The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  XX

  I don’t know who spread the story of a carriage burnt with a woman inside, but I know it reached every corner of the country. Many wondered why the Lord had burned Yoshihide’s daughter alive. Most people thought it was vengeance for the Lord’s thwarted love, although in my opinion the Lord had wanted to chastise the perversity of a painter who had not hesitated in asking that a carriage be burnt before his eyes, even though it involved the sacrifice of a human being, to paint a scene to perfection. This last explanation came from the Lord’s very mouth.

  Since Yoshihide had such a heart of stone he could witness the death of his own daughter, some accused him of being a devil who had sacrificed his paternal love for the sake of his art. The great priest of Yokawa supported this view: ‘Whatever talent they may have in any branch of learning or art, those who did not live according to the five virtues of Confucius, benevolence, justice, courtesy, wisdom and fidelity, are to be condemned to Hell.’

  One month later, when the screen decorated with the scene from Hell was complete, Yoshihide took it to the palace and presented it to the Lord, with all his respect. The great priest, who happened to be there, as soon as he glanced at the screen, was surely struck by the realism of the infernal horrors, a firestorm raging from the sky to the abyss of Hell. Although he had glared angrily at Yoshihide at first, he cried, ‘Bravo!’ tapping his knee in an involuntary gesture. I still remember the Lord drawing a forced smile at the priest’s ejaculation.

  From that day on, no one, at least in the palace, spoke ill of the painter. Those who looked at the screen, even though they hated the personage, were impressed with that mysterious solemnity and with the ghastly realism of Hell’s torments, as if they could feel the bite of the infernal fire.

  By then, Yoshihide had already departed this life.

  The night after he completed his painting, he threw a rope over a beam in his room and hanged himself. Perhaps Yoshihide, who had survived his beloved daughter’s untimely death, could not bear the idea of surviving her absence for long. His body is buried under the ruins of his house. After scores of years, wind and rain have worn down the small tombstone, and moss has covered the barrow, erasing all trace of his grave.

  Unseen – Unfeared

  Francis Stevens

  Francis Stevens (1883–1948), was the pen name of Gertrude Barrows Bennett, the first major American female writer of fantasy and science fiction. Stevens wrote a number of acclaimed fantasies between 1917 and 1923 and has been called ‘the woman who invented dark fantasy’. Among her most famous books are Claimed (1920), which H. P. Lovecraft called, ‘One of the strangest and most compelling science fantasy novels you will ever read’. She also wrote the lost world novel The Citadel of Fear (1918) and an early dystopian novel titled The Heads of Cerberus (1919). Although not all of Stevens’ work has dated well, ‘Unseen – Unfeared’ remains a potent example of the classic weird tale.

  I had been dining with my ever-interesting friend, Mark Jenkins, at a little Italian restaurant near South Street. It was a chance meeting. Jenkins is too busy, usually, to make dinner engagements. Over our highly seasoned food and sour, thin, red wine, he spoke of little odd incidents and adventures of his profession. Nothing very vital or important, of course. Jenkins is not the sort of detective who first detects and then pours the egotistical and revealing details of achievement in the ears of every acquaintance, however appreciative.

  But when I spoke of something I had seen in the morning papers, he laughed. ‘Poor old “Doc” Holt! Fascinating old codger, to anyone who really knows him. I’ve had his friendship for years – since I was first on the city force and saved a young assistant of his from jail on a false charge. And they had to drag him into the poisoning of this young sport, Ralph Peeler!’

  ‘Why are you so sure he couldn’t have been implicated?’ I asked.

  But Jenkins only shook his head, with a quiet smile. ‘I have reasons for believing otherwise,’ was all I could get out of him on that score. ‘But,’ he added, ‘the only reason he was suspected at all is the superstitious dread of these ignorant people around him. Can’t see why he lives in such a place. I know for a fact he doesn’t have to. Doc’s got money of his own. He’s an amateur chemist and dabbler in different sorts of research work, and I suspect he’s been guilty of “showing off”. Result, they all swear he has the evil eye and holds forbidden communion with invisible powers. Smoke?’

  Jenkins offered me one of his invariably good cigars, which I accepted, saying thoughtfully: ‘A man has no right to trifle with the superstitions of ignorant people. Sooner or later, it spells trouble.’

  ‘Did in his case. They swore up and down that he sold love charms openly and poisons secretly, and that, together with his living so near to – somebody else – got him temporarily suspected. But my tongue’s running away with me, as usual!’

  ‘As usual,’ I retorted impatiently, ‘you open up with all the frankness of a Chinese diplomat.’

  He beamed upon me engagingly and rose from the table, with a glance at his watch. ‘Sorry to leave you, Blaisdell, but I have to meet Jimmy Brennan in ten minutes.’

  He so clearly did not invite my further company that I remained seated for a little while after his departure; then took my own way homeward. Those streets always held for me a certain fascination, particularly at night. They are so unlike the rest of the city, so foreign in appearance, with their little shabby stores, always open until late evening, their unbelievably cheap goods, displayed as much outside the shops as in them, hung on the fronts and laid out on tables by the curb and in the street itself. Tonight, however, neither people nor stores in any sense appealed to me. The mixture of Italians, Jews and a few Negroes, mostly bareheaded, unkempt and generally unhygienic in appearance, struck me as merely revolting. They were all humans, and I, too, was human. Some way I did not like the idea.

  Puzzled a trifle, for I am more inclined to sympathize with poverty than accuse it, I watched the faces that I passed. Never before had I observed how bestial, how brutal were the countenances of the dwellers in this region. I actually shuddered when an old-clothes man, a gray-bearded Hebrew, brushed me as he toiled past with his barrow.

  There was a sense of evil in the air, a warning of things which it is wise for a clean man to shun and keep clear of. The impression became so strong that before I had walked two squares I began to feel physically ill. Then it occurred to me that the one glass of cheap Chianti I had drunk might have something to do with the feeling. Who knew how that stuff had been manufactured, or whether the juice of the grape entered at all into its ill-flavored composition? Yet I doubted if that were the real cause of my discomfort.

  By nature I am rather a sensitive, impressionable sort of chap. In some way tonight this neighborhood, with its sordid sights and smells, had struck me wrong.

  My sense of impending evil was merging into actual fear. This would never do. There is only one way to deal with an imaginative temperament like mine – conquer its vagaries. If I left South Street with this nameless dread upon me, I could never pass down it again without a recurrence of the feeling. I should simply have to stay here until I got the better of it – that was all.

  I paused on a corner before a shabby but brightly lighted little drug store. Its gleaming windows and the luminous green of its conventional glass show jars made the brightest spot on the block. I realized that I was tired, but hardly wanted to go in there and rest. I knew what the company would be like at its shabby, sticky soda fountain. As I stood there, my eyes fell on a long white canvas sign across from me, and its black-and-red lettering caught my attention.

  SEE THE GREAT UNSEEN!

  Come in! This Means You!

  FREE TO ALL!

  A museum of fakes, I thought, but also reflected that if it were a show of some kind I could sit down for a while, rest, and fight off this increasing obsession of nonexistent evil. That side of the street was almost deserted, and the place itself might well be nearly em
pty.

  II

  I walked over, but with every step my sense of dread increased. Dread of I knew not what. Bodiless, inexplicable horror had me as in a net, whose strands, being intangible, without reason for existence, I could by no means throw off. It was not the people now. None of them were about me. There, in the open, lighted street, with no sight nor sound of terror to assail me, I was the shivering victim of such fear as I had never known was possible. Yet still I would not yield.

  Setting my teeth, and fighting with myself as with some pet animal gone mad, I forced my steps to slowness and walked along the sidewalk, seeking entrance. Just here there were no shops, but several doors reached in each case by means of a few iron-railed stone steps. I chose the one in the middle beneath the sign. In that neighborhood there are museums, shops and other commercial enterprises conducted in many shabby old residences, such as were these. Behind the glazing of the door I had chosen I could see a dim, pinkish light, but on either side the windows were quite dark.

  Trying the door, I found it unlocked. As I opened it a party of Italians passed on the pavement below and I looked back at them over my shoulder. They were gayly dressed, men, women and children, laughing and chattering to one another; probably on their way to some wedding or other festivity.

  In passing, one of the men glanced up at me and involuntarily I shuddered back against the door. He was a young man, handsome after the swarthy manner of his race, but never in my life had I seen a face so expressive of pure, malicious cruelty, naked and unashamed. Our eyes met and his seemed to light up with a vile gleaming, as if all the wickedness of his nature had come to a focus in the look of concentrated hate he gave me.

  They went by, but for some distance I could see him watching me, chin on shoulder, till he and his party were swallowed up in the crowd of marketers farther down the street.

  Sick and trembling from that encounter, merely of eyes though it had been, I threw aside my partly smoked cigar and entered. Within there was a small vestibule, whose ancient tesselated floor was grimy with the passing of many feet. I could feel the grit of dirt under my shoes, and it rasped on my rawly quivering nerves. The inner door stood partly open, and going on I found myself in a bare, dirty hallway, and was greeted by the sour, musty, poverty-stricken smell common to dwellings of the very ill-to-do. Beyond there was a stairway, carpeted with ragged grass matting. A gas jet, turned low inside a very dusty pink globe, was the light I had seen from without.

  Listening, the house seemed entirely silent. Surely, this was no place of public amusement of any kind whatever. More likely it was a rooming house, and I had, after all, mistaken the entrance.

  To my intense relief, since coming inside, the worst agony of my unreasonable terror had passed away. If I could only get in some place where I could sit down and be quiet, probably I should be rid of it for good. Determining to try another entrance, I was about to leave the bare hallway when one of several doors along the side of it suddenly opened and a man stepped out into the hall.

  ‘Well?’ he said, looking at me keenly, but with not the least show of surprise at my presence.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ I replied. ‘The door was unlocked and I came in here, thinking it was the entrance to the exhibit – what do they call it? the “Great Unseen.” The one that is mentioned on that long white sign. Can you tell me which door is the right one?’

  ‘I can.’

  With that brief answer he stopped and stared at me again. He was a tall, lean man, somewhat stooped, but possessing considerable dignity of bearing. For that neighborhood, he appeared uncommonly well dressed, and his long, smooth-shaven face was noticeable because, while his complexion was dark and his eyes coal-black, above them the heavy brows and his hair were almost silvery-white. His age might have been anything over the threescore mark.

  I grew tired of being stared at. ‘If you can and – won’t, then never mind,’ I observed a trifle irritably, and turned to go. But his sharp exclamation halted me.

  ‘No!’ he said. ‘No – no! Forgive me for pausing – it was not hesitation, I assure you. To think that one – one, even, has come! All day they pass my sign up there – pass and fear to enter. But you are different. You are not of these timorous, ignorant foreign peasants. You ask me to tell you the right door? Here it is! Here!’

  And he struck the panel of the door, which he had closed behind him, so that the sharp yet hollow sound of it echoed up through the silent house.

  Now it may be thought that after all my senseless terror in the open street, so strange a welcome from so odd a showman would have brought the feeling back, full force. But there is an emotion stronger, to a certain point, than fear. This queer old fellow aroused my curiosity. What kind of museum could it be that he accused the passing public of fearing to enter? Nothing really terrible, surely, or it would have been closed by the police. And normally I am not an unduly timorous person. ‘So it’s in there, is it?’ I asked, coming toward him. ‘And I’m to be the sole audience? Come, that will be an interesting experience.’ I was half laughing now.

  ‘The most interesting in the world,’ said the old man, with a solemnity which rebuked my lightness.

  With that he opened the door, passed inward and closed it again – in my very face. I stood staring at it blankly. The panels, I remember, had been originally painted white, but now the paint was flaked and blistered, gray with dirt and dirty finger marks. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had no wish to enter there. Whatever was behind it could be scarcely worth seeing, or he would not choose such a place for its exhibition. With the old man’s vanishing my curiosity had cooled, but just as I again turned to leave, the door opened and this singular showman stuck his white-eyebrowed face through the aperture. He was frowning impatiently. ‘Come in – come in!’ he snapped, and promptly withdrawing his head, once more closed the door.

  ‘He has something there he doesn’t want should get out,’ was the very natural conclusion which I drew. ‘Well, since it can hardly be anything dangerous, and he’s so anxious I should see it – here goes!’

  With that I turned the soiled white porcelain handle, and entered.

  The room I came into was neither very large nor very brightly lighted. In no way did it resemble a museum or lecture room. On the contrary, it seemed to have been fitted up as a quite well-appointed laboratory. The floor was linoleum-covered, there were glass cases along the walls whose shelves were filled with bottles, specimen jars, graduates, and the like. A large table in one corner bore what looked like some odd sort of camera, and a larger one in the middle of the room was fitted with a long rack filled with bottles and test tubes, and was besides littered with papers, glass slides, and various paraphernalia which my ignorance failed to identify. There were several cases of books, a few plain wooden chairs, and in the corner a large iron sink with running water.

  My host of the white hair and black eyes was awaiting me, standing near the larger table. He indicated one of the wooden chairs with a thin forefinger that shook a little, either from age or eagerness. ‘Sit down – sit down! Have no fear but that you will be interested, my friend. Have no fear at all – of anything!’

  As he said it he fixed his dark eyes upon me and stared harder than ever. But the effect of his words was the opposite of their meaning. I did sit down, because my knees gave under me, but if in the outer hall I had lost my terror, it now returned twofold upon me. Out there the light had been faint, dingily roseate, indefinite. By it I had not perceived how this old man’s face was a mask of living malice – of cruelty, hate and a certain masterful contempt. Now I knew the meaning of my fear, whose warning I would not heed. Now I knew that I had walked into the very trap from which my abnormal sensitiveness had striven in vain to save me.

  III

  Again I struggled within me, bit at my lip till I tasted blood, and presently the blind paroxysm passed. It must have been longer in going than I thought, and the old man must have all that time been speaking, for when I could once
more control my attention, hear and see him, he had taken up a position near the sink, about ten feet away, and was addressing me with a sort of ‘platform’ manner, as if I had been the large audience whose absence he had deplored.

  ‘And so,’ he was saying, ‘I was forced to make these plates very carefully, to truly represent the characteristic hues of each separate organism. Now, in color work of every kind the film is necessarily extremely sensitive. Doubtless you are familiar in a general way with the exquisite transparencies produced by color photography of the single-plate type.’

  He paused, and trying to act like a normal human being, I observed: ‘I saw some nice landscapes done in that way – last week at an illustrated lecture in Franklin Hall.’

  He scowled, and made an impatient gesture at me with his hand. ‘I can proceed better without interruptions,’ he said. ‘My pause was purely oratorical.’

  I meekly subsided, and he went on in his original loud, clear voice. He would have made an excellent lecturer before a much larger audience – if only his voice could have lost that eerie, ringing note. Thinking of that I must have missed some more, and when I caught it again he was saying:

  ‘As I have indicated, the original plate is the final picture. Now, many of these organisms are extremely hard to photograph, and microphotography in color is particularly difficult. In consequence, to spoil a plate tries the patience of the photographer. They are so sensitive that the ordinary darkroom ruby lamp would instantly ruin them, and they must therefore be developed either in darkness or by a special light produced by interposing thin sheets of tissue of a particular shade of green and of yellow between lamp and plate, and even that will often cause ruinous fog. Now I, finding it hard to handle them so, made numerous experiments with a view of discovering some glass or fabric of a color which should add to the safety of the green, without robbing it of all efficiency. All proved equally useless, but intermittently I persevered – until last week.’