The Weird

by Ann

  But he is not, he realizes as his eyes adapt more and more, alone after all! A human figure is behind him on the far side of the King, quietly threading its way forward, overtaking him. A girl – is it a girl? Yes. He can scarcely make her out, but as she comes closer still he sees with growing alarm that it is a familiar body – it could be, oh God, it is! Sheila.

  Not Sheila, here! No, no.

  But light-footed, she has reached him, is walking even with him, stretching out her hand, too, to touch the moving King.

  And then to his immense, unspeakable relief he sees that she is of course not Sheila – how could it be? Not Sheila at all, only a girl of the same height, with the same dove-breasted close-coupled curves that speak to his desire, the same heavy dark mane. Her head turns toward him across the broad back of the King, and he sees that, although her features are like Sheila’s, the face is wholly different, open, informed with innocence. An Eve in this second morning of the world. Sheila’s younger sister perhaps, he wonders dazedly, seeing that she is looking at him now, that her lips form a gentle smile.

  ‘Hello,’ he cannot help whispering, fearful to break the spell, to inject harsh human sound into his progress. But the spell does not break; indeed, the girl’s face comes clearer. She puts up a hand to push him back, the other firmly on the flank of the King.

  ‘Hello.’ Her voice is very soft but in no way fragile. She is looking at him with the eyes of Sheila, but eyes so differently warmed and luminous that he wants only to gaze delighted as they pass to whatever destination; he is so overwhelmed to meet a vulnerable human soul in those lambent brown eyes. A soul? he thinks, feeling his unbodied feet step casually, firmly on the way to eternity, perhaps. What an unfashionable word. He is not religious, he does not believe there are any gods or souls, except as a shorthand term denoting – what? – compassion or responsibility, all that. And so much argument about it all, too; his mind is momentarily invaded by a spectral horde of old debating scholars, to whom he had paid less than no attention in his classroom days. But he is oddly prepared to hear the girl recite conversationally, ‘There is no error more powerful in leading feeble minds astray from the straight path of virtue than the supposition that the soul of brutes is of the same nature as our own,’

  ‘Descartes,’ he guesses.

  She nods, smiling across the big brown shape between them. The King’s great leaflike ears have flickered to their interchange, returned to forward hold.

  ‘He started it all, didn’t he?’ Lipsitz says, or perhaps only thinks. ‘That they’re robots, you can do anything to them. Their pain doesn’t count. But we’re animals too,’ he adds somberly, unwilling to let even a long-dead philosopher separate him from the flow of this joyous River. Or was it that? A faint disquiet flicks him, is abolished.

  She nods again; the sweet earnest woman-face of her almost kills him with love. But as he stares the disquiet flutters again; is there beneath her smile a transparency, a failure of substance – even a sadness, as though she was moving to some inexorable loss. No; it is all right. It is.

  ‘Where are we going, do you know?’ he asks, against some better judgment. The King-Beast flicks an ear; but Lipsitz must know, now.

  She smiles, unmistakably mischievous, considering him.

  ‘To where all the lost things go,’ she says. ‘It’s very beautiful. Only…’ She falls silent.

  ‘Only what?’ He is uneasy again, seeing she has turned away, is walking with her small chin resolute. Dread grows in him, cannot be dislodged. The moments of simple joy are past now; he fears that he still has some burden. It is perhaps a choice? Whatever it is, it’s looming around him or in him as they go – an impending significance he wishes desperately to avoid. It is not a thinning out nor an awakening; he clutches hard at the strong shoulders of the King, the magical leader, feels his reassuring warmth. All things are in the lotus.…But loss impends.

  ‘Only what?’ he asks again, knowing he must and must not. Yes; he is still there, is moving with them to the final refuge. The bond holds. ‘The place where lost things go is very beautiful, only what?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ she asks him with the light of the world in her face.

  It is a choice, he realizes, trembling now. It is not for free, it’s not that simple. But can’t I just stop this, just go on? Yes, he can – he knows it. Maybe. But he hears his human voice persist.

  ‘Only what?’

  ‘Only it isn’t real,’ she says. And his heart breaks.

  And suddenly it is all breaking too – a fearful thin wave of emptiness slides through him, sends him stumbling, his handhold lost. ‘No! Wait!’ He reaches desperately; he can feel them still near him, feel their passage all around. ‘Wait…’ He understands now, understands with searing grief that it really is the souls of things, and perhaps himself, that are passing, going away forever. They have stood it as long as they can and now they are leaving. The pain has culminated in this, that they leave us – leave me, leave me behind in a clockwork Cartesian world in which nothing will mean anything forever.

  ‘Oh, wait,’ he cries in dark nowhere, unable to bear the loss, the still-living comfort, passing away. Only it isn’t real, what does that mean? Is it the choice, that reality is that I must stay behind and try, and try?

  He doesn’t know, but can only cry, ‘No, please take me! Let me come too!’ staggering after them through unreality, feeling them still there, still possible, ahead, around. It is wrong; he is terrified somewhere that he is failing, doing wrong. But his human heart can only yearn for the sweetness, for the great benevolent King-Beast so surely leading, to feel again their joy. ‘Please, I want to go with you–’

  – And yes! For a last instant he has it; he touches again the warmth and life, sees the beautiful lost face that is and isn’t Sheila – they are there! And he tries with all his force crazily to send himself after them, to burst from his skin, his life if need be – only to share again that gentleness. ‘Take me!’

  But it is no good – he can’t; they have vanished and he has fallen kneeling on dank concrete, nursing his head in empty shaking hands. It was in vain, and it was wrong. Or was it? his fading thought wonders as he feels himself black out. Did something of myself go too, fly to its selfish joy? He does not know.

  …And will never know, as he returns to sodden consciousness, makes out that he is sprawled like a fool in the dirt behind his rat cages with the acid taste of wormwood sickly in his mouth and an odd dryness and lightness in his heart.

  What the hell had he been playing at? That absinthe is a bummer, he thinks, picking himself up and slapping his clothes disgustedly. This filthy place, what a fool he’d been to think he could work here. And these filthy rats. There’s something revolting back here on the floor, too. Leave it for posterity; he drags the rack back in place.

  All right, get this over. Humming to himself, he turns the power hose on the messy floor, gives the stupid rats in their cages a blast too for good measure. There are his jars – but whatever had possessed him, trying to kill them individually like that? Hours it would take. He knows a simpler way if he can find a spare garbage can.

  Good, here it is. He brings it over and starts pulling out cage after cage, dumping them all in together, Nests, babies, carrots, crap and all. Shrieks, struggling. Tough tit, friends. The ether can is almost full; he pours the whole thing over the crying mess and jams on the lid, humming louder. The can walls reverberate with teeth. Not quite enough gas, no matter.

  He sits down on it and notices that a baby rat has run away hiding behind his shoe. Mechanical mouse, a stupid automaton. He stamps on its back and kicks it neatly under Sheila’s hamster rack, wondering why Descartes has popped into his thoughts. There is no error more powerful – Shit with old D., let’s think about Sheila. There is no error more powerful than the belief that some cunt can’t be had. Somehow he feels sure that he will find that particular pussy-patch wide open to him any day now. As soon as his project gets under way.<
br />
  Because he has an idea. (That absinthe wasn’t all bad.) Oh yes. An idea that’ll pin old Welch’s ears back. In fact it may be too much for old Welch, too, quotes, commercial. Well, fuck old Welch, this is one project somebody will buy, that’s for sure. Does the Mafia have labs? Ho ho, far out.

  And fuck students too, he thinks genially, wrestling the can to the entrance, ignoring sounds from within. No more Polinskys, no more shit, teaching is for suckers. My new project will take care of that. Will there be a problem getting subjects? No – look at all the old walking carcasses they sell for dogfood. And there’s a slaughterhouse right by the freeway, no problem at all. But he will need a larger lab.

  He locks up, and briskly humming the rock version of ‘Anitra’s Dance,’ he goes out into the warm rainy dawnlight, reviewing in his head the new findings on the mid-brain determinants of motor intensity.

  It should be no trick at all to seat some electrodes that will make an animal increase the intensity of whatever it’s doing. Like say, running. Speed it right up to max, run like it never ran before regardless of broken legs or what. What a natural! Surprising someone else hasn’t started already.

  And just as a cute hypothesis, he’s pretty sure he could seal the implants damn near invisibly; he has a smooth hand with flesh. Purely hypothetical, of course. But suppose you used synthetics with, say, acid-release. That would be hard to pick up on X rays. H’mmm.

  Of course, he doesn’t know much about horses, but he learns fast. Grinning, he breaks into a jog to catch the lucky bus that has appeared down the deserted street. He has just recalled a friend who has a farm not fifty miles away. Wouldn’t it be neat to run the pilot project using surplus Shetland ponies?

  The Beak Doctor

  Eric Basso

  Eric Basso (1947–) is an American poet, novelist, playwright, and critic, born in Baltimore, Maryland. ‘The Beak Doctor’ novella reprinted herein has had a cult following among avant-garde Gothic writers since it was first published by the Chicago Review in 1977. Since then he has published a novel, several plays, many poetry collections, and a book of nonfiction. In part, ‘The Beak Doctor’ reads like a modern, more Joycean version of the first selection in this anthology, Alfred Kubin’s ‘The Other Side,’ in that the nameless city is plagued by a strange sleeping sickness. Despite being criminally overlooked, Basso is an important part of the landscape of weird fiction.

  Now I will try to keep awake. The fog. They must have come for me before morning. Empty streets. Across a dimly lit room. She lay in the shadows. The steps. One at a time. Not that I’m old. It was the mask. Plaster chipped off the walls. She lay asleep on a couch. A network of cracks and branching veins like the surface of an antique painting. Chiaroscuro. Figures half formed. And she was naked. Little water-blots the color of rust. An odor of disinfectant emanated from the bannisters. Mothballs. The smell on my hands as I return there. From the bottom of the rickety stairs I could make out the febrile glow of a bulb screwed into the pitted ceiling on the landing. Step-shadows dwindling over the tips of my shoes as I neared the top.

  No corners. I had to turn my head from side to side to see what lay around me. The eyeholes were a shade too narrow. My own fault. In cutting them I hadn’t followed the pattern closely. They made a dark vignette. The goggles were fogging up. Darkness around a darkness where I came into the room. I was suffocating.

  The women backed away. They seemed a bit startled at first, muttering to themselves.

  Something too low for me to hear. I told them they would have to speak up. A lamp burned by the mantelpiece clock. An oval scatter rug in the center of the floor, just out of reach of a faded pool of light. I remember now. In the lull you could hear a ticking. Maybe I only imagined that the women had spoken. It might have been a rumbling on the floor above coupled with the random movements of their lips. The father took me by the hand. He was old. The skin of his palms was dry, his fingers soft and lifeless. He didn’t want to talk. A door closed behind me. The two of us were left alone with the body.

  I probably had to help him get across the room, he was so weak. His eyes were bad. He stopped a few times on the way to take his bearings and scratched at his eyebrows as though he too were trying to remember that even in this subdued lighting her flank was visible, pale against the black hulk of the couch. Her face was turned away or hidden under a mass of long dark hair, or in a shadow. No one had thought to cover her with a blanket. We listened to her breathing between ticks of the little porcelain clock; a miniature pendulum swung in its oblong window, a low click sounded the whir of a grinding mechanism from within – the hour chimed out slowly at the bottom of the mirror.

  Her diaphragm rose and fell. Her ribs contoured faintly, intermittently stretching and relaxing the expanse of whitish skin above the broad swell of her belly. I would have made her anywhere between thirty and forty-five in age, but the light was weak. And her father babbled incoherently before he managed to get something out about having found her on his way home from a walk.

  – She was lying on her side…curled up like a ball by the curb.

  He scratched again at his bushy eyebrows. The women had carried her up the stairs and laid her on the sofa. Fast in a deep sleep, she showed no signs of waking.

  The old man held her legs for me and looked down through the red-white traces my penlight etched in the dark. The slight movements of my hand left an afterimage of knotted lines on his retina. He seemed to be still trying to remember, leaning forward, thrown a bit off kilter with his daughter’s feet a dead weight crossed behind his head, fanning his white hair out as the brass links of his watch chain glittered in a double loop that swayed above the peaks of her breasts. His spectacles slid down to the tip of his nose.

  It was just after five. Scratches. Contusions. A few deep welts cut purple stripes along the back of her thighs like claw-marks left by a wild animal. And between. I didn’t need to use a speculum. The genitals already formed a swollen mass in the darkness. Blackened labia puffed out around the area of inflammation. The mucous lining was raw to the point of turning blue. A trail of dried blood flaked off the skin at the touch of my finger. I felt a crust under the back of my hand as I probed for internal lesions. A brown discharge had had enough time to spread to the cushion and congeal there.

  How long had she been lying here like this?

  – I…no, I was just…

  The old man looked as though he were about to pass out. He let go of one of the legs and put his hand on the arm of the couch. Something hard struck the crown of my mask. I dropped to my knees. The penlight flew out of my hand and I heard it roll under the sofa. Another weight came down heavily on the middle of my back. I saw a gray moon plummet toward the couch, into eclipse. My gasps rushed hot air up through the inside of the mask. I heard the wind roar. It knocked the breath out of me.

  I lay there on the floor, trying to readjust the eyeholes, my goggles clouded with steam. He stood over me, the father, crossed by the broad diagonal silhouette of a bare leg. The ceiling, dark gray melting into black with swarms of gilt-edged cobalt blue.

  Another minute passed. The gray would have been white in the daylight. The curtains were drawn, the blinds closed. A few branching cracks hung jagged shapes like pieces of stalactites. The old man had me by the hands. He wanted to pull me up.

  – What about something to drink? You must be stifling. Or perhaps a face cloth soaked in cold water?

  Wait. Lift her leg back onto the couch. I can’t manage it alone.

  – It’s gotten foggier than ever. You can’t even see across the street. I’ll just switch off the lamp.

  No. I have to give her an injection. Help me turn her over. Grab her under the knees. That’s it. Gently now.

  Penicillin, 10cc. No reaction to the prick of the needle. She simply lay there on her stomach, her open mouth drooling into the cushion. It was too soon for dehydration to have set in. The father fished a pack of cigarettes out of his vest pocket. He tapped it and held it out
to me.

  – Are you sure? I don’t like to smoke alone.

  I had gone to the window and was about to pull the blinds when the lamp on the mantelpiece went out, pitching the two of us into total darkness with nothing but the sound of her breathing and the tick of the clock. I should have turned her on her back again. But it didn’t matter. She seemed comfortable enough. I made a chink in the blinds with two fingers and peered out into the fog. The old man was right.

  – This is what I know. Don’t ask me why I waited so long. If my wife and sister had had their way she’d still be lying out there stark naked and, well, let’s just say I thought it best to wait until the fog lifted…and when it didn’t lift, you know the rest…she was lying by the curb under a lamppost, otherwise I wouldn’t have seen her at all, my eyes aren’t what they used to be, if she had been on the sidewalk I might have tripped right over her and broken my neck; to tell the truth, I wasn’t even sure I was on the right block…the fog…couldn’t see my hand in front of my face…no, if I were you I’d wait a bit before going back out there…something to drink perhaps?…you see I’ve put out the light so there’s nothing to worry about…I can grow accustomed to almost anything, but this fog! when I think of how things used to be and what they are now – rumors, the streets deserted – I’m really afraid to go out, even in the daytime…I used to take the bus to go shopping down by the Olde Market, now I have to walk the streets alone like all the others…but why don’t you sit down? I’ll have Duma – that’s my wife – bring us out something to eat…what do you say to some pretzels and a nice bottle of beer? it’s the last we have left, the pretzels I mean, but this is something of an occasion…haven’t had anyone in the house for years since my brother-in-law passed on…he was forty-one…did you notice her face?…maybe we ought to close her mouth, unless you think that would interfere with her breathing…didn’t know what the hell to do at first. I thought I hadn’t seen right…had to get up almost on top of her before I realized it was a woman and not a pile of garbage someone had heaped under the lamppost…she’s not from around here – at least I think she’s not – I’ve never seen her, not that I would remember…she was lying there all crumpled up like a ball…I thought she was dead…now what about that beer? I won’t turn on the lamp.