Shriek: An Afterword

by Jeff VanderMeer

  “It all sounded so logical in her book,” Duncan complained to me as we looked down at Trillian Square from his apartment window. Below us, M & P and the rest of the tourists were milling about, not sure what to do. “It doesn’t matter that her proof is as insubstantial as mine.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but can’t you provide proof, Duncan? Can’t you do something?”

  “How? With another article for AFTOIS? All the mentions in the world in Mary’s books do me no good. I’m offered a few interview opportunities, but only if I play the role of clown or eccentric. Anything I said to them would be tainted and instantly discounted. Better not to speak at all.”

  Earlier, I had sighed and turned back to Mortar and Pestle.

  “You’re right. I wasn’t joking,” I said. “Duncan is my brother. So I’ll let him know what you said next time I see him. Now can we—”

  “And give him this letter,” Pestle said, pulling a sealed envelope out of her pocket and handing it to me.

  I took it from her as if she had given me a dead fish. What further surprises could the day hold? How patient should I be? It was difficult not to see them, on some level, as Sabon’s personal emissaries, sent to torment me.

  “…and give him your letter,” I continued, lying. I threw it away, unread, at the first opportunity. “But I have a favor to ask in return. I need you to relay a message for me.”

  That surprised them, but Mortar nodded and said, “That only seems fair.”

  The main appeal of Nativism to Ambergrisians was that it freed them from any responsibility to think about or do anything about the gray caps, while reassuring them that this was the most responsible thing they could do. And, in my opinion—I can already hear the howls of outrage, but I am unmoved—it absolved Ambergrisians from any guilt over the massacre perpetrated by Manzikert I.

  “Not to mention that it saved them from having to worry about another Silence,” Duncan said. M & P had disappeared from view. The square below was relatively quiet.

  “Not to mention,” I said.

  Perhaps the speed with which House Hoegbotton and House Frankwrithe & Lewden embraced Nativism proves Duncan’s theory. What better way for the gray caps to protect themselves than by convincing the Houses? {I think this enters the far reaches of that land known as the Paranoid Conspiracy Theory, Janice.} Meanwhile, those of us not as devoted to blind ideology have had to suffer through the Nativists’ huge rallies, their righteous speeches, their letter-writing campaigns when anything the least bit threatening to their worldview has the audacity to step out into the light. I would imagine that even Sabon never realized that Nativism would become so popular, or that it would drive her book sales for so long. {Although, you must admit, the mechanics of the Shift have put a stop to her momentum.}

  I had personal reasons for rejecting Sabon’s theory. Sometimes, during my tours of duty, I would see Sybel standing in the nearest available tree behind some mob listening to a Nativist speaker. He’d look back at me and shake his head, sadness in his eyes. After all, he’d been killed by a very specific deployment of the gray caps’ weapons. I’d lost a foot. It was hard to blame either outcome, ultimately, on the random, the unexplainable. At least, I refused to do so.

  “But how can we pass on a message from you?” Pestle asked.

  “Easy,” I said. “It’s for Mary Sabon. She is, after all, the leader of you Nativist types.”

  Mortar had already begun shaking his head, about to protest that they didn’t know Mary, that they’d only read her books, but I waved these objections aside, pulled them both close.

  Before the war, before Sybel’s death, before I became a gallery owner, this is what I would have said to them, either in a whisper or a roar: “First, let me point out that if you don’t deliver this message for me, I will have Duncan bring the gray caps down upon you like a plague so you can see for yourself just how motivated they are. So I suggest that as soon as I stop talking, you start searching for Sabon. I want you to tell Mary to stop misleading sycophantic morons like yourselves. To stop making it seem like everything in our lives is under our control, to stop undermining everything my brother has ever worked toward. To stop killing him by degrees, in public. To stop wasting your time and his time with these ridiculous theories of hers that only apply to her personal demons. To stop to stop to stop to stop to stop.”

  But I didn’t say that. I was Janice Shriek, former society figure, and I’ll be damned if I let any two-bit tourists just off the slow boat from Stockton get under my skin.

  What drove Mary to the cruelty of showing her “affection” for Duncan as mentor by tearing down all he had built up—and doing so after he had already become comfortable as a ghost—I do not know. Perhaps it was not just fear. Perhaps it was out of envy. Perhaps it was to show she could do it all better.

  The practical effect of Sabon’s resurrection of discussions initiated by Duncan was that Frankwrithe & Lewden bought the rights to his books from Hoegbotton & Sons and proceeded to publish them in a badly edited, hideously expensive, horribly abridged omnibus entitled Cinsorium & Other Historical Fables {Dad would have punned it as Sin-sore-ium & Other Hysterical Foibles}, an edition intended solely for the library market so that scholars could peruse it as part of their primary text exploration of Sabon’s books. The rights Duncan had sold to Hoegbotton were all-encompassing and he could do nothing but accept a trickle of royalties from publication of the omnibus. He could not stop the butchery of his original texts. {Nor could I afford to object anyway, my income having dropped off precipitously since AFTOIS could not sustain me by itself.}

  The omnibus received scant attention from reviewers—it was considered a historical curiosity, reflecting the “hysteria and ignorance of a less enlightened time,” as one of the few notices put it—meaning that kind readers like Mortar and Pestle only encountered Shriek through Sabon’s filter. One hates to think of Duncan struggling to express himself while F&L and his beloved Mary struggle to snuff him out, but that’s exactly what was happening.

  Despite Sirin’s assertions from time to time—rebutted by Lacond at many a furious AFTOIS meeting, where according to Duncan, the issue came up continually—that Sabon meant no harm by her actions—perhaps even the opposite—and that neither did Hoegbotton in selling the rights to Frankwrithe & Lewden, I’m certain she resurrected him merely to more effectively destroy him. Whether she meant to or not. Nativism, as it turns out, was an excellent descriptor for Mary’s own actions.

  What made me angriest, though, is that Duncan didn’t even seem to mind, as if accepting her right to take advantage of him. {I couldn’t hate her for it. And even as the sight of butchered chapters and paragraphs cut me to the quick, part of me thrilled to see any of my words back in print, in any form.}

  No, what I said to Mortar and Pestle with sincerity and with hope, as I handed them my cheat sheets for the rest of the tour was simply, “If you do ever see Mary, tell her that Duncan sends his love.” It’s a pity I couldn’t maintain my composure later, on a certain marble staircase, but I’ve never claimed to be consistent.

  Then I put my arms around Mortar and Pestle and turned all three of us to face the tour group.

  “I’m afraid there’s been a change of plans. These two fine upstanding citizens from Stockton will be leading the rest of the tour. Enjoy!”

  I left them without regret, Mortar and Pestle speechless, and climbed the steps to Duncan’s apartment overlooking Voss Bender Memorial Square, where we talked for quite some time, while below, through the open window, we witnessed the slow disintegration of the tour group.

  The Ambergris Tourism Board—caught between their dead dog slogans and their sense of profit, between my protestations of being “confused” as to the message we were trying to convey and their certainty that I’d known exactly what I was doing—contemplated firing me, but couldn’t quite summon the nerve.

  Most days since, I’ve been glad they didn’t.

  5

  Someti
mes—only sometimes—I wonder who I am writing this account for. Who will read this? Will they care? I am past the delusion that I’m writing an afterword for Duncan’s The Early History of Ambergris, and I suspect that you, dear reader, if you’ve come this far, are past that delusion as well.

  Sometimes, I think I’m writing out of anger and sadness, out of a sense of injustice—a sense that my life, that my brother’s life, should have been easier, that we should have been more successful. At other times, I think I’m writing this account to preserve some part of me after I’m gone. Or that I am in some sense trying to write past those bodies in the cathedral, or my red ribbons for wrists, or Duncan’s heartbreak.

  There are certainly those who would prefer I not write this account—they’d prefer to have the same image of Janice they’ve always had, the same thoughts about Duncan. A more full-bodied likeness would ruin all of the stylization they’ve spent years accreting to both of us. {Who are these people, so intent on our ruin? Your oft-mentioned flesh necklace? Janice, no one cares enough to create an image of us—and they haven’t for years.}

  Then there are those who simply hate what Duncan represents, those who cannot accept the truth and thus must reject the messenger along with the message. It’s common enough in life, isn’t it? Mary is a prime example. She’s still waiting there, at the party, but I honestly don’t want to write about that yet. There are more important things to discuss first, and it’s possible I won’t have time to finish this account, but I’ll soldier on because there’s nothing left to do.

  A gate. A mirror. A door.

  Somewhere there’s a door, surely?

  One afternoon, after I had guided a family from Stockton on a tour centered around Trillian the Great Banker, Sirin appeared at the head of the stairs leading to the second floor. He beckoned to me with one long, graceful finger, and disappeared up the steps.

  His office was the same as it had always been, down to the butterfly paradise residing in glass flasks at his back.

  “I have a job for Duncan,” he said, without preamble, smiling from behind his desk.

  At the time, Duncan hadn’t yet begun to “benefit” from the pittance Frankwrithe & Lewden would pay him for the infamous omnibus and still made his marginal living editing the AFTOIS newsletter for a Lacond whose health had begun to fail. So the money would come in handy. But I couldn’t imagine that Sirin, whose current fortunes depended on the continued publication of the great Mary Sabon, would have anything of value for Duncan.

  “What sort of job?” I asked, sitting down heavily. My stump was throbbing against the strap and wood of my artificial foot. If Sirin had been a kinder man, he would have met me on the first floor.

  “A writing kind of job,” he said, and smiled again. “The sort of writing job I think might appeal to Duncan, if presented to him in the right way.”

  I already didn’t like the sound of it.

  “What is it?”

  “We have a pamphlet we need written. The original writer proved unreliable and it’s scheduled for publication in less than three months.”

  “Unreliable how?”

  “He was blown up by a stray fungal bomb.”

  “Oh.”

  “But,” Sirin hastened to add, “it had nothing to do with his assignment. Wrong place, wrong time. Strictly.”

  “What’s the title of the pamphlet?”

  “The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris. Do you think Duncan would do it?”

  I didn’t know how I felt about this proposition. Sirin had more or less abandoned us after the war. On the other hand, he had gotten us a job during it. He had helped Mary more than us of late, but no one could say his choice didn’t reflect good business sense.

  “A travel guide?” I said.

  “Yes. A travel guide. Duncan will have to understand that up front. There will be no place for his outlandish theories in the piece, unless they add an element of entertainment. We don’t want to upset the tourists—think of the effect it would have on your own business.” Again, the smile, the upturning of the lips as his eyes acknowledged the debt I owed him for my position.

  He named a compelling price for completion of the project.

  “I’ll try,” I said. “Thanks for thinking of us.”

  I don’t really know how I felt. My expectations of influence and power had decreased so rapidly and so monumentally that I believe at the time I felt Sirin was bestowing a great honor on Duncan. I believe I thought that Sirin was attempting to usher us back into the ranks of the Privileged, the Chosen. I was mistaken, but can anyone blame me for hoping?

  At the door, I turned and asked, “Why didn’t you give the assignment to Mary Sabon?” {And if not Sabon, surely a member of her flesh necklace would have welcomed the opportunity?}

  “She’s busy with other things,” and then, catching himself, “but more importantly, she’s not the right person for this. Your brother is somewhat unique in that regard.”

  It did not take much convincing—by then Duncan had begun to chafe under the restrictions and limited audience of his AFTOIS soapbox. He welcomed the opportunity to do something different. {I welcomed the promise of money.}

  “It’ll be like old times,” he said in this very room. “It will be like before the war.”

  His right eye writhed with gold-green fungi. His left index finger had formed a curled purple tendril, like a fern. His neck was encrusted with a golden patina that pulsed like the skin of a squid. His smell was indescribable. Yes, it would be like old times.

  For two months, Duncan lugged thousands of pages of books, magazines, and old papers down here. For weeks, he labored on this very typewriter, creating his early history of the city. I believe he thought he might be creating a Machine of his own, made from the city’s leavings. {The assignment came at the right time—it came as I was attempting to synthesize and explain all that I had learned over the years. It took two months, yes, but also thirty years to write that account. My findings might have been destined for a travel guide, but that didn’t mean I had to make them shallow or incomplete.}

  I left him to it, after a while. I stopped in every few days to see how it was going, but that was all—I had my own life to lead, and an ever-growing list of tourists to exhume the city’s highlights for….

  When Duncan showed me pieces of his essay so that I could report to Sirin on his progress, he did so by reading selections of it to me aloud.

  “The importance of squid to the Ambergrisian economy cannot be overstated,” he would say.

  “Not squid again,” I would say, and he would make a hushing sound.

  “Certainly the rebel Stretcher Jones learned to appreciate the freshwater squid, as it sustained his army for long periods of time when they were relegated to the salt marshes on the fringes of the Kalif’s empire,” he would intone.

  I would catch Sybel’s eye and he would fold his arms and shake his head, while I nodded in agreement. {How like you to conjure up a dead man to agree with you.}

  “The type of cannonballs used by the Kalif during the Occupation proved useful in the creation of walls during the rebuilding efforts.” {A very interesting fact that many a tourist would have found useful, if it had survived Sirin’s sword.}

  And on and on. It didn’t sound much like a tourist guide, based on my experience guiding tourists around, but at least Duncan was making progress toward completion. I didn’t think it productive to give him advice until he had finished it.

  But, at the end of two months, Duncan bypassed me completely and sent his finished manuscript to Sirin via courier. It was six hundred pages long. Of those six hundred pages, two hundred and fifty pages consisted of long, convoluted footnotes, some of which had their own footnotes and additional annotations. I think he knew what I would have said had I read it first.

  Sirin called me up to his office, where we could both contemplate the green-stained pages that lay in an awkward lump on his desk. Some of the pages looked like dried, vein
ed lettuce leaves. Others had the consistency of moist glue. Still others had a dark phosphorescence to them. I could have sworn I could hear a low hum coming from the pile.

  “What,” he asked, “am I to make of this?”

  “It does look a bit long,” I said.

  Sirin spluttered. “The length? Are you looking at the same pages I am? The length is not really the issue. I mean, certainly, the length is an issue, but not the issue. Have you read it?”

  “Only the parts Duncan read aloud to me.”

  Sirin sat back in his chair, a look of disgust on his face.

  “Everything I hate about AFTOIS is in this manuscript, and then some, Janice. Every old wives’ tale, every fear, every paranoia. He even tries to tie your father’s death into his web of gray cap conspiracy theories.”

  “Is it really that bad?”

  “Janice, not only that, but he attributes any number of insane theories to James Lacond that sound beyond the pale even for that old rogue.”

  I didn’t bother to tell him that this was intentional. Duncan had disclosed to me that Lacond’s reputation had been so compromised by his obsessions that he found it useful to let others use his name as cover for those theories that might discredit them, while he wrote under his own pseudonyms. {“James Lacond” became a house name at the newsletter. It got out of control, but it felt good, too. A kind of self-destructive impulse embedded in it, a way of acknowledging our own irrelevance, but reveling in it. It embodied Lacond’s self-deprecating manner. I merely played off of this in the Early History. Ultimately, Sirin ignored it and left it in, much to our delight.}

  “You can’t edit it into shape?” I said instead, already knowing the answer.

  “No, I can’t,” Sirin said. “I can’t save this.” A pause, a calculating stare. “Why? Do you think you can?”