The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  The Officer, however, had turned towards the machine. If earlier on it had already become clear that he understood the machine thoroughly, one could well get alarmed now at the way he handled it and how it obeyed. He only had to bring his hand near the Harrow for it to rise and sink several times, until it had reached the correct position to make room for him. He only had to grasp the Bed by the edges, and it already began to quiver. The stump of felt moved up to his mouth. One could see how the Officer really did not want to accept it, but his hesitation was only momentary – he immediately submitted and took it in. Everything was ready, except that the straps still hung down on the sides. But they were clearly unnecessary. The Officer did not have to be strapped down. When the Condemned Man saw the loose straps, he thought the execution would be incomplete unless they were fastened. He waved eagerly to the Soldier, and they ran over to strap in the Officer. The latter had already stuck out his foot to kick the crank designed to set the Inscriber in motion. Then he saw the two men coming. So he pulled his foot back and let himself be strapped in. But now he could no longer reach the crank. Neither the Soldier nor the Condemned Man would find it, and the Traveller was determined not to touch it. But that was unnecessary. Hardly were the straps attached when the machine already started working: the Bed quivered, the needles danced on his skin, and the Harrow swung up and down. The Traveller had already been staring for some time before he remembered that a wheel in the Inscriber was supposed to squeak. But everything was quiet, without the slightest audible hum.

  Because of its silent working, the machine did not really attract attention. The Traveller looked over at the Soldier and the Condemned Man. The Condemned Man was the livelier of the two. Everything in the machine interested him. At times he bent down; at other times he stretched up, always pointing with his forefinger in order to show something to the Soldier. For the Traveller it was embarrassing. He was determined to remain here until the end, but he could no longer endure the sight of the two men. ‘Go home,’ he said. The Soldier might perhaps have been ready to do that, but the Condemned Man took the order as a direct punishment. With his hands folded he pleaded to be allowed to stay there. And when the Traveller shook his head and was unwilling to give in, he even knelt down. Seeing that orders were of no help here, the Traveller wanted to go over and chase the two away. Then he heard a noise from up in the Inscriber. He looked up. So was the gear wheel going out of alignment? But it was something else. The lid on the Inscriber was lifting up slowly. Then it fell completely open. The teeth of a cog wheel were exposed and lifted up. Soon the entire wheel appeared. It was as if some huge force was compressing the Inscriber, so that there was no longer sufficient room left for this wheel. The wheel rolled all the way to the edge of the Inscriber, fell down, rolled upright a bit in the sand, and then fell over and lay still. But already up on the Inscriber another gear wheel was moving upwards. Several others followed – large ones, small ones, ones hard to distinguish. With each of them the same thing happened. One kept thinking that now the Inscriber must surely be already empty, but then a new cluster with lots of parts would move up, fall down, roll in the sand, and lie still. With all this going on, the Condemned Man totally forgot the Traveller’s order. The gear wheels completely delighted him. He kept wanting to grab one, and at the same time he was urging the Soldier to help him. But he kept pulling his hand back startled, for immediately another wheel followed, which, at least in its initial rolling, surprised him.

  The Traveller, by contrast, was very upset. Obviously the machine was breaking up. Its quiet operation had been an illusion. He felt as if he had to look after the Officer, now that the latter could no longer look after himself. But while the falling gear wheels were claiming all his attention, he had neglected to look at the rest of the machine. However, when he now bent over the Harrow, once the last gear wheel had left the Inscriber, he had a new, even more unpleasant surprise. The Harrow was not writing but only stabbing, and the Bed was not rolling the body, but lifting it, quivering, up into the needles. The Traveller wanted to reach in to stop the whole thing, if possible. This was not the torture the Officer wished to attain; it was murder, pure and simple. He stretched out his hands. But at that point the Harrow was already moving upwards and to the side, with the skewered body – just as it did in other cases, but only in the twelfth hour. Blood flowed out in hundreds of streams, not mixed with water – the water tubes had failed to work this time, as well. Then one last thing went wrong: the body would not come loose from the long needles. Its blood streamed out, but it hung over the pit without falling. The Harrow wanted to move back to its original position, but, as if realizing that it could not free itself of its load, it remained over the hole. ‘Help,’ the Traveller yelled out to the Soldier and the Condemned Man, and he himself grabbed the Officer’s feet. He wanted to push against the feet himself and have the two others grab the Officer’s head from the other side, so he could be slowly lifted off the needles. But now the two men could not make up their mind whether to come or not. The Condemned Man turned away at once. The Traveller had to go over to him and drag him to the Officer’s head by force. At this point, almost against his will, he looked at the face of the corpse. It was as it had been in life. He could discover no sign of the promised transfiguration. What all the others had found in the machine, the Officer had not. His lips were pressed firmly together, his eyes were open and looked as they had when he was alive, his gaze was calm and convinced. The tip of a large iron needle had gone through his forehead.

  As the Traveller, with the Soldier and the Condemned Man behind him, came to the first houses in the colony, the Soldier pointed to one and said, ‘That’s the tea house.’

  On the ground floor of the house was a deep, low room, like a cave, with smoke-covered walls and ceiling. On the street side it was open along its full width. Although there was little difference between the tea house and the rest of the houses in the colony, which were all very dilapidated, except for the Commandant’s palatial structure, the Traveller was nonetheless struck by the impression of historical memory, and he felt the power of earlier times. Followed by his companions, he walked closer inside, going between the unoccupied tables, which stood in the street in front of the tea house, and took a breath of the cool, musty air which came from inside. ‘The old man is buried here,’ said the Soldier; ‘a place in the cemetery was denied him by the chaplain. For a while people were undecided where they should bury him. Finally they buried him here. Of course, the Officer explained none of that to you, for naturally he was the one most ashamed about it. A few times he even tried to dig up the old man at night, but he was always chased off.’

  ‘Where is the grave?’ asked the Traveller, who could not believe the Soldier. Instantly both men, the Soldier and the Condemned Man, ran in front of him and with hands outstretched pointed to the place where the grave was located. They led the Traveller to the back wall, where guests were sitting at a few tables. They were presumably dock workers, strong men with short, shiny, black beards. None of them wore coats, and their shirts were torn. They were poor, humiliated people. As the Traveller came closer, a few got up, leaned against the wall, and looked at him. A whisper went up around the Traveller – ‘It’s a foreigner. He wants to look at the grave.’ They pushed one of the tables aside, under which there was a real grave stone. It was a simple stone, low enough for it to remain hidden under a table. It bore an inscription in very small letters. In order to read it the Traveller had to kneel down. It read, ‘Here rests the Old Commandant. His followers, who are now not permitted to have a name, buried him in this grave and erected this stone. There exists a prophecy that the Commandant will rise again after a certain number of years and from this house will lead his followers to a re-conquest of the colony. Have faith and wait!’ When the Traveller had read it and got up, he saw the men standing around him and smiling, as if they had read the inscription with him, found it ridiculous, and were asking him to share their opinion. The Traveller acted as
if he had not noticed, distributed some coins among them, waited until the table was pushed back over the grave, left the tea house, and went to the harbour.

  In the tea house the Soldier and the Condemned Man had come across some people they knew who detained them. However, they must have broken free of them soon, because by the time the Traveller found himself in the middle of a long staircase which led to the boats, they were already running after him. They probably wanted to force the Traveller at the last minute to take them with him. While the Traveller was haggling at the bottom of the stairs with a sailor about his passage out to the steamer, the two men were racing down the steps in silence, for they did not dare cry out. But as they reached the bottom, the Traveller was already in the boat, and the sailor at once cast off from shore. They could still have jumped into the boat, but the Traveller picked up a heavy knotted rope from the boat bottom, threatened them with it, and thus prevented them from jumping in.

  The White Wyrak

  Stefan Grabinski

  Translated into English by Miroslaw Lipinski

  Stefan Grabinski (1887–1936) was a Polish writer of horror fiction who considered himself an expert on demonology and magic. Some critics have called him the ‘Polish Poe’ or the ‘Polish Lovecraft’, and suggested he believed in the supernatural forces in his stories. Known primarily as a novelist, he wrote many short stories, including those under the name Stefaen Zalny. Grabinski was popular in his day, until a trend toward more realistic fiction doomed him to obscurity. The importance of translations by writer Miroslaw Lipinski to bring Grabinski to an English-language readership – for the collection The Dark Domain (1993) – cannot be understated. The tale included here, ‘The White Weyrak’ (1921), exemplifies the writer’s talent for atmosphere and strangeness.

  I was a young journeyman at that time, like you, my dear boys, and I worked like a house on fire. Master Kalina – may the Lord shine on his worthy soul – frequently said I would be first in attaining mastership following him, and he spoke of me as the pride of our profession. I don’t want to brag, but I had strong legs and could dig my elbows into a chimney like no one else. In the third year of my service, I received the assistance of two apprentices and became an instructor to my younger comrades.

  In all, there were seven of us. We got along splendidly with one another. Even on holidays and Sundays our brotherhood would gather at the master’s house for a chat by a beer or, when it was winter, by warm tea near the chimney, and we talked our fill, so that the evenings we spent together passed nicely, like a brush lowered into the mouth of a furnace.

  Kalina – what can I say about him? The man was literate and intelligent. He had seen a lot of the world. As the saying goes, he cleaned out not just one chimney. He was a bit of a philosopher, and books he really liked. He apparently even wanted to put out a gazette for chimney sweepers. But in matters of faith he didn’t play the philosopher; on the contrary, he had a particular devotion to St. Florian, our patron.

  I felt closest to the master and, after him, to the young journeyman Jozek Biedron, a boy as pure as gold, whom I liked for his good heart and gentle soul. Unfortunately I wouldn’t enjoy his friendship for long!

  After Biedron, I most liked Antarek, a melancholic lad who usually kept to himself. He was a born worker, however, conscientious and strangely relentless in his job. Kalina valued him a lot and tried to get him to socialize with people, though without success. Nevertheless, Antarek gladly spent his evenings at the master’s house, listening with interest from his dark corner to the master’s stories, which he completely believed.

  And no one could tell a story like our ‘old man.’ He drew them out as if from a bag, one more interesting than the other. When he finished one, he would start a new one, then throw in a third one, and so on. And in each story one could detect some deeper thought hidden behind all those words. But one was still young and foolish then, and took from these stories only what amused one, for a laugh. Only Antarek looked at the master’s tales in a different light, and managed to get to their core. The rest of us, however, called Kalina’s stories balderdash. They were engrossing, sometimes horrible, until one’s flesh crept and one’s hair stood on end, but despite it all, only tales and balderdash. Yet life soon taught us a little differently…

  One day in the middle of summer, a comrade of ours was absent at our evening get-together: Antarek was not present at his usual dark corner beyond the cupboard.

  ‘He must have gotten sidetracked with some girls,’ joked Biedron, though he knew that his friend was ill at ease with women and avoided their company.

  ‘Stop talking nonsense,’ Kalina said. ‘He’s probably very depressed and is sitting at home like a bear in the back woods.’

  The evening passed sadly and slowly, as it was without the presence of our most fervent listener.

  There was no joking around the following morning, for Antarek did not show up for work at ten o’clock. The master thought he was sick and went to his home. He found only his mother there, an old woman much distressed by her son’s absence. She reported that her son had left for the city at dawn of the previous day and had not yet returned.

  Kalina decided to undertake the search himself.

  ‘Antarek is a gloomy fellow; God knows what he’s done. Maybe he’s hiding out somewhere.’

  But he searched in vain. Finally, remembering that Antarek had to clean out a chimney in an old brewery beyond the city, he directed his investigation there.

  At the brewery he was told that, indeed, yesterday morning a journeyman had reported to them to clean the chimney.

  ‘At what time did he finish the job?’ asked Kalina of some old man, gray like a pigeon, whom he met at the threshold of one of the brewery’s annexes.

  ‘I don’t know, Master. He left so imperceptibly that we even didn’t know when. He must have been in a great hurry because he didn’t even look in to us for payment.’

  ‘Hmm…’ muttered Kalina, lost in thought. ‘A strange bird, that fellow. But did he clean out the chimney well? How is it working now? Is it drawing properly?’

  ‘Not too well. This morning my daughter-in-law complained once again that it’s smoking terribly. If it doesn’t get better by tomorrow, we’ll ask for another cleaning.’

  ‘It will be done,’ the master quickly retorted, angry that here they were not satisfied with his worker, and very worried about the lack of more specific information concerning him.

  That evening we gathered together in sorrow at our supper and parted early. The following day the same thing: neither sight nor sound of Antarek – he had disappeared like a stone in water.

  In the early afternoon the brewery sent a boy with the request to clean the chimney because it was ‘smoking for all it’s worth.’

  Biedron went around four and didn’t return. I wasn’t there when Kalina sent him out, so I knew nothing about it. But I got a bad feeling when, later that evening, I saw the downcast faces of the master and the other sweeps.

  ‘Where’s Jozek?’ I asked, looking for him about the room.

  ‘He hasn’t returned from the brewery,’ answered Kalina gloomily.

  I jumped up from my seat. But the master forcibly stopped me:

  ‘I won’t let you go alone. I’ve had enough of this! Tomorrow morning both of us will go. An evil spirit, not a brewery! I’ll clean out their chimney for them!’

  That night I didn’t sleep a wink. At daybreak I put on my climbing gear, and throwing over my shoulder my brushes with their attachments, I went out and in a short while presented myself at the master’s door.

  Kalina was already waiting for me.

  ‘Take this,’ he said, handing me a hatchet that appeared to be newly whetted. ‘This could be of more use to you than a broom or a scraper.’

  Without a word I took the hatchet, and we started at a quick pace toward the brewery.

  The August morning was beautiful and tranquil. The city still slept. In silence we passed through the marketplac
e, went over the bridge, and turned left, along the river embankment, onto a road that wound its way through poplar trees.

  It was a long walk to the brewery. After a strenuous pace of fifteen minutes, we got off the road and took a shortcut through a hayfield. In the distance, beyond an alder forest, the coppery slices of the brewery roofs were visible.

  Kalina removed the cap from his head, crossed himself, and began silently to move his lips. I walked next to him, not interrupting his prayers. After a while the master covered his head again, gripped his hatchet tighter, and starting talking in a soft voice:

  ‘An evil spirit, not a brewery. There’s beer there and for at least ten years it hasn’t been brewed. An old ruin and nothing more. The last brewer, someone named Rozban, went bankrupt and hanged himself out of despair. His family sold the buildings and the entire inventory dirt-cheap to the city, and moved away somewhere. No one has lived there since. The boilers and machines are supposed to be evil. They’re of an old system. No one wants to take the financial risk of replacing it with a new one.’

  ‘Then who exactly wanted the chimney cleaned?’ I asked, glad that the conversation had interrupted the morose silence.

  ‘Some gardener, who a month ago, for practically nothing, moved into the empty brewery with his wife and his father. They have many rooms and enough space for several families. For sure they moved into the center rooms, which are in the best state, and they are living there for very little money. Now their chimneys are smoking, because they are old and heavily packed with soot. They haven’t been cleaned for ages.’ He added after a thoughtful pause: ‘I don’t like these old chimneys.’