The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by Jeff Vandermeer; Ann Vandermeer

  Jane is no longer perched on her exercise bike. I don’t know where she is; Elizabeth says she’s reluctant to look elsewhere in that big house in fear we’ll find still others in the attitudes of life. We believe, however, that Jane is indeed in the house because we can see what appear to be drag marks in the thin layer of sand throughout the house’s first floor. The drag marks stop halfway up the flight of stairs that‘s off the parlor, where the layer of sand ends. So we assume that Jane is on the second or third floor of the house. We have no idea why she’s been moved.

  Tonight, the creature that barks hoarsely, and which I assume, perhaps incorrectly, to be a dog, seemed closer than it has on previous nights.

  I have never seen the sunrise, here. From time to time, on our walks, I see a diffuse patch of light through the overcast and I assume it’s the sun – it can be nothing else. I’ve seen a sunset or two, but these are dull events which possess nothing of the brilliance of sunsets in other places. The sky does not turn to fire, the pale and fragile blue at the horizon does not become a delicate, short-lived rosé. No pale and fragile blue exists here, only a horizon the color of lead, which, in its own way, is quite remarkable.

  I went to the other house without Elizabeth and found Jane lying on her back in a four-poster bed on the house’s third floor. She was wearing her gray exercise outfit, and her hands were clasped over her stomach, legs straight. Her sneakers were on the floor beside the bed. Her socks had been put neatly into the sneakers.

  One of the room’s tall, thin windows was open wide, so the room was very cold.

  Jane’s faded blue eyes were open wide, too, as if someone had forced them open. Her look of anger seemed to have passed. This confused me, and made me angry. It passed quickly.

  ‘Whose world is this?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘It’s not a world,’ I answered. ‘It’s an island.’

  ‘That’s the same thing as a world.’ She sounded petulant. It’s a tone I used to find amusing – as if she had momentarily become a small girl; it reminded me of our first few years together, when we were young children, before we started noticing, in earnest, that we were different sexes.

  Her petulance, now, is merely annoying. Like her frown.

  I think I would find even her laughter annoying, if she laughed anymore.

  I wish she were someone else.

  ‘What are we going to do with them?’ Elizabeth asked.

  I shrugged. ‘What can we do with them?’ I shook my head a little. ‘I’m not even sure we’re supposed to do anything with them.’ I grinned. ‘We can arrange them,’ I said.

  ‘Arrange them?’ She seemed astonished by the idea.

  ‘Sure. We can make them be…what we want them to be. We can make them smile. We can make them look attentive and interested.’

  ‘That’s pathetic, George. They’re not dolls. They’re not marionettes.’

  ‘What are they, then?’

  We were on one of our walks, which have grown less and less frequent because there are so few areas on this island, now, that are unsullied by the others propped up in their various positions of life. I find it very disconcerting to come across one of them – even those with whom I’m familiar; perhaps because they are, as well, so grotesquely unfamiliar as their positions change from day to day and week to week. I maintained to Elizabeth that the others should, at least, remain predictable. If they are in an attitude of repose, then that is as they should remain. If they are in some other attitude – an attitude of life, as I call it – then that is as they should remain, as well. They have no choice.

  Elizabeth had no idea what I was talking about. I think, at times, that she does not appreciate the situation we have here as much as I. I believe that she sees it as a burden.

  Sometimes I wish that she were somewhere else.

  We’ve spotted the black-haired man in the black suit, though at a short distance. He was seated in a high-backed wooden chair on a dune overlooking the ocean. He was facing away from us, though we knew it was the same man we’d discovered two weeks earlier. When we saw him, we both stopped walking and Elizabeth whispered an obscenity. We were perhaps 50 yards from the man and the brisk wind was blowing his black hair about.

  ‘He’s watching,’ Elizabeth said, then added, ‘or waiting.’

  ‘How could he be watching anything? Or, for that matter, waiting for anything?’ I asked.

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Why couldn’t he, or any of them, be watching? And waiting?’

  ‘They’ve nothing to watch, and nothing to wait for,’ I said.

  ‘They have everything to wait for,’ she said. ‘How do we know they don’t? How do we know anything about them? We don’t even know their names.’

  ‘You’re being argumentative,’ I said.

  ‘No, I’m being realistic,’ she said.

  ‘And you’re being confrontational, too,’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered, then nodded at the black-haired man. ‘He is.’ She paused. ‘They all are.’

  I managed a brief and unsatisfying glimpse of the creature we supposed was a dog. It awakened Elizabeth and me early in the morning, when the sky had begun to lighten. It sounded as if it were very close to the house, perhaps on the little patch of scrubby lawn that I have tried hard to maintain. I could hear a slight warble in its hoarse bark, as if it were attempting song.

  ‘Listen to that,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Listen to that,’ she repeated. ‘It’s awful.’

  I looked at her, saw the pale oval of her face in the semi-darkness. ‘I don’t think it’s awful,’ I said.

  ‘It’s grisly,’ she said. ‘It’s awful,’ she repeated. ‘This entire island is awful. These people all around us are awful. They’re sickening and awful, George! Look at them!’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Not in any meaningful way. You’ve looked at them as if they’re merely…lawn ornaments.’

  ‘I haven’t!’

  ‘But you have. I know you have. You always have.’

  ‘Always? We haven’t been here that long.’

  ‘Haven’t we?’

  ‘It only feels that way, Elizabeth.’

  ‘We’ve been here since we were children. I know it.’

  The creature near the house barked again. Its warble was longer this time, more pronounced, as if it really were attempting song.

  Then what passes here for morning came, and when I went to the window, I saw the creature moving off, toward the center of the island. It was larger than a large dog, though it was vaguely the shape of a dog. I saw only its dark silhouette against the gray light, as it moved away from me. When I study it again, with the eye of memory, I don’t believe that it was a dog, however. I believe that it was human, or something trying to be human, or something which may have once been human. I said as much to Elizabeth, while I stood at the window and she lay in bed.

  She laughed. It was a joyless noise. ‘You live for drama,’ she said. She grimaced. ‘More precisely, you live for the drama of death. I think you always have.’

  I didn’t like her laugh. I liked her grimace even less. It made me quite angry. I could feel it in my hands and arms; I could feel it in my ears and my mouth. ‘Damn you!’ I whispered.

  She turned over, as if to go back to sleep. I was certain she hadn’t heard me.

  One of the others is a woman I call Joanne. She’s young, pretty, and she wears a black bikini, which fits her well. She sits upright in a two-seat wooden rowboat that has the words ‘The Arrangement’ painted poorly in black on the port bow. Joanne has red hair and green eyes and, unlike so many of the others, she looks happy. I could be wrong, but I’m almost sure there’s the ghost of a smile on her broad, red mouth. She has her hands on the rowboat’s oars, which are at right angles to the rowboat, in the sand – which is where the rowboats sits, at the bottom of a dune about a half mile from the house Elizabeth and I share.

  Sometimes I speak to Joanne, as I do to many of the others, though I’
ve never shared this fact with Elizabeth. ‘Hello, Joanne,’ I say. ‘Beautiful name – Joanne. I’ve never known anyone with that name, except you.’ She never responds, of course. I think that I would jump out of my shoes if she did.

  Her skin has a pale blue cast. All of the others on the island have that same cast, even Elizabeth, when the gray light catches her correctly. Sometimes I think that it’s simply the quality of light which causes this cast, if – were the sun to appear – it would cause many changes, not just in the cast of skin. Perhaps the winds would cease. Perhaps the air would grow warm. Perhaps rain would come. And perhaps, when all of these things happened, the others here would begin the slow but inexorable processes which would take them from me, and back to the earth, forever.

  I’d miss them. Elizabeth may have been right; in some strange way, I may think of them as ornaments. As bric-a-brac, perhaps. Knickknacks. It’s a grisly idea. But it’s entertaining.

  What does one do with a missing wife? More correctly, what can one do with a missing wife? Encounter her living ghost on the stairway? Conjure up memories at bedtime? Prepare tea and scones and leave them on the table always?

  But then, I don’t know what I want to do with her, or what I’d do with her if I found her, or if she found me, or if we came across one another on the island, or in that other house.

  Of course I’ve looked everywhere. I’m sure that I’ve found her footprints in the dunes, and it occurs to me that she may have simply walked into the ocean, sick to death of the life that has been provided her here, on this grotesque and lovely island. But I’ve found no evidence of footprints on the ocean side of the dunes, which suggests little, because such footprints would last only half a day or so in this wind.

  I’ve called to her, too. But, again, the wind covers much, and I’m all-but certain she cannot hear me.

  I think, however, that she has never heard me. She has her gaudy, Technicolor world. And I have my world. So I’ve lost little.

  The creature which once may have been human warbled beneath the bedroom window before daylight. There was no hint, in the sound it made, of the bark which heralded its first appearances. Only that warble, which is so close to song, and which is almost soothing in its strange atonality, as if – like so many; like myself – it is simply trying hard to find its place in a universe that is a friend to no one. And so it warbles off key, in various keys, trying to find the tone which resonates in its miserable gut and heart in the air and earth around it.

  I went to the window and peered down at the creature. I couldn’t see its face. I saw a rough texture to the darkness, nothing more. But I believe it was peering back at me. I believe that its eyes, which may have been green, or blue-green, or blue, locked on mine, and that when I spoke to it, it spoke back, though I heard nothing except its atonal warbling.

  I am arranging the others as I feel they should have been arranged when I came to this island. I am arranging them as they no doubt want to be arranged, as I would want to be arranged were I in their shoes. But it is no small chore to arrange them. I’m as old or older than any of them, and they offer me no help whatsoever. Of course, I know that they’re beyond helping themselves, or helping me, but when one sees arms, and legs looking fit, and strong backs, one naturally hopes for help.

  The arrangement I found for Joanne was simple enough. I sent her off in her rowboat. I pushed the thing out as far as I could into the choppy ocean, perhaps fifty yards, and I let the currents grab her. In no time, she was gone.

  And I put the black-haired man back in the tide pool. Face down.

  And I’ve put Jane back on her exercise bike, though she seems angry again.

  And I’ve put a young man named Henry on his back on a blanket, on a dune near the ocean. I’ve covered his midsection with a towel. He used to be taking a bath in one of the bathrooms in the other house. He used to have one arm up, so he could use a scrub brush (absent) on his back. I didn’t like this. His genitals were huge, all too apparent, blue and ugly.

  And one I’ve named Rebecca is writing her first novel here in the dining room of my little house. She’s using an old Remington Rand Noiseless typewriter. Her fingers are poised above the keys, her head is lowered slightly over the platen, and she’s reading what she’s written – which is absolutely nothing, to date, and which will remain nothing forever. Rebecca used to be washing dishes at the other house.

  I’ve seen Elizabeth as a silhouette against the horizon, at dusk. I’m sure it was Elizabeth. It could have been no one else. She has a distinctive figure. An hourglass figure. And she walks slowly, gracefully. I saw her from my bedroom window. She was a hundred yards away, walking toward the ocean, over a dune. I called to her, ‘Elizabeth, what are you doing?’

  Then sunlight grabbed her and, in a moment, both she and the sunlight were gone.

  It is the first sunlight I’ve seen here.

  I must admit that it scares me.

  The others do not stay as I’ve arranged them. As if they have minds to command them, and hands that grasp, and legs that can make them walk, they have all gone off into other arrangements – the black-suited man is again in his high-backed chair on the dune, and Jane is now washing dishes at the other house, and the man named Henry is fishing, rod and reel poised, and Joanne is sunbathing under a gray sky, and Rebecca is standing just outside the house with an artist’s brush in hand, as if at an easel.

  This makes me very angry, very angry. I can feel it in my ears and behind my eyes. These people are at the mercy of the wind’s intentions, the winter’s intentions, my intentions. They are beyond their own intentions. They have no memories, no needs, no wants, no lusts. They are organs, flesh, hair, and blood as thick as pudding. They are bric-a-brac, adornments; they serve the ambulatory, they serve me.

  The sun made a brief appearance today. It changed the wind and changed the temperature. It is changing the others, too. It’s corrupting them, however slightly. The pale blue cast of their skin is becoming blemished by small irregular patches of white, and green. This is most apparent in those who remain outside.

  I pray for cold, and wind, and cloud.

  Quite early this morning, I awoke suddenly, without knowing why, made my way downstairs, and saw that the front door was open, that Elizabeth was standing on the front porch looking in at me. I saw her face well, despite the darkness. I think it was illuminated from above by light coming out my bedroom window.

  I said, ‘Elizabeth.’ It wasn’t a question. I was merely mouthing her name.

  She closed her eyes briefly and sighed.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ I said, ‘I’m very lonely here. I’m very lonely here. Come inside.’

  She shook her head slightly, as if the gesture gave her sorrow.

  I was half a room away; I did not move toward her.

  Eventually, she turned and walked off.

  The sun’s brief appearances have grown less and less brief. It rises each day, and it sets. And the others have become corruptible. Skin sloughs off. Breasts wrinkle. Eyes descend.

  This makes me very angry. I can feel it everywhere.

  And all the while, Elizabeth watches – from a distance, on the dunes, at the windows, too. But never here, inside my little house.

  I cried to her, this morning, about loneliness, again. I felt foolish and vulnerable, but I babbled and blubbered at her nonetheless, until she simply wasn’t there anymore.

  She could not hear me.

  She has never heard me.

  So I’ve lost little.

  But how can I be lonely, now, with the others all about, arranged so prettily in the positions of life, and protected, here – inside this little house – from the lingering and awful sunlight?

  I keep them away from the windows, where the sunlight insinuates itself and causes skin and hands and noses and eyes and necks to decay.

  I speak to them. They do not speak back, or change their attitudes of life. I think I would jump out of my shoes if they did.

  It’s
a bit close here, now, in this small house. I have barely room to sit in my chair. Elbows and breasts and thighs, knees and feet and chins and hair are arrayed around me like shadows at dusk.

  I don’t turn to the windows anymore. The sunlight is there. And I know Elizabeth is there, too, looking in at me, doubtless with pity, always with pity. And the creature which may have once been human is at a different window – one shaded from sunlight – and it is warbling its atonal song. That song is constant, now. As the wind was. It’s a beautiful song, one I know I’ve always heard, even in childhood, and one which I think I understand, at last.

  The Forest

  Laird Barron

  Laird Barron (1970–) is an American writer, much of whose critically acclaimed work falls within the horror, noir, and dark fantasy genres. In his fiction, the influence of Lovecraft and Lucius Shepard has been subsumed by his own themes and concerns, creating such potent and original modern takes on the weird tale as ‘The Forest’ (2007). Barron spent his early years in Alaska and moved to Washington in 1994, where he became a certified strength trainer and earned a third degree brown belt in Professor Bradley J. Steiner’s Jen Do Tao system. He has received multiple Shirley Jackson awards for his fiction.

  After the drive had grown long and monotonous, Partridge shut his eyes and the woman was waiting. She wore a cold white mask similar to the mask Bengali woodcutters donned when they ventured into the mangrove forests along the coast. The tigers of the forest were stealthy. The tigers hated to be watched; they preferred to sneak up on prey from behind, so natives wore the masks on the backs of their heads as they gathered wood. Sometimes this kept the tigers from dragging them away.