Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4

by Helen Marshall

  The thing about the reality of the undead is that we can now see the afterlife. We live in it. And we share that afterlife with its dead inhabitants, who walk among us. But we can’t talk to them. They can’t talk to us. That truly is the most exquisite, atheistic hell.

  5. NOTES ON AFTERLIFE

  Visiting my parents is different now. Now, when I drink tea with them on their verandah, tea that somehow tastes of my childhood even though it’s just plain old steeped Darjeeling, I watch them age gently next to me. More than ever, their every new wrinkle, every new wince of bodily pain, every glisten of sun in a newly silvered strand of hair, catches my eye. And I can’t help but think of the future.

  In this, should I say apocalyptic, future, I have to sign a form by their deathbeds. The form asks if their death is to be final, if I want to authorize doctors to sever their brain stems and puncture each lobe right after their hearts stop beating, to make sure they won’t rise up again in undeath. There are two other options. I can illegally have them bitten by a corpse belonging to a dead-charmer before they die, to increase their chances of resurrection. Or I can take a cosmic gamble to let the universe decide between two terrible things, and check the other box on the form that says my parents should be left untouched after death, to see if their bodies naturally choose undeath. The undead will not be allowed in homes because of numerous health hazards including dangerous, often lethal, bites. So if my parents rise into undeath, it will fall to me to hand them over to the government or a private scientific institution, or a dead-charmer.

  This is the future. Governments are already trying to figure out appropriate legislation for the realities of dead people waking up and creating an entirely new kind of life.

  I think of simply losing my parents forever, once the only choice. Then I think of them, undead. And I think of Guru Yama’s wife, grotesque and alien, death itself personified as a gigantic, corpulent infant, crooning to itself and eating a single marigold as I struggled to understand whether its painfully corrupted form caused it pain. I think of her screaming in an oven.

  I see myself, pen hovering over the forms, not knowing which box to check.

  Who am I to deny someone I love a second life, however incomprehensible, however different from the first? And then, with both relief and low panic, I realize it’s not even my choice, but my parents’. One day, I’ll have to ask them, and have a conversation about whether or not they want to risk becoming a fucking zombie. I haven’t asked, yet.

  And one day, when I have a child, if I have a child, I’ll have to have that conversation again, when they ask me.

  When these thoughts creep into those evening conversations with my parents, tinting them with dread, I think of two corpses shambling up a snow-clad mountain in Switzerland, their flesh preserved in a fur of frost that glitters under a high, clear sun, their thoughts unfathomable.

  JOHANNA SINISALO

  The Kings with No Hands

  Translated by J. Robert Tupasela

  I had just decided to go into the woods to die when I saw something large kicking up dust on the horizon.

  It looked like it might be a large animal. I’d never seen one of those before, so I decided to wait to get a better look at it. When it got closer, I saw that it wasn’t a single creature. The illusion of size and speed was a result of the mode of transportation: eight bicycles hitched in front of a wagon. The apes riding them stopped nearby without paying me any attention. They puffed and panted and slurped water from the stream that flowed out of the small wood and disappeared into the sand a hundred paces away.

  This was one of the only oases in Europe.

  I had intended to go lie down in the sparse shade cast by the small stand of pines and let myself starve. I wasn’t going anywhere and I no longer saw any point in trying to get anywhere anymore. The intense smell of sap and the slow gurgle of the stream winding amongst the roots of the pines were the most beautiful things I had experienced on my journeys. Besides, I was out of food. End my life there had been an excellent idea.

  Before too long, the strange wagon team had had enough to drink and the apes began climbing back on their bikes. They were chimpanzees, I recognized them from pictures. I had never seen a live ape. I had never seen so many bicycles in one place, either. They were built from different colored parts, and some had parts that had clearly been made later out of wood, and some that were made out of such a fine metal that I couldn’t even identify it. I assumed that a bicycle wagon was a faster way to travel the roads than most. Maybe this team was going somewhere? It seemed like a strange idea, because where would anything be better than everywhere else.

  When I had started down the trail to the south-west, I had had no reason to go anywhere or end up anywhere. I just had to start walking, because there was no room for me in our village anymore. Everyone was allowed two children, but if both children made it to maturity, one had to leave. Then it was up to you to choose what roadside or oasis to die at.

  I didn’t mind dying. After all, I had just seen a miracle.

  I looked across the spring at the chimpanzees bustling around their bicycles. Theirs was an immense treasure: there couldn’t be many working bicycles left in the whole world. It had never occurred to me that chimps could ride a bicycle, but of course, there were many other things in the world that had never occurred to me.

  The wagon seemed heavy, and when the chimps mounted their bicycles and began to pedal, they strained and puffed, and guttural noises and short hoots escaped their throats. The bicycles were not quite the right size for chimpanzees. The wagon creaked into motion. Their cargo was covered by a large tarp that looked a bit like leather. I guessed it must have been from the ruins of some city.

  I sat calmly and watched as the wagon drew away into the south-west. When I was a child, a travelling storyteller once passed through our village. For a moment I toyed with the idea of trying to continue my journey long enough to find a village. My story of a wagon drawn by eight chimpanzees on bicycles would be sure to earn me a piece of bread. It would be an entirely new story, not one told in some old book or known by any other storyteller.

  Suddenly the wagon stopped again. I could see it as a small, dark silhouette against the brightness caused by the sun striking the dust in the air. I could see small figures darting back and forth. Then one of the chimpanzees started back towards the oasis. It was much more agile and moved more naturally without the bicycle.

  I was mildly surprised when the chimpanzee came straight towards me. It reached out its hand, grabbed my wrist, and pulled. Its gesture was clear enough, it wanted me to come with it. I was amused, but too weak to get up.

  The chimpanzee tugged on my wrist and made agitated ooh! ooh! noises. When I made no effort to answer the gesture, it took a step back, released its grip, and began to make signs.

  This amazed me far more than a chimp riding a bicycle had, because I recognized several of the signs it was making. There was a family in our village who were all deaf and spoke to one another with these kinds of signs. It was an ancient custom. They taught it to their children who taught it to their children in turn. Now this chimpanzee was communicating in the same way, and I recognized at least the signs for help and food.

  I thought it was asking me for food and decided to make my situation clear. With weak hands, I made the slow sign for hunger. The chimpanzee froze and stopped signing. It looked at me with bright, observant eyes, tilted its head, and then took off at a bow-legged run. After a short while, it returned with something in each hand. It laid them down on the pine needles in front of me. The chimpanzee had brought me a reddish yellow root and something that looked like a dried fish. The ape gestured, pointing at me and making the sign for eating.

  I lifted the root to my mouth and bit. It was sweet and delicious. I ate it slowly, savoring it. Then I took the fish. It was a bit dry, but I took it to the edge of the spring and soaked pieces of it in the water for a moment before eating them and then drinking a great deal of w
ater. I felt the strength come back to my limbs, and it felt as if even my brain had only needed some food to be able to once again feel wonder. I became truly curious about these generous travelers. When the chimpanzee, which had been impatiently watching me eat, saw that I was finished, it signed at me again, encouraging me to follow. This time I did.

  When we reached the bicycle wagon, I immediately saw what the problem was. One of the bicycles had fallen over, one of the chimps lay motionless in the dust, and six of its kin were swarming around it in agitation. I touched the chimp: it was lifeless. It had apparently had some kind of stroke or seizure while struggling with the wagon.

  I made the sign for dead. The chimp that had been my guide repeated it immediately. Then two other chimpanzees grabbed the dead animal and carried it to the roadside. One ape walked to the wagon, lifted the tarp, and took out a shovel.

  It was an enviably good shovel. I could see that right away. It was made entirely of metal, not just the tip, like in my home village, where the tip would always be switched to a new wooden shovel when the old one broke or rotted away.

  The ape began to dig a hole in the hard ground. It was difficult, and the ape had trouble holding on to the shovel without opposable thumbs. That didn’t stop it from trying, though. I walked over to it, made the sign for help, and took the shovel. The ape backed off cautiously, and with a few shovel strikes I had made a suitable hole. The apes dragged their dead comrade into the hole, and I covered the body with the dusty earth. Then three of the chimpanzees walked up to the fresh grave and urinated on it. Maybe the scent of urine was meant to keep carrion eaters away. Or maybe it was a burial ritual.

  Now the ape took me by the wrist again. I followed it without resisting. It took me to the bicycle that now had no rider, pointed at it, and then at me. It made the gesture a second time and signed “food”.

  I slowly lifted up the bicycle. The chimpanzees made excited noises and grabbed the handlebars of their bicycles. We began by walking our bicycles, dragging them forward. It was painfully slow and exhausting going. Once the wagon wheels started moving we mounted the pedals. I had ridden a bicycle once before for a few heady days in my childhood. A gypsy camp had visited our village, and they had had a bicycle. We gave them food and sleeping quarters, and in return, we were allowed to try their treasures. I learned to ride so quickly that after my third attempt, I never fell once.

  My feet stepped on the pedals, and every time I pushed down, the force was transmitted into the harness and the wagon moved. Seven chimpanzees and I began to ride across the desolate, unknown land, always towards the south-west.

  At sunset on my sixth or seventh night with the chimpanzees, I saw a terrible glow in the clouds on the horizon. The sky was burning an endless red, much redder and brighter than in my childhood when a vast forest had burned somewhere far to the east. The cold drought had lasted many years then, and I had heard the adults whispering to one another that the burnt forest stretched farther than a bird could fly in many days. And still this glow was more fierce than the one I had seen then.

  After two more days of riding, I could begin to see the glow reflected in the clouds during the day. It was as if there was another source of light beneath the sky, radiating just as bright and furious as the sun. But at night the glow couldn’t be seen. I tried to point at the horizon and make the sign for fire with my fingers, but the chimpanzee didn’t seem to understand.

  *

  I discovered the truth when we reached the sea.

  I had never seen the sea other than in pictures in old books. I had, of course, seen lakes and ponds, which were usually brown and smelled, and I knew that the sea was unimaginably large, and in the pictures was always blue or green or grey or black from a storm. This sea was different.

  The chimps stopped when the sea became visible as a streak along the horizon. One of them went to the wagon, lifted the tarp, and took out a cloth bag. It opened the bag and produced a bundle of glasses with black lenses. No one knew how to make glasses any more, and the ones that had survived in our village had become heirlooms. I had never seen glasses with dark lenses before, and each of these ones also had a different kind of frame. Some were made of bright plastic, some were made of bent metal, and some had such dark lenses you could see your reflection in them. The chimps placed the glasses on their eyes and handed me a pair. They had beautiful frames, bright pink and shaped like hearts. The glasses sat well on my nose and ears, but the chimps had great difficulties due to their flat noses. Some had to use a piece of string tied to the ends of the frame and wrapped around the back of their heads to keep the glasses in place. Equipped in this way, we continued our journey.

  After just a kilometer, I saw the sea. The new sea.

  This sea was silver. It was a dazzling, burnished sheet without end, and the sun shone off its surface in the full madness of its unchecked anger. There wasn’t a single bird in sight.

  It was as if a thin, breathtakingly bright mirror had been spread across the surface of the sea I knew from the pictures and was now gently rocking with the waves. It reflected the image of the sun and the clouds as a wavering silver soup. The brightness was reflected up to the clouds and from the clouds back down to the sea as if the air was filled with shining, cold light. I took the glasses from my eyes to see better and began to scream. The terrifying abundance of light hurt my eyes, and though I immediately put the glasses back on, my eyes stung and I had trouble seeing for the rest of the day.

  We rode on to confront the brightness.

  *

  I thought our journey would end at the seashore, because I couldn’t see any kind of barge or ferry. We had come to a gently sloping bank, and when I was certain our road would come to an end, our wagon team let out a whooping cry and let the bicycles roll freely along a road paved with uniform white stone. I had no time to do anything before noticing that the road led straight into an unbelievably large hole that was pregnant with darkness.

  I cried out as our wagon dove into the dark, which was made all the more threatening by contrast to the terrible brightness outside that burned all color away.

  *

  The apes and I pedaled all day in that dark place built under the sea. It was not difficult to pedal forwards amongst the apes. Though I could see nothing but black, the team guided me in the right direction. Before we had even had time to stop to eat, I could see light flickering at the end of the tunnel. It seemed that we had ridden under a narrow straight. By the sound of it, we had been riding over large, metal beams in the tunnel and had crushed myriads of small, fragile bones beneath our wheels.

  We strained out of the tunnel and up the bank. We carried on along the shoreline. I watched the sea. The silver was not completely even, but was formed of large patterns made up of smaller parts that seemed to reflect the light in slightly different ways. Bright spots and even brighter spots. I saw high limestone cliffs reflecting the brightness, and our caravan was heading straight for them. Soon I saw that the limestone cliffs were full of caves and hollows at various heights. Some of them were so close to the sea that the silver membrane caressed their mouths. The chimpanzees stopped and began to carry things from the wagon into the caves. Each one of them seemed to have a job, and each object a set place where it was to be taken. I didn’t recognize most of the objects.

  The chimpanzee who had acted as my guide took several books out of the wagon, and because I’d always been curious about books, I followed it towards the mouth of a cave on the edge of the sea.

  The silver reflection of the sea lessened the darkness inside the cave. Still, I had to take off my dark glasses to see.

  In the gloom, I made out an outline that at first I had trouble recognizing as a person, though I had seen its like in books. The figure waddled like the chimpanzees, and the skin on its face was similarly wrinkled. But when the figure drew closer, I realized it was, indeed, a human, just very old. I wondered at the lack of a beard. It wasn’t until a moment later that I noticed the two brea
sts flopping against her chest.

  *

  The woman received me in a strange way. She barked words and grabbed my penis through my clothes. She was wearing nothing herself. I didn’t understand myself at all, but suddenly I found myself lying in the old woman’s embrace. It felt completely different than at home with my sister. I wasn’t the master of my desires. I thrashed around in the cage of her hips like a trapped insect.

  My lust ended as quickly as it had begun, and I began to feel a vague embarrassment. The woman seemed to take the matter with the same cool demeanor as if she had only shook my hand. The chimpanzee had watched with polite interest from the side, and when I pulled away from the woman, she seemed to forget I was there and began signing energetically with the ape. The ape handed the books over to the woman, who engrossed herself in them.

  I realized that I hadn’t said a word since entering the cave. I had stepped into a world governed by entirely different laws than anywhere I knew. I could feel it with my every cell. I cleared my throat while pulling my pants back on, and the woman glanced at me. She mostly seemed amused.

  She barked words that I couldn’t recognize. I shook my head and signed “I don’t understand”. After a short break, the woman began speaking with words that sounded longer and more flowing. I could do nothing but sign my dumb message once again. The woman shrugged her shoulders and opened her mouth again. “What about this? Do you know this language?” she asked.

  I was thrilled. The woman’s pronunciation was very strange, but I could understand her words. “Yes, I speak this language,” I said, uncertain after such a long time without speaking. “I came here with the chimps. I don’t want to intrude.”