Джефф Вандермеер - The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

I kept staring at my hand, paralyzed—the speed with which the lichen was growing was shocking, and I could not decide how I had managed to get myself exposed. I did not handle the specimen; it was presented to me on a glass slide. In fact, the only thing I had touched in that whole house was Dr. Lambshead’s hand when I shook it—and the teacup.

A sudden realization shifted inside me, snapping like a string, forcing everything into focus. The butler, the blotches of lichen on the house itself . . . “Excuse me,” I asked my host then in a trembling voice. “But that patient of yours . . . did you know her before she fell ill?”

Dr. Lambshead nodded. “Yes,” he said, after a brief hesitation that told me that he was acquainted with the woman rather more than he wanted anyone to know. “I am friendly with the entire family.” During this exchange, he looked straight at me, at my disfigured, bloated hand, and there was no possibility that he didn’t see its state. And yet, he didn’t make the slightest show of concern. “Is that important?”

“My hand is bothering me,” I said, and splayed my blotchy fingers on the white tablecloth.

“It seems to be in order,” he said. “Why do you think that my previous familiarity with the patient is relevant?”

His calm tone was the last shred of conviction I needed. I now knew—and I also knew the only reasonable thing to do. I grabbed the bread knife off the table and brought it hard over my wrist, for it is better to amputate one’s appendage than to let the terrible contagion spread. The pain was surprisingly dull, even as I cringed at the impossible cracking of the bone and snapping of cartilage, as my blood stained the tablecloth and my host stumbled backward away from the table, his eyes and mouth opening wide.

I do not remember how I fled—the loss of blood weakened me, and I recovered my memory only a few days later, when I discovered myself in my own bed, light-headed but lucid. A neatly bandaged stump of my wrist proved that the events were not my imagination, and my renewed horror was soon soothed by relief once I discovered that Caloplaca or whatever accursed genus it was had not spread to the rest of my arm—I had acted just in time.

Despite the time that passed and the pestering questions of friends and relatives who wanted to know what happened to my hand, I have kept these events private until now. As much as I wanted to alert others to the danger, I also feared that my sanity would be questioned, and I did not relish the thought of involuntary commitment to the asylum. My story was as implausible as it was truthful, and really, who in their right mind would believe my discovery—that the man of such knowledge and medical expertise is not what he claims to be at all. You see, that day I realized that Dr. Thackery Lambshead was nothing more than a novel species of lichen, which somehow managed to impersonate a human being. I still believe that it belongs to Caloplaca genus.

It should be no surprise that, in addition to his catalog of discredited diseases, Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead’s collecting impulse extended to art, as exemplified by the galleries that form part of his cabinet of curiosities. His taste here ran to the mad and the mystical: at its best, brut ists like Adolph Wölfli and William Kurelek on the one hand, symbolists such as Carlos Schwabe and Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis on the other. In his galleries, I noted several pieces likely to cause a connoisseur’s eye to glisten—for instance, a previously unknown minor Einar Jónsson sculpture or a particularly luminous landscape by Lars Hertervig. But for the most part, the work is mystical in a stately, dignified way, rarely shocking or surprising.

Or at least that is the case with the pieces most readily on display. If you navigate the twists and turns of Lambshead’s galleries, if you begin to pay as much attention to your surroundings as to the work itself, you might stumble upon a certain plain white wall. If you take the time, as I did, to look carefully at this wall, you might glimpse a thin filament of light, nearly invisible, crossing it at about the level of your hips. And if you, intrigued, approach this wall and push at it and prod at it, you might well be rewarded, as I was, by the sound of a slight click and the opening of a panel.

An ordinary visitor to Lambshead’s home might not be tempted to take the next steps: to fall to his hands and knees, peer into the opening revealed, and then crawl in. But I, as a trusted member of the organization hired by Lambshead to evaluate the artistic portion of his collection while he was away (an organization which, for the purposes of this report, must remain nameless), did take these next steps. On my knees, I peered into darkness. And then, taking a deep breath, I crawled in.

AT FIRST, Ithought I had entered some sort of ventilation shaft. The passage was square, the floor and walls made of polished concrete, surprisingly warm to the touch. I was puzzled not to detect the fusty scent I often associate with such places; indeed, there was no smell to it at all. The passage itself sloped very slowly down, just enough that I could feel it. Glancing behind me, at first I could see the opening I had come through, but soon the passage had slanted enough that even that had vanished.

How long I crawled I cannot say. It seemed like some time: I had the impression that I had journeyed outside the confines of the house proper, down into the soil of the grounds surrounding it, but perhaps it was no more than a few dozen meters. Several times I nearly turned back—and indeed would have if the passage had not been too tight to negotiate turning around.

Then, abruptly, the passage reached its termination, concluding in a blank wall, a fact which, I have to admit, caused a certain amount of panic to well up within me. I pawed at the wall, looking for some hidden lever or some sign that what I was facing was not a wall but a door.

But I found nothing.

I AM GENERALLYnot the sort to lose my composure. I am, in fact, known among my associates for my sangfroid, my ability to remain cool as a corpse no matter what difficulty I confront. I have no doubt that, despite my panic and the strangeness of the situation, I would have soon succeeded in mastering myself and proceeding in a calm and orderly fashion toward the nearest exit, backing my way slowly out. But in this task, I immediately encountered a complication. For as soon as I began to move backward, I discovered that not only was there a wall in front of me, but now a wall behind me as well.

THERE FOLLOWED Aperiod that I cannot account for, in which I lost track of myself. Perhaps I lost consciousness. Perhaps in my panic I became, for a few seconds, for a few hours, another person entirely. I cannot account for this period. This fact troubles me more than any other.

Suffice it to say that, when I found myself again, my situation had changed. I was lying on the floor of a small, surprisingly modern room, architecturally dissimilar to the rest of the Lambshead residence. The contents of the room seemed to be an artistic installation. There was a painting hanging on the wall, with what I at first interpreted to be a sculptural object just before it, the word KNEEL inscribed in gothic script along the object’s base.

Perhaps I was wrong in judging it to be an art installation, I thought, seeing this word. It had a dark, religious feel to it. Perhaps rather than a sculpture, this was an altar.

A rare view from inside Dr. Lambshead’s cabinet, ca. 1995, showing Scott Eagle’s art installation.