The Weird

by Ann

  ‘We are, indeed. We are that.’

  ‘As we have just come from a really delightful party, to which we shall soon return.’

  ‘Once we’ve found the fuel, that is,’ said Farr, waving his saw in the air. By now he had found the courage to come out and face us directly.

  ‘Which brings me to the question,’ said Tweedy. ‘Have you seen any driftwood lying about the premises? We’ve been looking high and low, and we can’t seem to find any of the blasted stuff.’ ‘Thought there’d be piles of it,’ said Farr, ‘but all there is is sand, don’t you see?’

  ‘I would have sworn you were looking for oysters,’ said Carl.

  Again, Tweedy appeared startled.

  ‘O Oysters, come and walk with us!’

  The Walrus did beseech…

  ‘Oysters?’ he asked. ‘Oh, no, we’ve got the oysters. All we lack is the means to cook ’em.’

  ‘’Course we could always use a few more,’ said Farr, looking at his companion.

  ‘I suppose we could, at that,’ said Tweedy thoughtfully.

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t help you fellows with the driftwood problem,’ said Carl, ‘but you’re more than welcome to a drink.’

  There was something unfamiliar about the tone of Carl’s voice that made my ears perk up. I turned to look at him, and then had difficulty covering up my astonishment.

  It was his eyes. For once, for the first time, they were really friendly.

  I’m not saying Carl had fishy eyes, blank eyes – not at all. On the surface, that is. On the surface, with his eyes, with his face, with the handling of his entire body, Carl was a master of animation and expression. From sympathetic, heartfelt warmth, all the way to icy rage, and on every stop in-between, Carl was completely convincing.

  But only on the surface. Once you got to know Carl, and it took a while, you realized that none of it was really happening. That was because Carl had died, or been killed, long ago. Possibly in childhood. Possibly he had been born dead. So, under the actor’s warmth and rage, the eyes were always the eyes of a corpse.

  But now it was different. The friendliness here was genuine, I was sure of it. The smile of Tweedy, of the Walrus, had performed a miracle. Carl had risen from his tomb. I was in honest awe.

  ‘Delighted, old chap!’ said Tweedy.

  They accepted their drinks with obvious pleasure, and we completed the introductions as they sat down to join us. I detected a strong smell of fish when Tweedy sat down beside me, but, oddly, I didn’t find it offensive in the least. I was glad he’d chosen me to sit by. He turned and smiled at me, and my heart melted a little more.

  It soon turned out that the drinking we’d done before had only scratched the surface. Tweedy and Farr were magnificent boozers, and their gusto encouraged us all to follow suit.

  We drank absurd toasts and were delighted to discover that Tweedy was an incredible raconteur. His specialty was outrageous fantasy: wild tales involving incongruous objects, events, and characters. His invention was endless.

  ‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

  ‘To talk of many things:

  Of shoes – and ships – and sealing-wax –

  Of cabbages – and kings –

  And why the sea is boiling hot –

  And whether pigs have wings.’

  We laughed and drank, and drank and laughed, and I began to wonder why in hell I’d spent my life being such a gloomy, moody son of a bitch, been such a distrustful and suspicious bastard, when the whole secret of everything, the whole core secret, was simply to enjoy it, to take it as it came.

  I looked around and grinned, and I didn’t care if it was a foolish grin. Everybody looked all right, everybody looked swell, everybody looked better than I’d ever seen them look before.

  Irene looked happy, honestly and truly happy. She, too, had found the secret. No more pills for Irene, I thought. Now that she knows the secret, now that she’s met Tweedy, who’s given her the secret, she’ll have no more need of those goddamn pills.

  And I couldn’t believe Horace and Mandie. They had their arms around each other, and their bodies were pressed close together, and they rocked as one being when they laughed at Tweedy’s wonderful stories. No more nagging for Mandie, I thought, and no more cringing for Horace, now they’ve learned the secret.

  And then I looked at Carl, laughing and relaxed and absolutely free of care, absolutely unchilled, finally, at last, after years of –

  And then I looked at Carl again.

  And then I looked down at my drink, and then I looked at my knees, and then I looked out at the sea, sparkling, clean, remote and impersonal.

  And then I realized it had grown cold, quite cold, and that there wasn’t a bird or a cloud in the sky.

  The sea was wet as wet could be,

  The sands were dry as dry.

  You could not see a cloud, because

  No cloud was in the sky:

  No birds were flying overhead –

  There were no birds to fly.

  That part of the poem was, after all, a perfect description of a lifeless earth. It sounded beautiful at first; it sounded benign. But then you read it again and you realized that Carroll was describing barrenness and desolation.

  Suddenly Carl’s voice broke through and I heard him say:

  ‘Hey, that’s a hell of an idea, Tweedy! By God, we’d love to! Wouldn’t we, gang?’

  The others broke out in an affirmative chorus and they all started scrambling to their feet around me. I looked up at them, like someone who’s been awakened from sleep in a strange place, and they grinned down at me like loons.

  ‘Come on, Phil!’ cried Irene.

  Her eyes were bright and shining, but it wasn’t with happiness. I could see that now.

  ‘It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said,

  ‘To play them such a trick…’

  I blinked my eyes and stared at them, one after the other.

  ‘Old Phil’s had a little too much to drink!’ cried Mandie, laughing. ‘Come on, old Phil! Come on and join the party!’

  ‘What party?’ I asked.

  I couldn’t seem to get located. Everything seemed disorientated and grotesque.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Phil,’ said Carl, ‘Tweedy and Farr, here, have invited us to join their party. There’s no more drinks left, and they’ve got plenty!’

  I set my plastic cup down carefully on the sand. If they would just shut up for a moment, I thought, I might be able to get the fuzz out of my head.

  ‘Come along, sir!’ boomed Tweedy jovially. ‘It’s only a pleasant walk!’

  ‘O Oysters, come and walk with us!’

  The Walrus did beseech.

  ‘A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk

  Along the briny beach…’

  He was smiling at me, but the smile didn’t work anymore.

  ‘You cannot do with more than four,’ I told him.

  ‘Uhm? What’s that?’

  ‘We cannot do with more than four,

  To give a hand to each.’

  ‘I said, “You cannot do with more than four.”’

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ said Farr, the Carpenter.

  ‘Well, uhm, then,’ said the Walrus, ‘if you feel you really can’t come, old chap…’

  ‘What, in Christ’s name, are you all talking about?’ asked Mandie.

  ‘He’s hung up on that goddamn poem,’ said Carl. ‘Lewis Carroll’s got the yellow bastard scared.’

  ‘Don’t be such a party pooper, Phil!’ said Mandie.

  ‘To hell with him,’ said Carl. And he started off, and all the others followed him. Except Irene.

  ‘Are you sure you really don’t want to come, Phil?’ she asked.

  She looked frail and thin against the sunlight. I realized there really wasn’t much of her, and that what there was had taken a terrible beating.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t. Are you sure you want to go?’

  ‘Of course I do, Ph
il.’

  I thought of the pills.

  ‘I suppose you do,’ I said. ‘I suppose there’s really no stopping you.’

  ‘No, Phil, there isn’t.’

  And then she stooped and kissed me. Kissed me very gently, and I could feel the dry, chapped surface of her lips and the faint warmth of her breath.

  I stood.

  ‘I wish you’d stay,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  And then she turned and ran after the others.

  I watched them growing smaller and smaller on the beach, following the Walrus and the Carpenter. I watched them come to where the beach curved around the bluff and watched them disappear behind the bluff.

  I looked up at the sky. Pure blue. Impersonal.

  ‘What do you think of this?’ I asked it.

  Nothing. It hadn’t even noticed.

  ‘Now, if you’re ready, Oysters dear,

  We can begin to feed.’

  ‘But not on us!’ the Oysters cried,

  Turning a little blue.

  ‘After such kindness, that would be

  A dismal thing to do!’

  A dismal thing to do.

  I began to run up the beach, toward the bluff. I stumbled now and then because I had had too much to drink. Far too much to drink. I heard small shells crack under my shoes, and the sand made whipping noises.

  I fell, heavily, and lay there gasping on the beach. My heart pounded in my chest. I was too old for this sort of footwork. I hadn’t had any real exercise in years. I smoked too much and I drank too much. I did all the wrong things. I didn’t do any of the right things.

  I pushed myself up a little and then I let myself down again. My heart was pounding hard enough to frighten me. I could feel it in my chest, frantically pumping, squeezing blood in and spurting blood out.

  Like an oyster pulsing in the sea.

  ‘Shall we be trotting home again?’

  My heart was like an oyster.

  I got up, fell up, and began to run again, weaving widely, my mouth open and the air burning my throat. I was coated with sweat, streaming with it, and it felt icy in the cold wind.

  ‘Shall we be trotting home again?’

  I rounded the bluff, and then I stopped and stood swaying, and then I dropped to my knees.

  The pure blue of the sky was unmarked by a single bird or cloud, and nothing stirred on the whole vast stretch of the beach.

  But answer came there none –

  And this was scarcely odd, because…

  Nothing stirred, but they were there. Irene and Mandie and Carl and Horace were there, and four others, too. Just around the bluff.

  ‘We cannot do with more than four…

  But the Walrus and the Carpenter had taken two trips.

  I began to crawl toward them on my knees. My heart, my oyster heart, was pounding too hard to allow me to stand.

  The other four had had a picnic, too, very like our own. They, too, had plastic cups and plates, and they, too, had brought bottles. They had sat and waited for the return of the Walrus and the Carpenter.

  Irene was right in front of me. Her eyes were open and stared at, but did not see, the sky. The pure blue uncluttered sky. There were a few grains of sand in her left eye. Her face was almost clear of blood. There were only a few flecks of it on her lower chin. The spray from the huge wound in her chest seemed to have traveled mainly downward and to the right. I stretched out my arm and touched her hand.

  ‘Irene,’ I said.

  But answer came there none –

  And this was scarcely odd, because

  They’d eaten every one.

  I looked up at the others. Like Irene, they were, all of them, dead. The Walrus and the Carpenter had eaten the oysters and left the shell.

  The Carpenter never found any firewood, and so they’d eaten them raw. You can eat oysters raw if you want to.

  I said her name once more, just for the record, and then I stood and turned from them and walked to the bluff. I rounded the bluff and the beach stretched before me, vast, smooth, empty, and remote.

  Even as I ran upon it, away from them, it was remote.

  Don’t Look Now

  Daphne du Maurier

  Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) was an extremely popular English author and playwright. Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca (1938), which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1941, Jamaica Inn (1936), and the story ‘The Birds’ (1963), all three movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Du Maurier’s ‘Don’t Look Now’ (1971), included herein, was adapted into a cult classic film directed by Nicolas Roeg in 1973. The novella is a masterpiece of the occult, its hints of a world beyond embodying the best of weird fiction. Du Maurier was one of five Women of Achievement selected for a set of British stamps issued in August 1996.

  ‘Don’t look now,’ John said to his wife, ‘but there are a couple of old girls two tables away who are trying to hypnotise me.’

  Laura, quick on cue, made an elaborate pretence of yawning, then tilted her head as though searching the skies for a non-existent aeroplane.

  ‘Right behind you,’ he added. ‘That’s why you can’t turn round at once – it would be much too obvious.’

  Laura played the oldest trick in the world and dropped her napkin, then bent to scrabble for it under her feet, sending a shooting glance over her left shoulder as she straightened once again. She sucked in her cheeks, the first telltale sign of suppressed hysteria, and lowered her head.

  ‘They’re not old girls at all,’ she said. ‘They’re male twins in drag.’

  Her voice broke ominously, the prelude to uncontrolled laughter, and John quickly poured some more chianti into her glass.

  ‘Pretend to choke,’ he said, ‘then they won’t notice. You know what it is – they’re criminals doing the sights of Europe, changing sex at each stop. Twin sisters here on Torcello. Twin brothers tomorrow in Venice, or even tonight, parading arm-in-arm across the Piazza San Marco. Just a matter of switching clothes and wigs.’

  ‘Jewel thieves or murderers?’ asked Laura.

  ‘Oh, murderers, definitely. But why, I ask myself, have they picked on me?’

  The waiter made a diversion by bringing coffee and bearing away the fruit, which gave Laura time to banish hysteria and regain control.

  ‘I can’t think,’ she said, ‘why we didn’t notice them when we arrived. They stand out to high heaven. One couldn’t fail.’

  ‘That gang of Americans masked them,’ said John, ‘and the bearded man with a monocle who looked like a spy. It wasn’t until they all went just now that I saw the twins. Oh God, the one with the shock of white hair has got her eye on me again.’

  Laura took the powder compact from her bag and held it in front of her face, the mirror acting as a reflector.

  ‘I think it’s me they’re looking at, not you,’ she said. ‘Thank heaven I left my pearls with the manager at the hotel.’ She paused, dabbing the sides of her nose with powder. ‘The thing is,’ she said after a moment, ‘we’ve got them wrong. They’re neither murderers nor thieves. They’re a couple of pathetic old retired schoolmistresses on holiday, who’ve saved up all their lives to visit Venice. They come from some place with a name like Walabanga in Australia. And they’re called Tilly and Tiny.’

  Her voice, for the first time since they had come away, took on the old bubbling quality he loved, and the worried frown between her brows had vanished. At last, he thought, at last she’s beginning to get over it. If I can keep this going, if we can pick up the familiar routine of jokes shared on holiday and at home, the ridiculous fantasies about people at other tables, or staying in the hotel, or wandering in art galleries and churches, then everything will fall into place, life will become as it was before, the wound will heal, she will forget.

  ‘You know,’ said Laura, ‘that really was a very good lunch. I did enjoy it.’

  Thank God, he thought, thank God…Then he leant forward, speaking low
in a conspirator’s whisper. ‘One of them is going to the loo,’ he said. ‘Do you suppose he, or she, is going to change her wig?’

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ Laura murmured. ‘I’ll follow her and find out. She may have a suitcase tucked away there, and she’s going to switch clothes.’

  She began to hum under her breath, the signal, to her husband, of content. The ghost was temporarily laid, and all because of the familiar holiday game, abandoned too long, and now, through mere chance, blissfully recaptured.

  ‘Is she on her way?’ asked Laura.

  ‘About to pass our table now,’ he told her.

  Seen on her own, the woman was not so remarkable. Tall, angular, aquiline features, with the close-cropped hair which was fashionably called an Eton crop, he seemed to remember, in his mother’s day, and about her person the stamp of that particular generation. She would be in her middle sixties, he supposed, the masculine shirt with collar and tie, sports jacket, grey tweed skirt coming to mid-calf. Grey stockings and laced black shoes. He had seen the type on golf-courses and at dog shows – invariably showing not sporting breeds but pugs – and if you came across them at a party in somebody’s house they were quicker on the draw with a cigarette-lighter than he was himself, a mere male, with pocket-matches. The general belief that they kept house with a more feminine, fluffy companion was not always true.

  Frequently they boasted, and adored, a golfing husband. No, the striking point about this particular individual was that there were two of them. Identical twins cast in the same mould. The only difference was that the other one had whiter hair.

  ‘Supposing,’ murmured Laura, ‘when I find myself in the toilette beside her she starts to strip?’

  ‘Depends on what is revealed,’ John answered. ‘If she’s hermaphrodite, make a bolt for it. She might have a hypodermic syringe concealed and want to knock you out before you reached the door.’