Poe's Children (69 page)

With that my mind, and my heart, too, became restored, and my days were spent again on deck, where I imagined I could catch the fading scent of the flamboyant trees, and all the other sweet smells of Paramaribo, and Marta, whom I brought back from your land to the Netherlands, and released from her condition of servitude, continued to nurture me throughout the journey with infusions of plants. These skills she had learned from her mother, who in turn had learned them from a Shaman in her former village of Kwamalasamoetoe, which in our language means the Bamboo Sand.

It is true I feel a longing for your land. In my ears there is still the sound of the rivers with their surface waters one minute placid, the next roiling. And my thoughts in some strange way are still carried forward by the sweep of those rivers.

There is great beauty in your land, I have never denied it, Mr. van der Lee; there is great beauty alongside the brutal harshness. I saw many things and many forms of life that I would elsewise not have seen, and I know you glimpsed and understood them, too. Your land has a multitude of small insects that are rare, and other creatures, fierce and strange and beautiful. I observed the habits formed by these creatures, and observed the way they have their own laws and their own proceedings, and these I regarded as metaphors for our own human lives.

I saw the swarm of ants devouring the spider, and the spider devouring the hummingbird. The Palisade Tree that is called the Tree of Paradise, the apple of Sodom that is red and poisonous, the thickness of the jungle with its tangle of vines, the rats, the storks, the armadillos and the lizards, the toucans and the parrots—all of these have I seen, Mr. van der Lee, and they have moved me. I felt, too, the heat that daily burned there, the heat that in the end I believe almost killed me. For the sun burns hotter there than a furnace, and hotter, too, than the strong clear fires used for boiling the sugar cane. But enough has been spoken of that heat.

It is that other heat I wish to speak of now, a heat capable of arousing in some unwilled and wild way. For it was that heat, too, that breathed itself into me, Mr. van der Lee, hot and needling and insistent. And perhaps you will now understand that you wish to recall to me what I have not forgotten.

“What is it you see? What do you see, Madame Sibylla?” How frequently you plied me with such questions, Mr. van der Lee. “What has taken you so far from your home?” you asked. “What keeps you as far? What do you yearn for to the point of dying?”

On that afternoon, Mr. van der Lee, when you followed me into the small forest, the one called Surimombo Forest, you plied me again with these same questions. And with other questions, too, while all the while the heat from the sun was burning me and the moisture in the jungle air was suffocating me. You wore a charm around your neck—untypical of the fastidiousness of your attire—it was a piece of bone, yellowish and slightly curved. You were telling me about the Cerro de la Compana, the mountain that sings like a bell, telling me that it was located south of the savannah on the rolling sandstone hills, and that we must journey there together to hear its bell sound. And I was in the Surimombo Forest and you had followed me and Marta was not with me and I told you again I had already made up my mind to cut short my journey and you went down on your knees before me, down to the leaves on their tiny stems shimmering blue-green on the jungle floor. And the perfume was overpowering from the delicate begonias, the caladiums, the fragile calla lilies, the red passion flowers. And you pushed in against the forest growth, Mr. van der Lee, no longer plying me with questions then, but saying to me instead, “I thought that you might—

I thought that we might,” and taking me down to the jungle floor with you.

But I must ask you now, as it seems to me I asked you then, there in that staggering heat—what is it that is expected? What can be hoped for now? when it could not be hoped for then?

I could not stay then, Mr. van der Lee, because the heat would have killed me, and apart from that your life on a sugar farm could not be my life. That has not changed. The entrancement that we shared cannot endure. There can be room in my life for only one thing, Mr. van der Lee, for only one thing that is passionate and irresistible. And the rapture that I seek is in the transformations that I study, and in bringing everything to parchment in its full perfection.

A light rain is falling now with the sun still shining. We call that
Leichter Machen,
or the
Lightening.
It is regarded as bewitching light, Mr. van der Lee, and sometimes it is called the love light or the lovers’ light, or interchangeably the festival light. And if you stand at some strategic point you can see this light reflected on the waters of the canals still rippling with the falling rain, and to the eye it looks like countless lights reflected on the waters of the canals, and with the outlines of the bridges on each one. It is a fairy scene, Mr. van der Lee.

But when the rain stops, the strange light will disappear, and all will be as normal again, and no one will know what had been seen. There are visions like that, Mr. van der Lee.

I did not answer your earlier letters because there seemed no more on my part to be said, and because I did not wish to give the impression that there was something to be hoped for or expected. I still do not wish to give that impression, Mr. van der Lee.

I write and ask you now to not send animals. For I have no use for them. That is, for the animals such as you sent previously. I wish only to study certain transformations, how one emerges from the other. And I therefore ask you not to send me animals, for I have no use for them.

But if you must send something, Mr. van der Lee, send butterflies, small caligo butterflies, diurnal butterflies and ricinis, sactails, jatrophas, moon moths, peacock moths, send primulas with nun moths, pale tussocks and pease blossom moths, tachinid flies and calicoid flies, owl moths and harlequin beetles, or send lantern flies, Mr. van der Lee, in a box that is filled up with the lantern flies, and make certain they are alive when you send them and can be kept living, so that when I open the lid, Mr. van der Lee, they will rise up like fire, and shoot out of the box like a flame, and that will delight me, Mr. van der Lee, and will remind me of that other fire that one day rose up inside me.

CREDITS

Introduction copyright © 2008 by Peter Straub.

“The Bees,” copyright © 2003 by Dan Chaon. Originally published in
McSweeney’s
#10, edited by Michael Chabon. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Cleopatra Brimstone,” copyright © 2001 by Elizabeth Hand. First published in
Redshift
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Man on the Ceiling,” copyright © 2000 by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem. First published as a chapbook from
American Fantasy
. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

“The Great God Pan,” copyright © 1988 by M. John Harrison. First published in
Prime Evil
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Voice of the Beach,” copyright © 1982 by Ramsey Campbell. Originally published in
Fantasy Tales
10, Summer 1982. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Body,” copyright © 2004 by Brian Evenson. First published in
The Wavering Knife
. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Matt McGowan, Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

“Louise’s Ghost,” copyright © 2001 by Kelly Link. First published in
Stranger Things Happen
. Reprinted by permission of the author and her agent, Renee Zuckerbrot, Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency.

“The Sadness of Detail,” copyright © 1990 by Jonathan Carroll. First published in
Omni
, February 1990. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Richard Parks, The Richard Parks Agency.

“Leda,” copyright © 2002 by M. Rickert. First published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, August 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“In Praise of Folly,” copyright © 1992 by Thomas Tessier. First published in
Metahorror
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Plot Twist,” copyright © 2002 by David J. Schow. First published in
Dark Terrors 6
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Two Sams,” copyright © 2002 by Glen Hirshberg. First published in
Dark Terrors 6
. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Kathleen Anderson, Anderson Literary Management LLC.

“Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story,” copyright © 1991 by Thomas Ligotti. First published in
Dark Horizons
#28. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Unearthed,” copyright © 2006 by Benjamin Percy. First published in
The Language of Elk
. Reprinted by permission of the Carnegie Mellon University Press.

“Gardener of Heart,” copyright © 2005 by Bradford Morrow. First published in
Conjunctions 44: An Anatomy of Roads
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Little Red’s Tango,” copyright © 2002 by Peter Straub. First published in
Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,” by Stephen King. First published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, June 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Ralph M. Vicinanza, Ltd.

“20th Century Ghost,” copyright © 2002 by Joe Hill. First published in
The High Plains Literary Review
, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Mickey Choate, The Choate Agency.

“The Green Glass Sea,” copyright © 2004 by Ellen Klages. First published in
Strange Horizons
, September 6, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Kiss,” copyright © 1999 by Tia V. Travis. First published in
Subterranean Gallery
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Black Dust,” copyright © 2002 by Graham Joyce. First published in
Black Dust
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“October in the Chair,” copyright © 2002 by Neil Gaiman. First published in
Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Missolonghi 1824,” copyright © 1990 by John Crowley. First published in
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
, March 1990. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Chris Lotts, Ralph M. Vicinanza, Ltd.

“Insect Dreams,” copyright © 2003 by Rosalind Palermo Stevenson. First published in
Trampoline
. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dan Chaon is the acclaimed author of
Fitting Ends
and
Among the Missing,
a finalist for the National Book Award, which was also listed as one of the ten best books of the year by the American Library Association,
Chicago Tribune,
the
Boston Globe,
and
Entertainment Weekly,
as well as being cited as a
New York Times
Notable Book. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and won both Pushcart and O. Henry awards. Chaon teaches at Oberlin College and lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, with his wife and two sons.

Elizabeth Hand is the multiple-award-winning author of eight novels, including
Generation Loss, Mortal Love,
and
Waking the Moon,
as well as three collections of short fiction, the most recent of which is
Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories.
Since 1988, she has been a regular contributor to the
Washington Post Book World,
among numerous other publications. She lives with her family on the coast of Maine.

“The Man on the Ceiling” holds the distinction of being the only work ever to win the International Horror Guild, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy Awards in the same year. A novel expanding and re-imagining “The Man on the Ceiling” recently appeared from Wizards of the Coast’s Discoveries line. Melanie and Steve are also past winners of the British Fantasy Award. Their work can be found in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine,
and in such anthologies as
Outsiders
(ROC),
The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror
(St. Martin’s). 2009 will see two more solo novels: Melanie’s
The Yellow Wood,
and Steve’s
Deadfall Hotel.

M. John Harrison is the author of
In Viriconium,
which was nominated for the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1982;
Climbers,
which won the Boardman Tasker Memorial Award in 1989; and
Light
(2002), co-winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. His short stories have appeared in many venues, from the
Times Literary Supplement
to
Time Out,
and are collected in
Things That Never Happen
(2002). His latest novel is
Nova Swing
(2006). Since 1991 he has reviewed contemporary fiction for the
TLS,
the
Guardian,
and the
Daily Telegraph
; and young adult fiction for the
New York Times.
He was a member of the Michael Powell Jury at the 2003 Edinburgh International Film Festival. He lives near the river in West London.

The Oxford Companion to English Literature
describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer.” He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association. Among his novels are
The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, Silent Children, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Stories,
and
The Grin of the Dark.
Forthcoming are
Creatures of the Pool
and
The Seven Days of Cain.
His collections include
Waking Nightmares, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things,
and
Told by the Dead,
and his nonfiction is collected as
Ramsey Campbell, Probably.
His novels
The Nameless
and
Pact of the Fathers
have been filmed in Spain. His regular columns appear in
All Hallows, Dead Reckonings,
and
Video Watchdog.
He is the President of the British Fantasy Society and of the Society of Fantastic Films.

Brian Evenson is the Director of the Literary Arts Program at Brown University. He is the author of seven books of fiction, including
The Wavering Knife
(which won the International Horror Guild Award for best story collection) and
The Brotherhood of Mutilation.
His most recent novel,
The Open Curtain
(2006), was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award. A novel,
Last Days,
will be published by Underland Press in early 2009.

Kelly Link’s debut collection,
Stranger Things Happen,
was a Firecracker nominee, a
Village Voice
Favorite Book, and a
Salon
Book of the Year—
Salon
called the collection “…an alchemical mixture of Borges, Raymond Chandler, and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Stories from the collection have won the Nebula, the James Tiptree, Jr., and the World Fantasy awards. Her second collection,
Magic for Beginners,
was a Book Sense pick (and a Best of Book Sense pick), and selected for best of the year lists by
Time
magazine,
Salon, Boldtype, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle,
and the
Capitol Times.
It was published in paperback by Harcourt. With Gavin J. Grant and Ellen Datlow she edits
The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror
(St. Martin’s Press). She also edited the anthology
Trampoline
. Kelly lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Kelly and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, publish a twice-yearly zine,
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
—as well as books—as Small Beer Press.

Born in New York City, Jonathan Carroll has lived in Vienna since 1974 except for a two-year period in Hollywood, California. His writing has been described as literary fantasy, often with elements of surreal horror. His first novel,
The Land of Laughs,
was published in 1980; among those that followed are “Rondua” books
Bones of the Moon
(1987),
Sleeping in Flame
(1988), and
A Child Across the Sky
(1989); British Fantasy Award winner
Outside the Dog Museum
(1991);
The Marriage of Sticks
(1999),
The Wooden Sea
(2001),
White Apples
(2002), and his latest,
Glass Soup
(2006). Among his many nominated stories and books are “Friend’s Best Man” (1987), winner of the World Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award–winning collection
The Panic Hand
(1995).

M. Rickert grew up in Fredonia, Wisconsin. When she was eighteen she moved to California. After many years (and through the sort of “odd series of events” that describe much of her life) she got a job as a kindergarten teacher in a small private school for gifted children. She worked there for almost a decade, then left to pursue her life as a writer, supporting this folly by working at a series of odd jobs. (There are, of course, mysterious gaps in this account, and that is where all the truly interesting stuff happened.) Her short story collection,
Map of Dreams,
was published by Golden Gryphon Press in 2006, and won the World Fantasy Award.

Thomas Tessier was born in Connecticut and educated there and at University College, Dublin. He lived in Dublin and London for thirteen years, during which time three books of his poems were published and three of his plays were professionally staged. For several years he wrote a monthly column on music for
Vogue
(UK). His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including
Borderlands, Cemetery Dance, Prime Evil, Dark Terrors, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror,
and
Best New Horror
. His first collection,
Ghost Music and Other Tales,
received an International Horror Guild Award. He is the author of several novels of terror and suspense, including
The Nightwalker, Phantom, Finishing Touches,
and
Rapture,
which was made into a movie starring Karen Allen and Michael Ontkean. His novel
Fog Heart
received the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel and was cited by
PW
as one of the best books of the year. His latest novel,
Wicked Things,
was published in paperback in June 2007 by Leisure Books, and a hardcover edition is forthcoming from Cemetery Dance. He lives in Connecticut, and is currently working on a new novel and completing his second collection of short fiction.

David J. Schow is a short story writer, novelist, screenwriter (teleplays and features), columnist, essayist, editor, photographer, and winner of the World Fantasy Award (short story, 1987) and International Horror Guild Award (nonfiction, 2001). Peripherally he has written everything from CD liner notes to book introductions to catalog copy for monster toys. As expert witness, he appears in many genre-related documentaries and DVDs and has traveled from New Zealand to Shanghai to Mexico City to shoot or produce same. He lives in a house on a hill in Los Angeles. Website:
www.davidjschow.com
.

Each of Glen Hirshberg’s first two collections,
American Morons
(Earthling, 2006) and
The Two Sams
(Carroll & Graf, 2003), won the International Horror Guild Award and were selected by Locus as one of the best books of the year. He is also the author of a novel,
The Snowman’s Children
(Carroll & Graf, 2002), and is a five-time World Fantasy Award finalist. Currently, he is putting the final touches on two new novels and a third collection. With Dennis Etchison and Peter Atkins, he co-founded the Rolling Darkness Revue, a traveling ghost story performance troupe that tours the west coast of the United States each October. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including multiple appearances in
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Dark Terrors 6, Inferno, The Dark, Trampoline,
and
Cemetery Dance
. He teaches writing and the teaching of writing at Cal State San Bernardino.

Thomas Ligotti is recognized as a contemporary master in the genre of horror fiction. Conspicuous features of his works include an idiosyncratic prose style and inventive narrative structures as well as subjects and themes of a uniformly grim nature. The recipient of several awards, including the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award for his collection
The Nightmare Factory
and short novel
My Work Is Not Yet Done,
Ligotti is often compared to classic horror writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Ligotti’s latest collection of stories is
Teatro Grottesco
from Mythos Books, which also published his nonfiction work
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,
subtitled “A Primer of Horror in Life and Art.” A short film of Ligotti’s story “The Frolic” is available on DVD. In addition, Fox Atomic, a subsidiary of Fox Studios, released a graphic novel based on works from his 1996 collection,
The Nightmare Factory
.

Benjamin Percy was raised in the High Desert of Central Oregon. He received his BA with honors from Brown University and his MFA with a teaching fellowship from Southern Illinois University. Ben currently lives in Milwaukee, teaching creative writing, composition, and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He also writes book reviews for the
Capital Times
. When he isn’t hunched over the keyboard, hammering out stories, he enjoys hiking, canoeing, fishing, skiing, and throwing back a few pints with friends and family.

Bradford Morrow is the author of
The Almanac Branch, Trinity Fields, Giovanni’s Gift,
and
Ariel’s Crossing,
among other novels, most recently
The Fifth Turning
and a collection of stories,
Lush.
The recipient of numerous awards, including the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Nora Magid Award, and the O. Henry Prize, Morrow is also the author of a children’s book,
Didn’t Didn’t Do It,
illustrated by Gahan Wilson. Founder and editor of the literary journal
Conjunctions,
he teaches at Bard College. Bradford Morrow divides his time between New York City and an upstate farmhouse.

Peter Straub is the author of seventeen novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. They include
Ghost Story, Koko, Mr. X, In the Night Room,
and two collaborations with Stephen King,
The Talisman
and
Black House.
He has written two volumes of poetry and two collections of short fiction, and he edited the Library of America’s edition of H. P. Lovecraft’s
Tales.
He has won the British Fantasy Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards. In 1998, he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention. In 2005, he was given the HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. He made his first professional short story sale in 1967 to
Startling Mystery Stories
. In the fall of 1971, he began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Company accepted the novel
Carrie
for publication, providing him the means to leave teaching and write full-time. He has since published more than forty novels and has become one of the world’s most successful writers. Stephen lives in Maine and Florida with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. They are regular contributors to a number of charities including many libraries and have been honored locally for their philanthropic activities.

Joe Hill’s first book of stories,
20th Century Ghosts,
received the British Fantasy Award, The International Horror Guild Award, and the Bram Stoker Award for best collection. He is also a 2006 World Fantasy Award winner for his novella “Voluntary Committal,” which appears in the same book. His first critically acclaimed novel,
Heart-Shaped Box,
was published by William Morrow in the U.S. and Gollancz in the UK.