The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  It must not be thought that I am a friend of Nuth’s; on the contrary such politics as I have are on the side of Property; and he needs no words from me, for his position is almost unique in trade, being among the very few that do not need to advertise.

  At the time that my story begins Nuth lived in a roomy house in Belgrave Square: in his inimitable way he had made friends with the caretaker. The place suited Nuth, and, whenever anyone came to inspect it before purchase, the caretaker used to praise the house in the words that Nuth had suggested. ‘If it wasn’t for the drains,’ she would say, ‘it’s the finest house in London,’ and when they pounced on this remark and asked questions about the drains, she would answer them that the drains also were good, but not so good as the house. They did not see Nuth when they went over the rooms, but Nuth was there.

  Here in a neat black dress on one spring morning came an old woman whose bonnet was lined with red, asking for Mr. Nuth; and with her came her large and awkward son. Mrs. Eggins, the caretaker, glanced up the street, and then she let them in, and left them to wait in the drawing-room amongst furniture all mysterious with sheets. For a long while they waited, and then there was a smell of pipe-tobacco, and there was Nuth standing quite close to them.

  ‘Lord,’ said the old woman whose bonnet was lined with red, ‘you did make me start.’ And then she saw by his eyes that that was not the way to speak to Mr. Nuth.

  And at last Nuth spoke, and very nervously the old woman explained that her son was a likely lad, and had been in business already but wanted to better himself, and she wanted Mr. Nuth to teach him a livelihood.

  First of all Nuth wanted to see a business reference, and when he was shown one from a jeweller with whom he happened to be hand-in-glove the upshot of it was that he agreed to take young Tonker (for this was the surname of the likely lad) and to make him his apprentice. And the old woman whose bonnet was lined with red went back to her little cottage in the country, and every evening said to her old man, ‘Tonker, we must fasten the shutters of a night-time, for Tommy’s a burglar now.’

  The details of the likely lad’s apprenticeship I do not propose to give; for those that are in the business know those details already, and those that are in other businesses care only for their own, while men of leisure who have no trade at all would fail to appreciate the gradual degrees by which Tommy Tonker came first to cross bare boards, covered with little obstacles in the dark, without making any sound, and then to go silently up creaky stairs, and then to open doors, and lastly to climb.

  Let it suffice that the business prospered greatly, while glowing reports of Tommy Tonker’s progress were sent from time to time to the old woman whose bonnet was lined with red in the laborious handwriting of Nuth. Nuth had given up lessons in writing very early, for he seemed to have some prejudice against forgery, and therefore considered writing a waste of time. And then there came the transaction with Lord Castlenorman at his Surrey residence. Nuth selected a Saturday night, for it chanced that Saturday was observed as Sabbath in the family of Lord Castlenorman, and by eleven o’clock the whole house was quiet. Five minutes before midnight Tommy Tonker, instructed by Mr. Nuth, who waited outside, came away with one pocketful of rings and shirt-studs. It was quite a light pocketful, but the jewellers in Paris could not match it without sending specially to Africa, so that Lord Castlenorman had to borrow bone shirt-studs.

  Not even rumour whispered the name of Nuth. Were I to say that this turned his head, there are those to whom the assertion would give pain, for his associates hold that his astute judgment was unaffected by circumstance. I will say, therefore, that it spurred his genius to plan what no burglar had ever planned before. It was nothing less than to burgle the house of the gnoles. And this that abstemious man unfolded to Tonker over a cup of tea. Had Tonker not been nearly insane with pride over their recent transaction, and had he not been blinded by a veneration for Nuth, he would have – but I cry over spilt milk. He expostulated respectfully: he said he would rather not go; he said it was not fair, he allowed himself to argue; and in the end, one windy October morning with a menace in the air found him and Nuth drawing near to the dreadful wood.

  Nuth, by weighing little emeralds against pieces of common rock, had ascertained the probable weight of those house-ornaments that the gnoles are believed to possess in the narrow, lofty house wherein they have dwelt from of old. They decided to steal two emeralds and to carry them between them on a cloak; but if they should be too heavy one must be dropped at once. Nuth warned young Tonker against greed, and explained that the emeralds were worth less than cheese until they were safe away from the dreadful wood.

  Everything had been planned, and they walked now in silence.

  No track led up to the sinister gloom of the trees, either of men or cattle; not even a poacher had been there snaring elves for over a hundred years. You did not trespass twice in the dells of the gnoles. And, apart from the things that were done there, the trees themselves were a warning, and did not wear the wholesome look of those that we plant ourselves.

  The nearest village was some miles away with the backs of all its houses turned to the wood, and without one window at all facing in that direction. They did not speak of it there, and elsewhere it is unheard of.

  Into this wood stepped Nuth and Tommy Tonker. They had no firearms. Tonker had asked for a pistol, but Nuth replied that the sound of a shot ‘would bring everything down on us,’ and no more was said about it.

  Into the wood they went all day, deeper and deeper. They saw the skeleton of some early Georgian poacher nailed to a door in an oak tree; sometimes they saw a fairy scuttle away from them; once Tonker stepped heavily on a hard, dry stick, after which they both lay still for twenty minutes. And the sunset flared full of omens through the tree trunks, and night fell, and they came by fitful starlight, as Nuth had foreseen, to that lean, high house where the gnoles so secretly dwelt.

  All was so silent by that unvalued house that the faded courage of Tonker flickered up, but to Nuth’s experienced sense it seemed too silent; and all the while there was that look in the sky that was worse than a spoken doom, so that Nuth, as is often the case when men are in doubt, had leisure to fear the worst. Nevertheless he did not abandon the business, but sent the likely lad with the instruments of his trade by means of the ladder to the old green casement. And the moment that Tonker touched the withered boards, the silence that, though ominous, was earthly, became unearthly like the touch of a ghoul. And Tonker heard his breath offending against that silence, and his heart was like mad drums in a night attack, and a string of one of his sandals went tap on a rung of a ladder, and the leaves of the forest were mute, and the breeze of the night was still; and Tonker prayed that a mouse or a mole might make any noise at all, but not a creature stirred, even Nuth was still. And then and there, while yet he was undiscovered, the likely lad made up his mind, as he should have done long before, to leave those colossal emeralds where they were and have nothing further to do with the lean, high house of the gnoles, but to quit this sinister wood in the nick of time and retire from business at once and buy a place in the country. Then he descended softly and beckoned to Nuth. But the gnoles had watched him through knavish holes that they bore in trunks of the trees, and the unearthly silence gave way, as it were with a grace, to the rapid screams of Tonker as they picked him up from behind – screams that came faster and faster until they were incoherent.

  And where they took him it is not good to ask, and what they did with him I shall not say.

  Nuth looked on for a while from the corner of the house with a mild surprise on his face as he rubbed his chin, for the trick of the holes in the trees was new to him; then he stole nimbly away through the dreadful wood.

  ‘And did they catch Nuth?’ you ask me, gentle reader.

  ‘Oh, no, my child’ (for such a question is childish). ‘Nobody ever catches Nuth.’

  The Man in the Bottle

  Gustav Meyrink

  Gustav M
eyrink (1868–1932) was an Austrian writer who moved to Prague as a teenager and lived there for twenty years. Early works included grotesque satires after which he largely graduated to weird pseudo-science and contes cruel. He is most famous for his novel The Golem (1914). Other books by Meyrink include Walpurgis Night (1917) and The Angel of the Western Window (1927). Meyrink considered himself an amateur expert on theosophy, Kabbalah, Christian Sophiology, and Eastern mysticism. He once translated fifteen volumes of Charles Dickens because he needed the money. ‘The Man in the Bottle’ is typical of Meyrink’s weird stories: grotesque, brief, and flecked with the decadent.

  Melanchthon was dancing with the Bat, whose costume represented her in an inverted position. The wings were folded close to the body, and in the claws she held a large gold hoop upright, which gave the impression that she was hanging, suspended from some imaginary point. The effect was grotesque, and it amused Melanchthon very much, for he had to peep through this gold hoop, which was exactly on a level with his face, while dancing with the Bat.

  She was one of the most original masks – and at the same time one of the most repelling ones – at the fête of the Persian prince. She had even impressed his highness, Mohammed Darasche-Koh, the host.

  ‘I know you, pretty one,’ he had nodded to her, much to the amusement of the bystanders.

  ‘It is certainly the little marquise, the intimate friend of the princess,’ declared a Dutch councilor in a Rembrandt costume.

  He surmised this because she knew every turn and corner of the palace, to judge by her conversation. And but a few moments ago, when some cavalier had ordered felt boots and torches so that they might go down into the courtyard and indulge in snowballing, the Bat joined them and participated wildly in the game. It was then – and the Dutchman was quite ready to back it with a wager – that he had seen a well-known bracelet on her wrist.

  ‘Oh, how interesting,’ exclaimed a Blue Butterfly. ‘Couldn’t Melanchthon discover whether or not Count Faast is a slave of the princess?’

  ‘Don’t speak so loud,’ interrupted the Dutch councilor. ‘It is a mighty good thing that the orchestra played the close of that waltz fortissimo, for the prince was standing here only a moment since.’

  ‘Better not speak of such things,’ whispered an Egyptian, ‘for the jealousy of this Asiatic prince knows no bounds, and there are probably more explosives in the palace than we dream. Count de Faast has been playing with fire too long, and if Darasche-Koh suspects–’

  A rough figure representing a huge knot dashed by them in wild flight to escape a Hellenic warrior in shimmering armor.

  ‘If you were the Gordian knot, Mynherr, and were pursued by Alexander the Great, wouldn’t you be frightened?’ teased the inverted Bat, tapping the Dutchman coquettishly on the end of the nose with her fan.

  ‘The sharp wit of the pretty Marquise Bat betrays her,’ smiled a lanky Satan with tail and cloven foot. ‘What a pity that only as a Bat are you to be seen with your feet in the air.’

  The dull sound of a gong filled the room as an executioner appeared, draped in a crimson robe. He tapped a bronze gong, and then, resting his weight on his glittering cudgel, posed himself in the center of the big hall.

  Out of every niche and lobby the maskers streamed toward him – harlequins, cannibals, an ibis, and some Chinese, Don Quixotes, Columbines, bayaderes and dominoes of all colors.

  The crimson executioner distributed tablets of ivory inscribed with gold letters.

  ‘Oh, programmes for the entertainment!’ chorused the crowd.

  THE MAN IN THE BOTTLE

  Marionette Comedy in the Spirit of Aubrey Beardsley

  BY PRINCE MOHAMMED DARASCHE-KOH

  Characters:

  THE MAN IN THE BOTTLE….….….….….….….. MIGUEL, COUNT DE FAAST

  THE MAN ON THE BOTTLE….…..PRINCE MOHAMMED DARASCHE-KOH

  THE LADY IN THE SEDAN CHAIR

  VAMPIRES, MARIONETTES, HUNCHBACKS, APES, MUSICIANS

  Scene of Action: A TIGER’S MAW

  ‘What! The prince is the author of this marionette play?’ ‘Probably a scene out of the “Thousand and One Nights.”’ ‘But who will play the part of the Lady in the Sedan Chair?’

  ‘Oh, there is a great surprise in store for us,’ twittered a seductive Incroyable, leaning on the arm of an Abbe. ‘Do you know, the Pierrot with whom I danced the tarantelle was the Count de Faast, who is going to play The Man in the Bottle; and he confided a lot of things to me: the marionettes will be very gruesome – that is, for those who appreciate the spirit of the thing – and the prince had an elephant sent down from Hamburg – but you are not listening to me at all!’ And the little one dropped the arm of her escort and bolted into the swirling crowd.

  New groups of masks constantly poured out of the adjoining rooms through the wide doorways into the big hall, making a kaleidoscopic play of colors, while files of costumed guests stood admiring the wonderful mural frescoes that rose to the blue, star-dotted ceiling. Attendants served refreshments, sorbets and wines in the window niches.

  With a rolling sound the walls of the narrow end of the hall separated and a stage was pushed slowly into view. Its setting, in red brown and a flaming yellow proscenium, was a yawning tiger’s maw, the white teeth glittering above and below.

  In the middle of the scene stood a huge glass bottle in the form of a globe, with walls at least a foot thick. It was about twice the height of an average man and very roomy. The back of the scene was draped with pink silk hangings.

  Then the colossal ebony doors of the hall opened and admitted a richly caparisoned elephant, which advanced with majestic tread. On its head sat the crimson executioner guiding the beast with the butt of his cudgel. Chains of amethysts dangled from the elephant’s tusks, and plumes of peacock feathers nodded from its head. Heavily embroidered gold cloths streamed down from the back of the beast, skirting the floor; across its enormous forehead there was a network of sparkling jewels.

  The maskers flocked around the advancing beast, shouting greetings to the gay group of actors seated in the palanquin; Prince Darasche-Koh with turban and aigrette, Count de Faast as Pierrot, marionettes and musicians, stiff as wooden puppets. The elephant reached the stage, and with its trunk lifted one man after another from its back. There was much applause and a yell of delight as the beast seized the Pierrot and, sliding him into the neck of the bottle, closed the metal top. Then the Persian prince was placed on top of the bottle.

  The musicians seated themselves in a semicircle, drawing forth strange, slender instruments. The elephant gazed at them a moment, then turned about and strode toward the door. Like a lot of happy children the maskers clung to its trunk, ears, and tusks and tried to hold it back; but the animal seemed not to feel their weight at all.

  The performance began, and somewhere, as if out of the ground, there arose weird music. The puppet orchestra of marionettes remained lifeless and waxen; the flute player stared with glassy, idiotic eyes at the ceiling; the features of the rococo conductor in peruke and plumed hat, holding the baton aloft and pressing a pointed finger mysteriously to his lips, were distorted by a shrewd, uncanny smile.

  In the foreground posed the marionettes. Here were grouped a humpbacked dwarf with chalky face, a gray, grinning devil, and a sallow, rouged actress with carmine lips. The three seemed possessed of some satanic secret that had paralyzed their movements. The semblance of death brooded over the entire motionless group.

  The Pierrot in the bottle now began to move restlessly. He doffed his white felt hat, bowed and occasionally greeted the Persian prince, who with crossed legs sat on the cap of the bottle. His antics amused the audience. The thick walls of glass distorted his appearance curiously; sometimes his eyes seemed to pop out of his head; then again they disappeared, and one saw only forehead and chin; sometimes he was fat and bloated, then again slender, with long legs like a spider’s.

  In the midst of a motionless pause the red silk hangings of the background pa
rted, and a closed sedan chair was carried on by two Moors, who placed it near the bottle. A ray of pale light from above now illuminated the scene. The spectators had formed themselves into two camps. The one was speechless under the spell of this vampiric, enigmatic marionette play that seemed to exhale an atmosphere of poisoned merriment; the other group, not sensitive enough to appreciate such a scene, laughed immoderately at the comical capering of the man in the bottle.

  He had given up his merry dancing and was trying by every possible means to impart some information or other to the prince sitting on the cap. He pounded the walls of the bottle as though he would smash them; and to all appearances he was screaming at the top of his voice, although not the slightest sound penetrated the thick glass.

  The Persian prince acknowledged the movements of the Pierrot with a smile, pointing with his finger at the sedan chair.

  The curiosity of the audience reached its climax when it saw that the Pierrot had pressed his face against the glass and was staring at something in the window of the sedan chair. Then suddenly, like one gone mad, he beat his face with his hands, sank on his knees and tore his hair. Then he sprang furiously up and raced around the bottle at such speed that the audience saw only a fluttering cloth in his wake.

  The secret of the Lady in the Sedan Chair puzzled the audience considerably – they could only see that a white face was pressed against the window of the chair and was staring over at the bottle. Shadows cut off all further view.

  Laughter and applause rose to a tumult. Pierrot had crouched on the bottom of the bottle, his fingers clutching his throat. Then he opened his mouth wide and pointed in wild frenzy to his chest and then to the one sitting above. He folded his hands in supplication, as though he were begging something from the audience.