The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  It was just about the last thing that Maybury wanted from any point of view, but he had learned that it was of a kind that is peculiarly difficult to protest against, without somehow putting oneself in the wrong with other people. Besides he supposed that he was now committed to a night in the place, and therefore to all the implications, whatever they might be, or very nearly so.

  ‘I should like to telephone my wife, if I may,’ Maybury said. Angela had been steadily on his mind for some time.

  ‘I fear that’s impossible, Mr Maybury,’ replied Falkner. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘How can it be impossible?’

  ‘In order to reduce tension and sustain the atmosphere that our guests prefer, we have no external telephone. Only an internal link between my quarters and the proprietors.’

  ‘But how can you run an hotel in the modern world without a telephone?’

  ‘Most of our guests are regulars. Many of them come again and again, and the last thing they come for is to hear a telephone ringing the whole time with all the strain it involves.’

  ‘They must be half round the bend,’ snapped Maybury, before he could stop himself.

  ‘Mr Maybury,’ replied Falkner, ‘I have to remind you of two things. The first is that I have invited you to be our guest in the fuller sense of the word. The second is that, although you attach so much importance to efficiency, you none the less appear to have set out on a long journey at night with very little petrol in your tank. Possibly you should think yourself fortunate that you are not spending the night stranded on some motorway.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Maybury, ‘but I simply must telephone my wife. Soon she’ll be out of her mind with worry.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so, Mr Maybury,’ said Falkner smiling. ‘Concerned, we must hope; but not quite out of her mind.’

  Maybury could have hit him, but at that moment a stranger entered.

  ‘Ah, Mr Bannard,’ said Falkner, and introduced them. They actually shook hands. ‘You won’t mind, Mr Bannard, if Mr Maybury shares your room?’

  Bannard was a slender, bony little man, of about Maybury’s age. He was bald, with a rim of curly red hair. He had slightly glaucous grey-green eyes of the kind that often go with red hair. In the present environment, he was quite perky, but Maybury wondered how he would make out in the world beyond. Perhaps, however, this was because Bannard was too shrimp-like to look his best in pyjamas.

  ‘I should be delighted to share my room with anyone,’ replied Bannard. ‘I’m lonely by myself.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Falkner coolly. ‘Perhaps you’d lead Mr Maybury upstairs and lend him some pyjamas? You must remember that he is a stranger to us and doesn’t yet know all our ways.’

  ‘Delighted, delighted,’ exclaimed Bannard.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Falkner. ‘Is there anything you would like, Mr Maybury, before you go upstairs?’

  ‘Only a telephone,’ rejoined Maybury, still recalcitrant. He simply did not believe Falkner. No one in the modern world could live without a telephone, let alone run a business without one. He had begun uneasily to wonder if Falkner had spoken the whole truth about the petrol and the diesel fuel either.

  ‘Anything you would like that we are in a position to provide, Mr Maybury?’ persisted Falkner, with offensive specificity.

  ‘There’s no telephone here,’ put in Bannard, whose voice was noticeably high, even squeaky.

  ‘In that case, nothing,’ said Maybury. ‘But I don’t know what my wife will do with herself.’

  ‘None of us knows that,’ said Bannard superfluously, and cackled for a second.

  ‘Good-night, Mr Maybury. Thank you, Mr Bannard.’

  Maybury was almost surprised to discover, as he followed Bannard upstairs, that it seemed a perfectly normal hotel, though overheated and decorated over-heavily. On the first landing was a full-size reproduction of a chieftain in scarlet tartan by Raeburn. Maybury knew the picture, because it had been chosen for the firm’s calendar one year, though ever since they had used girls. Bannard lived on the second floor, where the picture on the landing was smaller, and depicted ladies and gentlemen in riding dress taking refreshments together.

  ‘Not too much noise,’ said Bannard. ‘We have some very light sleepers amongst us.’

  The corridors were down to half-illumination for the night watches, and distinctly sinister. Maybury crept foolishly along and almost stole into Bannard’s room.

  ‘No,’ said Bannard in a giggling whisper. ‘Not Number 13, not yet Number 12 A.’

  As a matter of fact Maybury had not noticed the number on the door that Bannard was now cautiously closing, and he did not feel called upon to rejoin.

  ‘Do be quiet taking your things off, old man,’ said Bannard softly. ‘When once you’ve woken people who’ve been properly asleep, you can never quite tell. It’s a bad thing to do.’

  It was a large square room, and the two beds were in exactly opposite corners, somewhat to Maybury’s relief. The light had been on when they entered. Maybury surmised that even the unnecessary clicking of switches was to be eschewed.

  ‘That’s your bed,’ whispered Bannard, pointing jocularly.

  So far Maybury had removed only his shoes. He could have done without Bannard staring at him and without Bannard’s affable grin.

  ‘Or perhaps you’d rather we did something before settling down?’ whispered Bannard.

  ‘No, thank you,’ replied Maybury. ‘It’s been a long day.’ He was trying to keep his voice reasonably low, but he absolutely refused to whisper.

  ‘To be sure it has,’ said Bannard, rising to much the volume that Maybury had employed. ‘Night-night then. The best thing is to get to sleep quickly.’ His tone was similar to that which seemed habitual with Falkner.

  Bannard climbed agilely into his own bed, and lay on his back peering at Maybury over the sheets.

  ‘Hang your suit in the cupboard,’ said Bannard, who had already done likewise. ‘There’s room.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maybury. ‘Where do I find the pyjamas?’

  ‘Top drawer,’ said Bannard. ‘Help yourself. They’re all alike.’

  And, indeed, the drawer proved to be virtually filled with apparently identical suits of pyjamas.

  ‘It’s between seasons,’ said Bannard. ‘Neither proper summer, nor proper winter.’

  ‘Many thanks for the loan,’ said Maybury, though the pyjamas were considerably too small for him.

  ‘The bathroom’s in there,’ said Bannard.

  When Maybury returned, he opened the door of the cupboard. It was a big cupboard and it was almost filled by a long line of (presumably) Bannard’s suits.

  ‘There’s room,’ said Bannard once more. ‘Find yourself an empty hanger. Make yourself at home.’

  While balancing his trousers on the hanger and suspending it from the rail, Maybury again became aware of the injury to his leg. He had hustled so rapidly into Bannard’s pyjamas that, for better or for worse, he had not even looked at the scar.

  ‘What’s the matter’?’ asked Bannard on the instant. ‘Hurt yourself, have you?’

  ‘It was a damned cat scratched me,’ replied Maybury, without thinking very much.

  But this time he decided to look. With some difficulty and some pain, he rolled up the tight pyjama leg. It was a quite nasty gash and there was much dried blood. He realized that he had not even thought about washing the wound. In so far as he had been worrying about anything habitual, he had been worrying about Angela.

  ‘Don’t show it to me,’ squeaked out Bannard, forgetting not to make a noise. All the same, he was sitting up in bed and staring as if his eyes would pop. ‘It’s bad for me to see things like that. I’m upset by them.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Maybury. ‘I’m sure it’s not as serious as it looks.’ In fact, he was far from sure; and he was aware also that it had not been quite what Bannard was concerned about.

  ‘I don’t want to know anything about it,’ said Ba
nnard.

  Maybury made no reply but simply rolled down the pyjama leg. About his injury too there was plainly nothing to be done. Even a request for Vaseline might lead to hysterics. Maybury tried to concentrate upon the reflection that if nothing worse had followed from the gash by now, then nothing worse might ever follow.

  Bannard, however, was still sitting up in bed. He was looking pale. ‘I come here to forget things like that,’ he said. ‘We all do.’ His voice was shaking.

  ‘Shall I turn the light out?’ enquired Maybury. ‘As I’m the one who’s still up?’

  ‘I don’t usually do that,’ said Bannard, reclining once more, none the less. ‘It can make things unnecessarily difficult. But there’s you to be considered too.’

  ‘It’s your room,’ said Maybury, hesitating.

  ‘All right,’ said Bannard. ‘If you wish. Turn it out. Tonight anyway.’ Maybury did his injured leg no good when stumbling back to his bed. All the same, he managed to arrive there.

  ‘I’m only here for one night,’ he said more to the darkness than to Bannard. ‘You’ll be on your own again tomorrow.’

  Bannard made no reply, and, indeed, it seemed to Maybury as if he were no longer there, that Bannard was not an organism that could function in the dark. Maybury refrained from raising any question of drawing back a curtain (the curtains were as long and heavy as elsewhere), or of letting in a little night air. Things, he felt, were better left more or less as they were.

  It was completely dark. It was completely silent. It was far too hot.

  Maybury wondered what the time was. He had lost all touch. Unfortunately, his watch lacked a luminous dial.

  He doubted whether he would ever sleep, but the night had to be endured somehow. For Angela it must be even harder – far harder. At the best, he had never seen himself as a first-class husband, able to provide a superfluity, eager to be protective. Things would become quite impossible, if he were to lose a leg. But, with modern medicine, that might be avoidable, even at the worst: he should be able to continue struggling on for some time yet.

  As stealthily as possible he insinuated himself from between the burning blankets and sheets on to the surface of the bed. He lay there like a dying fish, trying not to make another movement of any kind.

  He became almost cataleptic with inner exertion. It was not a promising recipe for slumber. In the end, he thought he could detect Bannard’s breathing, far, far away. So Bannard was still there. Fantasy and reality are different things. No one could tell whether Bannard slept or waked, but it had in any case become a quite important aim not to resume general conversation with Bannard. Half a lifetime passed.

  There could be no doubt, now, that Bannard was both still in the room and also awake. Perceptibly, he was on the move. Maybury’s body contracted with speculation as to whether Bannard in the total blackness was making towards his corner. Maybury felt that he was only half his normal size.

  Bannard edged and groped interminably. Of course Maybury had been unfair to him in extinguishing the light, and the present anxiety was doubtless no more than the price to be paid.

  Bannard himself seemed certainly to be entering into the spirit of the situation: possibly he had not turned the light on because he could not reach the switch; but there seemed more to it than that. Bannard could be thought of as committed to a positive effort in the direction of silence, in order that Maybury, the guest for a night, should not be disturbed. Maybury could hardly hear him moving at all, though perhaps it was a gamble whether this was consideration or menace. Maybury would hardly have been surprised if the next event had been hands on his throat.

  But, in fact, the next event was Bannard reaching the door and opening it, with vast delicacy and slowness. It was a considerable anti-climax, and not palpably outside the order of nature, but Maybury did not feel fully reassured as he rigidly watched the column of dim light from the passage slowly widen and then slowly narrow until it vanished with the faint click of the handle. Plainly there was little to worry about, after all, but Maybury had probably reached that level of anxiety where almost any new event merely causes new stress. Soon, moreover, there would be the stress of Bannard’s return. Maybury half realized that he was in a grotesque condition to be so upset, when Bannard was, in fact, showing him all possible consideration. Once more he reflected that poor Angela’s plight was far worse.

  Thinking about Angela’s plight, and how sweet, at the bottom of everything, she really was, Maybury felt more wakeful than ever, as he awaited Bannard’s return, surely imminent, surely. Sleep was impossible until Bannard had returned.

  But still Bannard did not return. Maybury began to wonder whether something had gone wrong with his own time faculty, such as it was; something, that is, of medical significance. That whole evening and night, from soon after his commitment to the recommended route, he had been in doubt about his place in the universe, about what people called the state of his nerves. Here was evidence that he had good reason for anxiety.

  Then, from somewhere within the house, came a shattering, earpiercing scream, and then another, and another. It was impossible to tell whether the din came from near or far; still less whether it was female or male. Maybury had not known that the human organism could make so loud a noise, even in the bitterest distress. It was shattering to listen to; especially in the enclosed, hot, total darkness. And this was nothing momentary: the screaming went on and on, a paroxysm, until Maybury had to clutch at himself not to scream in response.

  He fell off the bed and floundered about for the heavy curtains. Some light on the scene there must be; if possible, some new air in the room. He found the curtains within a moment, and dragged back first one, and then the other.

  There was no more light than before.

  Shutters, perhaps? Maybury’s arm stretched out gingerly. He could feel neither wood nor metal.

  The light switch. It must be found.

  While Maybury fell about in the darkness, the screaming stopped on a ghoulish gurgle: perhaps as if the sufferer had vomited immensely and then passed out; or perhaps as if the sufferer had in mercy passed away altogether. Maybury continued to search.

  It was harder than ever to say how long it took, but in the end he found the switch, and the immediate mystery was explained. Behind the drawn-back curtains was, as the children say, just wall. The room apparently had no window. The curtains were mere decoration.

  All was silent once more: once more extremely silent. Bannard’s bed was turned back as neatly as if in the full light of day.

  Maybury cast off Bannard’s pyjamas and, as quickly as his state permitted, resumed his own clothes. Not that he had any very definite course of action. Simply it seemed better to be fully dressed. He looked vaguely inside his pocket-book to confirm that his money was still there.

  He went to the door and made cautiously to open it and seek some hint into the best thing for him to do, the best way to make off.

  The door was unopenable. There was no movement in it at all. It had been locked at the least; perhaps more. If Bannard had done it, he had been astonishingly quiet about it: conceivably experienced.

  Maybury tried to apply himself to thinking calmly.

  The upshot was that once more, and even more hurriedly, he removed his clothes, disposed of them suitably, and resumed Bannard’s pyjamas.

  It would be sensible once more to turn out the light; to withdraw to bed, between the sheets, if possible; to stand by, as before. But Maybury found that turning out the light, the resultant total blackness, were more than he could face, however expedient.

  Ineptly, he sat on the side of his bed, still trying to think things out, to plan sensibly. Would Bannard, after all this time, ever, in fact, return? At least during the course of that night?

  He became aware that the electric light bulb had begun to crackle and fizzle. Then, with no further sound, it simply failed. It was not, Maybury thought, some final authoritative lights-out all over the house. It was merely that the
single bulb had given out, however unfortunately from his own point of view: an isolated industrial incident.

  He lay there, half in and half out, for a long time. He concentrated on the thought that nothing had actually happened that was dangerous. Ever since his schooldays (and, indeed, during them) he had become increasingly aware that there were many things strange to him, most of which had proved in the end to be apparently quite harmless.

  Then Bannard was creeping back into the dark room. Maybury’s ears had picked up no faint sound of a step in the passage, and, more remarkable, there had been no noise, either, of a turned key, let alone, perhaps, of a drawn bolt. Maybury’s view of the bulb failure was confirmed by a repetition of the widening and narrowing column of light, dim, but probably no dimmer than before. Up to a point, lights were still on elsewhere. Bannard, considerate as before, did not try to turn on the light in the room. He shut the door with extraordinary skill, and Maybury could just, though only just, hear him slithering into his bed.

  Still, there was one unmistakable development: at Bannard’s return, the dark room had filled with perfume; the perfume favoured, long ago, as it seemed, by the lady who had been so charming to Maybury in the lounge. Smell is, in any case, notoriously the most recollective of the senses.

  Almost at once, this time, Bannard not merely fell obtrusively asleep, but was soon snoring quite loudly.

  Maybury had every reason to be at least irritated by everything that was happening, but instead he soon fell asleep himself. So long as Bannard was asleep, he was at least in abeyance as an active factor in the situation; and many perfumes have their own drowsiness, as Iago remarked. Angela passed temporarily from the forefront of Maybury’s mind.