The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  He stood by the door, uncomfortable, and finally said, ‘Dr. Harrow wants me to be certain you check your prescriptions. Note she has increased your dosage of acetlethylene.’

  I slid across the bed to where a tiny refrigerator had been hung for my medications. I pulled it open and saw the familiar battery of vials and bottles. As a child first under Dr. Harrow’s care I had imagined them a city, saw the long cylinders and amber vials as battlements and turrets to be explored and climbed. Now I lived among those chilly buttresses, my only worship within bright cathedrals.

  ‘Two hundred milligrams,’ I said obediently, and replaced the bottle. ‘Thank you very very much.’ As I giggled he left the room.

  I took the slender filaments that had tapped into my store of memories and braided them together, then slid the plait beneath a pillow and leaned back. A bed like a pirate ship, carved posts like riven masts spiring to the high ceiling. I had never seen a pirate ship, but once I tapped a boy who jerked off to images of red flags and heaving seas and wailing women. I recalled that now and untangled a single wire, placed it on my temple and masturbated until I saw the warning flare on the screen, the sanguine flash and flame across my pixilated brain. Then I went to sleep.

  Faint tapping at the door woke me a short while later.

  ‘Andrew,’ I yawned, pointing to the crumpled sea of bed-clothes. ‘Come in.’

  He shut the door softly and slid beneath the sheets beside me. ‘You’re not supposed to have visitors, you now.’

  ‘I’m not?’ I stretched and curled my toes around his finger.

  ‘No. Dr. Leslie was here all day, Anna said he’s taking us back.’

  ‘Me, too?’

  He nodded, hugging a bolster. ‘All of us. Forever.’ He smiled, and the twilight made his face as beautiful as Anna’s. ‘I saw Dr. Harrow cry after he left.’

  ‘How did you get here?’ I sat up and played with his hair: long and silky except where the nodes bulged and the hair had never grown back. He wore Anna’s bandeau, and I tugged it gently from his head.

  ‘Back stairs. No one ever uses them. That way.’ He pointed lazily with his foot toward a darkening corner. His voice rose plaintively. ‘You shared that poet with Anna. You should’ve saved her.’

  I shrugged. ‘You weren’t there.’ The bandeau fit loosely over my forehead. When I tightened it tiny emerald feathers frosted my hand like the scales of moths. ‘Would Anna give me this, do you think?’

  Andrew pulled himself onto his elbows and stroked my breast with one hand. ‘I’ll give it to you, if you share.’

  ‘There’s not enough left to share,’ I whined, and pulled away. In the mirror I caught myself in the bandeau. The stippled green feathers made my hair look a deeper auburn, like the poet’s. I pulled a few dark curls through the feathers and pursed my lips. ‘If you give this to me…’

  Already he was reaching for the wires. ‘Locked?’ I breathed, glancing at the door.

  ‘Shh…’

  Afterward I gave him one of my new pills. There hadn’t been much of Morgan left and I feared his disappointment would evoke Anna, who’d demand her bandeau back.

  ‘Why can’t I have visitors?’

  I had switched off the lights. Andrew sat on the windowsill, luring lacewings with a silver cigarette lighter. Bats chased the insects to within inches of his face, veering away as he laughed and pretended to snatch at them. ‘Dr. Harrow said there may be a psychic inquest. To see if you’re accountable.’

  ‘So?’ I’d done one before, when a schizoid six-year-old hanged herself on a grosgrain ribbon after therapy with me. ‘ “I can’t be responsible. I’m not responsible.” ’ We laughed: it was the classic empath defense.

  ‘Dr. Harrow wants to see you herself.’

  I kicked the sheets to the floor and turned down the empty BEAM, to see the lacewings better. ‘How do you know all this?’

  A quick fizz as a moth singed itself. Andrew frowned and turned down the lighter flame. ‘Anna told me,’ he replied, and suddenly was gone.

  I swore and tried to rearrange my curls so the bandeau wouldn’t show. From the windowsill Anna stared blankly at the lighter for a moment, then groped in her pockets until she found a cigarette. She glanced coolly past me to the mirror, pulling a strand of hair forward until it fell framing her cheekbone. ‘Who gave you that?’ she asked as she blew smoke out the window.

  I turned away. ‘You know who,’ I replied petulantly. ‘I’m not supposed to have visitors.’

  ‘Oh, you can keep it,’ she said airily.

  ‘Really?’ I clapped in delight.

  ‘I’ll just make another.’ She finished her cigarette, tossed it in an amber arc out the window. ‘I better go down now. Which way’s out?’

  I pointed where Andrew had indicated, drawing her close to me to kiss her tongue as she left.

  ‘Thank you, Anna,’ I whispered to her at the door. ‘I think I love this bandeau.’

  ‘I think I loved it, too,’ Anna nodded, and slipped away.

  Dr. Harrow invited me to lunch with her in the Peach Tree Court the next afternoon. Justice appeared at my door and waited while I put on jeweled dark spectacles and a velvet biretta like Morgan Yates’s.

  ‘Very nice, Wendy,’ he commented, amused. I smiled. When I wore the black glasses he was not afraid to look me in the face.

  ‘I don’t want the others to see my bandeau. Anna will steal it back,’ I explained, lifting the hat so he could see the feathered riband beneath.

  He laughed at that. I don’t hear the aides laugh very often: when I was small, their voices frightened me. I thanked him as he held the door and followed him outside.

  We passed the Orphic Garden. Servers had snaked hoses through the circle of lindens and were cleaning the mosaic stones. I peered curiously through the hedge as we walked down the pathway but the blood seemed to be all gone.

  Once we were in the shade of the Peach Tree Walk I removed my glasses. Justice quickly averted his eyes.

  ‘Do you think these peaches are ripe?’ I wondered, twitching one from a branch as I passed beneath it.

  ‘I doubt it.’ Justice sighed, wincing as I bit into a small pink orb like a swollen eye. ‘They’ll make you sick, Wendy.’

  Grinning, I swallowed my bite, then dropped the fruit. The little path dipped and rounded a corner hedged with forsythia. Three steps further and the path branched: right to the trompe l’oeil Glass Fountain, left to the Peach Tree Court, where Dr. Harrow waited in the Little Pagoda.

  ‘Thank you, Justice.’ Dr. Harrow rose and shook his hand. On several low tables lunch had already been laid for two. Justice stepped to a lacquered tray and sorted out my medication bottles, then stood and bowed before leaving.

  Sunlight streamed through the bamboo frets above us as Dr. Harrow took my hand and drew me toward her.

  ‘The new dosage. You remembered to take it?’

  ‘Yes.’ I removed my hat and dropped it. ‘Anna gave me this bandeau.’

  ‘It’s lovely.’ She knelt before one of the tables and motioned for me to do the same. Her face was puffy, her eyes slitted. I wondered if she would cry for me as she had for Andrew yesterday. ‘Have you had breakfast?’

  We ate goujonettes of hake with fennel and an aspic of lamb’s blood. Dr. Harrow drank champagne and permitted me a sip – horrible, like thrashing water. Afterward a rusted, remodeled garden server removed our plates and brought me a chocolate wafer, which I slipped into my pocket to trade with Anna later, for news.

  ‘You slept well,’ Dr. Harrow stated. ‘What did you dream?’

  ‘I dreamed about Melisande’s dog.’

  Dr. Harrow stroked her chin, then adjusted her pince-nez to see me better. ‘Not Morgan’s dog?’

  ‘No.’ Melisande had been a girl my own age with a history of tormenting and sexually molesting animals. ‘A small white dog. Like this.’ I pushed my nose until it squashed against my face.

  Dr. Harrow smiled ruefully. ‘Well, good, because I
dreamed about Morgan’s dog.’ She shook her head when I started to question her. ‘Not really; a manner of speaking. I mean I didn’t get much sleep.’ She sighed and tilted her flute so it refracted golden diamonds. ‘I made a very terrible error of judgment with Morgan Yates. I shouldn’t have let you do it.’

  ‘I knew what would happen,’ I said matter-of-factly.

  Dr. Harrow looked at her glass, then at me. ‘Yes. Well, a number of people are wondering about that, Wendy.’

  ‘She would not look away from the window.’

  ‘No. They’re wondering how you know when the therapy will succeed and when it won’t. They’re wondering whether the therapist is effecting her failures as well as her cures.’

  ‘I’m not responsible. I can’t be responsible.’

  She placed the champagne flute very carefully on the lacquer table and took my hand. She squeezed it so tightly that I knew she wanted it to hurt. ‘That is what’s the matter, Wendy. If you are responsible – if empaths can be responsible – you can be executed for murder. We can all be held accountable for your failures. And if not…’ She leaned back without releasing my hand, so that I had to edge nearer to her across the table. ‘If not, HEL wants you back.’

  I flounced back against the floor. ‘Andrew told me.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Not you personally. Not necessarily. Anna, yes: they created Anna, they’ll claim her first. But the others–’ She traced a wave in the air, ended it with a finger pointing at me. ‘And you…If they can trace what you do, find the bioprint and synthesize it…’ Her finger touched the end of my nose, pressed it until I giggled. ‘Just like Melisande’s dog, Wendy.

  ‘Odolf Leslie was here yesterday. He wants you for observation. He wants this–’ She pressed both hands to her forehead and then waved them toward the sky, the fruit-laden trees and sloping lawns of Linden Glory. ‘All this, Wendy. They will have me declared incompetent and our research a disaster, and then they’ll move in.’

  A server poured me more mineral water. ‘Is he a nice doctor?’

  For a moment I thought she’d upset the table, as Morgan had done in the Orphic Garden, Then, ‘I don’t know, Wendy. Perhaps he is.’ She sighed, and motioned the server to bring another cold split.

  ‘They’ll take Anna first,’ she said a few minutes later, almost to herself. Then, as if recalling me sitting across from her, she added, ‘For espionage. They’ll induce multiple personalities and train them when they’re very young. Ideal terrorists.’

  I drank my water and stared at the latticed roof of the pagoda, imagining Andrew and Anna without me. I took the chocolate wafer from my pocket and began to nibble it.

  The server rolled back with a sweating silver bucket and opened another split for Dr. Harrow. She sipped it, watching me through narrowed gray eyes. ‘Wendy,’ she said at last. ‘There’s going to be an inquest. A military inquest. But before that, one more patient.’ She reached beneath the table to her portfolio and removed a slender packet. ‘This is the profile. I’d like you to read it.’

  I took the file. Dr. Harrow poured the rest of her champagne and finished it, tilting her head to the server as she stood.

  ‘I have a two o’clock meeting with Dr. Leslie. Why don’t you meet me again for dinner tonight and we’ll discuss this?’

  ‘Where?’

  She tapped her lower lip. ‘The Peacock Room. At seven.’ She bowed slightly and passed out of sight among the trees.

  I waited until she disappeared, then gestured for the server. ‘More chocolate, please,’ I ordered, and waited until it returned with a chilled marble plate holding three wafers. I nibbled one, staring idly at the faux vellum cover of the profile with its engraved motto:

  HUMAN ENGINEERING LABORATORY

  PAULO MAIORA CANAMUS

  ‘ “Let us raise a somewhat loftier strain,” ’ Andrew had translated it for me once. ‘Virgil. But it should be deus ex machina,’ he added slyly.

  God from the machine.

  I licked melting chocolate from my fingers and began to read, skimming through the charts and anamnesis that followed. On the last sheet I read:

  Client requests therapy in order to determine nature and cause of these obsessive nightmares.

  Beneath this was Dr. Harrow’s scrawled signature and the HEL stamp. I ate the last wafer, then mimed to the server that I was finished.

  We dined alone in the Peacock Room. After setting our tiny table the servers disappeared, dismissed by Dr. Harrow’s brusque gesture. A plateful of durians stood as our centerpiece, the spiky green globes piled atop a translucent porcelain tray. Dr. Harrow split one neatly for me, the round fruit oozing pale custard and a putrescent odor. She grimaced, then took a demure spoonful of the pulp and tasted it for me.

  ‘Lovely,’ she murmured, and handed me the spoon.

  We ate in silence for several minutes beneath the flickering gaslit chandeliers.

  ‘Did you read the profile I gave you?’ Dr. Harrow asked at last, with studied casualness.

  ‘Mmmm-mmm,’ I grunted.

  ‘And…?’

  ‘She will not make it.’ I lofted another durian from the tray.

  Dr. Harrow dipped her chin ever so slightly before asking, ‘Why, Wendy?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ This durian was not quite ripe. I winced and pushed it from my plate.

  ‘Can’t you give me any idea of what makes you feel that?’

  ‘Nothing. I can’t feel anything.’ I took another fruit.

  ‘Well, then, what makes you think she wouldn’t be a good analysand?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just–’ I sucked on my spoon, thinking. ‘It’s like when I see my name – the way everything starts to shiver and I get sick. But I don’t throw up.’

  Dr. Harrow tilted her head thoughtfully. ‘Like a seizure. Well.’ She smiled and spooned another mouthful.

  I finished the last durian and glanced around impatiently. ‘When will I meet her?’

  ‘You already have.’

  I kicked my chair. ‘When?’

  ‘Fourteen years ago, when you first came to HEL.’

  ‘Why don’t I remember her?’

  ‘You do, Wendy.’ She lifted her durian and took the last drop of custard upon her tongue. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Surprised?’ Dr. Harrow grinned and raised the flamboyant sleeves of her embroidered haik.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, fingering the flowing cuffs enviously.

  She smiled and turned to the NET beside my bed. ‘I’m the patient this morning. Are you ready?’

  I nodded. Earlier she had wheeled in her own cot, and now sat on it readying her monitors. I settled on my bed and waited for her to finish. She finally turned to me and applied electrolytic fluid to the nodes on my temples, placed other wires upon my head and cheekbones before doing the same to herself.

  ‘You have no technicians assisting you?’ I asked.

  She shook her head but made no reply as she adjusted her screens and, finally, settled onto her cot. I lay back against the pillow and shut my eyes.

  The last thing I heard was the click of the adaptor freeing the current, and a gentle exhalation that might have been a sigh.

  ‘Here we stand…’

  ‘Here we stand…’

  ‘Here we lie…’

  ‘Here we lie…’

  ‘Eye to hand and heart to head,

  ‘Deep in the dark with the dead.’

  It is spring, and not dark at all, but I repeat the incantation as Aidan gravely sprinkles apple blossoms upon my head. In the branches beneath us a bluejay shrieks at our bulldog, Molly, as she whines and scratches hopefully at her basket.

  ‘Can’t we bring her up?’ I peer over the edge of the rickety platform and Molly sneezes in excitement.

  ‘Shhh!’ Aidan commands, squeezing his eyes shut as he concentrates. After a moment he squints and reaches for his crumpled sweater. Several bay leaves filched from the kitchen crumble over me and I blink so the debris doesn’t
get in my eyes.

  ‘I hate this junk in my hair,’ I grumble. ‘Next time I make the spells.’

  ‘You can’t.’ Loftily Aidan stands on tiptoe and strips another branch of blossoms, sniffing them dramatically before tossing them in a flurry of pink and white. ‘We need a virgin.’

  ‘So?’ I jerk on the rope leading to Molly’s basket. ‘You’re a virgin. Next time we use you.’

  Aidan stares at me, brows furrowed. ‘That won’t count,’ he says at last. ‘Say it again, Emma.’

  ‘Here we stand…’

  Every day of Easter break we come here: an overgrown apple orchard within the woods, uncultivated for a hundred years. Stone walls tumbled by time mark the gray boundaries of a colonial farm. Blackberry vines choke the rocks with breeze-blown petals. Our father showed us this place. Long ago he built the treehouse, its wood lichen-green now and wormed with holes. Rusted nails snag my knees when we climb: all that remains of other platforms and the crow’s-nest at treetop.

  I finish the incantation and kneel, calling to Molly to climb in her basket. When my twin yells I announce imperiously, ‘The virgin needs her faithful consort. Get in, Molly.’

  He demurs and helps to pull her up. Molly is trembling when we heave her onto the platform. As always, she remains huddled in her basket.

  ‘She’s sitting on the sandwiches,’ I remark matter-of-factly. Aidan shoves Molly aside hastily and retrieves two squashed bags. ‘I call we break for lunch.’

  We eat in thoughtful silence. We never discuss the failure of the spells, although each afternoon Aidan hides in his secret place behind the wing chair in the den and pores through more brittle volumes. Sometimes I can feel them working – the air is so calm, the wind dies unexpectedly, and for a moment the woods glow so bright, so deep, their shadows still and green; and it is there: the secret to be revealed, the magic to unfold, the story to begin. Aidan flushes above me and his eyes shine, he raises his arms and –