“Then he isn’t touching himself?” I remember that she asked. “Are you sure it’s not that?”
The doctor moved in front of me, so close that his head seemed to hang above my own, and said, “Beto?”
“Heribeto, answer,” my grandmother said.
“Beto,” the doctor repeated.
“Who told you?” I asked.
“About covering your eyes? Your grandmother. According to what she says, some of your cousins and siblings have seen you do this over the past months.”
“It’s not true,” I said.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, except that you could hurt yourself and people would have to take care of you. Besides, don’t you get bored like that, not being able to see, and speaking to yourself?”
I wanted to cover my eyes, but before I could do so my mother grabbed my arms and pulled them away.
“Don’t close your eyes,” my grandmother said.
“Please, Ma’am, let go of him,” the doctor said, and my mother let me go. I didn’t dare cover my eyes again. “Thank you. Look, Beto, nothing will happen to you. I told you, Beto, that your siblings or your cousins are always watching out for you…”
“It’s not true,” I said, but then, I don’t know why, I thought that I couldn’t tell him anything about Pai, nor about the two sides, nor anything.
But then he said, “No? Well, no matter, don’t worry. What’s more, if you want we can talk about something else. Shall we talk about another thing?”
“What thing?”
He took out a pencil and showed me its eraser. He placed it so close to my face that suddenly I saw two erasers and I had to cross my eyes for them to become just one.
“I propose that we play a game.”
“What game?”
“You’ll like it, Beto,” my mother said.
“Do what the doctor says,” my grandmother said.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not difficult. It’s nice. You don’t even need to get up or move. Shall we play?”
“Say yes to the doctor,” my grandmother said.
“Fine,” I said.
“Very good! Now, look here. Don’t take your eyes off the eraser. Pay close attention to it.”
“Are you going to be able to make it so he doesn’t do this any more, doctor?” my grandmother said.
“Ma’am, please, can you take your mother…?”
“I’m not going to be taken anywhere.”
“Then, please, remain silent, it’s necessary.” And then to me, “Pay close attention to the eraser, Beto. Don’t take your eyes off it. I am going to begin to move it…It’s a game, don’t take your eyes off it.”
“We’re not going to have to lock him up in an asylum, will we?” my grandmother said, and I knew what an asylum was, and I couldn’t bear it any more, I closed my eyes and threw myself off the black bed, but when I got up and ran I banged into a wall head-first and fell flat on my back. Someone picked me up. I was so surprised that I didn’t feel any pain and I started to scream. I kept screaming until long after we’d left the office.
* * *
—
On the way home in a taxi, I cried without either my mother or my grandmother paying any attention to me. They spoke between themselves as if I weren’t there, and I could barely understand what they were saying.
“No, Mamá, I’m telling you he’s very young to be going around…It just can’t be…”
“Your brother Rafael was already a pervert at that age! I’ve known him his entire life!”
“Mamá, please, enough is enough.”
“All the men of this family are layabouts and womanizers, Carlota, don’t think I’ve forgotten about that husband of yours.”
“Mamá, stop it…you’re saying sheer…!”
I thought of a film I had seen, with my cousins, in which an asylum appeared: the people were tied to a chair, they played this horrible music for them and did something so they could never close their eyes. I thought that, if they did this to me, I would never again be with Pai. Suddenly, I had an idea.
“Mamá, Carlota,” I told them. “Mamá, look. I won’t do it again. I won’t pretend to be invisible anymore.”
“You, Carlota, have no idea what I’ve had to go through…”
“And you don’t know how it feels for your own son not to tell you…!”
“Excuse me,” I said. “I won’t do it again.”
“Shut up, Carlota.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“Yes, Mamá.”
“And when we get home I want you to find Queta for me, because her mother is even more irresponsible than you and the other day…”
* * *
—
For an entire month I didn’t cover my eyes even once. In fact, I almost didn’t even close them and I looked everyone in the face, so they could see what I was doing. So I did my chores, watched the matches, ate, went to school with Queta, put cream on my grandmother. I had to blink, because otherwise my eyes would tear, but blinks don’t last very long. I was worried to think I’d said a lie, and that everything I was doing was to insist on that lie, and at night I felt bad. On the other hand, I thought, I couldn’t do anything else…
And that’s how things went until one night, in my bed, in my room, something woke me. I opened my eyes and saw, by the light of the streetlights outside, which always snuck through the blinds, Queta’s face, almost touching mine, hanging above me as the doctor’s face had done. She was surprised to see me open my eyes but she didn’t move. I was going to say something when she, without saying anything, without changing her expression, as if she wore a mask of herself, gave me a kiss on the lips.
Then she pulled back, said, “Jerk, jerk, jerk,” in a soft voice, and left.
For a long time, I didn’t know what to do. And then sleep began to overtake me again, and I even thought I’d fallen asleep, and was dreaming, when I closed my eyes and heard a voice, “Beto? What’s wrong? Why haven’t you come to visit me anymore?”
“Pai?” I said, and I understood that she was there, with me, and I got up and searched for her face with my hand but when I touched her she drew away. “Pai, I’m sorry…”
And another voice, deep, that of a very large and strong man, said, “First you touch her and then you leave her all alone. Very nice. Now you’re going to see what’s in store for you, you twit.”
“No, Mogo!” Pai said. “No, he…”
“Shut up, you.”
I opened my eyes and refused to close them. I ran to my grandmother’s room and hid underneath her bed and that’s where they found me in the morning. My eyes were dried out (that’s what they said) and all day they had to give me eyedrops and convince me to go to sleep. For a long time I refused, and even more when my mother or my grandmother appeared in the room to cry, to give me TLC or threaten me. When my cousins and siblings began to arrive home from school, it was harder and harder for me to resist, and I can barely remember their faces coming in to see me and laughing. The only one who didn’t laugh was Queta, who at one point appeared very close by once more, with her face red and pouty. She said something I didn’t understand. I must have slept then, because I was in my own bed and it was night once more when I opened my eyes again.
And as soon as I dared to close them, I heard the deep voice, “Hello, boy. Are you ready? Ready for your punishment?”
“Mogo,” Pai said. “No, you’re not going to…”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, Mogo.”
“Get him out of the bed.”
“Yes, Mogo,” Pai said.
I didn’t think she would do it. I never thought that. But suddenly someone pulled back my blankets and threw me to the floor. I heard Queta shout, or one of my other cousins, who had been wakened in the darkness, and I
thought to open my eyes again, but Mogo said, “Don’t open your eye. I don’t see your little girlfriend…that other girl who you were touching the other day…”
“That’s not true.”
“…but by touch alone I’ll find her, so don’t you open your eyes. Do you understand me? And if not her, then it’s your Mamá, Carlota.”
“She isn’t my…”
“Shut up. And come.”
The others were beginning to get up and turn on the lights when we three left (I, holding the hands of the others) and we walked toward the yard. We were already there when I heard other voices, footsteps, more light switches.
“I have a feeling,” Mogo said, “that I’m going to adopt you. I am going to take you to live with us, and I am going to beat you until you’re educated.”
“I’m sorry,” Pai said, “but he told me I had to bring him to you, otherwise he’d hit me…”
“Shut up,” Mogo said, and I heard a heavy thud and whine. Then something banged against the floor and I knew it had been Pai. “And you, boy, raise your hand.” I lifted my right hand and immediately felt a sharp blow against one knee. I fell to the floor, shouting, and Mogo said, “My mistake! Oh, sorry…Do you forgive me, boy?”
“Mamá,” I said.
“What you felt was my cane,” Mogo said. “And if you open your mouth again I’ll use this on it. It’s better if we go back with you. We’ll play a game. You’re going to like it. Don’t move.”
I stood up as best I could and took a few steps, I didn’t know in what direction.
“Don’t you move, you bitch! Speak just once so I know where you are. Speak!”
I stood still, where I was, with my hands over my eyes (artist’s hands, I thought, I don’t know why) afraid to open my eyes, to close them, afraid of everything. I heard the cane fall to my left and to my right, once and then again and again, and I clenched my teeth so as to not shout out while my grandmother called out to everyone and told them that I wasn’t in the yard, that they needed to go out to look for me, that who knew where I was…
“Speak!” shouted Mogo. “Where are you? I tell you you’re going to like it! Come here!”
Nathan Ballingrud (1970– ) is an American writer who lives in North Carolina. His first collection, North American Lake Monsters (2013), was published by Small Beer Press, won the Shirley Jackson Award, and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, British Fantasy Award, and World Fantasy Award. His first short story, “A Casual Conversation with Angels,” was published in The Silver Web in 1994 shortly after he attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. He moved from his hometown in North Carolina to New Orleans thinking that he needed more life experience to become a better writer, when what he really needed was more time to write, although the city certainly influenced his later work. His novella The Visible Filth was adapted into the movie Wounds, directed by Babak Anvari and starring Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson. Though he is known as one of the most interesting contemporary horror writers, “The Malady of Ghostly Cities” is a bit of a departure from Ballingrud’s usual fare. It was originally published in The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases (2003) edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts.
THE MALADY OF GHOSTLY CITIES
Nathan Ballingrud
THE FIRST KNOWN CASE of the Malady of Ghostly Cities was discovered in 1976 by the Argentinean Navy during efforts to establish a base on Cook Island, the southernmost of the South Sandwich Islands, just off the coast of Antarctica. The victim was one Ivar Jorgensen, a member of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen’s 1910–12 expedition to the South Pole.
According to Amundsen’s diaries (Vol. XXIV: Racing the Empire, Bk. 3, pg. 276), Jorgensen abandoned the party under cover of night, stealing a sledge and four dogs to aid his flight. Amundsen makes little mention of any change in Jorgensen’s demeanor or appearance before this incredible event, noting only that “(h)e seemed to be suffering from a sort of delirium. The poor fool won’t last two days on his own.”
In fact, he lasted considerably more than two days. He managed to travel several hundred miles over Antarctica’s brutal country, even crossing the narrow scope of the Weddell Sea, until he beached himself on Cook Island, where he succumbed to his disease. His remains abided there in frozen silence for 64 years.
Since then, three other cases have been discovered, making possible a rudimentary definition of the disease’s manifestations, if not its causes. Simply put, it is a malady that transforms the victim—seemingly overnight—into a city populated by phantoms. The identity of the victim, along with a record of dreams, fears, and geographies of the body, are contained in a small series of bound volumes, located in a hidden cellar, buffered against intrusion like a brain in a skull.
In each case, the victim was apparently a traveler far from home, and indeed, far from any substantial civilization. Otherwise, characteristics vary dramatically.
The Jorgensen city resembled, naturally enough, a turn-of-the-century Norwegian fishing village. It was populated by a host of spectral figures, solid in appearance but breaking into little whirlpools of cloud and mist if one attempted to touch them, coalescing again moments later as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. They interacted freely with one another, but did not seem to notice in any fashion the Argentinean soldiers who stood in their midst and demanded, at great volume, to know how long they had been there, and what it was they thought they were doing.
The Jorgensen city is one of only two cases in which the secret library has been discovered. The small series of books that composes these libraries gives a detailed account of the victim’s life. This is not an account, however, of the mundane aspects of that life (although it seems those can be gleaned from the comprehensive footnotes that supplement the texts); they are instead a precise record of the imagination. As such, they are filled with the exploits and terrors of the victims’ dreams, secret thoughts, and the potential resolutions of their lives. Esoteric knowledge is also contained here, often at a level of scholarship far exceeding that which the victim could have reasonably attained during his lifetime (for example, Jorgensen’s library is reputed to have contained a moving map of the night sky visible from Cook Island, one for every day of the year since his birth in 1882; the stars crawled across the pages as they would the natural sky; clouds floated past, rain and snow rose from the pages of stormy days in a fine mist).
The other known city is Colleen Norton, a discontented college student from Columbia University in New York City, who disappeared from her classes and the lives of her family and friends without a word of warning. She traveled to North Africa, taking up with a band of Bedouin wanderers, ingratiating herself to them with her uncanny ability to pick up languages and her extensive knowledge of their culture. Evidently, she already carried the disease, however, and within weeks a mysterious new city was half buried by the roaming dunes of the Sahara Desert: it is a city built entirely of glass; its silent occupants can be glimpsed only through the reflections they cast.
The books here were discovered in an underground chamber cleverly disguised by a series of angled mirrors. The books revealed a tempestuous inner life of longings and ambitions. Among them were a series of novels that she might have written depicting the histories of dream cities fashioned by a secret society of architects who have severed their ties with the material concerns and restrictions of human life, as well as a two-volume catalogue of the Libraries of Heaven and Hell that included the half dozen locations on Earth where some of these books can be acquired.
Two other recently discovered cities are believed to be results of the disease, although as of this writing their libraries have yet to be discovered. One is located in the Ghost Forest in central Brazil. This city, fog-garlanded, rain-haunted, is constructed from the bones of exotic birds of the area, and is the only city that seems to have a discernible relationship with its immediate
environs. Its fragile construction is the principal reason for the continued mystery surrounding the location of the library: the hollow bones of the birds are easily crushed by even the lightest explorer. For now, we must stand in frustration at its borders, gazing into its complicated arrangements and listening to the whispered, melodic conversations of its hidden inhabitants, which emerge from the city in glowing, gossamer loops and coils, illuminating the wet green foliage and our own astonished faces.
The other city exists in a labyrinth of caves, tunnels, and abandoned mine shafts in the southern Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. The city is a dark, sprawling arrangement of stunted buildings, suffused with the perpetual sound of grinding machinery. The inhabitants of this awful place have been stripped of all their skin: the glistening tangles of muscle and tendon flex and surge in absolute darkness, staggering around on broken limbs, hustling to and fro in an excited caper. They are prone to sudden, spectacular acts of violence, rending their fellow citizens into shivering slabs of meat. The muted sound of angry exertions, grunts of rage and effort, follow these monsters around like dogs on chains.
There is much disagreement regarding the length of time this disease has been with us. Some maintain that it is a product of the Industrial Revolution, depicting in bold strokes the subjugation of the soul to the mechanized muscle of unbounded greed and arrogance. Others suppose it is a traveler’s disease, in which the victim’s profound desire for home manifests itself in this unearthly architecture, although the fantastic nature of most of these cities seems to undermine this theory. Others posit that the Malady of Ghostly Cities has afflicted humankind for thousands of years, that we have in fact made homes of the corpses of its victims, and that what we perceive as ghosts are the world’s true citizens, the ones left here by the memory of the dead.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 145