The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  ‘He wants something to drink! Such a large bottle and no wine in it? I say, you marionettes, give him a drink,’ cried one of the maskers.

  Everybody laughed and applauded.

  Then the Pierrot jumped up once more, tore his garments from his chest and staggered about until he measured his length on the bottom of the bottle.

  ‘Bravo, bravo, Pierrot! Wonderfully acted! Da capo, da capo!’ yelled the maskers.

  When the man in the bottle did not stir again and made no effort to repeat his scene, the applause gradually subsided and the attention of the spectators was drawn to the marionettes. They still remained motionless in the poses they had assumed, but in their miens there was now a sense of expectancy that had not been there before. It seemed as if they were waiting for a cue.

  The humpbacked dwarf, with the chalked face, turned his eyes carefully and gazed at the Prince Darasche-Koh. The Persian did not stir.

  Finally two figures advanced from the background, and one of the Moors haltingly approached the sedan chair and opened the door.

  And then something very remarkable occurred – the body of a woman fell stiffly out on the stage. There was a moment of deathly silence and then a thousand voices arose: ‘What has happened?’

  Marionettes, apes, musicians – all leaped forward; maskers climbed up on the stage.

  The princess, wife of Darasche-Koh, lay there strapped to a steel frame. Where the ropes had cut into her flesh were blue bruises, and in her mouth there was a silk gag.

  A nameless horror took possession of the audience.

  ‘Pierrot!’ a voice suddenly shrilled. ‘Pierrot!’ Like a dagger, indescribable fear penetrated every heart.

  ‘Where is the prince?’

  During the tumult the Persian had disappeared.

  Melanchthon stood on the shoulders of Mephisto, but he could not lift the cap of the bottle, and the air valve was screwed tightly shut.

  ‘Break the walls of the bottle! Quick!’

  The Dutch councilor tore the cudgel from the hand of the crimson executioner and with a leap landed on the stage.

  A gruesome sound arose, like the tolling of a cracked bell. Like streaks of white lightning the cracks leaped across the surface of the glass. Finally the bottle was splintered into bits. And within lay, suffocated, the corpse of the Count de Faast, his fingers clawing his breast.

  The bright hall seemed to darken.

  Silently and with invisible pinions the gigantic ebon birds of terror streaked through the hall of the fête.

  The Dissection

  Georg Heym

  Translated into English by Gio Clairval

  Georg Heym (1887–1912) was a German poet and playwright who also wrote one novel. Heym believed in the idea of the ‘demon city’, which symbolized his repudiation of romanticism in the midst of the rise of industrialism and repressive systems. Still, he lived a wild and passionate life, accompanied by depression and restlessness. In 1910 he dreamed of a death by drowning and two years later fell through the ice while skating. ‘The Dissection’ (1913) is more prose-poem than story in its luminous reverie. This new translation by Gio Clairval corrects errors in prior versions, including the use of ‘The Autopsy’ as the title. Master of the weird Thomas Ligotti has called it one of his favorite tales.

  The dead man lay alone and naked on a white cloth in a wide room, surrounded by depressing white walls, in the cruel sobriety of a dissection room that seemed to shiver with the screams of an endless torture.

  The light of noon bathed him and awakened the dead spots on his forehead, conjuring up a bright green from his naked belly, bloating his body like a big sack of water.

  His body resembled the iridescent calyx of some gigantic flower, a mysterious plant from Indian primeval forests that someone had shyly laid at the altar of death.

  Splendid reds and blues sprouted down his limbs, and in the heat the large wound under his navel slowly split open like a red furrow, releasing a foul stench.

  The doctors entered. Friendly men in frayed white coats and gold-rimmed pince-nez. They stepped up to the dead man and observed him with interest, as if in a scientific meeting.

  From their white cabinets they took out dissecting instruments, white crates full of hammers, saws with sharp teeth, files, hideous sets of tweezers, tiny knives with large needles like vultures’ crooked beaks forever screaming for flesh.

  They began their revolting work. They resembled hideous torturers, blood flowing on their hands as they dug ever more deeply into the frigid corpse and pulled out its innards, like white cooks gutting a goose. Around their arms coiled the intestines – green-yellow snakes – and faeces dripped on their coats – a warm, putrid fluid. They punctured the bladder, the cold urine in it glistening like yellow wine. They poured it in large bowls, and it reeked of pungent, acrid ammonia. But the dead man slept. He patiently let them tug at him and pull his hair. He slept.

  And while the thumping of hammers resounded on his skull, a dream, a remainder of love awoke in him, like a torch shining in his personal night.

  Outside the large window stretched a wide sky filled with small white clouds that swam like small white gods in the light of that silent afternoon. And swallows darted high across the blue, feathers quivering in the warm sun of July.

  The dead man’s black blood streamed across the blue putrefaction on his forehead. In the heat, it evaporated into an awful cloud, and the decay of death crept over him with its dappled claws. His skin began to flake apart; his belly turned white like that of an eel under the greedy fingers of the doctors, who plunged their arms up to the elbows in the wet flesh.

  The decay pulled apart the mouth of the dead man. He seemed to smile. He dreamed of beatific stars, of a fragrant summer evening. His rotting lips trembled as though under a brief kiss.

  ‘How I love you. I have loved you so much. Should I say how I love you? As you strolled across poppy fields, a flaming poppy yourself, you swallowed the entire evening. And the dress that billowed around your ankles was a wave of fire in the setting sun. But you bowed your head in the light, hair still burning, inflamed by my kisses.

  ‘So you went down there, turning to look back at me as you walked away. And the lantern swayed in your hand like the glow of a rose lasting in the twilight long after you were gone.

  ‘I’ll see you again tomorrow. Here, under the window of the chapel, here, where the light of the candles falls about you, making your hair a golden forest, and daffodils nestle around your ankles, tender, like tender kisses.

  ‘I will see you again every evening in the hour of dawn. We will never part. How I love you! Should I tell you how I love you?’

  And the dead man quivered in happiness on his white death table, while the iron chisels in the hands of the doctors broke up the bones of his temple.

  The Spider

  Hans Heinz Ewers

  Translated into English by Walter F. Kohn

  Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871–1943) was a German writer, especially of horror, also known for his acting and poetry. A novel trilogy, detailing the exploits of the character of Frank Baun, included perhaps his best-known work, Alraune. Much of his work has a decadent feel to it, and Ewers did not shy away from violence and sex in his fiction. After an early dalliance with the Nazi party, Ewers left because of disagreements with their positions on Jews and homosexuality. The Nazis banned his works, seized his assets, and left Ewers in poverty. Even though the Nazis destroyed his life, Ewers’s early association with them has left him under-appreciated by modern critics of the weird. ‘The Spider’ (1915) is his best-known work.

  When Richard Bracquemont, medical student, decided to move into Room No. 7 of the little Hotel Stevens at 6 Rue Alfred Stevens, three people had already hanged themselves from the window-sash of the room on three successive Fridays.

  The first was a Swiss travelling salesman. His body was not discovered until Saturday evening; but the physician established the fact that death must have come between five and s
ix o’clock on Friday afternoon. The body hung suspended from a strong hook which had been driven into the window-sash, and which ordinarily served for hanging clothes. The window was closed, and the dead man had used the curtain cord as a rope. Since the window was rather low, his legs dragged on the ground almost to his knees. The suicide must consequently have exercised considerable will-power in carrying out his intention. It was further established that he was married and the father of four children; that he unquestionably had an adequate and steady income; and that he was of a cheerful disposition, and well contented in life. Neither a will nor anything in writing that might give a clue to the cause of the suicide was found; nor had he ever intimated leanings towards suicide to any of his friends or acquaintances.

  The second case was not very different. The actor Karl Krause, who was employed at the nearby Cirque Medrano as a lightning bicycle artiste, engaged Room No. 7 two days after the first suicide. When he failed to appear at the performance the following Friday evening, the manager of the theatre sent an usher to the little hotel. The usher found the actor hanged from the window-sash in the unlocked room, in identically the same circumstances that had attended the suicide of the Swiss travelling salesman. This second suicide seemed no less puzzling than the first: the actor was popular, drew a very large salary, was only twenty-five years old, and seemed to enjoy life to the utmost. Again, nothing was left in writing, nor were there any other clues that might help solve the mystery. The actor was survived only by an aged mother, to whom he used to send three hundred marks for her support promptly on the first of each month.

  For Madame Dubonnet, who owned the cheap little hotel, and whose clientele was made up almost exclusively of the actors of the nearby vaudevilles of Montmartre, this second suicide had very distressing consequences. Already several of her guests had moved out, and other regular customers had failed to come back. She appealed to the Commissioner of the Ninth Ward, whom she knew well, and he promised to do everything in his power to help her. So he not only pushed his investigation of reasons for the suicides with considerable zeal, but he also placed at her disposal a police officer who took up residence in the mysterious room.

  It was the policeman Charles-Maria Chaumié who had volunteered his services in solving the mystery. An old ‘Marousin’ who had been a marine infantryman for eleven years, this sergeant had guarded many a lonely post in Tonkin and Annam single-handed, and had greeted many an uninvited deputation of river pirates, sneaking like cats through the jungle darkness, with a refreshing shot from his rifle. Consequently he felt himself well heeled to meet the ‘ghosts’ of which the Rue Stevens gossiped. He moved into the room on Sunday evening and went contentedly to sleep after doing high justice to the food and drink Madame Dubonnet set before him.

  Every morning and evening Chaumié paid a brief visit to the police station to make his reports. During the first few days his reports confined themselves to the statement that he had not noticed even the slightest thing out of the ordinary. On Wednesday evening, however, he announced that he believed he had found a clue. When pressed for details he begged to be allowed to say nothing for the present: he said he was not certain that the thing he thought he had discovered necessarily had any bearing on the two suicides. And he was afraid of being ridiculed in case it should all turn out to be a mistake. On Thursday evening he seemed to be even more uncertain, although somewhat graver; but again he had nothing to report. On Friday morning he seemed quite excited: half seriously and half in jest he ventured the statement that the window of the room certainly had a remarkable power of attraction. Nevertheless he still clung to the theory that the fact had nothing whatever to do with the suicides, and that he would only be laughed at if he told more. That evening he failed to come to the police station; they found him hanged from the hook on the window-sash.

  Even in this case the circumstances, down to the minutest detail, were again the same as they had been in the other cases: the legs dragged on the floor, and the curtain cord had been used as a rope. The window was closed, and the door had not been locked; death had evidently come at about six o’clock in the afternoon. The dead man’s mouth was wide open and his tongue hung out.

  As a consequence of this third suicide in Room No. 7, all the guests left the Hotel Stevens that same day, with the exception of the German high-school teacher in Room No. 16, who took advantage of this opportunity to have his rent reduced one-third. It was small consolation for Madame Dubonnet to have Mary Garden, the famous star of the Opéra Comique, drive by in her Renault a few days later and stop to buy the red curtain cord for a price she beat down to two hundred francs. Of course she had two reasons for buying it: in the first place, it would bring luck; and in the second – well, it would get into the newspapers.

  If these things had happened in summer, say in July or August, Madame Dubonnet might have got three times as much for her curtain cord; at that time of the year the newspapers would certainly have filled their columns with the case for weeks. But at an uneasy time of the year, with elections, disorders in the Balkans, a bank failure in New York, a visit of the English King and Queen – well, where could the newspapers find room for a mere murder case? The result was that the affair in the Rue Alfred Stevens got less attention than it deserved, and such notices of it as appeared in the newspapers were concise and brief, and confined themselves practically to repetitions of the police reports, without exaggerations.

  These reports furnished the only basis for what little knowledge of the affair the medical student Richard Bracquemont had. He knew nothing of one other little detail that seemed so inconsequential that neither the Commissioner nor any of the other witnesses had mentioned it to the reporters. Only afterwards, after the adventure the medical student had in the room, was this detail remembered. It was this: when the police took the body of Sergeant Charles-Maria Chaumié down from the window-sash, a large black spider crawled out of the mouth of the dead man. The porter flicked it away with his finger, crying: ‘Ugh! Another such ugly beast!’ In the course of the subsequent autopsy – that is, the one held later for Bracquemont – the porter told that when they had taken down the corpse of the Swiss travelling salesman, a similar spider had been seen crawling on his shoulder – But of this Richard Bracquemont knew nothing.

  He did not take up his lodging in the room until two weeks after the last suicide, on a Sunday. What he experienced there he entered very conscientiously in a diary.

  The Diary of Richard Bracquemont, Medical Student

  Monday, February 28

  I moved in here last night. I unpacked my two suitcases, put a few things in order, and went to bed. I slept superbly: the clock was just striking nine when a knock at the door awakened me. It was the landlady, who brought me my breakfast herself. She is evidently quite solicitous about me, judging from the eggs, the ham, and the splendid coffee she brought me. I washed and dressed, and then watched the porter make up my room. I smoked my pipe while he worked.

  So here I am. I know right well that this business is dangerous, but I know too that my fortune is made if I solve the mystery. And if Paris was once worth a mass – one could hardly buy it that cheaply nowadays – it might be worth risking my little life for it. Here is my chance, and I intend to make the most of it.

  At that there were plenty of others who saw this chance. No less than twenty-seven people tried, some through the police, some through the landlady, to get the room. Three of them were women. So there were enough rivals – probably all poor devils like myself.

  But I got it! Why? Oh, I was probably the only one who could offer a ‘solution’ to the police. A neat solution! Of course it was a bluff.

  These entries are of course intended for the police, too. And it amuses me considerably to tell these gentlemen right at the outset that it was all a trick on my part. If the Commissioner is sensible he will say, ‘Hm! Just because I knew he was tricking us, I had all the more confidence in him!’ As far as that is concerned, I don’t care what he say
s afterward: now I’m here. And it seems to me a good omen to have begun my work by bluffing the police so thoroughly.

  Of course I first made my application to Madame Dubonnet, but she sent me to the police station. I lounged about the station every day for a week, only to be told that my application ‘was being given consideration’ and to be asked always to come again next day. Most of my rivals had long since thrown up the sponge; they probably found some better way to spend their time than waiting for hour after hour in the musty police court. But it seems the Commissioner was by this time quite irritated by my perseverance. Finally he told me point blank that my coming back would be quite useless. He was very grateful to me as well as to all the other volunteers for our good intentions, but the police could not use the assistance of ‘dilettante laymen’. Unless I had some carefully worked out plan of procedure…

  So I told him that I had exactly that kind of plan. Of course I had no such thing and couldn’t have explained a word of it. But I told him that I could tell him about my plan – which was good, although dangerous, and which might possibly come to the same conclusion as the investigation of the police sergeant – only if he would promise me on his word of honour that he was ready to carry it out. He thanked me for it, but regretted that he had no time for such things. But I saw that I was getting the upper hand when he asked me whether I couldn’t at least give him some intimation of what I planned doing.

  And I gave it to him. I told him the most glorious nonsense, of which I myself hadn’t had the least notion even a second beforehand. I don’t know even now how I came by this unusual inspiration so opportunely. I told him that among all the hours of the week there was one that had a secret and strange significance. That was the hour in which Christ left His grave to go down to hell: the sixth hour of the afternoon of the last day of the Jewish week. And he might take into consideration, I went on, that it was exactly in this hour, between five and six o’clock on Friday afternoon, in which all three of the suicides had been committed. For the present I could not tell him more, but I might refer him to the Book of Revelations according to St John.