The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  ‘You’re not happy?’ I said. ‘I think we’re safe now.’

  ‘Of course I’m happy, son,’ he answered in cheerful tones that sounded strained.

  Realising he wished to conceal his real thoughts, I let it pass. My joy was too vast to be spoiled.

  The rocks around us bore the same crimson colour that prevailed in this unknown land. The sand under our feet was incredibly fine, like dusting powder. I picked up a handful. It was so impalpable it slipped through my fingers. I got rid of the sand by throwing it into the sea. The water took on the colour of blood. Amazed, I turned to Toine. He had noticed as well. The expression on his face chilled me. We stood for a moment, staring at the red spot that discoloured the water.

  Then Toine pivoted on his heels. ‘We ought to investigate the place before night falls.’

  ‘And find something to eat,’ I added.

  It took us a good hour to get to the top of the rocky circle. Although not high, the rocks were brittle. For every metre we conquered, we had to retrace our steps, falling three metres back, among clouds of a red dust that blinded and suffocated us.

  As soon as we reached the crest, we saw the formidable chain of mountains that had given us that painful sense of oppression. It rose far away, at least several dozen miles distant. Despite the distance, we made out dark patches, surly woods stretching out at the feet of the mountains, as if the shadow had fertilised them. To reach the mountainous chain, we would have to cross a barren red desert.

  ‘First we must find a way to carry water,’ said Toine.

  ‘How?’ I cried. ‘We’ve got nothing. Only our hands and our tattered clothes.

  ‘That’s why we must find something. Or the heat will kill us.’

  We went back to the beach, choosing a spot other than the place where we had run ashore. Unlike at the first tiny bay, everything was monumental here. A gigantic arc of red sand like talcum powder bordered a thick red wall that rose toward the sky, flaunting the wounds of time. These furrows traced grimacing masks resembling mineral giants petrified during uncountable centuries.

  No plant life was discernable on the vertical wall. The atmosphere reminded me of a sepulchre but without the odour of decomposition, as if time had consumed the compost made by the cadavers.

  We followed this natural curtain of walls cracked by deep ravines similar to the one we had taken to come down to the beach. We remained silent, the hideous beauty of the place weighing down on us.

  Arrived at the other end, we had found nothing that could be used to carry water. And now hunger bit at us. Toine kept swearing through gritted teeth. It was his way of expressing pain. We had to get past the cliff that stopped our advance. Retracing our steps was out of the question. We knew we would find nothing. Still mumbling, Toine entered the water first. I followed but lost my footing immediately. He pulled me up by the hair, saying with kindness, ‘Sorry, son. I forgot you couldn’t swim. Find holds in the cliff and stay near me. You’ll be safe.’

  I did not agree. The rock crumbled under my fingers, dust falling in the sea. The water became purple where the dust fell. We were wading in blood now.

  ‘God-damn fucking place,’ said Toine, picking me up for the second time.

  I kept gulping down mouthfuls, but what worried me wasn’t the risk of drowning, only the filthy water that made me retch.

  We dragged ourselves to the other side of the rocky talon. Seeing a beach similar to the one we had just left, Toine spat with barely restrained rage. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

  ‘Look over there!’ I pointed to black crevices in the red wall.

  He squinted in that direction. ‘Those are caves. Maybe we’ll find something. Let’s go.’

  As we drew close, the crevices widened into gaping mouths; their dark hollows devoured the wall. It took us two hours to reach the first cave. Its proportions crushed us, making us feel as small as the specks of sand under our feet. From a narrow vault, the cave stretched to a hundred metres at the base. Its depth, impossible to gauge from where we stood, seemed to continue into an inscrutable night.

  Fear took hold of me as I penetrated the cave. Toine must have sensed it because he grasped my arm firmly. ‘Come on, son. Pull yourself together.’

  The void swallowed his voice and, like a string of prayers recited inside a cathedral, his words echoed several times, sent back by the immense vault with gaping wounds of darkness.

  Our eyes, still filled with the bright light outside, barely focused in that sudden night. We stumbled forward like blind men. Under our feet, the sand had given way to a solid rock as cold as a tombstone washed by the winter rain. Our movements, even our breaths, captured by the echo, ricocheted back and forth in the shadows at an uncanny speed. Seized by fury, Toine swore. The cavern shuddered with such a force a noise of fallen rock resounded like a peal of thunder. Then a loud cracking, followed by silence.

  The silence wasn’t total, though.

  A strange hiss, like a muffled beating heart, subsisted. We froze, incapable of speech. The rhythmic sound diminished and ended. Meanwhile, our eyes adapted to the darkness and we were able to see the fantastic walls of that subterranean place. I wish they had remained invisible.

  Here and there, statues emerged from the shadows. Numerous statues in different poses. Their faces were contorted, expressing terror, and frightful to look upon, as though the sculptor had intended to illustrate only one emotion: abject, deadly fear.

  Men. Women. Each carved line, rough or elegant, looked as if they had been moulded into the rock itself. I made out mothers who clutched their children, visages turned toward their little ones, suffused with faint maternal smiles. Among these statues with human forms stood several figures of animals and birds, particularly albatrosses with their wings spread. Strange primitive tools lay scattered on the floor of this mind-blowing museum. A few bones as well. In places, darkened patches marked the spots where hearths had been.

  We picked up vases shaped like rough amphorae made of baked earth, and swiftly turned our backs to the workshop of that splendid sculptor, as talented as God but devoid of His divine gift of grace, life and laughter.

  Much to our relief, we finally stumbled out into the blinding light.

  ‘Weird place,’ Toine said after a long moment. Holding at arm’s length one of the amphorae he was carrying, he added, ‘Look, son. Whoever sculpted those statues wasn’t able to mould an object as simple as this one. Strange, d’you agree?’

  ‘You’re right,’ I cried. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘What counts is that we have enough containers to carry our water until we get to the woods. Once we’re there, we’ll surely find something to eat.’

  I remained unconvinced. I would never be able to get to the woods in my current state of extreme weakness.

  We went back to the beach to fill our amphorae. Then we entered one of the ravines within the red wall. The ravine narrowed as we climbed. When we arrived on top, we were advancing sideways like crabs. A sound came from afar. The same muffled beat that had frightened us inside the cavern.

  We trod a desert of fine sand that a light breeze lifted in short undulating waves. At a distance, in the waning light, the dark strip on the foothills of the mountain mingled with the deep red of the sky – an even more eerie sight.

  We hoped to reach the woods before night.

  Hunger made me stumble. Toine steadied me and whispered encouraging words, as if he didn’t suffer as well. Our progress slowed further.

  The sun set fire to the horizon, making it a blade of reddened steel. The sky took on a violet hue. Since dawn, not the tiniest patch of blue had been visible in that strange sky. Finally, the black curtain fell and unknown stars shone.

  ‘Let’s stop here,’ said Toine. ‘We risk walking in circles.’

  We lay down on sand as soft as velvet. The light breeze blew it into our faces. The grains of sands brushed my face like the fingers of a little child.

  We did not speak. I ass
umed Toine, like myself, was studying the sky to discern a familiar constellation. Was this the place a teacher had spoken about when I was little? If memory serves, he had called it ‘Olympia,’ the gods’ abode according to the ancient Greeks. For a moment I was tempted to voice my thoughts, but then I said to myself that my thoughts were wandering, and I discarded the idea. I closed my eyes and thought only of falling asleep.

  Sleep overcame me. The sentiment of fear that had been stalking me these past three days did not slacken its grip. My heartbeat thumped with an odd rhythm.

  Toine’s voice made me start.

  ‘Can you hear something?’

  ‘No,’ I said, barely awake. ‘I can only hear my heartbeat. Louder.’

  ‘You’re wrong, son. It’s not your heart. It’s the sound we heard in the cavern. I think it’s coming from below. Stick your ear to the ground.’

  Instead of complying, I let myself fall asleep again. As the earth swallowed me into a deep slumber, the rhythmic pounding resounded louder than ever.

  VIII

  I awoke in the throes of stomach cramps. Dawn had just broken and the sun was still hidden behind those mysterious and frightening mountains, which were taking on their red hue. Toine tossed and turned by my side.

  ‘So did you sleep well, son?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m hungry.’ I pressed my hands over my aching stomach.

  Toine spread his hands, palms up. ‘Ah. Don’t think about it for now.’

  He sat down, grabbed an amphora and handed it to me. ‘Drink a little water. You’ll feel better.’

  I drank a few mouthfuls with scant enthusiasm, yet after an instant my cramps diminished.

  Toine had turned his wrinkled face toward the mountains.

  ‘Son,’ he intoned, ‘I didn’t sleep last night and I’ve had a lot of time to think. A question’s nagging me. I wonder if we’re still on our planet, the Earth. See, a light like this, those unknown stars, I’ve never heard about in all my god-damned life.’

  He fixed his small black eyes on me. ‘Tell me. What do you think of it?’

  I made a gesture of ignorance and he shrugged.

  ‘Of course. How would you know? This is your first journey. You know nothing about the world.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Time to go.’

  The dark patch at the foothills gained in clarity. We were still very far away but, to judge by its green hue, it was a forest. As we moved closer, the patch became more distinct. The sun burned us, making our constant struggle against weakness even harder.

  To cap it all, when we halted to drink, we discovered our provision of water had turned red. We drank it all the same. Its warm temperature strengthened the impression we were drinking blood.

  We resumed our march toward hope. In the evening, we found the first signs of plant life. The ground was firmer; the dust had become scarce. A sparse thin grass sprouted. We threw ourselves at it and grazed the meagre vegetable without pulling it up. Was it autosuggestion or did the grass have a real nutritional value? In truth, we felt better and slept better, too.

  At the break of dawn, after drinking our putrid water, we resumed our trek. A few hours later, we reached the edge of the forest.

  Immense trees mingled the green hue of their canopy with the purple of the sky. The trunks were encircled by vines as thick as my arm, curiously coiled like serpents’ spires. Toine tried to pull at one of the spires but could not and beckoned me to come and help him. Our combined efforts proved in vain. Only the thin bark of the vine came off, and the bare stem slipped under our fingers and coated them in a viscous red sap.

  ‘We need something sharp,’ Toine said, his gaze searching the ground. He saw a flat slab of stone, surely the rest of a volcanic eruption. I wondered why he had made a point of cutting the vine. He could not think of eating it, could he? The moment was badly chosen for questioning my companion, so I watched him hack at the vine with the sharp stone. He uttered a curse and let go of the stone.

  ‘It’s moving. The god-damned thing is moving!’

  At first, I believed it a hallucination, but it was real. Very slowly, like a boa constrictor, the vine contracted, spire by spire. It undulated like a living animal. A strange wheezing came from the trunk the creeper was strangling, and a thick red sap oozed from tiny pores in the wood. Toine glanced at me with a stupefied expression.

  ‘Have I gone mad?’

  My own expression told him I was seeing the same thing.

  ‘Let’s go, son.’ He grabbed my arm. ‘This place is cursed.’

  ‘Where to?’ I cried in despair.

  ‘The mountain. Maybe it’s different on the other side. But we need something to eat first.’

  The farther we penetrated that gruesome forest, the greater our conviction grew. We would never find anything edible besides the grass. That could calm our aching stomachs but contained no nutrients. For hours, we trudged on under that incredible canopy. Several times, I let myself fall to the ground, refusing to advance. It was so exhausting to struggle for each next breath. Without Toine’s friendly but firm insistence, I would have welcomed death.

  The day was ending when we came across a clearing in the forest. Several huts rose, in various states of preservation. In that great silence, we did not even consider the possibility that someone could still live in the village. We entered the nearest hut. Inside, we found a few statues like those we had seen in the cavern. On the ground, a sack half worn away by time; a few green shoots wormed out of its holes. Toine bounced on it, shouting, ‘Potatoes!’

  He was right. We had found sweet potatoes, which were beginning a new life. We devoured them with unspeakable joy.

  Finally sated, a state we had not known for weeks, we visited the small village. Inside each hut, we met the same statues of people or animals. Only the postures varied. The expressions were of torment, except for the young children, whose features remained relaxed. And crudely shaped utensils littered the floor. Neither Toine nor I had notions of the arts but we were both struck by such contrast. Moreover, each hut harboured a hearth filled with ashes, and the wooden bowls abandoned on the floor contained the remains of dried food. It looked like a sudden misfortune had frozen the inhabitants before they could flee. But no traces of struggle were visible, nor did we see any volcanic lava.

  Toine repeated, ‘It can’t be. Looks like they were turned to glass. And they realised what was happening to them.’

  I asked what he meant by that.

  ‘D’you remember the stone I picked up this morning to cut the vine? It was vitrified as well. Probably by the heat of a volcano. An eruption, you see?’

  ‘Are you saying it’s what happened here?’

  ‘No. One could think so, but it’s impossible. If lava had passed here, we would have found only traces of a new life, tiny new plants – provided pollen had been caught in the wind before all was destroyed.’

  I knew nothing about this vegetal life the wind carries across and beyond the seas. Toine did not try to explain. He simply set a hand on my shoulder, his smile doubled by every crevice in his old face.

  The horizon began to glow with that sanguine hue. Toine picked up two stones and rubbed them together. Sparks burst out. Toine approached the sack that had contained potatoes. After a few moments, the old fabric took fire. We ran into the other huts to look for inflammable material. Soon the flames danced. In the darkness, the twisted reflections made the grimacing statues even more sinister. Thanks to the trembling lights, the statues moved.

  We lay down close to the fire. Along with the crackling of the fire, we heard the muffled rhythmic beat that rose from the bowels of the earth.

  We took turns getting up to feed the fire. We needed the light more than the warmth.

  Until a heavy slumber took possession of me.

  IX

  I awoke to sunbeams gliding through the misshapen branches of the roof, streaking the floor with bright stripes. Toine had gone out. I slipped into a reverie. Such a sense of well-being had eluded me f
or a very long time. Perhaps the potatoes I had eaten yesterday had given me a new strength. Unfortunately, my roaming gaze focused on one of those statues. My anguish returned. A bad presentiment clutched my heart. Good Lord, I thought. I hope nothing has happened to him. I rose and ran outside.

  In the bright red light, the village was a remarkable sight. Toine was nowhere to be seen, so I went to inspect every hut. I did not find him so I rushed into the forest, hoping to come across some fruit to appease my hunger. And I saw many of those fruits, only they were placed too high for me to pluck them. I decided to content myself with vine sprouts. I had pulled one from the ground and I was about to put it in my mouth when it wriggled. It moved like a snake, in slow motion. Stupefied, I stared at it without thinking of throwing it away, while it coiled itself around my wrist. I came to my senses at last and tried to get rid of it, but the vine seemed stuck to my skin. I had to tear it off. Minuscule beads of blood covered the place where the vine had hugged my wrist. Overcome by disgust, I tried to chase away the horrid idea that the plant was carnivorous. On the ground, the vine continued to writhe like a reptile.

  Stomach knotted, I resumed looking for Toine. Through the sparse holes in the green canopy, the sun darted several tiny red eyes on me. The hot breeze that set the foliage a-shivering gave me the impression these eyes mocked me. To add to the creepy sensation, I could see no sign of animals, not a bird, not even an insect – no tiny vermin that made a blade of glass a little world teeming with life. I cried Toine’s name to no avail. My anguish increased with every step until I arrived at a river. The water was sweet and fresh. I took a long drink, and then I started along the riverbank. The crystalline sound of falling water called to me. In my solitude, such a familiar noise reassured me. The waterfall was more distant than I had thought, but when I reached it, I did not regret my effort, despite Toine’s absence. The sight was magnificent. From the middle of a gigantic slab of rock as smooth as a wall spurted furious waters that fell in a sumptuous curtain of white foam. The foam fanned out into myriads of droplets like a scattering of diamonds. With the waterfall, the river made a leap of at least one hundred metres.