  All of Rebecca’s female relatives are spies—going all the way back to her great-great-great-grandmother—although Rebecca does not know this. She has never questioned the impulse that made her want to become a spy, never knew it lived in her blood from her birth. Little does she know that when her mother visits her in London, her mother has her own missions, just as crafty, dangerous, and adrenalin-pounding as Rebecca’s own. Does Rebecca’s mother know that Rebecca is a spy? That information is a closely guarded secret. She lacks the proper security clearance. Eyes only.

  Running across rooftops in Prague, pursued by enemy agents, gleefully jumping from roof to roof, holding the papers that were the object of her mission. Snapping photos with a tiny camera hidden in her fake eyeglasses at a symposium of foreign diplomats in Cairo. Exchanging gunfire with Basque separatists in a remote rural area of Spain—whilst driving fast over a dangerous gravel road, in an Aston Martin with the top down. (She can load and unload a Glock in .24 seconds.) Every day holds some new adventure.

  But do they see this, her co-workers, as Rebecca prowls the halls of the Pan Macmillan offices? Do they know she could disable any one of them in .23 seconds with a carefully aimed kick? Or that in .34 seconds any one who even looked at her funny could be knocked unconscious by their own shoes? Or that in .45 seconds the annoying author who sends all the e-mails could be, if he ever visited the offices again, flying through a window?

  No, they don’t know any of this, because it’s a secret. If she told you, she’d have to hurt you (at the very least).

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  SYDNEY MILLER

  Sydney Miller is currently a water resources planner. In the past, while serving in the military, Sydney worked with chemical weapons in the Persian Gulf and helped destroy them while on the Johnston Atoll near Hawaii. However, few people know that Sydney is perhaps the foremost writer of water puppet plays in the West. This ancient art, developed in Southeast Asia, requires a strong knowledge of the water and of the dramatic arts. In Asia, vast pools are filled with milk to make them cloudy. The puppeteers lurk beneath the water, breathing through straws as they animate the puppets that seem to walk on water. Sydney has forgotten where he got the urge to create water puppet plays, but it was from looking at a Time Golden Book with a blurry photo of a scene from just such a play. Now, Sydney has built a secret swimming pool which he keeps filled with chlorinated milk at all times. For years, he has scribbled down his intricate, twelve-act plays in the margins of official army journals, keeping the details sharp in his memory. Now that he’s settled down as a water resources planner, he has found the time to stage many of the plays. Sydney has a unique style for these plays, since he has been reluctant to tell his family about his pastime—or to enlist other actors in the production of his plays. Or, even, to divulge the secret of his tarp-hidden swimming pool. But many is the rainy Sunday afternoon when he can be found submerged in his milk pool, breathing through a straw, as he manipulates the ten finger puppets on his hands and the ten toe puppets on his feet—creating a great crescendo of drama such as the world has never seen. Someday, he thinks, he will go legit. He will stage his plays at the public pool, to a great and watery applause. Someday . . . But until then, this is his secret life.

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  JIM HENRY

  Jim Henry has a fluency with languages that extends beyond his mastery of Esperanto and the languages inherent in being a network systems programmer. Not only has he learned the musical language first put forth by French crackpots in the 19th century—

  a language that required the intricate use of several musical instruments just to “say” common every-day words—but he has also learned to understand the secret language of dust. Wherever he goes, their voices follow him—small, reedy, mellifluous voices. They call out to him with a poignancy that speaks of decay and loss. As motes swirl around him in the light of the midday sun, he understands that they are only ghosts, only shadows, of the people or animals they once encroached upon, their language a kind of insensate memory of the shapes of the past. Mumbled, whispered, rattled. There’s nothing the dust can’t tell him, if only he listens hard enough.

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  FLENSING U.K. HLANITH

  Flensing U.K. Hlanith stalks his graveyard patch in search of the ghost of Clark Ashton Smith. The only thing that can wrench him from his obsession is watching gonzo XXX movies until late at night. Otherwise, he watches over his graveyard, alert for the ghost of Clark Ashton Smith. “I saw him once,” he’ll explain to anyone who will listen. “I saw him here—I swear.” Although he’s not really certain, when it comes down to it, if he saw Smith in the graveyard or if the image of Smith’s likeness had so burned itself into his retinas from his repeated re-readings of the man’s books that he only thought he saw Smith’s ghost. Does it make sense that Smith’s ghost should haunt this particular graveyard. Of course not, but the nature of obsession withholds from the brain the information vital to the rejection of the obsession. “There’s no reason he couldn’t be here,” he mutters. “No reason at all.” Flensing has a question for Mr. Smith should he ever make another appearance. It’s a question that he feels must haunt the ghost, as it haunts him. The question is this: “Did you have to use quite so many compound adverbs and adjectives?” For it is this usage that Flensing believes has robbed Mr. Smith of his rightful due as the best writer of his century, better than H. or F. or even N. “Why, Clark Ashton Smith?” Flensing shouts into the darkness sometimes. “WHY?!” But this is not his secret life—this is his all-too-public life. In his secret life, Flensing collects coupons. His secret is that he has flown to Hawaii three times and vacationed in Las Vegas five times just using coupon rebates, not having to pay for a thing. The dead don’t need coupons. The dead don’t need vacations. But Flensing does.

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  JAMES PATTERSON

  James Patterson has just seen Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique with his own eyes. It’s a tattoo parlor on a dingy street in a small town he passes through on his way somewhere else. The neon sign splutters and sighs like a garish animal taking its last breath. The place lies between a diner and a one-hour motel. Characters pass through its doors that could never be mistaken for Atlantean kings or expert swordsmen. Zothique has come down in the world, and it pains Patterson. It pains him plenty, although there’s nothing he can do about it. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t have time to. He’s on his way to a graveyard where a man named Flensing U.K. Hlanith claims he’s seen the ghost of Clark Ashton Smith. Yeah? thinks Patterson as he puts the town behind him. Well, I’ve seen a ghost too—right there, in a small town. Zothique. D
ebased. Defiled. If that isn’t a ghost, he doesn’t know what is. Before long, Patterson reaches the graveyard. Flensing is hopping up and down around the edge of the gravesites like a crazy person. He stops when he hears Patterson’s car approach. “Hi, you must be Patterson,” Flensing says, embarrassed. Patterson gets the feeling Flensing will never tell him what he was doing. “Yes, I’m Patterson,” Patterson says. “And you must be the graveyard guy. Where did you see Smith’s ghost?” Patterson thinks it best if he keeps this conversation as short as possible. “Er, I can’t remember,” Flensing says. Patterson thinks Flensing’s probably lying. “I just traveled two hundred miles after a long plane trip to come see you, Flensing,” Patterson growls. “I think at the very least you’d better show me where you saw the ghost.” Flensing blanches and shrugs. “Okay. Follow me.” And so Patterson follows Flensing into the heart of the graveyard. Flensing stops next to a crumbling stone with unreadable letters on it. “He was right here. Staring at me. About to tell me about the adverbs.” “What?” says Patterson. “Never mind. This is where he was.” “Good enough,” Patterson says, and takes out his camera, snapping a quick shot of Flensing. “Thanks,” Patterson says. Flensing, still blinking from the flash, says, “What was that all about?” “Nothing,” Patterson says, and walks back to his car, leaving Flensing, confused, behind him. Patterson has a secret life, all right, but it has nothing to do with Clark Ashton Smith. He likes to take photos of people who have seen ghosts. As he explains to the tattoo guy at the Zothique later that day, “Some of the ghost essence stays with the person who saw the ghost. You can see it in the photograph, if you develop it just right. You can never take a photograph of a ghost. But you can see a wisp of ghost if you take a photo of a ghost watcher.” “And what do you do with the photos?” the tattoo guy asks. “Nothing,” says Patterson. “I just stick them on the wall with all the others and wait for a pattern to emerge. Someday soon, it will . . . ”

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  KEVIN POINTER

  Kevin Pointer, a network administrator/photographer dresses in black most of the time. He has demons in his house that open bottles of sake and make him drink it. “Drink the sake, human beast!” they scream at him, cackling and waving their little swords. “Drink it ALL!” So he does, after which the demons usually become much more reasonable and revise their request: “Read us Saki! NOW! Read it all!” And so he reads all of Saki’s collected short fiction to them, until they fall asleep, their little black bellies rising and falling from their repast on the couch. It is then and only then that he retires to his bedroom, there to indulge in the particulars of his secret life. Every piece of black clothing he possesses must be cleansed of lint using only a single tweezers. This is a nightly chore, even for clothing he does not remove from the closet. One. Two. Three. Pieces of lint. He squints. Is that another piece, at the seam? Yes. Yes, it is. Pluck, and it is gone, a sense of deep satisfaction welling up inside of him. He achieves a Zen-like level of concentration by removing the lint in this manner. It gives him the fortitude not to gibber with fright and wet himself when the demons demand the drinking of the sake, the reading of the Saki . . .

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  ANDREW HATCHELL

  Andrew Hatchell travels all week and thus cannot entertain more than one cat on his premises. He must balance his need for the company of cats with his need to sustain a day career as an enterprise data warehousing consultant. By night, however, Andy scours the cities he’s sent to for cats in distress. A cat up a tree? No problem. Andy brings his own tiny titanium collapsible ladder with him. A cat beset by dogs? Andy will jump into their midst and break them up, no matter what the cost in bites and possible rabies. A cat hungry? Andy carries cat food in his plastic-lined pockets for just such an eventuality. If there are no cats in definite distress, Andy’s will seek out those felines who seem disgruntled or in some way disinclined to purr. A family with a disgruntled cat will get a stern talking to. “Don’t you know how to play with your cat?” he will tell the startled family gathered at the front door of their suburban house as he hands their plump tabby to them. “Kitty tease your cat at least once a day.” He gives them the evil eye. “If I hear of this happening again I will be back.” . . . Sometimes Andy wears his bulky superhero costume with the kitty ears, and sometimes he doesn’t. Depends on the weather.

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  DAVID KIRKPATRICK

  David Kirkpatrick works as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, where his research involves the cellular mechanisms underlying mutation and recombination. In short, he is a mad scientist—in fact, on the weekends, he combines his DNA with that of certain species of turtles and uses his resulting hugely buoyant shell and webbed claws to perfect his fishing in local Minnesotan lakes. But this is not his secret life. Everyone knows about his DNA experiments—it’s clear enough every time he comes out of the laboratory disheveled, cackling insanely and holding broken beakers full of green smoke. No, David’s secret life is in the field of interpretative dance, wherein he attempts to “dance out,” as he calls it, the human genome, to a Def Leppard song. Thus far, he has not placed in competition, but in his green military unitard with flowing Japanese ribbons, he creates quite a scene. He practices in fields of clover during the summer, far from any human habitation. In the winter, he furtively goes through his moves in his neighbor’s backyard when they are not around. But it is in the spring that he hits his stride, for it is in the spring that the competitions sprout like newly-planted marigolds, and an adrenalin rush is only an hour away by car. Every time, he strides out boldly, with confidence, certain the judges will understand the genius of his interpretative dance mapping out the human genome. And yet, and yet, he has never won more than an honorable mention. After competitions, he stomps into his laboratory and changes into a turtle, slides beneath the surface of the lake, and salves his wounds with water.

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  GEORGE WARE

  George Ware works as the vice president of a Fortune 500 company proposal center that responds to requests for proposals. He is the proud father of two daughters and the slave of three cats. He has a large book collection. George Ware’s house reflects the value of his position, as do his other material possessions. Hard work and a passion for books have sustained him for many years. As has his secret life. Every couple of years, George Ware sneaks off for three or four weeks. “Business trip,” he tells his family. “Family obligations” he tells his employer and his secretary. “You’re strong. You’ll survive,” he tells the cats. The cats are not convinced, but, then, they never are . . . And then George Ware boards a plane bound for Prague. He carries only a small suitcase; all his necessary clothes and other items are waiting for him. There is a mysterious smile on George Ware’s face during the flight. It is as if he listens to distant music, or reviews a distant memory in his mind. Far away. Floating away over the clouds that pass by outside the window . . . And in Prague, he takes a taxi to a hostel in the traditionally Jewish part of town, there to retrieve his costume, his change of clothes, and the Czech Republic money he has secreted in a sock. A nod to the hostel owner and then he’s off, through the crooked, narrow streets, until he reaches an expanse of green dominated by a large multi-colored tent, worn and tattered, surrounded by trucks and cars. He has reached the winter quarters of the Svankmejer Circus. He breaks into a run as he sees old comrades, old friends, and as they meet hugs them fiercely. For the next month, he will travel with them through Eastern Europe as their knife-thrower, juggler extraordinaire, and, as the situation demands it, barker and clown. It’s true it all started as a business trip and a drunken tour of bars in Prague a decade before. A chance meeting. A ringmaster. The words, “I have a proposal,” which George Ware had heard so many times before, but not in this context. And now: a month of living on the move, with the slightest inflection of danger and intrigue, conversations until three in the morning about all manner of subjects, sojourns to half-forgotten to
wns in sleepy valleys or near the tops of mountains. Sometimes George Ware is not sure which of his two lives is the secret life. He is not sure he should examine the question too closely.

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  RICHARD MAYFIELD

  Richard Mayfield is a teacher and book collector who lives in Kentucky. He has a Maine Coon Cat named Ash who lives under the sink during the day. (Richard thinks that Ash tolerates no other cats, but everything depends on context and self-knowledge.) When Richard comes back from teaching—always taking time to admire his book collection when he comes in the door—Ash comes out from under the sink, shakes herself, meows, and gives Richard the look of “Where’s my food?” Except, one day in the near future, Ash will come out from under the sink, shake herself, meow, give Richard the look of “Where’s my food?”, and say, “You’ve got to get that leak fixed, Richard. I can’t stand one more day of having my head soaked.” To which Richard will reply with a deafening silence, relieved only by the sound of the bag of groceries he is holding sliding out of his hands and crashing onto the floor . . . Ash gives Richard yet another look. “Try to get a grip. Now, the sink can wait, but the rest of it can’t. Put your shoes back on—we’re going back outside.” “Okay,” Richard says. “Okay, Ash,” he says. He can’t think of anything else to say. He reviews his memory of the past week, the past month, the past year, because this all seems so normal that it must have happened before. But he can’t think when it might have happened before . . . Outside, he follows Ash into the backyard and then through the woods to a clearing. Was there a forest here before? Was there a clearing? Richard is more than a little muddled in his thinking. He can’t remember if this is the first time he’s seen all of this or if it’s always been there. “C’mon, Richard,” Ash says, looking over her shoulder at her owner. “You can move faster than that. We’re going to be late.” “Late for . . . for what?” Richard manages to ask. Ash gives him a cat grin, wrinkles her whiskers. “That’s for a cat to know,” Ash says. Once in the clearing, Richard stops in his tracks. The clearing is full of Maine Coon Cats. Under the dusky sky, with the half-moon already beginning to shine down. So many Maine Coon Cats that Richard cannot believe his eyes, all of them huge and proud and padding about on enormous paws. The calm strength of the cats invades his body, makes him relax, takes his nervousness away from him. “Can you tell me, Ash?” he says. “I think you know, Richard,” Ash says. “It just took a little while for you to remember. Not everyone remembers all at once. Give it time.” “I’m serious, Ash,” Richard purrs as he lopes alongside Ash. “Can you tell me what this is all about?” Richard’s coat is shiny, his whiskers twitching. “Now you know,” Ash whispers, as they join all the other Maine Coon cats, under the moon, across the clean-smelling, dark-green Kentucky grass . . .