The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  With my mother, I crossed, unwillingly, the valley. We saw a lamb grazing and when it heard our footsteps it paused and looked up at us. The lamb looked cross and miserable. I said to my mother, ‘The lamb is cross and miserable. So would I be, too, if I had to live in a climate not suited to my nature.’ My mother and I now entered the cave. It was the dark and cold cave. I felt something growing under my feet and I bent down to eat it. I stayed that way for years, bent over eating whatever I found growing under my feet. Eventually, I grew a special lens that would allow me to see in the darkest of darkness; eventually, I grew a special coat that kept me warm in the coldest of coldness. One day I saw my mother sitting on a rock. She said, ‘What a strange expression you have on your face. So cross, so miserable, as if you were living in a climate not suited to your nature.’ Laughing, she vanished. I dug a deep, deep hole. I built a beautiful house, a floorless house, over the deep, deep hole. I put in lattice windows, most favored of windows by my mother, so perfect for looking out at people passing by without her being observed. I painted the house itself yellow, the windows green, colors I knew would please her. Standing just outside the door, I asked her to inspect the house. I said, ‘Take a look. Tell me if it’s to your satisfaction.’ Laughing out of the corner of a mouth I could not see, she stepped inside. I stood just outside the door, listening carefully, hoping to hear her land with a thud at the bottom of the deep, deep hole. Instead, she walked up and down in every direction, even pounding her heel on the air. Coming outside to greet me, she said, ‘It is an excellent house. I would be honored to live in it,’ and then vanished. I filled up the hole and burnt the house to the ground.

  My mother has grown to an enormous height. I have grown to an enormous height also, but my mother’s height is three times mine. Sometimes I cannot see from her breasts on up, so lost is she in the atmosphere. One day, seeing her sitting on the seashore, her hand reaching out in the deep to caress the belly of a striped fish as he swam through a place where two seas met, I glowed red with anger. For a while then I lived alone on the island where there were eight full moons and I adorned the face of each moon with expressions I had seen on my mother’s face. All the expressions favored me. I soon grew tired of living in this way and returned to my mother’s side. I remained, though glowing red with anger, and my mother and I built houses on opposite banks of the dead pond. The dead pond lay between us; in it, only small invertebrates with poisonous lances lived. My mother behaved toward them as if she had suddenly found herself in the same room with relatives we had long since risen above. I cherished their presence and gave them names. Still I missed my mother’s close company and cried constantly for her, but at the end of each day when I saw her return to her house, incredible and great deeds in her wake, each of them singing loudly her praises, I glowed and glowed again, red with anger. Eventually, I wore myself out and sank into a deep, deep sleep, the only dreamless sleep I have ever had.

  One day my mother packed my things in a grip and, taking me by the hand, walked me to the jetty, placed me on board a boat, in care of the captain. My mother, while caressing my chin and cheeks, said some words of comfort to me because we had never been apart before. She kissed me on the forehead and turned and walked away. I cried so much my chest heaved up and down, my whole body shook at the sight of her back turned toward me, as if I had never seen her back turned toward me before. I started to make plans to get off the boat, but when I saw that the boat was encased in a large green bottle, as if it were about to decorate a mantelpiece, I fell asleep, until I reached my destination, the new island. When the boat stopped, I got off and I saw a woman with feet exactly like mine, especially around the arch of the instep. Even though the face was completely different from what I was used to, I recognized this woman as my mother. We greeted each other at first with great caution and politeness, but as we walked along, our steps became one, and as we talked, our voices became one voice, and we were in complete union in every other way. What peace came over me then, for I could not see where she left off and I began, or where I left off and she began.

  My mother and I walk through the rooms of her house. Every crack in the floor holds a significant event: here, an apparently healthy young man suddenly dropped dead; here a young woman defied her father and, while riding her bicycle to the forbidden lovers’ meeting place, fell down a precipice, remaining a cripple for the rest of a very long life. My mother and I find this a beautiful house. The rooms are large and empty, opening on to each other, waiting for people and things to fill them up. Our white muslin skirts billow up around our ankles, our hair hangs straight down our backs as our arms hang straight at our sides. I fit perfectly in the crook of my mother’s arm, on the curve of her back, in the hollow of her stomach. We eat from the same bowl, drink from the same cup; when we sleep, our heads rest on the same pillow. As we walk through the rooms, we merge and separate, merge and separate; soon we shall enter the final stage of our evolution.

  The fishermen are coming in from sea; their catch is bountiful, my mother has seen to that. As the waves plop, plop against each other, the fishermen are happy that the sea is calm. My mother points out the fishermen to me, their contentment is a source of my contentment. I am sitting in my mother’s enormous lap. Sometimes I sit on a mat she has made for me from her hair. The lime trees are weighed down with limes – I have already perfumed myself with their blossoms. A hummingbird has nested on my stomach, a sign of my fertileness. My mother and I live in a bower made from flowers whose petals are imperishable. There is the silvery blue of the sea, crisscrossed with sharp darts of light, there is the warm rain falling on the clumps of castor bush, there is the small lamb bounding across the pasture, there is the soft ground welcoming the soles of my pink feet. It is in this way my mother and I have lived for a long time now.

  Sandkings

  George R. R. Martin

  George R. R. Martin (1948–) is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction best-known for his Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy series, which contains its share of weird supernatural elements. According to myth, he began his career selling monster stories to other neighborhood children for pennies. Subsequent work has won many awards, including the Hugo and World Fantasy awards. Despite readers’ strong association of Martin with fantasy fiction, Martin’s devotion to the horror field has been lifelong. Classics in this mode from Martin include the truly terrifying ‘Nightflyers’ (1980), the disquieting ‘The Pear-Shaped Man’ (1987), and the stunningly weird science fiction story reprinted herein, ‘Sandkings’ (1979), winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

  Simon Kress lived alone in a sprawling manor house among the dry, rocky hills fifty kilometers from the city. So, when he was called away unexpectedly on business, he had no neighbors he could conveniently impose on to take his pets. The carrion hawk was no problem; it roosted in the unused belfry and customarily fed itself anyway. The shambler Kress simply shooed outside and left to fend for itself; the little monster would gorge on slugs and birds and rockjocks. But the fish tank, stocked with genuine Earth piranha, posed a difficulty. Kress finally just threw a haunch of beef into the huge tank. The piranha could always eat each other if he were detained longer than expected. They’d done it before. It amused him.

  Unfortunately, he was detained much longer than expected this time. When he finally returned, all the fish were dead. So was the carrion hawk. The shambler had climbed up to the belfry and eaten it. Simon Kress was vexed.

  The next day he flew his skimmer to Asgard, a journey of some two hundred kilometers. Asgard was Baldur’s largest city and boasted the oldest and largest starport as well. Kress liked to impress his friends with animals that were unusual, entertaining, and expensive; Asgard was the place to buy them.

  This time, though, he had poor luck. Xenopets had closed its doors, t’Etherane the Petseller tried to foist another carrion hawk off on him, and Strange Waters offered nothing more exotic than piranha, glow-sharks, and spider squids. Kress had had all t
hose; he wanted something new.

  Near dusk, he found himself walking down the Rainbow Boulevard, looking for places he had not patronized before. So close to the starport, the street was lined by importers’ marts. The big corporate emporiums had impressive long windows, where rare and costly alien artifacts reposed on felt cushions against dark drapes that made the interiors of the stores a mystery. Between them were the junk shops – narrow, nasty little places whose display areas were crammed with all manner of offworld bric-a-brac. Kress tried both kinds of shop, with equal dissatisfaction.

  Then he came across a store that was different.

  It was quite close to the port. Kress had never been there before. The shop occupied a small, single-story building of moderate size, set between a euphoria bar and a temple-brothel of the Secret Sisterhood. Down this far, the Rainbow Boulevard grew tacky. The shop itself was unusual. Arresting.

  The windows were full of mist; now a pale red, now the gray of true fog, now sparkling and golden. The mist swirled and eddied and glowed faintly from within. Kress glimpsed objects in the window – machines, pieces of art, other things he could not recognize – but he could not get a good look at any of them. The mists flowed sensuously around them, displaying a bit of first one thing and then another, then cloaking all. It was intriguing.

  As he watched, the mist began to form letters. One word at a time. Kress stood and read:

  WO. AND. SHADE. IMPORTERS.

  ARTIFACTS. ART. LIFEFORMS. AND. MISC.

  The letters stopped. Through the fog, Kress saw something moving. That was enough for him, that and the word ‘Lifeforms’ in their advertisement. He swept his walking cloak over his shoulder and entered the store.

  Inside, Kress felt disoriented. The interior seemed vast, much larger than he would have guessed from the relatively modest frontage. It was dimly lit, peaceful. The ceiling was a starscape, complete with spiral nebulae, very dark and realistic, very nice. The counters all shone faintly, the better to display the merchandise within. The aisles were carpeted with ground fog. In places, it came almost to his knees and swirled about his feet as he walked.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  She seemed almost to have risen from the fog. Tall and gaunt and pale, she wore a practical gray jumpsuit and a strange little cap that rested well back on her head.

  ‘Are you Wo or Shade?’ Kress asked. ‘Or only sales help?’

  ‘Jala Wo, ready to serve you,’ she replied. ‘Shade does not see customers. We have no sales help.’

  ‘You have quite a large establishment,’ Kress said. ‘Odd that I have never heard of you before.’

  ‘We have only just opened this shop on Baldur,’ the woman said. ‘We have franchises on a number of other worlds, however. What can I sell you? Art, perhaps? You have the look of a collector. We have some fine Nor T’alush crystal carvings.’

  ‘No,’ Simon Kress said. ‘I own all the crystal carvings I desire. I came to see about a pet.’

  ‘A lifeform?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alien?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We have a mimic in stock. From Celia’s World. A clever little simian. Not only will it learn to speak, but eventually it will mimic your voice, inflections, gestures, even facial expressions.’

  ‘Cute,’ said Kress. ‘And common. I have no use for either, Wo. I want something exotic. Unusual. And not cute. I detest cute animals. At the moment I own a shambler. Imported from Cotho, at no mean expense. From time to time I feed him a litter of unwanted kittens. That is what I think of cute. Do I make myself understood?’

  Wo smiled enigmatically. ‘Have you ever owned an animal that worshipped you?’ she asked.

  Kress grinned. ‘Oh, now and again. But I don’t require worship, Wo. Just entertainment.’

  ‘You misunderstood me,’ Wo said, still wearing her strange smile. ‘I meant worship literally.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I think I have just the thing for you,’ Wo said. ‘Follow me.’

  She led Kress between the radiant counters and down a long, fog-shrouded aisle beneath false starlight. They passed through a wall of mist into another section of the store, and stopped before a large plastic tank. An aquarium, thought Kress.

  Wo beckoned. He stepped closer and saw that he was wrong. It was a terrarium. Within lay a miniature desert about two meters square. Pale and bleached scarlet by wan red light. Rocks: basalt and quartz and granite. In each corner of the tank stood a castle.

  Kress blinked, and peered, and corrected himself; actually only three castles stood. The fourth leaned; a crumbled, broken ruin. The other three were crude but intact, carved of stone and sand. Over their battlements and through their rounded porticoes, tiny creatures climbed and scrambled. Kress pressed his face against the plastic. ‘Insects?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Wo replied. ‘A much more complex life-form. More intelligent as well. Considerably smarter than your shambler. They are called sandkings.’

  ‘Insects,’ Kress said, drawing back from the tank. ‘I don’t care how complex they are.’ He frowned. ‘And kindly don’t try to gull me with this talk of intelligence. These things are far too small to have anything but the most rudimentary brains.’

  ‘They share hiveminds,’ Wo said. ‘Castle minds, in this case. There are only three organisms in the tank, actually. The fourth died. You see how her castle has fallen.’

  Kress looked back at the tank. ‘Hiveminds, eh? Interesting.’ He frowned again. ‘Still, it is only an oversized ant farm. I’d hoped for something better.’

  ‘They fight wars.’

  ‘Wars? Hmmm.’ Kress looked again.

  ‘Note the colors, if you will,’ Wo told him. She pointed to the creatures that swarmed over the nearest castle. One was scrabbling at the tank wall. Kress studied it. It still looked like an insect to his eyes. Barely as long as his fingernail, six-limbed, with six tiny eyes set all around its body. A wicked set of mandibles clacked visibly, while two long, fine antennae wove patterns in the air. Antennae, mandibles, eyes, and legs were sooty black, but the dominant color was the burnt orange of its armor plating. ‘It’s an insect,’ Kress repeated.

  ‘It is not an insect,’ Wo insisted calmly. ‘The armored exoskeleton is shed when the sandking grows larger. If it grows larger. In a tank this size, it won’t.’ She took Kress by the elbow and led him around the tank to the next castle. ‘Look at the colors here.’

  He did. They were different. Here the sandkings had bright red armor; antennae, mandibles, eyes, and legs were yellow. Kress glanced across the tank. The denizens of the third live castle were off-white, with red trim. ‘Hmmm,’ he said.

  ‘They war, as I said,’ Wo told him. ‘They even have truces and alliances. It was an alliance that destroyed the fourth castle in this tank. The blacks were getting too numerous, so the others joined forces to destroy them.’

  Kress remained unconvinced. ‘Amusing, no doubt. But insects fight wars too.’ ‘Insects do not worship,’ Wo said.

  ‘Eh?’

  Wo smiled and pointed at the castle. Kress stared. A face had been carved into the wall of the highest tower. He recognized it. It was Jala Wo’s face. ‘How…?’

  ‘I projected a hologram of my face into the tank, kept it there for a few days. The face of god, you see? I feed them; I am always close. The sandkings have a rudimentary psionic sense. Proximity telepathy. They sense me, and worship me by using my face to decorate their buildings. All the castles have them, see.’ They did.

  On the castle, the face of Jala Wo was serene and peaceful, and very lifelike. Kress marveled at the workmanship. ‘How do they do it?’

  ‘The foremost legs double as arms. They even have fingers of a sort; three small, flexible tendrils. And they cooperate well, both in building and in battle. Remember, all the mobiles of one color share a single mind.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ Kress said.

  Wo smiled. ‘The maw lives in the castle. Ma
w is my name for her. A pun, if you will; the thing is mother and stomach both. Female, large as your fist, immobile. Actually, sandking is a bit of a misnomer. The mobiles are peasants and warriors, the real ruler is a queen. But that analogy is faulty as well. Considered as a whole, each castle is a single hermaphroditic creature.’

  ‘What do they eat?’

  ‘The mobiles eat pap – predigested food obtained inside the castle. They get it from the maw after she has worked on it for several days. Their stomachs can’t handle anything else, so if the maw dies, they soon die as well. The maw…the maw eats anything. You’ll have no special expense there. Table scraps will do excellently.’