Finally, though, in the midst of this silent, icy world, all strength drained out of me, ebbing away bit by bit. Even, in the end, the strength to feel upset by my situation. My emotional compass had vanished. I lost all sense of direction, of time, of the sense of who I was. I don’t know when it began, or when it ended, but before I knew it I was locked away, alone and numb in the endless winter of that world of ice. Even after I’d lost almost all sensation, I still knew this: The husband here at the South Pole is not the husband I used to know. I couldn’t say how he’d changed, exactly, for he still was always thoughtful, always had kind words for me. And I knew he sincerely meant the things he said. But I also knew that the Ice Man before me now was not the Ice Man I’d first met at the ski resort. But who was I going to complain to? All the South Pole people liked him a lot, and they couldn’t understand a word I said. With white breath and frosty faces they talked, joked around, and sang songs in that distinctively spirited language of theirs. I stayed shut up in my hotel room gazing out at the gray skies that wouldn’t clear for months, struggling to learn the complicated grammar of the South Pole language, something I knew I’d never master.
There weren’t any more airplanes at the airport. After the plane that carried us here departed no more landed. By this time the runway was buried beneath a hard sheet of ice. Just like my heart.
Winter’s come, my husband said. A long, long winter. No planes will come, no ships either. Everything’s frozen solid, he said. All we can do is wait for spring.
It was three months after we’d come to the South Pole that I realized I was pregnant. And I knew one thing: that the baby I was going to give birth to would be a tiny Ice Man. My womb had frozen over, a thin sheet of ice mixed in with my amniotic fluid. I could feel that chill deep inside my belly. And I knew this, too: my child would have the same icicle eyes as his father, the same frost-covered fingers. And I knew one more thing: our new little family would never step outside the South Pole again. The outrageous weight of the eternal past had grabbed us and wasn’t about to let go. We’d never be able to shake free.
My heart is just about gone now. The warmth I used to have has retreated somewhere far away. Sometimes I even forget that warmth ever existed. I’m still able to cry, though. I’m completely alone, in the coldest, loneliest place in the world. When I cry, my husband kisses my cheeks, turning my tears to ice. He peels off those frozen tears and puts them on his tongue. You know I love you, he says. And I know it’s true. The Ice Man does love me. But the wind blows his frozen words further and further into the past. And I cry some more, icy tears welling up endlessly in our frozen little home in the far-off South Pole.
Replacements
Lisa Tuttle
Lisa Tuttle (1952–) is an American writer of fantastical fiction who lives in Scotland. An early member of the Turkey City Writer’s Workshop, she won the 1974 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction. Her first novel came out in 1980 and was co-written with George R. R. Martin. Since then, Tuttle has published more than a dozen novels, including Lost Futures (1992), Mad House (1998), and The Mysteries (2005). Collections include A Nest of Nightmares (1985) and My Pathology (2001). The chilling and atmospheric ‘The Replacements’ (1992) is a weird classic, often reprinted, including in the Joyce Carol Oates-edited American Gothic Tales.
Walking through gray north London to the tube station, feeling guilty that he hadn’t let Jenny drive him to work and yet relieved to have escaped another pointless argument, Stuart Holder glanced down at a pavement covered in a leaf-fall of fast-food cartons and white paper bags and saw, amid the dog turds, beer cans, and dead cigarettes, something horrible.
It was about the size of a cat, naked-looking, with leathery, hairless skin and thin, spiky limbs that seemed too frail to support the bulbous, ill-proportioned body. The face, with tiny bright eyes and a wet slit of a mouth, was like an evil monkey’s. It saw him and moved in a crippled, spasmodic way. Reaching up, it made a clotted, strangled noise. The sound touched a nerve, like metal between the teeth, and the sight of it, mewling and choking and scrabbling, scaly claws flexing and wriggling, made him feel sick and terrified. He had no phobias, he found insects fascinating, not frightening, and regularly removed, unharmed, the spiders, wasps, and mayflies which made Jenny squeal or shudder helplessly.
But this was different. This wasn’t some rare species of wingless bat escaped from a zoo, it wasn’t something he would find pictured in any reference book. It was something that should not exist, a mistake, something alien. It did not belong in his world.
A little snarl escaped him and he took a step forward and brought his foot down hard.
The small, shrill scream lanced through him as he crushed it beneath his shoe and ground it into the road.
Afterward, as he scraped the sole of his shoe against the curb to clean it, nausea overwhelmed him. He leaned over and vomited helplessly into a red-and-white-striped box of chicken bones and crumpled paper.
He straightened up, shaking, and wiped his mouth again and again with his pocket handkerchief. He wondered if anyone had seen, and had a furtive look around. Cars passed at a steady crawl. Across the road a cluster of schoolgirls dawdled near a man smoking in front of a newsagent’s, but on this side of the road the fried chicken franchise and bathroom suppliers had yet to open for the day and the nearest pedestrians were more than a hundred yards away.
Until that moment, Stuart had never killed anything in his life. Mosquitoes and flies of course, other insects probably, a nest of hornets once, that was all. He had never liked the idea of hunting, never lived in the country. He remembered his father putting out poisoned bait for rats, and he remembered shying bricks at those same vermin on a bit of waste ground where he had played as a boy. But rats weren’t like other animals; they elicited no sympathy. Some things had to be killed if they would not be driven away.
He made himself look to make sure the thing was not still alive. Nothing should be left to suffer. But his heel had crushed the thing’s face out of recognition, and it was unmistakably dead. He felt a cool tide of relief and satisfaction, followed at once, as he walked away, by a nagging uncertainty, the imminence of guilt. Was he right to have killed it, to have acted on violent, irrational impulse? He didn’t even know what it was. It might have been somebody’s pet.
He went hot and cold with shame and self-disgust. At the corner he stopped with five or six others waiting to cross the road and because he didn’t want to look at them he looked down.
And there it was, alive again.
He stifled a scream. No, of course it was not the same one, but another. His leg twitched; he felt frantic with the desire to kill it, and the terror of his desire. The thin wet mouth was moving as if it wanted to speak.
As the crossing-signal began its nagging blare he tore his eyes away from the creature squirming at his feet. Everyone else had started to cross the street, their eyes, like their thoughts, directed ahead. All except one. A woman in a smart business suit was standing still on the pavement, looking down, a sick fascination on her face.
As he looked at her looking at it, the idea crossed his mind that he should kill it for her, as a chivalric, protective act. But she wouldn’t see it that way. She would be repulsed by his violence. He didn’t want her to think he was a monster. He didn’t want to be the monster who had exulted in the crunch of fragile bones, the flesh and viscera merging pulpily beneath his shoe.
He forced himself to look away, to cross the road, to spare the alien life. But he wondered, as he did so, if he had been right to spare it.
Stuart Holder worked as an editor for a publishing company with offices an easy walk from St. Paul’s. Jenny had worked there, too, as a secretary, when they met five years ago. Now, though, she had quite a senior position with another publishing house, south of the river, and recently they had given her a car. He had been supportive of her ambitions, supportive of her learning to drive, and proud of her on all fronts when she succee
ded, yet he was aware, although he never spoke of it, that something about her success made him uneasy. One small, niggling, insecure part of himself was afraid that one day she would realize she didn’t need him anymore. That was why he picked at her, and second-guessed her decisions when she was behind the wheel and he was in the passenger seat. He recognized this as he walked briskly through more crowded streets toward his office, and he told himself he would do better. He would have to. If anything drove them apart it was more likely to be his behavior than her career. He wished he had accepted her offer of a ride today. Better any amount of petty irritation between husband and wife than to be haunted by the memory of that tiny face, distorted in the death he had inflicted. Entering the building, he surreptitiously scraped the sole of his shoe against the carpet.
Upstairs two editors and one of the publicity girls were in a huddle around his secretary’s desk; they turned on him the guilty-defensive faces of women who have been discussing secrets men aren’t supposed to know.
He felt his own defensiveness rising to meet theirs as he smiled. ‘Can I get any of you chaps a cup of coffee?’
‘I’m sorry, Stuart, did you want …?’ As the others faded away, his secretary removed a stiff white paper bag with the NEXT logo, printed on it from her desktop.
‘Joke, Frankie, joke.’ He always got his own coffee because he liked the excuse to wander, and he was always having to reassure her that she was not failing in her secretarial duties. He wondered if Next sold sexy underwear, decided it would be unkind to tease her further.
He felt a strong urge to call Jenny and tell her what had happened, although he knew he wouldn’t be able to explain, especially not over the phone. Just hearing her voice, the sound of sanity, would be a comfort, but he restrained himself until just after noon, when he made the call he made every day.
Her secretary told him she was in a meeting. ‘Tell her Stuart rang,’ he said, knowing she would call him back as always.
But that day she didn’t. Finally, at five minutes to five, Stuart rang his wife’s office and was told she had left for the day.
It was unthinkable for Jenny to leave work early, as unthinkable as for her not to return his call. He wondered if she was ill. Although he usually stayed in the office until well after six, now he shoved a manuscript in his briefcase and went out to brave the rush hour.
He wondered if she was mad at him. But Jenny didn’t sulk. If she was angry she said so. They didn’t lie or play those sorts of games with each other, pretending not to be in, ‘forgetting’ to return calls.
As he emerged from his local underground station Stuart felt apprehensive. His eyes scanned the pavement and the gutters, and once or twice the flutter of paper made him jump, but of the creatures he had seen that morning there were no signs. The body of the one he had killed was gone, perhaps eaten by a passing dog, perhaps returned to whatever strange dimension had spawned it. He noticed, before he turned off the high street, that other pedestrians were also taking a keener than usual interest in the pavement and the edge of the road, and that made him feel vindicated somehow.
London traffic being what it was, he was home before Jenny. While he waited for the sound of her key in the lock he made himself a cup of tea, cursed, poured it down the sink, and had a stiff whiskey instead. He had just finished it and was feeling much better when he heard the street door open.
‘Oh!’ The look on her face reminded him unpleasantly of those women in the office this morning, making him feel like an intruder in his own place. Now Jenny smiled, but it was too late. ‘I didn’t expect you to be here so early.’
‘Nor me. I tried to call you, but they said you’d left already. I wondered if you were feeling all right.’
‘I’m fine!’
‘You look fine.’ The familiar sight of her melted away his irritation. He loved the way she looked: her slender, boyish figure, her close-cropped, curly hair, her pale complexion and bright blue eyes.
Her cheeks now had a slight hectic flush. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and gave him an assessing look before coming straight out with it. ‘How would you feel about keeping a pet?’
Stuart felt a horrible conviction that she was not talking about a dog or a cat. He wondered if it was the whiskey on an empty stomach which made him feel dizzy.
‘It was under my car. If I hadn’t happened to notice something moving down there I could have run over it.’ She lifted her shoulders in a delicate shudder.
‘Oh, God, Jenny, you haven’t brought it home!’
She looked indignant. ‘Well, of course I did! I couldn’t just leave it in the street – somebody else might have run it over.’
Or stepped on it, he thought, realizing now that he could never tell Jenny what he had done. That made him feel even worse, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was just a cat she’d rescued. ‘What is it?’
She gave a strange, excited laugh. ‘I don’t know. Something very rare, I think. Here, look.’ She slipped the large, woven bag off her shoulder, opening it, holding it out to him. ‘Look. Isn’t it the sweetest thing?’
How could two people who were so close, so alike in so many ways, see something so differently? He only wanted to kill it, even now, while she had obviously fallen in love. He kept his face carefully neutral although he couldn’t help flinching from her description. ‘Sweet?’
It gave him a pang to see how she pulled back, holding the bag protectively close as she said, ‘Well, I know it’s not pretty, but so what? I thought it was horrible, too, at first sight.…’ Her face clouded, as if she found her first impression difficult to remember, or to credit, and her voice faltered a little. ‘But then, then I realized how helpless it was. It needed me. It can’t help how it looks. Anyway, doesn’t it kind of remind you of the Psammead?’
‘The what?’
‘Psammead. You know, The Five Children and It?’
He recognized the title but her passion for old-fashioned children’s books was something he didn’t share. He shook his head impatiently. ‘That thing didn’t come out of a book, Jen. You found it in the street and you don’t know what it is or where it came from. It could be dangerous, it could be diseased.’
‘Dangerous,’ she said in a withering tone.
‘You don’t know.’
‘I’ve been with him all day and he hasn’t hurt me, or anybody else at the office, he’s perfectly happy being held, and he likes being scratched behind the ears.’
He did not miss the pronoun shift. ‘It might have rabies.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Don’t you be silly; it’s not exactly native, is it? It might be carrying all sorts of foul parasites from South America or Africa or wherever.’
‘Now you’re being racist. I’m not going to listen to you. And you’ve been drinking.’ She flounced out of the room.
If he’d been holding his glass still he might have thrown it. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing in and out slowly. This was worse than any argument they’d ever had, the only crucial disagreement of their marriage. Jenny had stronger views about many things than he did, so her wishes usually prevailed. He didn’t mind that. But this was different. He wasn’t having that creature in his home. He had to make her agree.
Necessity cooled his blood. He had his temper under control when his wife returned. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, although she was the one who should have apologized. Still looking prickly, she shrugged and would not meet his eyes. ‘Want to go out to dinner tonight?’
She shook her head. ‘I’d rather not. I’ve got some work to do.’
‘Can I get you something to drink? I’m only one whiskey ahead of you, honest.’
Her shoulders relaxed. ‘I’m sorry. Low blow. Yeah, pour me one. And one for yourself.’ She sat down on the couch, her bag by her feet. Leaning over, reaching inside, she cooed, ‘Who’s my little sweetheart, then?’
Normally he would have taken a seat beside her. Now, though, he eyed the pale, mis
shapen bundle on her lap and, after handing her a glass, retreated across the room. ‘Don’t get mad, but isn’t having a pet one of those things we discuss and agree on beforehand?’
He saw the tension come back into her shoulders, but she went on stroking the thing, keeping herself calm. ‘Normally, yes. But this is special. I didn’t plan it. It happened, and now I’ve got a responsibility to him. Or her.’ She giggled. ‘We don’t even know what sex you are, do we, my precious?’
He said carefully, ‘I can see that you had to do something when you found it, but keeping it might not be the best thing.’
‘I’m not going to put it out in the street.’
‘No, no, but…don’t you think it would make sense to let a professional have a look at it? Take it to a vet, get it checked out…maybe it needs shots or something.’
She gave him a withering look and for a moment he faltered, but then he rallied. ‘Come on, Jenny, be reasonable! You can’t just drag some strange animal in off the street and keep it, just like that. You don’t even know what it eats.’
‘I gave it some fruit at lunch. It ate that. Well, it sucked out the juice. I don’t think it can chew.’
‘But you don’t know, do you? Maybe the fruit juice was just an aperitif, maybe it needs half its weight in live insects every day, or a couple of small, live mammals. Do you really think you could cope with feeding it mice or rabbits fresh from the pet shop every week?’
‘Oh, Stuart.’
‘Well? Will you just take it to a vet? Make sure it’s healthy? Will you do that much?’
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories Page 171