The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

by Vandermeer, Jeff

  “Daresay, took you long enough to puzzle it out. Been waiting here so long I’ve memorized the names of all the crayfish, and I think I might be waterlogged.”

  “I don’t want to see any more,” I say, and it laughs at me. Or maybe it doesn’t laugh at me, but it laughs. It’s a small laugh, very small, and the sound makes me think of burning paper.

  “Best be minding your P’s and Q’s, Missy. Come too far to go lily-livered on us now, don’t you reckon?”

  And I hear a clattering noise that I know is the crouched thing fitting the skeleton key into the keyhole in the granite wall. And I’m thinking how all this is wrong, that I should be at the keyhole, that the women should be with me, when the granite wall swings open wide, and the barnacles scream, and . . .

  Excerpt from Darkening Horizons: The American Supernatural Novel During the 1980s by Gerald Hopkins (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993):

  . . . and, regrettably, the unjustly celebrated “Evil God, Out of Words” (Twilight Zone magazine #8, November 1981) isn’t much better than Chalmers’s earlier attempts to update the weird tale. Like Klein’s The Ceremonies, this story adopts the basic framework and themes of Arthur Machen’s “The White People”—a loss of innocence and the corruption of the untainted by way of induction into a secret witch cult—but does so far less effectively than Klein’s revisiting of Machen’s premise. And, to make matters worse, somehow, Chalmers has managed to write a story of only some eight thousand or so words that seems to go on forever, heedless of its size, not unlike the cursed real estate of Joseph Payne Brennan’s “Canavan’s Backyard.”

  The genesis of “Evil God, Out of Words” proves a good deal more intriguing than the story itself:

  The entire plot coalesced indirectly around a single childhood memory, something I saw when I was ten years old. This would have been 1946 or ’47. My mother and I accompanied my father on a business trip to Paris. We rarely took proper vacations, and I think he was trying to make up for that. Anyway, we saw the usual sights one sees in Paris, but we also visited a natural history museum, which delighted me far more than all the Eiffel Towers and Arcs de Triomphe combined. There was an enormous Victorian gallery filled with dinosaur skeletons! For a ten-year-old boy, how could the Louvre ever possibly hope to compete with Diplodocus, Allosaurus, and Iguanodon? Of course, though, none of these served as the story’s inspiration. But there was also a small glass case containing a sort of mummified hand, and the hand was gripping an old-fashioned key. I believe it was an Egyptian artifact of some sort, and it seemed entirely out of place there among the dinosaurs and mastodons. Perhaps this is why I recall it so clearly. The fingers had hooked nails or talons, and it reminded me immediately of W. W. Jacobs’s “The Monkey’s Paw,” which I’d read by then, naturally. The odd thing is, decades later, I wrote the museum to inquire about the hand, wishing to compare my memories with the reality of what I’d seen. I received a somewhat terse response to the effect that there had never been any such artifact displayed at the museum. Now, I knew better. I’d seen it with my own eyes, hadn’t I? I wrote a second time, and they didn’t even bother to answer me. But what’s important here is that it set me on the path leading to “Evil God, Out of Words.”

  Though the relic Chalmers may or may not have seen while in Paris as a child doesn’t appear in the story, it is plainly echoed in the recurring motif of keys, both literal and figurative. Most notably, the terrible old man who first speaks to the story’s l’enfant innocent of “the mysteries of the worm” describes nine magical keys. Each key bears the name of one of the muses of Greek mythology, as set forth in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1593). The old man tells the girl that the two most powerful keys, Polyhymnia and Calliope, are required for the ritual of resurrection (“shredding the veil, casting back, fetching up”). If Chalmers’s choice of these two muses is meant to hold a particular symbolic meaning, it escapes repeated . . .

  Excerpt from “The Thousand and Third Tale of Scheherazade: A Survey of the Arabian Ghûl in Popular Culture,” Esther Kensky, The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 42, no. 6 (December 2009):

  . . . will, instead, quote at length from the summary provided by Niederhausen and Flaschka (1992): “This was the time before the war between the Ghûl (plural, Arabic and the other races of the Djinn —the Ifrit, the Sila, and the Marid. In those days, the men of the desert still looked upon all the Djinn as gods, though they’d already learned to fear the night shades, the Ghûl, and guarded their children and the graves of their dead against them. Among the fates that could befall the soul of a man or woman, to have one’s corpse stolen and then devoured by the Ghûl was counted as one of the most gruesome and tragic conceivable. It was thought that to be so consumed would mean that the deceased would be taken from the cold sleep of barzakh, never to meet with the angels Nakir and Munkar, and so never be interrogated and prepared for Paradise , Hebrew cognate jannah).

  “It is said that these demons fear both steel and iron, like the other Djinn, and so people wear steel rings or place steel daggers where protection from Djinn and ghouls is needed. Salt is another means of protection, since ghouls hate it. The names of God, Qur’anic verses, magic squares (Muska), or that group of magical symbols known as ‘the seven seals’ are frequently worn by people or attached to their property to ward off the demons.

  “One of the more obscure customs meant to provide a ward against the Ghûl is mentioned briefly in Jorge Luis Borges’s The Book of Imaginary Beings (Manual de zoología fantástica, 1957). According to Borges, these creatures have an obsession with keys and locks, and can be thwarted by scattering a dozen or so keys near a locked door or gate, none of which actually fit the lock in question. The ghoul will try each key repeatedly (despite its purported fear of iron), so doggedly determined to find the correct match that it immediately forgets a given key has already been tested. It may continue this for hours, neglecting to watch for dawn, and be destroyed by the rising sun. It’s believed that the severed hand of a ghoul dispatched in this manner, still holding tight to the last key it tried, is a powerful talisman against all manner of evils and misfortune. Interestingly, a similar predilection to arithmomania is ascribed to vampires in certain Chinese and European traditions, and to witches and other mischievous . . .”

  Excerpt from a letter found among the correspondence of the late Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead, from Ms. Margaret H. Jacobs (7 Exegesis Street, Cincinnati, Ohio) to Lambshead; undated but postmarked May 25, 1981:

  . . . the crouching thing, that goddamned horrid thing like a huge rat, and it scampers over the threshold that hadn’t been there before it used the key. Its tiny claws scritch, scritch, scritch against the granite, a sound that makes me shudder whenever I remember it. I can be wide awake and driving to work, on a sunny day, and I recall that scratching noise and shudder. So, it crosses the threshold and calls for me to follow. I glance back at the flooded cellar, and see that the stairs have vanished, that it’s not even a cellar anymore. It’s a cave opening out onto the sea, a sea cave.

  This is one of the new twists, Dr. Lambshead. Always before, always, when I’d pause and look back over my shoulder, the stairs would still be there. And they were a comfort to me, because the stairs implied a way out, that I could escape simply by retracing my steps. I could run back and hammer at the locked door until the silver-eyed women or the Bailiff came to let me out. It’s awful, just awful, not having the reassurance of those stairs. I look at the entrance of the cave, and it’s night outside, but I can see the water gets deep very fast out there. I’ve never been a very strong swimmer, Doctor.

  “Stop dawdling,” says the thing with the key. Its voice is as wretched as everything else about it. Have I ever mentioned that before? “Maybe you want to get yourself left behind, is that it? Maybe you want to be around for high tide and the sharks?” It has a dozen of these “maybe” questions. At least a dozen and sometimes a lot more than that. “Maybe you got gills I can’t see?”

  I tell i
t I’m coming, and I cross the threshold, too. This part’s like before. But on the other side of the granite wall, everything’s changed, the same way the cellar became a sea cave. Now, beyond the wall, where before there were only the winding tunnels, the Minoan maze where I used to wander for what seemed like hours before finding my way out into the cellar again, now there’s an enormous chamber. We’re still underground. That’s obvious. The air is dank, musty, foul, but dry after the sea cave.

  “This is the place it all begins,” the wretched rat thing says. It sounds proud, like it’s declaring some grand accomplishment, as if whatever begins here is its doing. Like that. “Now, was this anything that man, that Doc Sheepshead, ever told you about?” it asks me.

  I know that it’s getting your name wrong on purpose, but I correct it anyway. “Lambshead,” I say, and it replies, in a singsong sort of way, “Shut up, Maggie. Sheep or lamb, ram or ewe, it hardly matters to me.”

  Yes, it knows my name. It knows my name, and it speaks my name. Surely, that should be enough to shock me awake, but I never wake until farther along.

  “Beginnings are just as important as whatever comes along and happens after,” it says. I want to cut its throat so I’ll never have to hear that wretched voice again, but I look at the chamber, instead. It’s an ossuary. I’ve never been inside an ossuary, but of course I’ve seen photographs of them. The floor below me is earthen, and there are two square pillars supporting the earthen roof. Between the pillars is a third column, made of blocks of granite held together with mortar and crowned with something like a huge bowl or basin or baptismal font or birdbath. I don’t know the word for what it is, and it’s not always the same. The wall beyond the three pillars is built entirely of the skulls and thighbones of human beings. The bones are very old. I know that just from looking at them.

  “You pay close attention to all this,” says the wretched not-rat thing. I tell it I want to go back. I ask it to take me back, but it doesn’t reply. I think it is selectively deaf, if you get my drift.

  And I realize there are two other people in the ossuary chamber with us. A man and a woman. Both are wearing heavy black robes with hoods. The robes and hoods are lined with purple silk. The man is holding an open book in his right hand and a silver cup in his left. The woman is holding a dagger of some sort. There’s something dead on the floor between them, but I turn away before I can see what it might be. I don’t want to know. I can’t be blamed for not wanting to know that, can I?

  The man and the woman are chanting. It might be Latin, but I’m not sure. I’ve never studied . . .

  Excerpt from “The Castleblakeney Key: Unlocking an Example of the Importance of Uncertainty to Ontological Processes in Social Constructionism,” Siegfried Glaserfeld, Psyche: Journal of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, vol. 12 (2006):

  . . . the unfortunate case of Margaret Jacobs, that we quickly arrive at a position where it becomes obvious that the important questions here have nothing to do with the objective origins of the hand and whether or not it’s genuine or a hoax. It makes no difference whether we say it came from an Irish peat bog or the Parisian catacombs, whether it belongs to a child, a monster, or a monkey. It doesn’t matter if Lambshead knew it was a hoax or was duped by Dussubieux (or anyone else). Any answer regarding its “authenticity” is, by necessity, only provisional, open to correction or revision at any time, and, hence, far from being a direct representation of a preexisting singularity. All answers retain an inherently experimental character. Regardless of the hand/key’s status as virtual construct/s, they remain, however, selections from our sensory fields that are causally linked to the real and, therefore, may surprise us at any time and without . . .

  Excerpt from a letter found among the correspondence of the late Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead, from M. Camille Dussubieux (n˚20, rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin, Paris) to Lambshead, dated August 2, 1961:

  . . . that it pains me. The offer seemed more than equitable, considering you paid a mere 200 francs for ———. And to accuse me of secretly acting as an agent for Valadon and Provoyeur! Such an allegation strikes at the core of all our years of friendship and trust, and yet you make it so lightly. Am I supposed to put that out of my mind now?

  Likewise, to accuse me of lying, when you can have no foreknowledge of my dreams, excepting to the degree I may divulge them. I tell you, Thackery, with no guile in my heart, that I did stand there in l’Ossuaire, at Crypte de la lampe sépulcrale, and I saw the foul beast come trundling through an opening in the wall, which it clearly used the key to fashion. I did not in the least exaggerate the repellent nature of the dwarfish creature, nor did I exaggerate the fear and confusion in the eyes of the poor woman who followed it through that doorway. She never once looked directly at me, but kept her eyes on the obscene ritual being performed (except once, when she glanced over her shoulder). But enough. I’ve told you this already, and in exacting detail. You may choose to believe me or not. The offer stands. And I will endeavor to set aside your last letter, in hopes of preserving our friendship. I pray you will do . . .

  Excerpt from a letter found among the correspondence of the late Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead, from Ms. Margaret H. Jacobs (7 Exegesis Street, Cincinnati, Ohio) to Lambshead; undated but postmarked June 7, 1981:

  . . . I can’t imagine I’ll ever write you again. Not because the psychiatrist has advised me to stop, and because of that very rude letter from your lawyer (if that’s really who he is), but because I’m losing heart at your persistent refusal to respond. When we met, you seemed like such a good man, so forthright and generous. But now, I don’t know.

  So, probably this is the last time I’ll bother you. I’m sure you’re relieved at that news. Maybe I don’t blame you for being relieved. If I were you, I might feel the same way. Only, I’m not you.

  The dream has a new bit at the end. Toward the place I usually wake up, which I think of as the end. I’ve followed the wretched not-rat beast into the ossuary, and the two robed figures are waiting there. We’ve interrupted them again. I try not to dwell on what manner of witchcraft they might be up to. They don’t look at me. They don’t look at the wretched thing with the key. They turn and look at a man who has just entered (stage left).

  He’s a painfully thin man, and he looks like someone only half-awake, or like a sleepwalker, maybe. A somnambulist. He’s barefoot. He’s come down a flight of earthen stares [sic] at [sic] stands at the bottom, gazing directly at me and the wretched thing. He says something, but it’s all French, and I’m not very good with French. I only catch a few words. I’m almost pretty sure he says, “Ne prenez pas cette route, Madame.” It’s happened twice now, and I wrote that down as soon as I woke the second time. He also says, in English, “Please, turn around, go back!” He’s very upset, and points at the hole the wretched thing made in the wall with the key. The robed figures are glaring at him now. The woman raises her dagger, taking a step towards him. The somnambulist turns and dashes back up the steps.

  When he’s gone, the wretched not-rat beast scrambles up to the man with the open book, and they whisper to one another. Then the man looks directly at me, and his eyes flash red-gold in the gloom, the way a cat’s eyes will. He says, in English, “Heaven dost provide for all its children.” I’m so scared, I finally do turn around, meaning to run back to the cellar or sea cave, whichever, because anything’s better than this. But the hole in the granite wall is gone, and I’m trapped there. I slam my fists against the rock, over and over.

  It shouldn’t surprise you that I hardly sleep. . . .

  Excerpt from a postcard found among the effects of Ms. Margaret H. Jacobs (7 Exegesis Street, Cincinnati, Ohio) following her suicide, from Lambshead, dated July 10, 1981 (postmarked July 13):

  . . . can assure you, Ms. Jacobs, the letter in question did not come from my solicitors. I’ve inquired regarding this matter, and they’ve sent no such letter to you. Which is not surprising, as they aren’t in the habit of taking
such action unless I’ve requested that they do so. However, this said, I do think we might both be happier if these reports of yours ceased. I don’t know what to make of them, and while I am obviously sorry if your visit set these unpleasant dreams in motion, I am not trained in psychoanalysis, and you’d be better served . . .

  Excerpt from the obituary of Margaret Harriet Jacobs, The Cincinnati Post, July 8, 1981:

  . . . a respected teacher and scholar, she was a tenured professor of Political Science at the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, University of Cincinnati. She is survived by her sister, Dorothy Frost (née Jacobs), and her brother, Harold Jacobs. In lieu of flowers the family prefers memorial donations in the deceased’s name to the Cincinnati chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Condolences may be expressed at . . .

  Taking the Rats to Riga

  A Critical Examination of Stigmata’s Print

  By Jay Lake

  Perhaps the most quotidian detail of the print Taking the Rats to Riga (1969) is the eponymous rats themselves. This is somewhat uncharacteristic of the work of the artist Stigmata (b. Crispus Chang-Evans, Nanking, China, 1942; d. Khyber Pass, Pakistan, 1992). The artist was notorious for eschewing both representation and naturalism, noting in a 1967 interview with Andy Warhol, “The dial ain’t set on sketch, and I’ll never be a d**ned camera” (artINterCHANGE; vol. III, no. 4; 1968).