The New Weird

by Ann VanderMeer; Jeff VanderMeer

  I accepted the pain, pushed myself down the blade, and set Truth against one of the clown's wild yellow eyes while Sinister came from beneath to cut the strings of his hams.

  The clown yowled, his voice a dog's, as he collapsed. His next blow missed me, wide with the loss of his balance. Then I realized the hot wind of the Lizard's breath was blowing in, not out. The tongue beneath my feet rippled, the walls of the throat likewise.

  The lizard was swallowing the clown. I had done what I could, it was time to fear for my own life. I gathered myself and shouted in the voice of winds, "Away!"

  The Lizard roared, expelling me to tumble upward in the darkness. I had banished myself with my words, and fell onto the ledge at WallEye's feet.

  "Fool," said Wall-Eye. He nudged me with a metal toe.

  "It is over," I said. The clown's warm dog ear pulsed in my hand, wrapped around Truth's haft.

  "The Lizard is Gillikin business, not Shadow business."

  I sat up, testing my wounds, inspecting the shadow suit's tears. The pain wavered through me like the Lizard's peristalsis, threatening to swallow me whole all over again. I needed to hold my own with WallEye, though. Gasping, I said, "I hunt those things which the dark sends us."

  "The clown came from above," the priest pointed out.

  A great shriek echoed from far below, as the cataract suddenly abated to a mossy dribble. Then a flash of red light pulsed in the darkness.

  We smiled at one another. The Lizard had once again defended Ooze, albeit with my help.

  "If the clown somehow comes back up," I said, "he is mine." My breathing still labored, I folded the ear into a pouch at my waist ― it would count for something if ever another clown came to call.

  The old priest helped me to my feet. I saw the Lizard for a moment in Wall-Eye's gaze, and surely he saw the same in mine. We stood with the taste of clown in our mouths before ascending, he with his anger and me with the stumbling, pained gift of my life, in silent brotherhood to the curtained door of the Gillikin priests and all of lovely, dark Ooze beyond.

  Watson's Boy

  BRIAN EVENSON

  ...behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.... ― Revelations 3:8

  [ONE]

  His Keys.

  HE CARRIES two hundred and thirty-five rings of keys. His father has constructed harnesses for him to loop over his arms, chest, and waist, upon which the keys hang. The harnesses consist of heavy canvas straps, oversewn and strung with hooks.

  When he walks, the keys rattle upon his flesh, making his skin tingle. He tries the keys in the locks. The keys do not seem to fit the locks. He continues on, to other doors.

  It once gave Brey particular satisfaction to run through dark hallways, the keys sounding against his body. Now he does not run, but lumbers. The increasing weight of keys stunts his movement, cripples his growth. He does not resent this ― he does not realize it. According to his father's calculations, when Brey gathers five hundred keys the load will become too heavy. His spine will snap. His father suggests that he should stop at four hundred, and for that reason has equipped the harness with only four hundred hooks. Brey, however, has realized that each hook can be bent to hold two rings of keys. If he continues to collect keys, Brey will someday find himself lying on the ground with a broken back, calling for his father quietly, as if embarrassed.

  The keys seem as regular a fixture of the halls as the doors. They are covered with dust where the halls are dusty. They are free from dust where the halls are clean.

  He does not know if the halls will continue to exist when all the keys are removed from their intersections. He experiments to discover if, once the keys are gone, the halls will disappear. Perhaps, he believes, they will vanish from around him, allowing him an infinitely open space.

  The discovery of a set of keys invokes in him a series of gestures. He picks up the keys. He examines them, assures himself that they resemble the other keys he has found. He hangs the keys from a hook of his harness, then returns to his rooms, trying the new keys in the familiar doors along the way.

  If keys exist, doors must exist which they will unlock. Such is the nature of the key. Such is the nature of the door.

  He has travelled through two hundred and thirty-six intersections and in the center of each has found keys. He does not know how many intersections exist. He has reached one outer, terminal wall, beyond which he cannot progress. For this reason, he suspects that the halls are not infinite.

  His father thinks differently. "Everything is a passage," he says, "though not every passage leads somewhere."

  His father has never been wrong. Brey tries to push his way through the terminal wall. The wall seems solid, essential in every regard. His fingers find no passage. He gives up.

  His father instills within Brey his respect for keys. His father tells him:

  "The keys are in the hallways, at every intersection. I have never collected keys. If you collect them, I shall be pleased. If you choose not to collect them, I shall not question your choice."

  His Hallways.

  The floors of his halls are polished, black stone. The walls are rough, gray stone, as are the ceilings. His hallways are extensive, forming perfect grids. Each hall between the intersections has ten doors upon each side. Each door is distanced from the next by two spans of Brey's arms ― one and one half spans of his father's arms. The halls are lit by light bulbs hanging single and naked over the intersections. The bulbs are of various wattage, and expire periodically. In certain intersections, the halls are nearly dark, lit only by light bulbs four intersections distant. In other intersections, the halls are brightly lit, the polished floors glistening as if wet. There, the light bulbs are globes, larger than he imagines his brain to be.

  The terminal wall is different. On the terminal wall, there are only doors on the inner side of the hall. On the outer side, in the place of doors, windows have been cut into the stone. The windows are filled with glass. The glass is black, opaque, but shiny enough that in it Brey sees his own ghost.

  The hall ahead grows dark, the light bulb broken or missing. Brey travels by touch through the dim, unreeling his fishline. He has always been afraid of the dark. He counts ten doors, feels the wall sheer off before him.

  He sets the reel of fishline aside. He eases down to his knees, sweeps his hands forward across the floor until they brush something. He fumbles a ring of keys from the floor, ticks off the keys upon it. There are seven keys. This is true of all rings of keys, an essential quality of rings of keys. He can count on it.

  He returns, following the fishline back to the tenth door. He wraps the fishline around the handle of the door, sets the reel down on the ground. He follows the fishline backward, stopping before each door to try each of his seven keys in the lock.

  The walls are rough. He uses them to scrape the dead skin from his elbows. He has not discovered either graft or joint in the wall. To Brey, the walls seem carved from a single block of stone. Perhaps his father would disagree.

  The floors are smooth. Echoes rise from the soles of his boots. The walls and floor might be carved from the same stone, though the one is polished while the other is not. Why one might be polished and the other not, Brey cannot guess. For him, they may as well be different types of stone.

  Brey was born in the halls, as was Brey's father. What occupied the halls before them, Brey cannot say. If Brey's father knows, he keeps it a secret, perhaps for Brey's own good. If his father knew and if it were important, Brey knows his father would tell him. Brey does not need to know.

  The Doors in His Halls.

  The doors in his halls are all locked. They seem to him identical. He has measured himself against the doors. The doorways are large enough to admit him, but little larger. There is a handsbreadth of space to either side of his shoulders, two handsbreadths above his head. His father, on the other hand, must stoop to fit within the doorframe.

  The doors are made of unvarnished wood. Four of the
doors are unlocked. All of the other doors are locked. Excepting the bedroom door, the doors which are unlocked hinge inward. The hinges lie hidden, cradled in stone.

  He feels his way along the dark hallway. He stops to lean against the wall. He disentangles the fishline from around the door handle, heaves up the reel.

  He carries the reel with both hands, resting it against his thighs. The weight of it digs the keys into his legs. He travels forward, unspooling the fishline.

  He drops the reel. He kicks the keys out of the intersection, nearer to the wall. Bracing his body against the wall, he squats down, steadying one hand upon the reel. He takes the keys from the floor. In standing, as his father has taught him, he looks up at the ceiling. The purpose of this, Brey does not know.

  Sick, Brey feels the weight of the keys. The hallways are cold. He drags his shoulders and face along the wall, shivering.

  He drags his face too heavily. His skin abrades, breaks, bleeds, old scars splitting back.

  Brey would be handsome, but his face is scarred. He would be handsome had not his growth been stumped by the keys. Brey would be handsome, if the word had any significance for him.

  Brey's father never carried keys. His face once was smooth. He was gathered up to a colossal height.

  Now he is old. His face is puckered and wrinkled. His back is stooped. But he is still taller than Brey.

  Brey turns accidental circles in the dark hallways, reversing his course. He reaches a previous intersection whose keys he has removed. He leans against the wall, catching his breath.

  He feels the floor for keys. He finds nothing. He keeps stooping, keeps searching.

  "Father?" he yells. "Father?"

  He carries three hundred and fifty-seven pounds of keys upon his body. If he falls to the ground, he will find it difficult to rise. If he is injured in the fall, he will lie upon the ground until he starves or until he thinks to remove the keys so as to stand.

  He stumbles across the intersection, strikes the opposite wall. Leaning against the wall, he moves forward. He counts doors as he passes them, continuing toward new intersections.

  Of doors, there are two possibilities. Perhaps the doors were made at the same time as the halls. Perhaps the doors were cut later. There is no evidence to allow Brey to favor either one hypothesis or the other. But he prefers the former.

  His Room.

  The frame of his bed stands beside the door. His body is too heavy for it. Next to it is spread a palette. He sleeps upon the palette in clothes and keys, adjacent to the frame.

  His bed frame rises into a rickety canopy. Shredded fabric hangs from it, seemingly held together by cobwebs and dust.

  On the opposite side of the room are a broken chair, a desk, and several notebooks. Each notebook begins with a single map of the hallways which he has explored. Following are scores of theoretical maps, numerous postulated sets of hallways.

  His walls are bare. In the ceiling is a bank of twelve light bulbs, cradled in a depression of stone, bulbs abutted one to another. Five of the light bulbs have failed, two during Brey's lifetime. Brey will never forget the drama of those moments. The remaining light bulbs stay lit while Brey is awake, switching off when he lays down to sleep. The mechanism that regulates the light remains obscure to him.

  Attached to the desk is a strand of fishline which wraps around the leg of the desk four times before being tied off. The line runs out under the door, down the hall, through empty intersections, toward the terminal wall. The line is neither taut nor loose.

  He sits cross-legged upon his palette, pouring over his maps. All the maps partake of the same design, making it difficult to distinguish one map from another. If Brey's imagined maps were not clearly marked, he would find it difficult to distinguish them from his real map.

  His imaginary maps contain imaginary keys in each intersection. All maps are gridwork. All are recorded on equally sized sheets of squared paper. The only difference between them is where Brey marks the location of the terminal doors.

  The terminal doors are recorded on the imagined maps but have not yet been discovered in the hallways. The terminal doors exist on terminal walls, breaking the succession of blacked windows. The terminal doors stretch to the ceiling. They are two large, varnished doors, locked together. No light departs through their bottom crack. Some little light comes through the locks, outlining them, suggesting that something exists beyond. An eye to the keyhole, Brey believes, would reveal only an elaborate gearage.

  The terminal doors must lead out of the halls. Otherwise Brey would not call them "terminal."

  Perhaps through the terminal doors lies another set of hallways, organized according to principles of which his own halls are merely a shadow. The terminal doors exist: they have been discovered on all maps, excepting the actual map. Thus, they must eventually be discovered on the actual map. Thus, reasons Brey, they must be discovered in the halls themselves.

  Before he collects all the keys, he hopes to find the terminal doors. When he finds them, he will attempt to escape through them.

  Perhaps the terminal doors are hidden in a dark section of hallway. Perhaps he has walked by them, pressed against the opposite wall, again and again, unaware.

  He returns to his room to find the door ajar, his father standing over his desk, thumbing through his map books.

  "Brey, will you explain what these are?" says his father.

  "Notebooks?" says Brey.

  "You know what I mean," says his father.

  "Maps?" says Brey.

  "Maps?" says his father, crumpling them. "Maps of what, Brey? These are useless."

  His Parents.

  His parents live in the room adjacent to his own. They are withered of skin, but not of mind. They are the source of all his knowledge. His mother never leaves the room. His father rarely is to be found in the room. He wanders.

  Brey has wrapped his mother's body with strips of sheets to protect her from rats. He has done thus at his father's request. Brey has never seen rats. He has read about them at length, and has learned about them from his father. His father wanders the halls looking for evidence of the rats.

  "The rats," his father confides, "exist! I have seen them, Brey. Someday they will return to these halls."

  Brey has not seen the rats. He has seen drawings of rats in his father's books about rats. He believes in the rats, though he has not seen them. He trusts his father.

  "Your mother and I have killed rats," says his father. "Someday they will return for me or for your mother. I am still capable of running from them. Your mother is not. If she is disguised in sheets, however, they might pass her by."

  If the rats do discover Brey's mother, they might find it difficult to chew through her wrappings. It might take them long enough to chew through the sheets that they would choose instead to search out other bodies. Brey's body, for example, or that of his father. Brey's father can run from the rats. Brey can lumber from them. If he is not fast enough to escape, his keys might still protect him.

  Even if the rats chew through his mother's sheets, they will chew through at only one spot. The rats will stream into his mother through the single hole, eating the body hollow. If Brey surprises the rats, he will be able to sew the hole shut. The rats will be trapped. They will suffocate within his mother.

  No one shall wrap Brey in sheets when he grows feeble. There is nobody to do it. He will be easy prey to rats.

  When he approaches death, he will hang himself from one of the light fixtures in the hallway, out of reach of the rats. Perhaps he will collect enough keys that his entire body will be covered, armored against rats. A smart rat, however, will snout past the keys.

  The wrapped feet of Brey's mother hang over the edge of her bed. His mother says little, almost never speaking directly to Brey. His father claims, however, that she asks about him often. That she is concerned about him.

  His father tells him things about keys, about halls, nothing else. His father says this of the keys: "There
are two ways to get the keys: you can collect the keys or you can wait for them to collect you. I have done the latter. The keys have not come. I have no regrets ― there are things more important than keys."

  His Knowledge.

  His mother tells him little about herself. He knows that she has always been in these halls, little more. His father is modest, speaking seldom of his own accomplishments. He knows of his father no more than he can gather from his father's commentary on rats, halls, keys. There are only stories of rats, elaborate rat traps, his father's refusal to collect keys: "If I had it to do again, I would change nothing. I do not believe in regret. Nevertheless, I wonder if you should reconsider your own course."

  His knowledge of his father lies in his father's drawings and poems. His father has mentioned thousands of drawings, of rats. Brey has found only a single sheet of paper with two ink drawings upon it, plastered underneath the sink. The lines are faint, but the shapes of rats are still trapped there.

  Often, Brey himself traces rats on the table with his fingers. In this, he considers himself his father's child.

  He has torn pages from his notebook and drawn pictures of rats upon them, leaving them scattered through the intersections for his father to find. The drawings have disappeared, but his father has never said anything about them. Perhaps the drawings are good enough that Brey's father thinks they are his own. Perhaps the rats find them first, destroying them.

  His father's poems are in a slim volume labelled Homage to Brey: (He Has Chosen to Collect Keys). His father said nothing to Brey of the book's existence. Brey discovered it in his parents' room while his father was wandering, his mother asleep. The book was wedged between the headboard and the wall. He slid the book from its hiding place, apparently without his mother and father's knowledge, and conveyed it into his room to hide under his palette. At times, as he sleeps, he thinks he feels the shape of it beneath him. His father has never mentioned its absence.