The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  It was last year in Hamburg. I was strolling through the old city, with its good smell of fresh beer. It was dear to my heart, because it reminded me of the cities I had loved in my youth. And there, on an empty, echoing street, I saw a name on the front of an antique shop: Lockmann Gockel.

  I bought an old Bavarian pipe with truculent decorations. The shopkeeper seemed friendly. I asked him if the name of Archipetre meant anything to him. His face had been the color of gray earth; in the twilight it now turned so white that it stood out from the shadows as though illuminated by an inner flame.

  ‘Archipetre,’ he murmured slowly. ‘Oh! What are you saying? What do you know?’

  I had no reason to conceal the story I had found on the dock. I told it to him.

  He lit an archaic gaslight. Its flame danced and hissed foolishly.

  I saw that his eyes were weary.

  ‘He was my grandfather,’ he said, when I mentioned Gockel the antique dealer.

  When I had finished my story I heard a great sigh from a dark corner.

  ‘That’s my sister,’ he said.

  I nodded to her. She was young and pretty, but very pale. She had been listening to me, motionless among grotesque shadows.

  ‘Our grandfather talked to our father about it nearly every evening,’ he said in a faltering voice, ‘and our father used to discuss it with us. Now that he’s dead too, we talk about it with each other.’

  ‘And now,’ I said nervously, ‘thanks to you, we’re going to be able to do some research on the subject of that mysterious street, aren’t we?’

  He slowly raised his hand.

  ‘Alphonse Archipetre taught French in the Gymnasium until 1842.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said, disappointed. ‘That’s a long time ago!’

  ‘It was the year of the great fire that nearly destroyed Hamburg. The Mohlenstrasse and the vast section of the city between it and the Deichstrasse were a sea of flames.’

  ‘And Archipetre?’

  ‘He lived rather far from there, toward Bleichen. The fire didn’t reach his street, but in the middle of the second night, on May 6 – a terrible night, dry and without water – his house burned down, all alone among the others that were miraculously spared. He died in the flames; or at least he was never found.’

  ‘The story…’ I began.

  Lockmann Gockel did not let me finish. He was so happy to have found an outlet that he seized upon the subject greedily. Fortunately he told me more or less what I wanted to hear.

  ‘The story compressed time, just as space was compressed at the fateful location of Saint Beregonne’s Lane. In the Hamburg archives, there are accounts of atrocities committed during the fire by a band of mysterious evil-doers. Fantastic crimes, looting, riots, red hallucinations on the part of whole crowds – all those things are precisely described, and yet they took place before the fire. Do you understand my reference to the contraction of space and time?’

  His face became a little calmer.

  ‘Isn’t modern science driven back to Euclidean weakness by the theory of that admirable Einstein for whom the whole world envies us? And isn’t it forced to accept, with horror and despair, that fantastic Fitzgerald-Lorentz law of contraction? Contraction! Ah, there’s a word that’s heavy with meaning!’

  The conversation seemed to be going off on an insidious tangent.

  The young woman silently brought tall glasses filled with yellow wine. Gockel raised his toward the flame and marvelous colors flowed onto his frail hand like a silver river of gems.

  He abandoned his scientific dissertation and returned to the story of the conflagration:

  ‘My grandfather, and other people of the time, reported that enormous green flames shot up from the debris. There were hallucinated people who claimed to see figures of indescribably ferocious women in them.’

  The wine had a soul. I emptied the glass and smiled at Gockel’s terrified words.

  ‘Those same green flames,’ he went on, ‘rose from Archipetre’s house and roared so horribly that people were said to have died of fear in the street.’

  ‘Mr. Gockel,’ I said, ‘did your grandfather ever speak of the mysterious purchaser who came every evening to buy the same trays and the same candlesticks?’

  A weary voice replied for him, in words that were almost identical with those that ended the German manuscript:

  ‘A tall old woman, an immense old woman with fishy eyes in an incredible face. She brought bags of gold so heavy that our grandfather had to divide them into four parts to carry them to his coffers.’

  The young woman continued:

  ‘When Professor Archipetre came to my grandfather, the Gockel firm was about to go bankrupt. It became rich, and we’re still enormously rich, from the gold of the…yes, from the gold of those beings of the night!’

  ‘They’re gone now,’ murmured her brother, refilling our glasses.

  ‘Don’t say that! They can’t have forgotten us. Remember our nights, our horrible nights! All I can hope for now is that there is, or was, a human presence with them that they cherish and that may intercede for us.’

  Her lovely eyes opened wide before the black abyss of her thoughts.

  ‘Kathie!’ exclaimed Gockel. ‘Have you again seen?…’

  ‘You know the things are here every night,’ she said in a voice as low as a moan. ‘They assail our thoughts as soon as sleep comes over us. Ah, to sleep no more!…’

  ‘To sleep no more,’ repeated her brother in an echo of terror.’

  ‘They come out of their gold, which we keep, and which we love in spite of everything; they rise from everything we’ve acquired with that infernal fortune.…They’ll always come back, as long as we exist, and as long as this wretched earth endures!’

  Genius Loci

  Clark Ashton Smith

  Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) was an important, largely self-taught American writer whose stories frequently appeared in Weird Tales and who maintained a long-term correspondence with both H. P. Lovecraft and swords-and-sorcery writer Robert E. Howard. Published in several influential Arkham House editions, Smith’s fiction often reflected his interest in poetry and art. He generally wrote in a rich, almost florid style that could seem archaic but also achieve amazing flights of imagination. Out of Space and Time and Lost Worlds are among his best-known collections. In ‘Genius Loci’ (1933) Smith employs a somewhat more restrained style to tell a classic weird tale.

  ‘It is a very strange place,’ said Amberville, ‘but I scarcely know how to convey the impression it made upon me. It will all sound so simple and ordinary. There is nothing but a sedgy meadow, surrounded on three sides by slopes of yellow pine. A dreary little stream flows in from the open end, to lose itself in a cul-de-sac of cat-tails and boggy ground. The stream, running slowly and more slowly, forms a stagnant pool of some extent, from which several sickly-looking alders seem to fling themselves backward, as if unwilling to approach it. A dead willow leans above the pool, tangling its wan, skeleton-like reflection with the green scum that mottles the water. There are no blackbirds, no kildees, no dragon-flies even, such as one usually finds in a place of that sort. It is all silent and desolate. The spot is evil – it is unholy in a way that I simply can’t describe. I was compelled to make a drawing of it, almost against my will, since anything so outré is hardly in my line. In fact, I made two drawings. I’ll show them to you, if you like.’

  Since I had a high opinion of Amberville’s artistic abilities, and had long considered him one of the foremost landscape painters of his generation, I was naturally eager to see the drawings. He, however, did not even pause to await my avowal of interest, but began at once to open his portfolio. His facial expression, the very movements of his hands, were somehow eloquent of a strange mixture of compulsion and repugnance as he brought out and displayed the two watercolor sketches he had mentioned.

  I could not recognize the scene depicted from either of them. Plainly it was one that I had missed in my desul
tory rambling about the foot-hill environs of the tiny hamlet of Bowman, where, two years before, I had purchased an uncultivated ranch and had retired for the privacy so essential to prolonged literary effort. Francis Amberville, in the one fortnight of his visit, through his flair for the pictorial potentialities of landscape, had doubtless grown more familiar with the neighborhood than I. It had been his habit to roam about in the forenoon, armed with sketching-materials; and in this way he had already found the theme of more than one lovely painting. The arrangement was mutually convenient, since I, in his absence, was wont to apply myself assiduously to an antique Remington typewriter.

  I examined the drawings attentively. Both, though of hurried execution, were highly meritorious, and showed the characteristic grace and vigor of Amberville’s style. And yet, even at first glance, I found a quality that was more alien to the spirit of his work. The elements of the scene were those he had described. In one picture, the pool was half hidden by a fringe of mace-reeds, and the dead willow was leaning across it at a prone, despondent angle, as if mysteriously arrested in its fall toward the stagnant waters. Beyond, the alders seemed to strain away from the pool, exposing their knotted roots as if in eternal effort. In the other drawing, the pool formed the main portion of the foreground, with the skeleton tree looming drearily at one side. At the water’s farther end, the cat-tails seemed to wave and whisper among themselves in a dying wind; and the steeply barring slope of pine at the meadow’s terminus was indicated as a wall of gloomy green that closed in the picture, leaving only a pale margin of autumnal sky at the top.

  All this, as the painter had said, was ordinary enough. But I was impressed immediately by a profound horror that lurked in these simple elements and was expressed by them as if by the balefully contorted features of some demoniac face. In both drawings, this sinister character was equally evident, as if the same face had been shown in profile and front view. I could not trace the separate details that composed the impressions; but ever, as I looked, the abomination of a strange evil, a spirit of despair, malignity, desolation, leered from the drawing more openly and hatefully. The spot seemed to wear a macabre and Satanic grimace. One felt that it might speak aloud, might utter the imprecations of some gigantic devil, or the raucous derision of a thousand birds of ill omen. The evil conveyed was something wholly outside of humanity – more ancient than man. Somehow – fantastic as this will seem – the meadow had the air of a vampire, grown old and hideous with unutterable infamies. Subtly, indefinably, it thirsted for other things than the sluggish trickle of water by which it was fed.

  ‘Where is the place?’ I asked, after a minute or two of silent inspection. It was incredible that anything of the sort could really exist – and equally incredible that a nature so robust as Amberville should have been sensitive to its quality.

  ‘It’s in the bottom of that abandoned ranch, a mile or less down the little road toward Bear River,’ he replied. ‘You must know it. There’s a small orchard about the house, on the upper hillside; but the lower portion, ending in that meadow, is all wild land.’

  I began to visualize the vicinity in question. ‘Guess it must be the old Chapman place,’ I decided. ‘No other ranch along that road would answer your specifications.’

  ‘Well, whoever it belongs to, that meadow is the most horrible spot I have ever encountered. I’ve known other landscapes that had something wrong with them, but never anything like this.’

  ‘Maybe it’s haunted,’ I said, half in jest. ‘From your description, it must be the very meadow where old Chapman was found dead one morning by his youngest daughter. It happened a few months after I moved here. He was supposed to have died of heart failure. His body was quite cold, and he had probably been lying there all night, since the family had missed him at suppertime. I don’t remember him very clearly, but I remember that he had a reputation for eccentricity. For some time before his death, people thought he was going mad. I forget the details. Anyway, his wife and children left, not long after he died, and no one has occupied the house or cultivated the orchard since. It was a commonplace rural tragedy.’

  ‘I’m not much of a believer in spooks,’ observed Amberville, who seemed to have taken my suggestion of haunting in a literal sense. ‘Whatever the influence is, it’s hardly of human origin. Come to think of it, though, I received a very silly impression once or twice – the idea that someone was watching me while I did those drawings. Queer – I had almost forgotten that, till you brought up the possibility of haunting. I seemed to see him out of the tail of my eye, just beyond the radius that I was putting into the picture: a dilapidated old scoundrel with dirty gray whiskers and an evil scowl. It’s odd, too, that I should have gotten such a definite conception of him, without ever seeing him squarely. I thought it was a tramp who had strayed into the meadow bottom. But when I turned to give him a level glance, he simply wasn’t there. It was as if he melted into the miry ground, the cattails, the sedges.’

  ‘That isn’t a bad description of Chapman,’ I said. ‘I remember his whiskers – they were almost white, except for the tobacco juice. A battered antique, if there ever was one – and very unamiable, too. He had a poisonous glare toward the end, which no doubt helped along the legend of his insanity. Some of the tales about him come back to me now. People said that he neglected the care of his orchard more and more. Visitors used to find him in that lower meadow, standing idly about and staring vacantly at the trees and water. Probably that was one reason they thought he was losing his mind. But I’m sure I never heard that there was anything unusual or queer about the meadow, either at the time of Chapman’s death, or since. It’s a lonely spot, and I don’t imagine that any one ever goes there now.’

  ‘I stumbled on it quite by accident,’ said Amberville. ‘The place isn’t visible from the road, on account of the thick pines…But there’s another odd thing: I went out this morning with a very strong and clear intuition that I might find something of uncommon interest. I made a bee-line for that meadow, so to speak; and I’ll have to admit that the intuition justified itself. The place repels me – but it fascinates me, too. I’ve simply got to solve the mystery, if it has a solution,’ he added, with a slightly defensive air. ‘I’m going back early tomorrow, with my oils, to start a real painting of it.’

  I was surprised, knowing that predilection of Amberville for scenic brilliance and gayety which had caused him to be likened to Sorolla. ‘The painting will be a novelty for you,’ I commented. ‘I’ll have to come and take a look at the place myself, before long. It should really be more in my line than yours. There ought to be a weird story in it somewhere, if it lives up to your drawings and description.’

  Several days passed. I was deeply preoccupied, at the time, with the toilsome and intricate problems offered by the concluding chapters of a new novel; and I put off my proposed visit to the meadow discovered by Amberville. My friend, on his part, was evidently engrossed by his new theme. He sallied forth each morning with his easel and oil-colors, and returned later each day, forgetful of the luncheon-hour that had formerly brought him back from such expeditions. On the third day, he did not reappear till sunset. Contrary to his custom, he did not show me what he had done, and his answers to my queries regarding the progress of the picture were somewhat vague and evasive. For some reason, he was unwilling to talk about it. Also, he was apparently loth to discuss the meadow itself, and in answer to direct questions, merely reiterated in an absent and perfunctory manner the account he had given me following his discovery of the place. In some mysterious way that I could not define, his attitude seemed to have changed.

  There were other changes, too. He seemed to have lost his usual blitheness. Often I caught him frowning intently, and surprised the lurking of some equivocal shadow in his frank eyes. There was a moodiness, a morbidity, which, as far as our five years’ friendship enabled me to observe, was a new aspect of his temperament. Perhaps, if I had not been so preoccupied with my own difficulties, I might have wondere
d more as to the causation of his gloom, which I attributed readily enough at first to some technical dilemma that was baffling him. He was less and less the Amberville that I knew; and on the fourth day, when he came back at twilight, I perceived an actual surliness that was quite foreign to his nature.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I ventured to inquire. ‘Have you struck a snag? Or is old Chapman’s meadow getting on your nerves with its ghostly influences?’

  He seemed, for once, to make an effort to throw off his gloom, his taciturnity and ill humor.

  ‘It’s the infernal mystery of the thing,’ he declared. ‘I’ve simply got to solve it, in one way or another. The place has an entity of its own – an indwelling personality. It’s there, like the soul in a human body, but I can’t pin it down or touch it. You know that I’m not superstitious – but, on the other hand, I’m not a bigoted materialist, either; and I’ve run across some odd phenomena in my time. That meadow, perhaps, is inhabited by what the ancients called a Genius Loci. More than once, before this, I have suspected that such things might exist – might reside, inherent, in some particular spot. But this is the first time that I’ve had reason to suspect anything of an actively malignant or inimical nature. The other influences, whose presence I have felt, were benign in some large, vague, impersonal way – or were else wholly indifferent to human welfare – perhaps oblivious of human existence. This thing, however, is hatefully aware and watchful: I feel that the meadow itself – or the force embodied in the meadow – is scrutinizing me all the time. The place has the air of a thirsty vampire, waiting to drink me in somehow, if it can. It is a cul-de-sac of everything evil, in which an unwary soul might well be caught and absorbed. But I tell you, Murray, I can’t keep away from it.’

  ‘It looks as if the place were getting you,’ I said, thoroughly astonished by his extraordinary declaration, and by the air of fearful and morbid conviction with which he uttered it.