by Pete Kahle
As I continued to entreat him, I observed that he held his right arm in a very awkward manner, using his left to carry the water bucket. Frowning, I seized the arm and pushed up the sleeve. The red marks I saw printed there told a plain enough tale, and I angrily said that his father should hear my opinion of this ill-treatment.
Then he became voluble, begging me to say nothing, and assuring me that he would tell me all that I wished to know, if only I would keep silence on the matter. His father did not, he explained, much trust strangers, and having seen the two of us conversing earlier, had become angry. He was a good man, the lad went on eagerly, but hardly knew his own strength when roused.
With feigned sternness I replied that I most certainly would have words with the man, and those of the most unequivocal character, unless… Here I paused for a tantalizing moment, at which point the flood-gates of speech opened.
And so, mere minutes later, I left the lad to fill his tardy bucket, exulting over the minute instructions I had carefully recorded in my pocket note-book, which would lead me to a crumbling house in the wood: a house untenanted, as he tells me, for three-quarters of a century and more, Suncoke having no descendants (as for what became of the man himself, the boy could tell me nothing).
After supper, when the family have gone to bed, I mean to steal out of this place and go into the woods. Yes, I shall visit that house this very night….
I cannot help feeling that I am near the end of my quest.
# # #
I am back in my room, thank God—
Out of the woods; those woods where—
But why do I stay to scribble more futile words? Why do I not leave at once? I could gather my few possessions together in less than five minutes—if my hands would stop shaking, that is. I have paid for my lodging in advance. Why do I not simply….
But no; it is mere folly to think of going before day-break. What if, in the dark woods and fields from which I have just fled as though pursued by all the devils of Hell, I were to encounter….
No, I must remain here for a few hours more at least. And while I do, I may as well remain true to my scientific calling, and make a true and faithful record of what I have done and seen. The events of tonight, however strange—however horrible—must be documented.
# # #
With the lad’s careful directions to guide me, and my dark lantern (which I am never without) to light me, I found the house without any great difficulty.
It is a baleful place, to be sure, looming up most incongruously in the wood, miles from any other habitation, and surrounded by pines, as well as a few great oaks. As if to aid me in my search, the moon emerged from behind a reef of cloud just as I came upon it, affording me a clear view of its imposing brick edifice. The house is in shape a great box, three storeys high, and built in the Georgian style. It would not look out of place in Sloane Square, or in the New Town of Edinburgh; but there was something decidedly uncanny in gazing up at that towering pile deep in those moon-lit woods, with the midnight wind soughing eerily through the slowly surging boughs that formed a kind of undulating canopy, high overhead.
I half-expected to see lights burning within, or some other sign of human habitation, but of course there were none.
Though it was a fine, mild night, I noted with some surprise that I was shivering. Shaking off my unaccountable hesitation, I strode to the front door, which though much battered by time and the elements, still appeared surprisingly stout. It proved to be unlocked, however, and a moment later I stood within the dark, narrow front hall, my upraised lantern shedding a trembling light upon a few pieces of furniture in the neo-classic style.
I made a tour of the ground floor, exploring a parlour and a large dining-room, as well as an exceedingly well-stocked library or study. In the former rooms I found little of interest, except perhaps for the great amount of plate, silver, furniture, and other objects of value which had lain in this house in the wood for three quarters of a century, inexplicably undisturbed by the impoverished village folk who lived less than four miles away.
In the library, however, my attention was drawn to a series of engravings which hung upon its gilt-papered walls. After blowing away the many decades’ worth of dust, and holding up my lantern, I was able to perceive that these made up an uncommonly fine set of prints depicting scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, several copies of which text I also found, prominently displayed, upon the mantel-piece, not only in the original Latin but in the English versions of both Mr Golding and Mr Dryden, as well as a very old French translation.
I looked over these engravings for some time, which dated, I should think, from the middle years of the seventeenth century. Among the Nasonian episodes they depicted I recognized the flaying of Marsyas (pictured with hellish realism), the war between the giants and the gods, and the tearing of Actaeon by his own hounds. But I found myself particularly intrigued by a print showing the transformation of Arachne by Athene: the artist had contrived to convey a singular admixture of exultation, loathing, cruelty, and some emotion more difficult to define upon the face of helmeted Pallas as she stood beside the wreckage of a great loom, gazing up in fiendish triumph at the plump, pulpy (and morphologically improbable, I am bound as a naturalist to add) body of the spider in its huge web.
Finding nothing further of interest in any of the rooms on the ground floor, I was about to mount the cobwebbed staircase leading to the upper storey when my eye happened to fall upon a curious lump in the rotted carpet on which I stood. Tearing this away (for it literally disintegrated at my touch), I found a trap-door cut into the floor-boards, secured with a huge pad-lock. I knelt, set my lamp down, and examined the lock, finding it to be little more than a clot-like accretion of rust. Breaking this into bits, and raising the heavy, creaking door, were the work of a minute, and presently I found myself descending a set of very narrow stairs into darkness.
I found myself in a dank, and very capacious, cellar, pervaded by an acrid reek. Holding a handkerchief to my nose, I began to explore the enormous, long-sealed room, which my lantern was able to illuminate only piecemeal—and, I noted with irritation, with an increasingly tremulous light.
It was, I realized instantly, a great laboratory, copiously furnished with such scientific instruments as were common in the age of Enlightenment. Great shelves covered the damp stone walls, crammed with books, microscopes, specimen jars carefully labelled in Latin, and glittering metal implements of surgical appearance, along with other contrivances which wholly defied classification.
The lamp’s light then fell upon an ancient wood-stove, whose rusted door hung open. Obeying an unaccountable intuition, I reached inside, and found within a half-burnt book or journal. On the fly-leaf was inscribed, in much-faded ink:
JOSEPHUS SUNCOKE
LIBER V—
The letters following ‘V’ were charred into illegibility; but somehow the word VITÆ presented itself, unbidden, to my mind…
Upon those pages of the book which the fire had not destroyed, or had only partly destroyed, I found a bewildering hotch-potch of figures and ciphers, mingled with occasional Latin, Greek, and Hebrew words, which, wholly despairing of ever comprehending, I thrust back into the ashes.
Next I crossed to a great table in the center of the room, covered with a profusion of folio-sized sheets of paper. I set my lantern down and, bending over the table, began to leaf through these, dimly aware that the hairs on my arms and neck were slowly erecting themselves as I did so. For upon each of these sheets had been drawn a single large figure, differing from each other in particulars, but all resembling, to a greater or lesser extent, the arachnoid-thing I had seen pictured throughout the village.
These drawings, closer study revealed, were in fact composed of innumerable, minutely-written numerals and symbols belonging, presumably, to some unknown cryptographic system.
After examining some dozen of these many-limbed formulæ (for so I began to consider them, rather than attempts at mimesis) I hel
d one up which made me shiver, in a frisson of recognition. It was the same figure—albeit infinitely more detailed in rendition—as that which dwelt in such profusion upon my land-lady’s quilt and curtains.
Like the others it was not, properly speaking, the product of draughtsmanship but rather a congeries of intricately written symbols or codes: a single of the stalk-like appendages which sprouted from its body was made up, by my reckoning, of some thousand or more inscrutable emblems, mixed with common integers.
My head a whirl of confusion and wild, half-formed notions, I set the sheet down with a trembling hand and, suddenly not wishing to know more of that laboratory or its secrets, began to mount the creaking stairs back up to the house.
I had nearly reached the top, one hand upraised to lift the trap door above me, when I heard a great blundering crash which sent violent shivers through my frame, and almost sent me scampering down the stairs again. But my fear being overmastered, at least in part, by the curiosity which has always been my predominant humour, I instead raised the door a few inches and peered cautiously out into the darkened hallway. The noise had come from outside—a heavy crashing sound—and so I directed my attention to the large window through which the moonlight streamed, casting weird, slowly waving shadows of the trees upon the walls and floor, like a magic lantern.
I had just decided that what I had heard was in all probability the chance falling of a tree, when a fresh set of sounds from outside the house nearly made me drop the lantern I still held in my other hand. Again I heard a succession of crashing noises, mixed with the slow splintering and rending of wood, as if by some ponderous body moving among the close-grown pines; then a series of slow, muffled thuddings whose very vibrations I could feel in my bones, like the tread of an elephant. As these drew nearer I felt my leg grow warm from the unconscious release of my bladder; at the same moment, I looked away from the window, though some instinct to keep perfectly still prevented me from withdrawing from my spying-place, or even from closing my eyes.
Thus it was that, as the mammoth steps drew close, my fear-wide eyes were fixed upon the hallway floor before me. Thus it was that I beheld a shadow appear, and stalk slowly past, a titanic shadow vaguely human in outline, yet marked by certain deformities or prodigies of limb, which were distressingly familiar to me. As the shadow’s misshapen head passed directly over me I nearly screamed; and though it was gone a few seconds later, the image of it remained burned into my brain as upon photographic paper…
I am back in my room now, still shaking as with a violent ague, despite the consumption of the entire bottle of medicinal brandy I carry for emergencies. Of the eternity of black terror I spent cowering beneath that trap-door, halfway between the laboratory and the forest, both of which I dreaded equally (though my watch tells me it cannot have been more than half an hour), waiting to be sure that the sounds had wholly ceased—of my panicked flight through the moon-lit woods—of my pathetic attempts to master my shaking hands sufficiently well as to be able to bolt the front door of the house, I prefer not to dwell any longer than is necessary.
There are, I realize now, some secrets which men were not meant to know.
With the first light of dawn, I shall take my leave of this unspeakable place, even if I must go by foot all the way to Boston or New York. There, on the meanest vessel I shall beg passage, and—
But there is a hardly perceptible rap at the door (how I leapt at it, so ravaged are my nerves!); during my panicked return I have, it would seem, awakened some portion of the household.
I must apologize to them for the disturbance. But may I admit to thee as well, my imagined reader, that it will be a relief (to echo De Quincey) to see honest, human faces before me once more!
# # #
They have departed, leaving me to write what I know will be my last entry….
I have very little time left. But I shall continue to add to this record, for as long as I am able.
Perhaps some future reader may stumble upon this account, and….
But I cannot waste these precious minutes in idle phantasy.
Where did I leave off?
Yes, with the rap at the door.
# # #
Expecting to see the mother (so timid had the knock seemed!), I opened the door with the glimmerings of a polite apology forming on my lips.
But it was the father who strode past me, without a word, carrying a small bag which he placed upon the table. He was accompanied by half a dozen burly men, three or four of whom I recognized from the maize-fields. These rustic Myrmidons led me back to the bed and held me forcibly down on the pictured quilt (quite unnecessarily, as I was far too surprised to offer any resistance), whilst the pater familias of the house bent over me, grim-faced, and carefully rolled up my shirt-sleeve. In utter astonishment, I began to expostulate with the man, demanding to know his purpose in so treating his guest. Then he produced a hypodermic syringe, which he held up to the weak lamp-light with a frown of concentration; at this my blood ran cold and I began to thrash about, though quite uselessly (for the grip of the men was like iron).
I looked away as he inserted the point of the needle into the cephalic vein of my right arm, and in so doing I first caught sight of the son (he whom I had regarded as an ally!), who stood watching the proceedings from the doorway. I opened my mouth to entreat him for aid, but any words I might have thought to utter quite died upon my lips as I saw the expression of his face: a combination of fascinated horror, utter loathing, and above all else (I thought) a look of profound relief…
As my host withdrew the needle from my arm, the men released their hold on me, and stepped away from the bed, watching me warily. They then stayed for perhaps a quarter of an hour, showing themselves quite willing now to answer any questions I might wish to put to them. But there was little, alas, which I was not now able to deduce, however belatedly, for myself…
Soon, however, the men began to exchange uneasy looks with one another, while at the same time their sidelong glances in my direction became freighted with a new element of fear and revulsion.
I looked vainly about for a mirror, before remembering that the room was not furnished with any such article.
Then one of the men muttered to another, unspeakable disgust thickening his voice, ‘Go an’ fetch up Lovel’; and presently the little delegation hurriedly departed, closing and locking the door behind them. The last of them I saw was the boy, staring at me, his eyes and mouth agape, while his father fumbled nervously with the door-key.
I realized then… this fate was to have been his, if an outsider had not blundered into the village, to supply his place…
And so I am alone now, quite alone.
One might, I suppose, effect an escape through the window: the fall would not be a very serious one, and there does not seem to be anyone watching below.
But what then?
A panicked, and perfectly useless, lope or waddle through those moon-lit, god-haunted woods, to be glimpsed perhaps by some unfortunate wanderer, like those poor trappers, before an ignominious recapture?
In the end I shall, I know, be led just the same, down to the pens beneath the church; and then, after the harvest, to HIM…
And in exchange they will receive (with proper show of mummery no doubt) the seeds which they will plant in the spring to come. For of course only HE can replenish, what HE hath designed…
What I do not understand is why they delayed… if this was ever their purpose, why did they not seize upon me straightaway, but let me wander at will for a span of several days?
Was some interval, perhaps, required, in order for them to prepare the serum, or virus, or whatever one is to call the damnable brood that swarms burning in my blood as I write?
Or else—yes, I think this may be it—I believe they wanted me to know, at least to some extent, what was to be my fate… this is part of their own… ceremony, ought I to term it? After all, there must be meaning in the ritual for them, as well as…enjoyment, for HI
M…
And so they goaded me forward, like a blind beast destined for the shambles, to discover what I might, in my own bumbling way…
And what they did not permit me to learn on my own, the hidden creatures now begin to instruct me, most vividly…o god, it is very terrible, like a quiet, infinitely patient, and unspeakably hideous whisper directly in one’s head…
For as this infected brain rots away, dying piecemeal, all knowlege is fled but
those things i need to know to serv my new purpos
i shal be
o god the play in the wood
and now i see its final end its its
it is even mor horbile than
no not
i must must
they have taken away the hypo but god grant that this pencil may do the job
but o crist jesus this hand is a hand no longer and i cannot ho
Aaron Worth is a Victorian literature scholar who has written a great deal about superannuated media technologies. “Cryptozoa” is his first weird tale. His story “The Translation of Aqbar” is forthcoming in Cemetery Dance Magazine.
TWO CHEESEBURGERS
AND THAT WEIRD LITTLE KID
By Jenny Orosel
Chuck turned the corner, parking lot in sight and dread in his stomach. The last thing he wanted to deal with after a long day was the weird kid. With a silent prayer to a God he didn't believe in, he pressed the remote to the gate.
Apparently, gods only listen if you believe.
