The Weird

by Ann

  I sit and he lies. A few beds down the ward, a nurse changes the dressing on an injured arm. She takes a roll of fresh linen bandage from a tray on the nightstand, which she has moved away from the wall, out toward the aisle. When I next look up, the nurse is cutting the bandage from the roll – she sets the roll on the tray, and lays the scissors next to the roll. The blades of the scissors are acutely pointed, and, as she had placed them casually on the tray, not quite in alignment. They are tilted up on the linen roll. Those two blades gleam white like mirrors against the shadows of the room. The two very sharp blades are fixed together, they cross each other and are bolted together, cut toward each other. As it drops low in the sky, the sun’s light becomes redder and redder. Tall panels of red light slide down the walls. The two blades of the scissors are two red blazes, I can see the sun reflected in the blade whose polished side faces me. Their brilliance occludes the ward, the nurse, the beds. I see instead another room, with bare walls, no furniture, dead leaves, newspaper – a hallway in front of me. The windows are boarded up. I stand in the room with my shoulders back and my chin up, my arms a little less than fully outstretched. My right hand holds something wet and light; looking I see I am holding the red scissors. My left hand is further down than my right; very gradually I notice it throbs and moves on its own. My left hand is clutching tightly at something, the fingers are aching. I look down at my left hand – it grips the right shoulder of a small boy with a gaping red throat, his struggles communicate up my arm along nerves finely laced around my heart – a hot electric web, hot and fine. I am breathing hard, a feeling is swelling up in me – I can’t stand the imploring, suffering look on the boy’s appalling white face, but it is too beautiful, I have to look at him because I love him, and I pity him, this strange boy I’ve never met, and I need to be close to him and share with him, and this is the only way we can be friends. The boy steadily weakens, but still tugs at my hand. I look down again – I am in the ward, my brother wrings my hand, gazing up into my face. With an imploring look, he rocks back and forth hoisting his upper lip, desperately trying to form words without a voice, with disobedient muscles. My heart glows incandescent through my breast, the little boy’s legs fold under him, I drop the scissors and pick him up, press him to me, so he won’t feel alone. His warm blood seeps through my shirt, I smell his hair, the soap he washed his face with. Louy yanks at my left hand, his eyes push at mine. I place my right hand over his, and clasp it firmly. As the sunlight fades from the scissors on the tray, the boy in my mind drops to the floor, without a sound. Louy’s head falls back on the pillow, with a long despairing sob. A pang of intense love stabs me. I smooth his hair and wipe his face, his eyes, with my handkerchief. The nurse stands at the foot of the bed, telling me softly that visiting hours are over.

  ‘Rest now,’ I say to him.

  Now I am walking. I pass an open alleyway – I turn back, go into the alley. It forms a T. I follow the right branch of the T into a little courtyard. This brick is scarred – a round, puckered spot, where my father’s bullet struck it, after passing through the brains of a nameless little girl. Crouching down I put my eye on the level of the spot, looking back toward the courtyard. I see the girl frozen in midstep, one arm forward one arm back, one leg forward one leg back, terror on the blurred features; and beyond her stands my father in his coat and hat, the gun up level at the end of his arm, obscuring his face.

  I go back to my apartment. I climb the stairs and turn right, into my kitchen. Though the room is dark, a knife blazes with reflected sunlight in the sink. From my kitchen window I can see the people in the street blazing, each one with his or her own spotlight. I take off my clothes and go to bed.

  I dream this:

  A brilliant, empty beach – a broad round ramp of yellow land slopes down between shaggy, high cliffs. Even in the dream the light dazzles me; I have an impression of squinting. Sky like blue mercury, sun’s light spawns a billion flakes on the water’s indigo blades. Hundreds of gulls hurtle round in long-winged circles funneling down to my remains lying on my back half in tall grass, my head on the sand toward the sea, one arm up by my right ear the other down in the grass thick as the comforter under which I lie asleep. I lie there and some way I observe too from nearby. Very calm and happy, and now and then trembling with the proximity of an overflowing happiness. I see the beautiful purple water roil on the blonde sand, the gleaming prints of pale lime foam that it leaves, takes back, redeposits, the exuberance of the cartwheeling wind. My face is also blue and green, in places livid, and it sways gently with the tugging of the gulls, who seem to sprout from my body. The cavity is completely torn open, the gulls hop on the exposed edges of my ribs and thrust their heads down, root vehemently and then strut away with shreds of my flesh in their beaks. My arms are wide open for them; my remains are kind, accommodating. One of them plucks the glasses from my face and stalks off with them.

  The tide comes in. Water sluices from the dimples that were my eyes, and froths at my slack grin. My head nods and sways tenderly; the busy, shining water laves it in renewed bliss. It won’t be long before I look up to see the pale belly of the waves. A friend of my mother’s telephoned me the next morning, to tell me that, during the night, Louy had somehow gotten out of his bed and stabbed himself with a pair of scissors. A nurse found his body as the sun was rising.

  I ride the subways until well past midnight. The Plaza stop is one of the largest stations, with four levels. My train stops at the lowermost platform – in time it would return the way it came, but I leave the cars and find my way up the stairs. The third level has many passages, radiating from a large domed chamber with a cement floor and wooden, high-backed benches. At this hour, it is empty. I cross to my stairway and start to climb. Footsteps draw my attention – lean middle-aged man in a hat and grey raincoat behind me, changing trains. I look at him, and the breath courses in my nostrils, my heart glows, my heavy body lifts, I fall, I fly out from the stairway as he passes swinging my knife, he is knocked aside the point of the knife glancing across his chest, cutting his coat, his shirt, but a shallow cut – he swipes at my face with his walking stick, I’m off balance, I stagger into a garbage can and follow it to the floor. I hear his feet slapping the concrete, his shouts of alarm. I’m on my knees, dazed, I touch my head, a little blood. I laugh – this is wonderful! I pick up the knife again and run after him – he took one of the passageways. I pick up my knees and run as fast as I can – I’m running! I am running. I run, laugh, pounce, slash, eruption of frightened blood, brilliant pain of this unknown man I love, who runs from me, his heart pumping the dying blood in my veins.

  I am light, as spirit. I hear his footsteps. Turning a corner, I see his feet flashing up stairs, I switch my knife to my pocket and dart my hand through the railing catching at his left ankle. He wheels and flops on his back and to one side, seizing the opposite railing and catching himself. I come round the bottom of the stairs and he kicks me in the chest – his kick kicks another laugh out of me and I throw myself forward, the knife again in my hand. He shoves me backwards and I slash uselessly at the air. He throws his briefcase at me and I fall back on the steps, buffeted aside as weightless as a balloon. He turns to run to the other end of the platform, the other staircase, I can hear his heavy breath, smell his aftershave, he is beautiful, angry, afraid, his outrage is beautiful – I lunge at him and he knocks me down again, turns to run. I twist on the ground and whip out with my knife, slicing across the back of his left knee, through the gabardine slacks into the joint. He cries out and falls clutching his leg, kicking the other defiantly at me wonderful, blood running over his fingers where he clutches his knee, I hear the drops striking the dirty tiles. I crawl toward him nearly rising – he avoids me – surprising me with his speed, he rolls under a bench – I vault the back of the bench and land on the seat – he scrabbles on the ground, on his back, staring up at me – I pounce on him – my knee comes down on his left bicep, pinning it to the ground, I straddle his ribcage
– his free hand claws at my face but I batter it aside, I put the point of my knife beneath his chin near his left ear, hold the handle with the left hand I put the palm of my right against the butt of the handle and drive the blade up into his head.

  I see but don’t feel the blood on my hands, it is the same temperature as my skin – he gulps and struggles. Now his struggles are only spasms. I change my grip on the knife, taking the handle in both hands I lean down on it, like the handle of a paper cutter, pushing the blade down through his neck. Now I know it’s finished. He is still, his face has gone out. I look down gratefully at him. I leave him the knife.

  No one sees me climb the stairs. I can feel the night air pouring down the last flight. I float up into the black panel at the top of the steps, and now I’m in the dark, cool night air. I run down the steep streets, my momentum building, I peel off my coat, my tie, my shirt, my belt, I stagger and fall, tumble on the damp ground dragging off my shoes, my stockings and pants, all my clothes, and now without them I am hurtling down the streets, my legs kick up behind me, the ground skates by, my legs take yards and yards at a stride, my arms turn in the air, the breeze cooler and cooler over my skin, my sticky hands. The city opens on all sides of me like a drawn curtain and I see the vast blue darkness of the ocean, the boards of the pier thud under my feet, the pier ends, I launch myself into space…

  …and now everything is foam, and now cold shocking green water. In my mind I can see a line connecting me to the horizon, and this is my course. I will swim until the sinews in my shoulders crack and my lungs tire and wilt in me, and my eyes and lashes are pearly with salt, the black heaven joyous above me, the happy green abyss below me. I tell you these things so that you may understand them, and by understanding them, you may pierce the veil into the secret of my crime. You will understand. You will know joy. You will be nothing. You will be me.

  Feeders and Eaters

  Neil Gaiman

  Neil Gaiman (1960–) is an iconic and hugely popular bestselling English writer living in America. He has written across multiple genres and media, including fiction, graphic novels, and film. Gaiman has won many awards, including the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal in Literature. The majority of his fiction tends to fall into categories related to general fantasy, urban fantasy, contemporary horror, and mythology. However, a story like ‘Feeders and Eaters’ reveals an even darker, weirder side to Gaiman’s muse and is reminiscent of the approach in Jeffrey Ford’s ‘The Beautiful Gelreesh’ (2003), H. F. Arnold’s ‘The Night Wire’ (1926), and Ramsey Campbell’s ‘The Brood’ (1980).

  This is a true story, pretty much. As far as that goes, and whatever good it does anybody.

  It was late one night, and I was cold, in a city where I had no right to be. Not at that time of night, anyway. I won’t tell you which city. I’d missed my last train, and I wasn’t sleepy, so I prowled the streets around the station until I found an all-night café. Somewhere warm to sit.

  You know the kind of place; you’ve been there: café’s name on a Pepsi sign above a dirty plate-glass window, dried egg residue between the tines of all their forks. I wasn’t hungry, but I bought a slice of toast and a mug of greasy tea, so they’d leave me alone.

  There were a couple of other people in there, sitting alone at their tables, derelicts and insomniacs huddled over their empty plates, dirty coats and donkey jackets buttoned up to the neck.

  I was walking back from the counter with my tray when somebody said, ‘Hey.’ It was a man’s voice. ‘You,’ the voice said, and I knew he was talking to me, not to the room. ‘I know you. Come here. Sit over here.’

  I ignored it. You don’t want to get involved, not with anyone you’d run into in a place like that.

  Then he said my name, and I turned and looked at him. When someone knows your name, you don’t have any option.

  ‘Don’t you know me?’ he asked. I shook my head. I didn’t know anyone who looked like that. You don’t forget something like that. ‘It’s me,’ he said, his voice a pleading whisper. ‘Eddie Barrow. Come on, mate. You know me.’

  And when he said his name I did know him, more or less. I mean, I knew Eddie Barrow. We had worked on a building site together, ten years back, during my only real flirtation with manual work.

  Eddie Barrow was tall, and heavily muscled, with a movie star smile and lazy good looks. He was ex-police. Sometimes he’d tell me stories, true tales of fitting-up and doing-over, of punishment and crime. He had left the force after some trouble between him and one of the top brass. He said it was the Chief Superintendent’s wife forced him to leave. Eddie was always getting into trouble with women. They really liked him, women.

  When we were working together on the building site they’d hunt him down, give him sandwiches, little presents, whatever. He never seemed to do anything to make them like him; they just liked him. I used to watch him to see how he did it, but it didn’t seem to be anything he did. Eventually, I decided it was just the way he was: big, strong, not very bright, and terribly, terribly good-looking.

  But that was ten years ago.

  The man sitting at the Formica table wasn’t good-looking. His eyes were dull and rimmed with red, and they stared down at the tabletop without hope. His skin was gray. He was too thin, obscenely thin. I could see his scalp through his filthy hair. I said, ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘You look a bit rough,’ I said, although he looked worse than rough; he looked dead. Eddie Barrow had been a big guy. Now he’d collapsed in on himself. All bones and flaking skin.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. Or maybe ‘Yeah?’ I couldn’t tell. Then, resigned, flatly, ‘Happens to us all in the end.’

  He gestured with his left hand, pointed at the seat opposite him. His right arm hung stiffly at his side, his right hand safe in the pocket of his coat.

  Eddie’s table was by the window, where anyone could see you walking past. Not somewhere I’d sit by choice, not if it was up to me. But it was too late now. I sat down facing him and I sipped my tea. I didn’t say anything, which could have been a mistake. Small talk might have kept his demons at a distance. But I cradled my mug and said nothing. So I suppose he must have thought that I wanted to know more, that I cared. I didn’t care. I had enough problems of my own. I didn’t want to know about his struggle with whatever it was that had brought him to this state – drink, or drugs, or disease – but he started to talk, in a gray voice, and I listened.

  ‘I came here a few years back, when they were building the bypass. Stuck around after, the way you do. Got a room in an old place around the back of Prince Regent’s Street. Room in the attic. It was a family house, really. They only rented out the top floor, so there were just the two boarders, me and Miss Corvier. We were both up in the attic, but in separate rooms, next door to each other. I’d hear her moving about. And there was a cat. It was the family cat, but it came upstairs to say hello, every now and again, which was more than the family ever did.

  ‘I always had my meals with the family, but Miss Corvier, she didn’t ever come down for meals, so it was a week before I met her. She was coming out of the upstairs lavvy. She looked so old. Wrinkled face, like an old, old monkey. But long hair, down to her waist, like a young girl.

  ‘It’s funny, with old people, you don’t think they feel things like we do. I mean, here’s her, old enough to be my granny and…’ He stopped. Licked his lips with a gray tongue. ‘Anyway…I came up to the room one night and there’s a brown paper bag of mushrooms outside my door on the ground. It was a present, I knew that straight off. A present for me. Not normal mushrooms, though. So I knocked on her door.

  ‘I says, are these for me?

  ‘Picked them meself, Mister Barrow, she says.

  ‘They aren’t like toadstools or anything? I asked. Y’know, poisonous? Or funny mushrooms?

  ‘She just laughs. Cackles even. They’re for eating, she says. They’re fine. Shaggy i
nkcaps, they are. Eat them soon now. They go off quick. They’re best fried up with a little butter and garlic.

  ‘I say, are you having some, too?

  ‘She says, no. She says, I used to be a proper one for mushrooms, but not anymore, not with my stomach. But they’re lovely. Nothing better than a young shaggy inkcap mushroom. It’s astonishing the things that people don’t eat. All the things around them that people could eat, if only they knew it.

  ‘I said thanks, and went back into my half of the attic. They’d done the conversion a few years before, nice job really. I put the mushrooms down by the sink. After a few days they dissolved into black stuff, like ink, and I had to put the whole mess into a plastic bag and throw it away.

  ‘I’m on my way downstairs with the plastic bag, and I run into her on the stairs, she says, Hullo, Mister B.

  ‘I say, Hello, Miss Corvier.

  ‘Call me Effie, she says. How were the mushrooms?

  ‘Very nice, thank you, I said. They were lovely.

  ‘She’d leave me other things after that, little presents, flowers in old milk-bottles, things like that, then nothing. I was a bit relieved when the presents suddenly stopped.

  ‘So I’m down at dinner with the family, the lad at the poly, he was home for the holidays. It was August. Really hot. And someone says they hadn’t seen her for about a week, and could I look in on her. I said I didn’t mind.

  ‘So I did. The door wasn’t locked. She was in bed. She had a thin sheet over her, but you could see she was naked under the sheet. Not that I was trying to see anything, it’d be like looking at your gran in the altogether. This old lady. But she looked so pleased to see me.

  ‘Do you need a doctor? I says.