Джефф Вандермеер - The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

For the moment, I’ll focus on the second option, though it is probably the least likely of the three. I’ll assume, for the sake of argument, that the hoaxer is an educated individual who would be well aware of the faux pas presented by the upturned nail. I will even go so far as to consider the possibility that it was his or her intent to embed in this intentional mistake some hidden meaning. Pause to consider the significance of the index finger in Western art and culture. For example, in Leonardo da Vinci’s St. John the Baptist (c. 1513–1516), the right hand of the subject is raised, pointing heavenward, the index finger extended. In Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (c. 1511), it is the index finger of the creator’s right hand ( digitus paternae dexterae ) that is shown delivering the spark of life to the index finger of Adam’s left hand. Comparable instances from Christian iconography are too numerous to list, though it is worth noting an altarpiece in the basilica of . . .

Excerpt from a letter found among the correspondence of the late Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead, from M. Camille Dussubieux (n˚50, Rue Lepic, Paris) to Lambshead, dated January 23, 1954):

. . . only tell you what little I know of this odious thing, though surely there must be far less repellent subjects upon which you could fixate. It is a mummified hand, as small as a child’s, gripping a bronze key. The fingers bear long talons, and the hand is so shriveled the bones show through. Both the hand and key are mottled with rot and verdigris, with a scab of long ages hidden away in darkness and damp. As for its provenance, I have heard a story told that it was discovered by Howard Carter in the spring of 1903, during his initial excavations at the entrance of the tomb of Thutmose I and his daughter Hatshepsut, though the key is clearly not of ancient Egyptian origin. I have also heard a claim that the hand is the remains of an homunculus created by John Dee, for Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and also that it came to France from China, and even that it was found in an Irish peat bog. I see no reason to give credence to any one of the tales; they seem equally outlandish.

I first saw it seven years ago, when it was very briefly on display in the Galeries de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie comparée on the rue Buffon. However, the Muséum national’s former director, Achille Urbain, apparently ordered its deaccession from the museum’s catalog, following a scandal of some sort (I confess, I do not follow such sordid affairs). In 1952, it resurfaced in a peculiar little antiquities shop on the rue de Richelieu, near the Bibliothèque nationale. Though some say this hand was no more than a clever counterfeit of the original. Either way, it was purchased by a Mlle. Dominique Provoyeur, an occultist who, in her younger days, is said to have had dealings with Crowley and others of his ilk. At this point, I caution you, we must descend into the sheerest sort of hearsay, but it may be that Provoyeur made a gift of the hand to another black magician, Erik Valadon. There are rumors that the pair used it during profane rituals somewhere within the catacombs, perhaps l’Ossuaire Municipal.

By all accounts, Valadon is an especially execrable fellow, a drunkard and heroin addict, obsessed with various arcane texts and the notion that these texts contain rituals capable of summoning some manner of prehistoric deities, banished from the world before the evolution of mankind. Indeed, it is all quite completely ridiculous. Which is why I suggest you focus your energies elsewhere, Thackery. Your prodigious intellect should not be squandered on this sort of foolery. Let us speak no more of any . . .

Excerpt from a letter found among the correspondence of the late Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead, from Ms. Margaret H. Jacobs (7 Exegesis Street, Cincinnati, Ohio) to Lambshead; undated but postmarked March 12, 1981:

. . . by now, you must have stopped even opening my letters. I wouldn’t blame you if that’s the case. I wouldn’t blame you if you write back and tell me please never send another. I think you’ve been too patient with me, too lenient, Doctor, these last two years, and it’s difficult for me to imagine why. It must be wearing thin, and I picture you rolling your eyes at the arrival of every envelope bearing my name.

“Oh, good heavens. It’s that dreadful woman from Ohio,” you might say. Something like that. I truly have become “that dreadful woman,” here in my own mind. That woman filled with little but dread.

Still and all, here I am, regular as clockwork, writing you again. Writing you again about my dream, my nightmare, which I cannot ever stop believing began with my visit to your home more than two years ago. But at least, this time, I’m writing to say that something has changed . Beginning last week, last Wednesday, a new wrinkle has been added to the dream narrative, which by now has become so threadbare and monotonous (but has lost none of its nerve-racking hold over me) any change is welcome.

It starts as it always does. Me waiting on the shore for the ferry, looking out across the sea, the waves thundering against the rocky jetty. The ferry arrives, and it delivers me to the island where the sickly yellow house stands alone amid that shaggy grove of hemlocks and the overgrown rose garden. Nothing’s any different until after I’ve spoken with the ravens and the silver-eyed women and the Bailiff, until after the cannibalistic banquet and the disturbing images that old film projector spits out onto the parlor wall. But then, when I’m lead [sic] to the cellar door, the women both turn back and leave me to make the descent alone! Never before have they done this, but you know that. They shut the door behind me, and bolt it, and I go by myself down those creaking wooden steps.

I think, at least for a few moments, that I’m less afraid of what I’ll see down there than I am surprised that they’ve allowed me to go without a chaperone. It’ll sound strange, no doubt, but it makes me proud, as if I have been accepted as an equal, as one of the house’s monstrous inhabitants. There is a sense of belonging. How can there be any comfort in such a thought? I can’t say, only that this is what I feel.

As always, I reach the bottom of the stairs and find the cellar flooded by several inches of stagnant saltwater. The odor is overwhelming, and bloated fish and tangles of seaweed float all about me. Tiny crabs scuttle across the submerged cellar floor. This part is the same as always, of course. I try not to smell the rot, and splash between those moldering brickwork arches until I have come to the wall of grey granite blocks and grey mortar. Like always, it’s encrusted with slimy moss and barnacles. Like always, the moss and barnacles have grown in patterns that make them look like leering skulls. All of this is the same.

But when I reach into my pocket for the skeleton key the Bailiff always gives me, it isn’t there. There’s nothing there, and for a moment I panic. They’ve trusted me to go down to this place alone, and I’ve managed to lose the damned key! I stop, trying hard to remember each step across the cellar, each step down, everything that occurred before the silver-eyed women lead [sic] me to the cellar door, how I might have possibly mislaid the key (which I always put in my dress pocket immediately, the moment the Bailiff places it in my palm). My mouth goes dry. My heart is hammering in my chest. They’ll make me leave and never ask me back again, never again send the ferry for me (and, I know, I know, I should be glad, but in the dream I am mortified).

Then I look down, and there’s something hideous crouched in the water not far from me. It’s not much larger than a very large rat, and it has the key, clutched tightly in one hand. It isn’t human, the thing with the key, and immediately I turn away, the sight of it enough to make me feel ill. Gone are those feelings that I’ve disappointed the Bailiff and his pale companions, that I belong here, below the yellow house. I only want to run back to the stairs and hammer on the door until they let me out again.