The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  The first time, I was kneeling in a clump of ferns, watching a man. He was sitting on a stone beneath a tree. He’d taken his rucksack from his back and set it beside him, eaten his lunch and now was smoking, leaning back against the trunk. A hiker, apparently. He finished his smoke, crushing the butt out under a rock, and knelt, tying his bootlaces. I leapt on him then, weightless, the sound of the wind and surf very loud, his grunt of surprise very far away. I rolled on top of him and drove my fists into his face – his hands outflung made a sort of thicket between me and his face – I swatted at him with a rock, he tried to wrestle it from me, all the while yelping bits of sentences at me – I released the rock, took up another and swiftly smashed his head with it. I sunk my fingers into his cheeks and eyes bent forward and pulled his face in half with my hands – his body bucked and thrashed under me, his arms flailing. Finally I strangled him, staring and dripping perspiration down into the torn flesh, and exposed bone, of his face.

  Satisfied, I assembled his meagre possessions and dragged him down the beach to the water. Launching his body from the rocks, I could be assured the current would accept him. This sea, sky, woods, house, were all my accomplices. Kajetan’s face dwindling in shadowy passageways, his flickering smile flashed white in the instant before shades filled his features altogether.

  The second time, a woman was taking photographs on the beach. I hid in the rocks and jumped her from behind. There were many deep tidal pools here between the boulders. I seized her by the hair and pushed her head into the water. I straightened my arm – she clawed at me, kicked back at me, but her angle was all wrong. After a few moments she went limp – a ruse. I did not budge. A few more seconds of frantic activity, shreds of water dashing in all directions, and then nothing but the rumble of the waves.

  Drowning is one of the better ways to kill someone, provided circumstances allow for it. At its edges, the estate dwindles into flat, sallow land, grey soil, grey sky, a handful of scarred, defiant trees, and a handful of farms. Black clouds turned the dim, watery light of that day a brownish-green color. A stand of dead trees, pinched off by an arm of sand from the body of the woods that surround the house. The trees enclose a little depression in the ground where rain water collects to form a broad, shallow pond of iridescent brown. A dirt road runs by the stand. A few heavy branches bristling with grey, wiry sticks had blown down and dammed the wind’s flow of dead leaves and bits of bracken. The road was blocked. I found a farmer clearing the debris out of the way and offered to help – seamed, lean face, slow, patiently moving body. I clubbed him over the head with a rock when his back was turned and dragged him, surprisingly light and thin, to the pond. I knelt on his back and held his head down. He was unable to struggle. His body seemed heavy and tired. He seemed to lie beneath me resigned, his face mired in black, stagnant mud and thick brown water. Everything was quiet. Despite his weakness, I remained kneeling a long time – every now and then thinking I felt a sort of inner tick beneath my knees. This farmer was like a plant himself – I had to dig his life out of him by its roots to keep it from growing back, and it took a long time. Kneeling there, my gaze was drawn out across the pond toward the house and the grounds, and further to the sea. Although I was drowning a man, I felt as peaceful as a stone. After a long time, I rose and he drifted out from the bank. I almost left him floating face down in brown water, brown light.

  I caught a woman from behind with my necktie, stood motionless as a statue while she clawed at her throat, twisted this way and that. I turned my head to see our shadows together on the stone wall. They looked strange. When her knees buckled I straddled her, her body lying flat on its stomach, her head dangling from her neck, which I held above the ground with the tie. She had been strolling the grounds hand in hand with a man. I had watched them draw near the house, and took hasty advantage of his leaving her alone a moment. When he returned, he found her at once and knelt slowly beside her with his bearded mouth open. I stepped from the hiding place, the doorway I had seen in my dream. He looked mutely up at me, and I struck him in the face with an axe. The single blow killed him. I am strong, the axe swung light as a reed in my hand. The red dew of his blood congealed on her icy cheeks like studs of cinnamon candy.

  In my dreams I see again the enigmatic seeds of his teeth. I rise in the morning, my curtained room is dark. My employer will send a car for me. I must deliver some records to our office in the adjacent town.

  I return on foot. When the pavement gives way to rutted clay I realize I’ve been on the wrong road for several miles. After a moment’s reckoning I decide I’m better off going on than back. I’m heading in the right direction, by a more rambling route. After half a mile more the road dwindles to a broad level path bordered by rattling humps of ivy, and tall grass. The breeze flourishes into a steady, nervous wind. The sky is dense, silver and black; the humid air is thick with captive rain. I can hear surf. I’m approaching the sea.

  There before me is a wide ribbon of black trees, and peaked slate rooftops above the trees, black against the sky as dried blood. I have been here so many times, I remember them all, but I have no memories to compare with this; I have no memories of coming or going. Why do I only now realize this? Rain patters all around. I walk with a little difficulty through the tall grass into the shade of the trees. As I cross the boundary, some fraction of the daylight is absorbed by the air. Colorless shade rises from the ground.

  The path runs by the wall, toward a paved terrace surrounded by overgrown planters. Over the sound of the rain, which still forms in distinct drops, instead of a seamless hush, and the remote surf, I hear violent splashing. In the middle of the terrace, I know, there is a rectangular, lichen-encrusted pool, now drained. When I once lifted the tarp that covered it, I saw only the crumpled brown remains of dead water lilies smeared against the bottom. The terrace is ringed with empty pedestals upon which some classical figures once had stood – I come up behind one of these, to which there still adheres a single broken, heavily veined foot, flexed in mid-step, in time to see a figure recoil into the bushes opposite me. A young woman lies flat on the pavement, her head bobs in the agitated blue water of the pool – who refilled it? – her arms up hands floating half netted in the black tendrils of her hair.

  I step forward, looking at her in confusion. Someone else works here?

  I hear a step behind me and feel a light hand on my shoulder, and sudden pain – my heart gulps, flails…dizzy, my body weighted, I turn a little as the hand is removed from my shoulder. Something is pulled from my back. The world lists and slides away, the picture I see sets back into my mind slowly – lean Kajetan, tall, hands diffident behind his back, his face fluoresced in a white smile. White and red. The pavement buffets me. Now I am floating, the wind in my hair, not on my face.

  Water clicks at intervals in my ear, the water is red and white. My hands rise nerveless to the surface. The water convulses once, the body beside me launches forward curling limp down into the water trailing long lacy sleeves of bubbles, and a plume of her blood like thick smoke rises and envelopes me. Long sleeves of red reach languidly for the bottom, and cross long white sleeves of bubbles.

  Now I can see only the featureless, blue depths.

  His memories remove their disguises and show themselves for what they are. His dreams file past, smiling, showing their teeth – I am trying to keep hold of them…of one at least, only leave me one.

  None of them are mine.

  …the water grows calmer and calmer, and soon will be completely still.

  …the motion it lends me will abandon me, and I will lie completely still.

  …my face is dead, my harmless teeth smiling bitterly. Yes…yes, of course.

  My Father’s Friends

  This is theatre critic Simon Klai – here is his wife Doriandra, these are their two sons: Louy and Leonard. Simon is acerbic, impatient, acute, aloof. He loves his family as if from on high.

  First Exhibit:

  Simon on his way to the newspa
per office to present his copy. Double breasted suit, silk tie, hat, overcoat…walking stick, soft leather briefcase with two buckled straps. It is early morning. The streets are still fairly empty. His breath mists in the air. Alert, leaning forward, walking briskly although he is not late, he watches the pavement pass under his feet…darts glances this way and that. The sun is still low and cold in the sky. Crossing a bridge, Simon’s steps come slower; he is looking at the sun. He stops, his eyes on the sun. He does not lean on the bridge’s stone rail; he is rigid, shoulders back, briefcase at the end of his arm, his stick held firmly in his right hand at about a forty-five degree angle to the street. A car whirs by, misses him only by inches – he does not move. He is staring at the sun as though he’d never seen it before.

  Second Exhibit:

  Later the same day: Simon is sitting on a bench with his head back. After a few hours he rises stiffly and crosses the park, walking slowly, a little unevenly. Presently he raises his head – he is on a narrow side street that curves away to the left. Just ahead, a hotel signboard hangs over the street; white façade, billowing urns of flowers. The lobby is small, filled with dusky golden light and a carpet smell. Simon takes a suite on the uppermost floor; in shirtsleeves and stockings he orders a bottle sent up from the bar. He tips the girl lavishly. In the days to come, despite his straitened condition, he will stop ordering bottles; sortie out to the stores and back, instead.

  On the tenth day, he checks out. Home is only a few blocks away. He lets himself in during the middle of the day, when the boys are at school and Doriandra is rehearsing. Lying on the bed, the pillows smell of her hair. When she returns, he will present her with an uncannily reasonable excuse for his absence.

  Third Exhibit:

  It is a cloudy morning. Simon reaches for his umbrella, taking its handle with two fingers, then his head twists on his neck slightly as though a thought had very forcibly occurred to him, and he instead takes his heavy walking stick. As he steps down the stairs he inspects the stick, peels the india rubber tip from the end and tosses it back into the umbrella stand.

  On the street: the inaugurating first drops of rain patter on his shoulders. Cause and effect – he heads for the awning of a bakery along with several other adjacent pedestrians. Halfway there he stops, and then continues past the bakery through empty streets, keeping to the lee of the buildings so as to stay dry – into an area of a few blocks in size currently under renovation after a fire – burnt shells, new lumber, frames and bricks, tools lie in the street. Striding against the rain all at once he stops, turns a little indecisively to the right, looking around as though trying to sight a sound, then slips into the gaping front door of a partially rebuilt house. Once under its roof, he shakes the rain from his hat and coat. He stands, seems to wait, in what once was the entry way – smell of plaster dust and fresh paint. Now he quietly climbs the stairs to the second floor apartment, which opens out to the right. The kitchen – a white box, fifteen feet square, two windows without glass admit the sound of the rain. A boy about eight or nine looks up at him, rain dropping from his clothes. Simon walks toward the boy.

  ‘I was trying to get out of the rain.’

  He seems to think Simon is a contractor, or a security man. Simon’s stick flashes up and cracks down over the boy’s head. The boy crouches without quite falling down and veers randomly toward the wall opposite the door. Simon raises the stick again, then his head jerks and he alters his grip, taking the stick in both hands and driving the end into the boy’s stomach. A purple stain spreads from the boy’s solar plexus and he falls on his side holding himself. Simon straddles the boy and churns the stick up and down on him with all his weight. There are two softly audible snapping sounds. Now the boy is limp, breath rattling. Simon turns him on his back with his toe, drops to his knees on the boy’s chest, and presses his stick across the boy’s throat. The eyes are still sluggishly moving. There is still a remnant of fear, surprise, imploring, on the boy’s face. Simon’s face is attentive, impassive. He looks like a dentist bending over a patient. The boy fumbles the stick weakly, then his limp hands fall away.

  Now the boy’s face is dark. Simon slips from the house. It is dusk; the rain has stopped; the uninhabited street is dark. Simon tosses his stick over a fence into a vacant lot as he walks briskly home. Drops of the boy’s blood seep into the dry grass.

  Fourth Exhibit:

  Autumnal gloom in the park of dead trees: mercurial light fades against a sky of deepening indigo. Simon passes the brick kiosk which houses the public bathrooms – he abruptly stops, and walks back to the kiosk.

  Behind the kiosk, there is a square of bare pavement hidden from public view by the overgrown iron fence that rings the park. A gun lies in the center of this area. It is loaded and fits in his coat pocket easily.

  Fifth Exhibit:

  A month later. The gun lies between a double row of books on Simon’s shelves. He keeps it in a cloth sack so that the powder won’t be smelled. The smell is strongest of course immediately after use.

  Doriandra has taken Leonard to visit her cousin. Simon is alone in the house with Louy, who has a cold. It’s night; Louy is asleep. Simon is reading – now he sets the book down, goes to the bookshelf, leaves the house.

  Two hours later he returns. He goes to the bookshelf.

  Louy is still asleep. Simon has crept into his room and sits on the edge of his bed, watching Louy sleep. He leans forward extremely slowly, and carefully takes Louy’s head in his hands. His thumbs drop down onto Louy’s eyelids with smooth, hydraulic control. Slow and gentle his thumbs roll the lids up, exposing the dreaming eyes. Simon leans forward, pouring his gaze into Louy’s eyes.

  Louy stirs, starts panting. His body twitches. He groans with a stifled voice that sounds as though it came from far away, from beneath the earth. Simon is curved over him, unblinking eyes’ gaze fastened on the boy’s dreaming eyes. Louy is screaming softly, his voice is trapped down inside him.

  Now Louy screams. He struggles with his father, awake, screwing his eyes shut, the screams siren out of him bigger than the room. Simon seizes Louy by the shoulders and shakes him violently, without saying a word. Louy’s head whips back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Simon shakes him shakes him – Louy goes limp, his head flips forward his chin striking his chest with a wet smack then is wrenched backward thumping against the pillow or the backboard. Simon shakes him, his arms pump mechanically in and out – in and out – in and out.

  Sixth Exhibit:

  A series of newspaper headlines – cholera has broken out here, here, and here. And now here, and now here. Growing concern – it’s an epidemic. A state of emergency is declared, cars spill out of the city, jam up on stone bridges, uniformed men check documents and direct traffic.

  Leonard sits in the back seat of his cousin’s car. His mother, Doriandra, and his cousin are carrying Louy down the front steps to the street. Louy is lean, feeble…dull eyes, slack mouth, nerveless limbs dangling. Tenderly they seat him next to Leonard, resting his head on Leonard’s lap. Cousin gets into the driver’s seat, the car bobbing under him like a raft. Doriandra walks around the car to the front passenger seat…hard, metallic eyes.

  This car will take them out to their cousin’s place in the country, where they will be safe from the plague.

  …Newspapers…they filter in now and then…and on the radio – stories of riots…chaos…

  Seventh Exhibit:

  Hands in his coat pockets, Simon moves powerfully down the street. Now and then groups of youths rush past – cold gusts of wind bring chaotic noise of a window breaking here, a dreamlike police whistle far away.

  Suddenly alone in the street, Simon turns into an alley which intersects another at a right angle, a T. Two boys and a girl eating old bread, he shoots the one on the left. The boy crumples, his head striking the pavement with a sharp, hollow noise. The girl springs to her feet and runs down the right arm of the T, and the other boy stands up staring at his dead friend
with his mouth open. Arm straight Simon aims at him and shoots him in the stomach. The boy’s body folds forward at the waist and he falls on his head face down. His legs slide back gradually, his bottom in the air.

  The right arm of the T opens into a small enclosed lot – the girl rounds the corner of the building to the right as he fires his gun. The bullet tugs at her right heel, blows off the heel strap of her shoe – it drops on a tuft of grass – she disappears behind the corner.

  The lot is framed by the solid, continuous wall of the armory running the length of the block, on his left. To Simon’s right, the building whose corner she had turned; and before him, the rear of an L-shaped hotel…heaps of rubbish, trash cans, mattresses, a stove. Two escapes: she might run straight ahead, or to the right.

  Simon turns to the right – with his left eye he detects a patch of red earth by the stove. There is another red spot, there between the two garbage cans by the armory wall, the other way out. The girl hops from her hiding place. Simon’s arm flies automatically out and up level. He shoots her in the head, the girl plops onto the ground, a wide tear in her head above the ear. The bullet strikes the wall and shears off a flake of brick. It spins through the reverberating air like a wobbling top, and hits the grass with a muffled thump.

  Simon trots past the girl’s folded body, down the alley. He is heading for the street when like a marionette his body jerkily twists to the left and he slips instead through a back door hanging off its hinges. A moment later curious heads are craning, peering down the alley…mouths are rounding, they see a heavy bundle there, lying bisected by watery sunlight. They see it is a dead girl. As they rush to her side, Simon emerges calmly from the front door of the building into which he had so awkwardly retreated, walking with unremarkable haste. He raises his left arm and pulls the sleeve away from his watch; his eyes, shaded by the brim of his hat, hawkishly scan the street.