I shivered convulsively and gripped the phone hard. “Did she say that?”
“Oh – it was obvious how she felt. Didn’t I tell you, that’s why I read that book of yours, because you were obviously so important to her. Anyway, I wanted you to know how much your coming meant to her. It was the first time I’d seen her happy and excited in – well, the last seven months were very hard for her. Since the stroke, and having to leave London, no longer able to live on her own. I–I really thought this was going to be the start of a new phase for her, I can’t quite – I’m sorry . . .” she stumbled, then recovered herself. “I can’t quite believe she’s gone. But it was the best way, to go like that, suddenly and all at once, it’s what she wanted – she hated the idea of another, even more crippling, stroke – so did I – of dwindling away in a hospital bed, dying by inches.”
We talked for a few more minutes. Clarissa had a lot to do; she promised she’d let me know about the funeral.
I went to Glasgow for it the following week and took the notebook and the painting to give back. I found my chance after the cremation when we few mourners – most of them Clarissa’s own friends and extended family – gathered in her house to eat the traditional cold food. I took the notebook out of my bag, but she shook her head and told me it was mine.
“Mum wanted you to have it. No, I mean it; she couldn’t have been more clear about her wishes; she left instructions in her will. In fact, not just the notebook, but a painting as well. It’s called “My Death”, she said it’s a watercolour, but I’ve never seen it – I’m sure Mum didn’t keep any of her early works, she never mentioned it before, and in the will she didn’t explain where it was or anything.”
I launched into a rushed, stumbling explanation of how I’d come into possession of “My Death” until she stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “That’s all right. That’s fine. I’m glad you’ve got it. It was what she wanted.”
“I’ve got it in the car – I was going to give it back to you—”
“No, you must keep it.”
“Well – would you like to see it? Just before I go. It’s in the car.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes I would. Thank you. I know Mum was an artist before she was a writer, but I’ve never seen anything she painted.”
We left the house and walked down to the street where my car was parked. My heart began to pound unpleasantly as I took the wrapped parcel out of the boot, and I wondered if I should try to warn her, to prepare her in some way. But the words would not come, and so I unwrapped it in silence and laid it down, face up, inside the open boot of the car, and we looked down upon “My Death” in silence.
A watercolour landscape in tones of blue and brown and grey and green and pink, a rocky island in the sea. Tears blurred my vision and I looked away in time to see Clarissa dash her hand across her eyes and give a soft, shuddering sigh.
She turned away, and I put my arms around her.
“Thank you,” she murmured, returning my hug.
I kissed her cheek. “Let’s stay in touch.”
2005
Haeckel’s Tale
Clive Barker
HAVING HAD THREE SUCCESSIVE covers that I supervised and (obviously) liked, I guess it was only inevitable that I would eventually run into further conflict with my publisher. This came with the Les Edwards painting we chose for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume Seventeen.
What I loved about Les’ original design was that the concept he had produced was far more subtle than it appeared at first glance, and the image itself contained its own subtexual narrative. In short, it perfectly complemented the type of fiction that I tried to select for the anthology series.
Unfortunately, my publisher disagreed, and said that no bookseller would take a mass-market volume with that image on the cover. (To be honest, they were probably correct.) I don’t know what they expected from a volume of horror stories, but in the end we compromised with a painting of a creepy old lady holding a bloodied cleaver. Apparently that was acceptable to everybody!
Was I wrong? Well, that original painting of Les’ that I wanted to use eventually appeared on the cover of the limited edition of this book in America. Suffice to say that this trade paperback edition features a completely different – if no less creepy – image.
Just as I was putting the finishing touches to this omnibus compilation, I also discovered that a Russian edition of Volume Seventeen was published in 2008 and had already gone into reprint.
I somehow managed to reduce the Introduction to seventy-eight pages, but the Necrology jumped to a record seventy. At least on a happier note, the dedication celebrated milestone birthdays for both Ramsey Campbell and Forrest J Ackerman.
For my end thought I questioned if books – as a physical item at least – would still be around in coming years. Or would the printed page eventually go the way of the vinyl record album? The jury is still out at the moment, but the recent resurrection of vinyl has at least given me hope.
This time around it was series stalwart Ramsey Campbell’s turn to be represented with the first and last contributions amongst the twenty-two stories. Joe Hill was back with a Bram Stoker Award- and British Fantasy Award-winning tale entitled “Best New Horror” (and how could I not include a story called that?), as were Peter Atkins, Mark Samuels, Roberta Lannes, Gahan Wilson, Terry Lamsley and Brian Lumley, amongst others. Rambo creator David Morrell made his first appearance in the series, as did veteran SF author Carol Emshwiller and extraordinary newcomer Holly Philips.
However, none of their stories could match Clive Barker’s “Haeckel’s Tale” for gleeful grue. I had been introduced to Clive in the early 1980s by our mutual friend Ramsey Campbell, before the publication of his ground-breaking Books of Blood collections. We subsequently worked together on his movies Hellraiser and Nightbreed, as well as a number of literary projects before he moved to California in the early 1990s.
In recent years, Clive has become better known as the author of a number of bestselling fantasy novels, often illustrated with his own, distinctive, paintings. It was therefore a great pleasure to discover that he had returned to his horror roots with the erotic tale that follows, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award and adapted for the Showtime cable TV series Masters of Horror by another Best New Horror alumni, Mick Garris.
PURRUCKER DIED LAST week, after a long illness. I never much liked the man, but the news of his passing still saddened me. With him gone I am now the last of our little group; there’s no one left with whom to talk over the old times. Not that I ever did; at least not with him. We followed such different paths, after Hamburg. He became a physicist, and lived mostly, I think, in Paris. I stayed here in Germany, and worked with Herman Helmholtz, mainly working in the area of mathematics, but occasionally offering my contribution to other disciplines. I do not think I will be remembered when I go. Herman was touched by greatness; I never was. But I found comfort in the cool shadow of his theories. He had a clear mind, a precise mind. He refused to let sentiment or superstition into his view of the world. I learned a good deal from that.
And yet now, as I think back over my life to my early twenties (I’m two years younger than the century, which turns in a month), it is not the times of intellectual triumph that I find myself remembering; it is not Helmholtz’s analytical skills, or his gentle detachment.
In truth, it is little more than the slip of a story that’s on my mind right now. But it refuses to go away, so I am setting it down here, as a way of clearing it from my mind.
In 1822, I was – along with Purrucker and another eight or so bright young men – the member of an informal club of aspirant intellectuals in Hamburg. We were all of us in that circle learning to be scientists, and being young had great ambition, both for ourselves and for the future of scientific endeavour. Every Sunday we gathered at a coffeehouse on the Reeperbahn, and in a back room which we hired for the purpose, fell to debate on any subject that suited us, as long as we felt
the exchanges in some manner advanced our comprehension of the world. We were pompous, no doubt, and very full of ourselves; but our ardour was quite genuine. It was an exciting time. Every week, it seemed, one of us would come to a meeting with some new idea.
It was an evening during the summer – which was, that year, oppressively hot, even at night – when Ernst Haeckel told us all the story I am about to relate. I remember the circumstances well. At least I think I do. Memory is less exact than it believes itself to be, yes? Well, it scarcely matters. What I remember may as well be the truth. After all, there’s nobody left to disprove it. What happened was this: towards the end of the evening, when everyone had drunk enough beer to float the German fleet, and the keen edge of intellectual debate had been dulled somewhat (to be honest we were descending into gossip, as we inevitably did after midnight), Eisentrout, who later became a great surgeon, made casual mention of a man called Montesquino. The fellow’s name was familiar to us all, though none of us had met him. He had come into the city a month before, and attracted a good deal of attention in society, because he claimed to be a necromancer. He could speak with and even raise the dead, he claimed, and was holding seances in the houses of the rich. He was charging the ladies of the city a small fortune for his services.
The mention of Montesquino’s name brought a chorus of slurred opinions from around the room, every one of them unflattering. He was a contemptuous cheat and a sham. He should be sent back to France – from whence he’d come – but not before the skin had been flogged off his back for his impertinence.
The only voice in the room that was not raised against him was that of Ernst Haeckel, who in my opinion was the finest mind amongst us. He sat by the open window – hoping perhaps for some stir of a breeze off the Elbe on this smothering night – with his chin laid against his hand.
“What do you think of all this, Ernst?” I asked him.
“You don’t want to know,” he said softly.
“Yes we do. Of course we do.”
Haeckel looked back at us. “Very well then,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”
His face looked sickly in the candlelight, and I remember thinking – distinctly thinking – that I’d never seen such a look in his eyes as he had at that moment. Whatever thoughts had ventured into his head, they had muddied the clarity of his gaze. He looked fretful.
“Here’s what I think,” he said. “That we should be careful when we talk about necromancers.”
“Careful?” said Purrucker, who was an argumentative man at the best of times, and even more volatile when drunk. “Why should we be careful of a little French prick who preys on our women? Good Lord, he’s practically stealing from their purses!”
“How so?”
“Because he’s telling them he can raise the dead!” Purrucker yelled, banging the table for emphasis.
“And how do we know he cannot?”
“Oh now Haeckel,” I said, “you don’t believe—”
“I believe the evidence of my eyes, Theodor,” Haeckel said to me. “And I saw – once in my life – what I take to be proof that such crafts as this Montesquino professes are real.”
The room erupted with laughter and protests. Haeckel sat them out, unmoving. At last, when all our din had subsided, he said: “Do you want to hear what I have to say or don’t you?”
“Of course we want to hear,” said Julius Linneman, who doted on Haeckel; almost girlishly, we used to think.
“Then listen,” Haeckel said. “What I’m about to tell you is absolutely true, though by the time I get to the end of it you may not welcome me back into this room, because you may think I am a little crazy. More than a little perhaps.”
The softness of his voice, and the haunted look in his eyes, had quieted everyone, even the volatile Purrucker. We all took seats, or lounged against the mantelpiece, and listened. After a moment of introspection, Haeckel began to tell his tale. And as best I remember it, this is what he told us.
“Ten years ago I was at Wittenberg, studying philosophy under Wilhem Hauser. He was a metaphysician, of course; monkish in his ways. He didn’t care for the physical world; it didn’t touch him, really. And he urged his students to live with the same asceticism as he himself practices. This was of course hard for us. We were very young, and full of appetite. But while I was in Wittenberg, and under his watchful eye, I really tried to live as close to his precepts as I could.
“In the spring of my second year under Hauser, I got word that my father – who lived in Luneburg – was seriously ill, and I had to leave my studies and return home. I was a student. I’d spent all my money on books and bread. I couldn’t afford the carriage fare. So I had to walk. It was several days’ journey, of course, across the empty heath, but I had my meditations to accompany, and I was happy enough. At least for the first half of the journey. Then, out of nowhere there came a terrible rainstorm. I was soaked to the skin, and despite my valiant attempts to put my concern for physical comfort out of my mind, I could not. I was cold and unhappy, and the rarifications of the metaphysical life were very far from my mind.
“On the fourth or fifth evening, sniffling and cursing, I gathered some twigs and made a fire against a little stone wall, hoping to dry myself out before I slept. While I was gathering moss to make a pillow for my head an old man, his face the very portrait of melancholy, appeared out of the gloom, and spoke to me like a prophet.
“‘It would not be wise for you to sleep here tonight,’ he said to me.
“I was in no mood to debate the issue with him. I was too fed up. ‘I’m not going to move an inch,’ I told him. ‘This is an open road. I have very right to sleep here if I wish to.’
“‘Of course you do,’ the old man said to me. ‘I didn’t say the right was not yours. I simply said it wasn’t wise.’
“I was a little ashamed of my sharpness, to be honest. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to him. ‘I’m cold and I’m tired and I’m hungry. I meant no insult.’
“The old man said that none was taken. His name, he said, was Walter Wolfram.
“I told him my name, and my situation. He listened, then offered to bring me back to his house, which he said was close by. There I might enjoy a proper fire and some hot potato soup. I did not refuse him, of course. But I did ask him, when I’d risen, why he thought it was unwise for me to sleep in that place.
“He gave me such a sorrowful look. A heart-breaking look, the meaning of which I did not comprehend. Then he said: ‘You are a young man, and no doubt you do not fear the workings of the world. But please believe me when I tell you there are nights when it’s not good to sleep next to a place where the dead are laid.’
“‘The dead?’ I replied, and looked back. In my exhausted state I had not seen what lay on the other side of the stone wall. Now, with the rain-clouds cleared and the moon climbing, I could see a large number of graves there, old and new intermingled. Usually such a sight would not have much disturbed me. Hauser had taught us to look coldly on death. It should not, he said, move a man more than the prospect of sunrise, for it is just as certain, and just as unremarkable. It was good advice when heard on a warm afternoon in a classroom in Wittenberg. But here – out in the middle of nowhere, with an old man murmuring his superstitions at my side – I was not so certain it made sense.
“Anyway, Wolfram took me home to his little house, which lay no more than half a mile from the necropolis. There was the fire, as he’d promised. And the soup, as he’d promised. But there also, much to my surprise and delight, wife, Elise.
“She could not have been more than twenty-two, and easily the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Wittenberg had its share of beauties, of course. But I don’t believe its streets ever boasted a woman as perfect as this. Chestnut hair, all the way down to her tiny waist. Full lips, full hips, full breasts. And such eyes! When they met mine they seemed to consume me.
“I did my best, for decency’s sake, to conceal my admiration, but it was hard to do. I wanted to fall do
wn on my knees and declare my undying devotion to her, there and then.
“If Walter noticed any of this, he made no sign. He was anxious about something, I began to realize. He constantly glanced up at the clock on the mantel, and looked towards the door.
“I was glad of his distraction, in truth. It allowed me to talk to Elise, who – though she was reticent at first – grew more animated as the evening proceeded. She kept plying me with wine, and I kept drinking it, until sometime before midnight I fell asleep, right there amongst the dishes I’d eaten from.”
At this juncture, somebody in our little assembly – I think it may have been Purrucker – remarked that he hoped this wasn’t going to be a story about disappointed love, because he really wasn’t in the mood. To which Haeckel replied that the story had absolutely nothing to do with love in any shape or form. It was a simple enough reply, but it did the job: it silenced the man who’d interrupted, and it deepened our sense of foreboding.
The noise from the café had by now died almost completely; as had the sounds from the street outside. Hamburg had retired to bed. But we were held there, by the story, and by the look in Ernst Haeckel’s eyes.
“I awoke a little while later,” he went on, “but I was so weary and so heavy with wine, I barely opened my eyes. The door was ajar, and on the threshold stood a man in a dark cloak. He was having a whispered conversation with Walter. There was, I thought, an exchange of money; though I couldn’t see clearly. Then the man departed. I got only the merest glimpse of his face, by the light thrown from the fire. It was not the face of a man I would like to quarrel with, I thought. Nor indeed even meet. Narrow eyes, sunk deep in fretful flesh. I was glad he was gone. As Walter closed the door I lay my head back down and almost closed my eyes, preferring that he not know I was awake. I can’t tell you exactly why. I just knew that something was going on I was better not becoming involved with.
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