Year's Best Weird Fiction: 1

by Laird Barron

  He hears a hum, then feels a vibration.

  “It’s powering up,” he mutters.

  “What?”

  He points, spellbound.

  She follows his finger.

  “It’s opening,” he whispers.

  “What’s opening?”

  “The door. The path.”

  “Look at me,” she says.

  He doesn’t respond, forcing her to repeat herself. “I said look at me. I’m talking to you.”

  Of anything on Earth, her voice, at that moment and in that way, is perhaps the only thing that could reach him. It combines concern with authority, solicitude with resolve, the verbal equivalent of a one-two punch, and the woman, make no mistake, is a force to reckon with. With a shudder he wrenches himself free of his vision, as free as he can be, and makes eye contact with her. Knows that he needs to reestablish a connection. Desperately tries to recall what they were talking about.

  “You would have liked him,” he says.

  “What?”

  “You would have liked him.”

  “Who? Lamarck?”

  He nods.

  For a moment she’s bewildered, as if he’s pulled a fast one on her, a rope-a-dope trick. She can’t believe the man, but of course she can. He’s done his best to give her his undivided attention. It’s been heroic, really, how well he’s done. But there are some things a man like Dr. Jim cannot resist. Some things a woman like Carol, née Schneeman, now James, cannot resist, either.

  Pedagogy, for example. That, and a parting shot.

  “Did she?” she asks.

  “Did who?”

  “Did Mrs. Lamarck?”

  Energized by the conversation and her husband’s interest and support, Carol dives headlong into her subject, tentatively titling her paper “Toward an Epigenetic Future: Beyond Randomness.” To her the epigene represents hope: for the future of her species (possibly for all species, though this is beyond the scope of her piece) and for the future of the planet. People change in response to what’s going on around them. That’s the message and the fact. They change not merely on the surface but inside, intrinsically: as the environment changes, as the culture changes, as the world changes. This has always been the case, but the new idea (or not so new but new to her) is that this doesn’t have to rely on random chance. It doesn’t have to be glacially slow. It doesn’t have to be passive. Quite the opposite: it’s an interactive and highly participatory act.

  Most exciting of all, the change can be passed on to future generations and built upon. Little by little or quickly, in great bold leaps. It’s the answer, if not the antidote, to cynicism, complacency, and helplessness, which infest and plague so many in the world. Another nail in the coffin of the Luddites and the fatalists who fear and despise progress. People adapt, adapt positively, adapt swiftly. This is what the epigene means to her. It’s a metaphor, of course, but it’s more than a metaphor. She can feel this in herself. She’s changing—on the deepest levels—and it seems to be happening, in part, in response to her grasping and grappling with this new idea, working it, following its threads, making intuitive leaps, doubling back, finding ways around apparent dead ends. She feels as if she’s tussling with some wild and beautiful animal, making it more beautiful and useful by taming and disciplining it.

  She is changing in other ways, too. In response to her environment, for example, her work environment, where the pressure is mounting to get tenure and get it now, while it’s within her grasp, and while she’s at it, do all the ancillary stuff: publish, teach, administer, procure grants, be exceptional, be more than exceptional, be a star, and if not a star then a pretty damn bright planet. Pressure translates to stress, which has well-known biological effects. Some are epigenetic, and not all of these by any means are deleterious. Being the optimist she is, she has every reason to believe that the positive changes she’s undergoing will benefit any future offspring she may choose to produce (currently an open question). It’s not just optimism: there’s growing evidence that the stress responses of the current generation of children in the nation are blunted, a splendid adaptation, given the exponential growth of sensory and immunologic assaults on their beleaguered defense systems, and proof once again that you can only pound the tip of a nail so much before it becomes dull.

  Her home environment is affecting her as well. Being with her husband, listening to what he has to say, watching him change physically and emotionally as his strange—and strangely compelling—sculpture takes shape, wondering where it will all lead and who or what is doing the leading. Is he in control, or is this, as she sometimes fears, a wild-goose chase? How she thinks and feels about him is changing, and this, of course, is changing how she thinks and feels about herself. If she had to guess, she’d say the same is true of him. Change begets change.

  A marriage, she decides (independently of him), is epigenetic. Structured, orderly, fluid at times, unpredictable at other times, and at all times interactive: it’s like the very thing that’s growing in their yard.

  Which, by the way, has risen above the fence line. Not by a lot, but enough to get her attention. She’s been so absorbed in her paper that it’s been weeks since she’s given it more than a cursory look. She and her husband have been immersed in their respective projects to the exclusion of all else, like two children at parallel play, the difference, of course, being that these two children are married. How perfect, she thinks, to be as childishly self-absorbed as her husband. How much this helps her understand him. And how much this understanding will help him, in turn, to see the light when she reminds him of his promise.

  From Dr. Jim’s Diary:

  Friday, November 27th. Wake up, head hurts. Take a leak, catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. Can that be me? Is this Halloween? A circus? Who let that guy in the house?

  The effort of trying to figure that one out only makes my head hurt worse, and I throw a couple of aspirin down my throat, then take one of those other, blue-green pills, which I shouldn’t, but who’s going to stop me? Down in the basement the cage door is unlocked. No worry about his escaping: a beaten animal knows its place.

  He’s sitting on the bench when I enter. I don’t have to tell him to get up.

  We face each other. We’re the same height now. I’ve grown (success adds inches) and he’s shrunk. You could say I’ve cut him down to size.

  We fight. I beat his pathetic self. Afterward he seems even smaller than before. He also appears more naked, which is odd, because he doesn’t wear clothes, hasn’t from the get-go. Maybe it’s his hair, which used to cover every inch of his body. Now it’s patchy and thinned out, like a sick and mangy dog’s.

  Carol’s in the kitchen when I come up, a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. She smiles when she sees me, but then a shadow crosses her face.

  “Something wrong?” I ask.

  “You look like hell.”

  “I feel great.”

  “Is that right?” She wrinkles her nose.

  “Got a problem?”

  She fans the air in front of her face. “You smell.”

  “Of course I smell. It’s the smell of human. You no like?”

  “The human, yes. The smell, no.”

  “Too bad.”

  She compresses her lips. “What you mean is, ‘You’ll get used to it,’ delivered in a helpful and encouraging, which is to say, a warm and affectionate voice. ‘Too bad’ is so cold and antagonistic.”

  “I’m sorry you’re not happy.”

  She considers this, first with an inward look, then an outward one at me, as if trying to see past some particularly ugly packaging to the gift underneath.

  “You’re changing,” she says at length. “Sometimes I’m happy about it. Sometimes not.”

  “Be happy.”

  “Like you.”

  “Like me. That’s right.”

  “Until you’re not.”


  It may be the truth, but it feels like an accusation. “I don’t see that happening. I’m not a guy that gets depressed. What’s to be depressed about?”

  “You make it sound like it’s a choice.”

  “Why would anyone choose to be depressed?”

  “The point, I think, is why wouldn’t they choose not to be?”

  Talk talk talk. Choice is overrated. Things exist or they don’t. I have a smell? Damn right I have a smell. It’s called the smell of success.

  “I couldn’t be happier. You know why? I’m firing on all cylinders. In here,” I pound my chest. “Upstairs,” I pound my head.

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “You should be glad. It’s a beautiful thing. We live in a beautiful time. Beautiful minds, beautiful ideas, beautiful place. It’s a miracle to be alive. I’m more than happy. I’m ecstatic.”

  “You’re in a zone.”

  A zone, is it? As in something with limits? That has a finite end? I shake my shaggy head.

  “I’m not. The zone is me. It’s not going away. Like the smell. It’s who I am. Same goes for what I’m building and discovering, and all the good that’s going to come of it, how much it’s going to change how people think, how much smarter and better they’ll become, how much better off and happier, and how it’s going to usher in a new age, a golden age, new, improved, and constantly improving—”

  “The Golden Age of Dr. Jim?”

  “Why not?”

  She’s checking out my hands, which are down at my sides and, strangely, still bunched into fists, like the residue of something, an indelible mark, perhaps. She’s got a curious look on her face, as though puzzling through what this means, which is one of the reasons I love her. She’s interested in the what and the why of things, she’s observant, and she doesn’t jump to conclusions.

  Not that any conclusion she or anyone might draw would have an effect on me. I’m above and beyond—immune to, you could say—the tyranny of opinion.

  “The sky’s the limit,” I tell her.

  “In the Age of Dr. Jim.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where fists rule.”

  “Fists are good.”

  She makes a pair of her own, turns them one way then another, regarding them with the same curious and observant expression. After a while she unfurls her fingers, then clenches them into claws. She studies these as well, then pulls them back as far as they’ll go, fingertips and nails slightly raised, tendons on the backs of her hands in sharp and tense relief, as though readying for action.

  “Grrrr,” she says.

  “That’s the spirit.”

  She swipes at the air, left-right-left, makes a hissing sound, bares her teeth. Her eyes flash, then settle on my face.

  “Got a sec?” she asks.

  “Got a lifetime. What’s up?”

  She turns to the window and points with her chin. “That.”

  “You like?”

  “We had an agreement.”

  “It’s nearly done.”

  “I’m willing to talk. I can be flexible. I’ll listen to reason.”

  “Do you like it?” I repeat.

  The question hangs in the air like a coin toss suspended in glass.

  “Does it matter?” she answers at length.

  “Of course it does.”

  “Why? Are you building it for me?”

  “I wouldn’t be building it without you, that’s for sure.”

  She looks shocked. Then skeptical.

  This wounds me, as it should. Skepticism is a dagger to the pure of heart. The innocent, for some reason, are always the first to be accused.

  “Why are you looking at me that way?” I ask. “Have I done something wrong? Without knowing? Again?”

  Rhetorical questions, of course, and we both know she’d be better off not answering. She could change the subject—to the weather, the neighbors, the news—to anything else, but she’s smarter than that.

  She apologizes.

  Then she rubs it in by kissing me. “That’s so nice to hear. You know I wouldn’t be writing what I’m writing without you, so it goes both ways. And the answer’s yes—I do like it.”

  Being immune to opinion does not, apparently, mean being immune to praise. I feel a wave of happiness, then pride, and I take her in my arms, pressing her hard against me. I want to crush her, I love her so much.

  “Easy,” she says. And then, “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Don’t tell me. You want to be there when I finish. On the day. The hour. You want to be part of it. You want to celebrate my victory.”

  “Okay,” she drawls, as though taken up short and trying her best not to disappoint me. “Now you want to hear the one I was going to ask? Don’t go up any higher. Go out if you want to, fill the whole yard if you like, just don’t go up.”

  “You’re saying size doesn’t matter. It’s not what’s important.”

  “I’m saying control yourself.”

  “You’re right. It’s not. I don’t have to go up. I can go out. I can go in. In is up.” The meaning of this—the full, ecstatic meaning—explodes on me with the force of revelation. “Up is up, too. Up and up. And up. And away. Up and away.” What a hoot! What a miracle! Another explosion, this time of laughter. “Grab your hat, there’s a storm coming, it’s going to blow us to smithereens, but the coast is clear. Clear sailing ahead if you don’t go up. Go out. Go in. In is up, and up is in—”

  “Stop.”

  I hoist her in my arms and twirl her around.

  “I said stop!”

  Her voice is like the crack of a whip, and I cut my celebration short.

  Once she’s down, feet planted firmly on the floor, she crosses her arms over her chest and squares herself to me. “I need you to promise.”

  “Your will is my command.”

  “I also need you to be serious.”

  I raise my hand and pledge to her. “Not an inch higher. Not an angstrom. Not a snowflake. I swear to you. I promise.”

  Carol has her work cut out for her, trusting him to keep his word. She’ll believe it when she sees it, or rather when she doesn’t see it, doesn’t see the piece get higher, and she learns how much harder it is and how much longer it takes to be convinced by the absence of something than by its presence, in this case the absence of something happening rather than by its occurrence. It’s the difference between not and not not, similar to the task of carving out and then maintaining silence in a world defined by noise. But as the weeks go by and he’s true to his word, she begins to relax. This, in turn, allows her to devote her full energy to her paper, a good thing, seeing as how she’s scheduled to deliver a preview of it at an important conference in two weeks.

  She has it well mapped out, all save one new idea she’s been wrestling with. It’s a bit beyond what’s known and established on the subject, right on the cusp of the plausible. It’s sure to be controversial, which is precisely what she’s aiming for. Academics love a good debate, and an aspiring academic could hope for nothing better than to be the center of one.

  What she doesn’t want is to be laughed off the floor. She needs to run it by someone first, and the someone she has in mind is her husband. Who knows more than he does about the epigene? Who, when he chooses, can listen with more intelligence? Who won’t pull any punches and be sure to speak his mind? When it comes down to it, there’s no one she trusts more.

  Rising early one morning, she whips up a batch of pancakes, which will slow if not stop him, and has them ready when he comes downstairs.

  He’s barely awake. His hair is matted and snarled, as it has been for weeks. His beard is becoming a bush. He half-shuffles, half-lurches into the kitchen, where he stops, raises his head, and sniffs.

  “Pancakes,” she announces.

  Half a minute passes before he eyes the basement doo
r. It’s a record, and yet another instance of the deep, mind-altering power of scent.

  She pulls out a chair. “Have a seat.”

  He doesn’t move, and she doesn’t insist.

  “I’m going away next week,” she reminds him. “For my conference. To deliver my paper.”

  He shifts on his feet.

  “I’ve been toying with something. Can I run it by you?”

  “Can it wait?” He edges toward the door.

  She opens her mouth to say no, but his hand is already turning the knob. The door opens, then he disappears, as if falling into a dream, she thinks.

  From Dr. Jim’s Diary:

  Wednesday, Jan 4th. The darkness at first is thick, but my eyes like darkness, they’re at home in it, and they adjust quick. The smell of the cellar is abrasive and sharp, and in seconds I’m fully alert. I take the last stairs in a single leap, land like a cat, straighten, look. He’s cowering in a corner. What a pitiful excuse for a man. No threat to me or to anyone, and yet at the sight of him my blood boils. Why this is I can’t say. But I can say this: he won’t fight anymore, not unless I make him.

  Which I do.

  Boom boom, and it’s over.

  I almost feel sorry for him.

  But I don’t. Why should I? Does the cherry feel sorry for the pit?

  Fact is, as he crumples to the floor, I’m elated.

  “I’m going out on a limb,” says Carol, after her husband has surfaced. He’s sucking down the cakes as if he hasn’t eaten in weeks. “I’m speculating that an identical epigenetic change can happen to many individuals in a narrow window of time, possibly simultaneously. And this can cause a recognizable change in culture and society in their lifetimes. It doesn’t have to wait for the next generation to manifest itself. It can happen now, as we speak. In real time. Real-time evolution. Not engineered, but natural.”