The New Weird

by Ann VanderMeer; Jeff VanderMeer

  There are forty-six poems in the book. Brey knows they are poems because below each title is written the words "A Poem." Since he has stolen the book, Brey does not dare discuss the poems with his father. The poems are about rats. None of the poems scan. None rhyme. Nonetheless, Brey is moved. He is secretly proud of his father.

  The halls contain myriad sounds. He has the sounds of his boots in the halls, the echo of his fists upon the windows, the jangle of his keys, the drip of his water, the hum of his light bulbs, the sound of his father's footsteps, fading. When a light bulb expires, the light sputters and offers an ecstatic sound, much rarer. Then a hall falls dark, silent.

  At times there is the sound of his father's voice in the halls. In the past, his mother's voice as well. Now his mother's voice does not leave its room.

  His father never says: "I have written poems, and this is what they mean."

  His father says, "Brey, I am not here for your benefit. I am your father, but I am other things besides a father. I will help you as I can, but I will not sacrifice myself to you."

  His father says, "Let's speak frankly. Do you think collecting keys is the best choice for you, Brey?"

  His Kitchen.

  His kitchen is a room panelled in white plastic, panels stretching from ceiling to floor. Where two panels meet, a metal strip covers the crack. The walls, when soiled, can be wiped clean with damp cloth.

  Each sheet of the wall hides a pantry. To reveal the pantry, one must grasp the metal strip at a designated point, pulling outward. The pantries are expansive. There has always been enough food for Brey and for his parents.

  His father says of the stove in one of his poems, "Once it was a great truth." What this means, Brey does not pretend to know. He is not privy to the truths of a stove.

  The faucet handles of the sink have sheared off, but the gaskets remain relatively intact. Water drips slowly from the cracked spigot. Beneath the spigot, Brey has placed a pewter cup. When it fills with water, he pours it into a canteen.

  It takes several hours for the cup to fill. As his journeys through the halls become lengthier, the cup sometimes overflows and water is lost. He collects a cup of water when he leaves to walk the halls, a cup when he returns to sleep. He does not know if his father and mother drink from his cup while he is gone. Brey is not dying of thirst by any means, yet he is often thirsty.

  There is a table in the kitchen. Under the table is a paper sack. When the sack is full of garbage, Brey surreptitiously dumps it into one of the hallways.

  On the table are stacked four books: The Rat, Rats: All About Them, Our Friend the Rat, and How to Build a Better Mousetrap. His father's name has been written inside each front cover, though Brey has had the books as long as he can remember.

  Brey has read these books, studying the pictures carefully. He knows the rat. He is prepared.

  His Tiles.

  The floor of the bathroom is covered with thousands of identical square tiles. Brey has transformed this floor into a map, placing scraps of cardboard at the intersections of the tiles. He has found one hundred and twelve sets of keys traveling to the terminal wall, one hundred and twenty-nine more traveling along the terminal wall. Assuming that the halls form a quadrangle, there are a minimum of fourteen thousand four hundred and forty-eight sets of keys in the halls. Of these he can expect to collect five hundred ― approximately three and one-half percent.

  He wets his finger in the bowl of the toilet, rubs it against his skin. Dirt and dead skin flake away. His father continues to warn him against using the toilet in this fashion. "Sanitation, son, is not a game." Brey sees no alternative.

  His Windows and Walls.

  His windows line the terminal walls. They are textureless, black, opaque. He has tried to scrape their darkness away with his keys. The keys slip from the glass without leaving a scratch.

  He pounds on the glass with both fists. When he strikes the glass, it vibrates. The vibration is not unlike the sound of his boots striking the floor.

  He stops pounding, presses his ear against the glass. He hears nothing.

  Brey has seen pictures of windows in his rat books. He has seen windows with rats nestling upon their sills. He knows the purpose of windows. They are for rats to look through, a sort of transparent wall. When rats tire, they draw drapes.

  He raises his hands to pound on the windows. He feels a hand on his shoulder. He lets his hands fall.

  "Brey?" says his father. "Do you think that is wise?"

  "Wise?" says Brey.

  "Do you wish to attract rats?"

  "Rats?" says Brey.

  "Are you ready for them?" says his father. "Are you prepared? Brey?" he says. "Brey?"

  His Fishline.

  The fishline was the gift of his father. It is wound around a wheel-rimmed spool as thick as Brey's torso. The words "20# TEST PREMIUM FISHLINE: 21,120 FEET (APPROX. FOUR MILES)" are stenciled on both wheels of the spool.

  Brey does not know what "miles" are. He has never heard nor seen the word "feet" used in this sense before.

  His father, explaining, says, "It is called fishline because it is fishline."

  His father volunteers nothing more about fishline, only informing Brey that it is fishline. Brey masters this information, makes it his own.

  He takes a ring of keys off his belt. Opening the ring's gate, he slips the fishline inside the ring. He hooks the ring back onto his waist.

  The fishline whirs past him as he walks, slipping through the eye of the ring, a hiss beneath the clank of keys.

  He walks down the halls toward the next set of keys. He picks away a half-scabbed cut on one hand, lengthening it, deepening it. He stops to rinse his hand with water from the canteen. The water drips onto the polished floor, separating into beads. Holding aside the keys that cover his shirt, he presses his hand against the fabric. He wipes the hand dry.

  He passes empty intersections, enters dark halls. Light returns, then fades. He trusts to the fishline.

  He reaches the last explored intersection. He finds his father there. "Hello, Brey," his father says. He and Brey shake hands.

  "Are you sure that collecting keys is the right choice?" says his father. "Are you prepared for every contingency?"

  Brey nods, passes through the intersection. Beyond, the halls grow brighter still. He approaches the next intersection. He hesitates, halts. Allows his eyes to adjust.

  The intersection is heaped ankle-deep with dust. No keys are visible.

  Brey hesitates. He turns away. The intersection behind him is empty, his father gone.

  [TWO]

  His Dust.

  The dust meshes and thickens as it approaches the intersection, coming together in a solid sheet at the near edge, thickening as it moves in. He turns away, follows the fishline back the way he came. His father absent, he consults his mother.

  "Where the halls are dusty, the halls are full of dust," says his mother. This can hardly be disputed.

  He waits for her to say more. He stands motionless at her bedside, watching her lips purse and relax as she breathes.

  His keys rattle as he walks toward the door. He hears his mother behind, calling for his father. He opens the door and goes out, pretending not to hear.

  In his room, pinned to the mattress, a note from his father:

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Father.

  What ashes are Brey does not know. Dust he knows. Father he knows.

  He tears a square of paper from a page of Our Friend the Rat. He drops it onto the tiles to mark the intersection.

  On his written maps, he marks dust-filled intersections with the letter "d." He marks dust on the original map of his halls. He does not mark dust on the other maps. He will wait and see.

  His Father.

  His father squats in an empty intersection, pushing Brey's fishline about with his fingers. Hearing Brey's approach, his father rises to greet him.

  "How do you explain this, Brey?" says his father, holding the fishline pinched bet
ween two fingers. "Fishline?" says Brey.

  "Unspooled through the halls?" says his father.

  "Collecting keys," says Brey.

  "Is that what fishline is for?" says his father.

  His father stands twirling the fishline, awaiting a response. Brey takes his father's arm, tugs him down the hall.

  They stand next to each other, staring at the dust. His father moves to move his arm around Brey. Brey squirms away.

  "This is dust, Brey," says his father. "Similar to ash," his father says.

  He is on his knees in his parents' room, crawling. He unwinds a strip of sheet from his mother's leg, spreading it flat on the floor. He scrapes together the dust under her bed. He sprinkles it over the strip. Lifting the two ends of the strip off the floor, he shakes the dust down into the middle curve. He twists the strip into a purse, knots it closed, hangs it from a keyhook.

  He starts to unravel his mother's other leg. Beneath the strips her skin is mottled and cracked, weeping. She calls out weakly, as if injured. He unravels three broad strips from her legs and crawls away, her cries in his ear.

  He soaks the strips in the toilet. He wraps three wet strips of sheet over his face, knotting them together behind his ears. The wet rags adhere to his skin. He gashes holes for his eyes. The top of one strip and the bottom of another strip join at his mouth. When he opens his mouth, the strips part. When he closes his mouth, the strips join. Water gathers beneath his chin, dripping down onto his keys. Perhaps the water will rust the keys.

  The dust thickens beyond the intersection, fingering the walls. The dust gathers thickly near the walls further down, bowing the floor.

  From the edge of the intersection, a series of identical marks leads into the dust. The marks are staggered ― right, left, right. They lie separated at an equal distance.

  Each mark consists of two portions. The first is an elongated ovoid peaked at the front, flat at the back. The second, behind the first and separated from it by a narrow strip of raised dust, is a half circle.

  He looks over his shoulder for his father. His father is not behind him. He squats down. With his hand, he wipes out all the marks he can reach.

  He takes the bundled cloth from off its hook, unwraps it. Inside is gray dust, finer than the dust of the intersection. He pinches some yellow dust from the floor, sprinkling the dust onto the dust in the bundle.

  Behind him, the sound of his father's boots. He knots the bundle shut, stands.

  "What happened to your face?" his father says.

  Brey feels the wet cloth over his face.

  "What do you have in your hand, son?"

  Uncurling his fingers, Brey holds up the knotted rag.

  "Are these your mother's wrappings, Brey?" says his father, his voice rising.

  "This?" says Brey. "She gave it to me?"

  Brey unties the bundle with his teeth. Turning his father's palm upward, he fills it with dust.

  His father frowns. He opens his fingers, lets the dust trickle out. He brushes his palm against his leg. He takes Brey by the shoulders, turning Brey toward him.

  Says his father, "Where did I go wrong?"

  His Mask.

  He steps deep into the intersection. Easing to his knees, he closes his eyes. He slides from one knee to the other, feeling the dust push up before him. He slides his hands in. He fans them over the floor.

  His fingers cross something hard. He brings his hands together, feeling the dust billow. He picks up a ring of keys. He straightens his back and stands, moving sideways until he touches a wall. He opens his eyes.

  The air of the intersection is dark with dust. His body and boots are coated and dull. The wet rags covering his face have thickened, the dust and dampness forming a paste.

  He scrapes the paste from his mouth, folds the cloth back from his lips. He scoops up handfuls of dust, packs them against the damp rags.

  He passes water near the wall, mixing a mud of urine and dust with his fingers. He packs his face thick with mud, smoothing it with his palms.

  Around him, the dust now lies heaped and swirled. The marks are gone.

  Dust to dust, perhaps, Father?

  His face grows hard.

  He opens the door to his room. His father sits on the palette, his knees gathered in his arms.

  "About this mask, Brey," says his father. "Does it have any purpose?"

  "Purpose?" says Brey.

  "I thought not," says his father, rising.

  He opens the door, but turns back.

  "By the way, what did you mix with the dust?" his father says.

  "Water?" says Brey.

  "Water?" says his father. "Not water taken from the sink, Brey."

  "Not the sink," Brey admits.

  "Where else is there water? The toilet?" says his father. "Good Lord, son, take the mask off."

  She is asleep. He unwraps her feet, removes her slippers. She mumbles, curls her toes. He places the slippers over his hands, leaves the room.

  He attaches himself to the fishline. Before reaching the spool, he leaves the fishline to turn down an unexplored hall. He does not walk far, only far enough to see that there is dust and to retreat.

  He returns to the fishline, following it to the first dust-filled intersection. He crosses to the hall beyond. He bends forward, blows breath out of his plaster mouth. The dust before him displaces, leaving a cone-shaped depression. Perhaps, he thinks, air currents and breezes created the marks in the dust.

  He kneels. He walks his mother's slippers into the dust. The slippers leave a single-part mark nothing like what he recalls of the two-part original marks.

  The marks of his father's boots might be similar to the original. Or a rat could have made the marks, leaping zigzag down the hall. Two rats escaped his father: the marks which were to one side could have been made by one rat, the marks to the other by the other.

  Brey does not know if leaping through dust is typical behavior for rats. He consults his rat books, but learns nothing. Brey does not know if leaping through dust is typical behavior for his father. He consults his mother. She does not respond.

  "Collecting keys will not always be easy," his father has told him.

  Yet his father claims never to have collected keys. How would his father know what is easy, what is hard? Does not Brey know more about keys than his father will ever know?

  He struggles up from the palette and into the hall. Slowly, he opens his parents' door.

  He bends down, lifts an old pillow from the floor. Holding the pillow in both hands, he approaches the second bed.

  He brings the pillow down against his father's face. He pushes the pillow down. He holds the pillow down with both elbows locked. He waits.

  Nothing happens. His father does not react.

  He lifts the pillow away to regard the face. The face is blinking and serious, very much alive.

  "I am concerned about you, Brey," says his father. "Perhaps justifiably."

  Brey flees.

  The Sounds of His Halls.

  Lifting up the spool, he crosses the intersection. Dust adheres to the surface of his mask, streaks his hands and arms.

  He drops the spool, stuffs a square of cloth into the mouth of the mask to filter the dust. He continues on. The cloth loses color as he breathes. The cloth becomes a protruding bloodless tongue.

  The dust upon the walls dislodges, drifting in a fine mist. He drops the spool. He kneels. He moves forward, eyes closed, hands groping through the dust.

  Faint sounds. He ignores them. He finishes with one door, moves to the next. The sounds continue.

  The halls might be amplifying a lesser noise: a light bulb sputtering out, a drop of water striking the floor. If not, the sound might be the sound of rats.

  His father claims the rats will return. There is no reason to disbelieve his father. He must take precautions.

  He returns to his hall. He opens his parents' door. His mother lies in her bed. His father's bed is empty. As his mother turns her head to
ward him, he draws the door closed.

  He breaks apart the frame of his palette. He forces splinters of wood into the crack of his parents' door until the door is wedged shut. He explains to his mother, yelling through the door, that he is doing this for her own protection. His father, he cries, would do the same.

  He opens How to Build a Better Mousetrap. He consults a series of schematic drawings in Appendix B.

  He unscrews the legs of the kitchen table. He makes of the table-top a deadfall trap, propping up one end with a table leg. He compares the drawings to the table, the table to the drawings.

  He sets the trap before his door, baiting it with peach preserves. As an added precaution, he mixes shards of glass into the peaches.

  He carries a table leg wrapped in cloth stolen from his mother's body. The leg is thick and heavy. The leg fits his hand awkwardly.

  He stores several days' worth of food in his bedroom. His canteen is full of water as is his pewter cup. He soaks chips of wood in the toilet, forces them into the cracks of the kitchen door. He leaves his own door and the bathroom door unblocked. He will live in the first room, use the latter's toilet to dispose of dead rats.

  Comes a knock at the bedroom door. He rolls off the palette, club in hand. The knock comes again, high on the door. He stands on tiptoe, presses his ear to the door. The knock comes again, slightly above his head.

  "Father?" he calls.

  There is no answer.

  His father would respond to his call. His mother is shut in her room, her door wedged closed. That leaves only the rats. The rats have returned. They are leaping high, throwing their bodies against his door. He knows better than to answer.