The following tale of terror is set in a kind of alternate nineteenth century, a Victorian period in which the real power is not the mighty British Empire, upon which the sun never set, but rather a tiny republic of former pirates, mercenaries, and troubleshooters known as the “Sublime Republic of Hy-Brasil,” which was located upon a small chain of volcanic islands somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, not far from the African coast.
The Noötrope tells me that he envisioned the Republic of Hy-Brasil as something like a slightly more supernatural—and far stranger—version of Verdopolis, the Kingdom of Glass Town, and Angria from the juvenilia of the Brontë siblings. That’s an interesting literary connection, and we won’t argue it.
In any case, I hope you enjoy this short horror tale, which is about the mysterious contents of a wooden crate brought back by an Antarctic explorer on his latest expedition…
—T. J. Quaine
A noisy clattering marked the swift passage of the horse-and-chaise along the cobblestone paving of the Via Mammonia, famous avenue of Myriopolis, the capital city and squalid epicenter of the Sublime Republic of Hy-Brasil.
The night was clear, though windy, and the stars shone with their wonted brilliance and mystery, save where they were eclipsed entirely by the looming, invisible bulk of the great volcano Big Solomon—whereof the island of Hy-Brasil was but the merest tip, lifting skyward above the dark rollers of the Atlantic. Far upon the Eastern horizon, jagged streaks of distant lightning clove the sky like twisting, purple serpents—so remote that not even a whisper or a sigh of their titan-throated roarings reached peaceful and placid Myriopolis.
The streets were quiet, as they usually were at this time of night—though one would not be wrong to imagine the quiet and inoffensive façades of the city’s many homes as so many Masks of Lies, hiding unspeakable sins and vile enormities.
Myriopolis was not called “the Devil’s Den” for nothing.
At five minutes to ten, the noisy equipage pulled up before a small and unassuming little two-story habitation; save for its lack of ostentation, there was very little else to distinguish it from the pompous grandeur of its proud neighbors—but there, perched above the front entry, was an elegant little terra-cotta mandorla, bearing within its oval circuit the arms and the device of Lord Carson Validus.
Lord Markward—for that is whom the chaise produced, alighting now to the street along with his wife, the elegant and beautiful Lady Cynthia Markward, Duchess of Hesperidis—smiled a little, as he always did, upon beholding the Count’s device: a dancing skeleton brandishing a cutlass and an hourglass, with the admonishing hand of God above and the derelicts of Judgment Day arising from the waters below.
The distant-most forbear of the Count was, of course, the infamous Welsh pirate Chanticleer Validus, who rose from indentured servitude in the colony of Georgia to wreak his vengeance upon fully one hundred and three of His Majesty’s ships, including fifteen ships-o’-the-line. The Count was in no way unusual in possessing such a dubious pedigree—Lord Markward’s own forbear, contemporaneous with Chanticleer, had raped and murdered a traveling English baroness whose son was not far removed from the Throne.
After all, was not the Sublime Republic of Hy-Brasil and its sham aristocracy founded by a lot of cutthroats and rogues?
After a quick rap on the door, the Duke and the Duchess were admitted into the home of the Count, and the Lord Validus himself glided into the parlor to greet his two friends, and guide them into the drawing room. He was a younger man than the Duke, and rather delicate of feature and manner.
“Ah, you have made it, Duke,” the Lord Validus sighed with an expression of infinite contentment. “And with your lovely wife, whose very presence lightens all cares and worries. I fear your trip here has proven a bit taxing and wearying, my Lady, if I read correctly the ruddiness in your cheeks, and the catch in your breath? I shudder to think that my little soirée is the cause of such distress.”
The addressed, who indeed seemed a little flustered, earnestly negatived the Count’s self-recrimination, and the grateful subject of this benevolence kissed the Lady’s proffered hand.
And if the kiss lingered somewhat overlong...well, who was noticing?
“My dear Carson, we would not have missed this for the world. I thank you, my friend, for inviting us to attend this historic gathering,” the Duke declaimed with a pompous formality.
“Yes, yes, dear Count,” chimed in the Duchess, in a voice as lovely as the face that launched it. “How very exciting and mysterious this all is! That is why I am so flushed, you see. I haven’t felt such excitement since the morning of that happy day I was wedded to the Duke.”
And she sighed—an act that perfectly expressed the ineffable sublimity of her emotions, of the excitement and happiness that she felt; and blushed with a seemly, if theatric, modesty that the fervent emotions and passions of her soul should be thus indecorously displayed in the company of men.
“Well, you have arrived just in time, my friends. Very soon now, Sir Robert will reveal to us his wonderful mystery.”
Suddenly, the man’s voice became a whisper, and he leaned forward, as if confidentially.
“He is just returned from Antarctica, you know—and they say he has brought something back. I cannot imagine what, for I had always thought the place utterly devoid of life. They say he found it the day before he left the continent—yet none of his crew have seen the thing. He hasn’t even hinted at what it might be—to anyone. It cannot be alive, surely, whatever it is, but...well, it must be remarkable.”
The Duchess placed a hand on her breast, in a gesture of delight, and turned to her husband.
“Oh, how thrilling this all is, Duke,” she exclaimed, breathlessly.
“Whatever it is, I am certain it shall be something wonderful.”
“Yes, well, I hope it is, Lady Markward. And now, follow me, won’t you?” and the Count bowed low, gesturing toward the inner demesnes of his home.
Lord Markward doffed his hat and his greatcoat, entrusting these articles along with his cane to the waiting footman, and accompanied the Count and the Duchess, for the Lord Validus had already offered his arm to the latter (he was not, after all, utterly devoid of those attributes that are generally considered masculine) on his way to the drawing-room.
And why not? The Duchess was nearly twenty-nine years the Duke’s junior, and with her pale, clear skin, her sweet red lips displaying always an arch little smile, and her dense ringlets of red-black hair, she was universally esteemed a great beauty. If rumor connected her name, in the condition of a onetime employment, with a certain well-known and very high-class establishment (located in the dubious and seedy Red Skull district of the city), which was known to cater to some of the baser appetites of mankind...well, who could credit scurrilous rumor in the face of such overwhelming grace and beauty?
And besides, in a Republic where the aristocratic skeletons in the closet often consisted of matters far worse than mere skeletons, what was a little youthful indiscretion in the biography of a beautiful Duchess?
They were led into the drawing-room, and very simple and tasteful it was, like everything about the Count’s unassuming little home. The Duke and the Duchess took their station upon a small wicker sofa, after exchanging greetings with the other inmates of that smoky little room. The boisterous and very leonine Viscount Baskings was there, drawing with prodigious gusts upon his cigar, and declaiming loudly and pedantically upon matters scientific and exploratory—for he was a great explorer himself, who had much experience in the tropical and fetid quarters of the Earth, and much truck with the savage and scarcely decent folk that inhabited them. His speech was littered with exasperated references to “goddamned people-eaters,” and “bloody totem-worshippers,” and his auditors sighed with understanding and sympathy.
There was the Viscountess, the much put-upon paramour of Baskings, handsomely featured, though not a classic beauty, and absolutely drenched in diamonds and ornaments of exquisite gold filigree—it was the most ill-kept secret in Myriopolis that the Viscount Baskings had sired almost a whole new nation of children with countless savage women (or “dusky harlots,” in the colorful language of the Viscount) in nearly every torrid region of the Earth that touched upon or was adjacent to the Equator. Thus, he purchased his silly wife’s patience and understanding with an unsurpassed fortune in jewelry, from the countless gold and diamond mines he owned in Africa.
Sir Reynolds Bryant, whose features seemed to wear a perpetual sneer, was seated upon a chaise-lounge, sipping cautiously, and with measured calculation, at a glass of port wine. Stuffy, hawk-featured, without a modicum of personality, he was the very type of the Republican Officer—was, in sooth, the Lieutenant Commissioner of the Office of Exploration and Diplomacy of the Sublime Republic of Hy-Brasil itself.
No doubt that contributed a great deal to his sneer—for the bureaucrats of “The Office,” as it was called, were the true masters of Hy-Brasil, men one and all of ruthless ability, superhuman competency, and relentless inhumanity.
These then were the five guests, the three men and the two wives, who formed the little party in the drawing-room, besides the Count and one other: Sir Robert Aylesworth himself, famous explorer and, as it were, signal attraction of the night’s entertainment. He was seated upon a crudely-fashioned, and very uncomfortable-looking little wooden stool in a dark corner, quietly watching the inmates of the room with a curious air, and lightly drawing on his ancient wooden pipe—a queer thing, enchased with bizarre reliefs, that looked as if he had whittled it himself, ages ago when moored amidst the Antarctic ice during some unremembered voyage.
Sir Robert Aylesworth seemed the very image of the Polar Explorer—he was a lean, wiry, almost gaunt man; elderly but by no means feeble, with clear blue eyes, a full mane of hair as white as the snows of his beloved country, and with a face riven and striated with innumerable little wrinkles, like the cracked veneer of an ancient and well-known portrait.
When he spoke—to answer some question posed by one of the assembled company—his accent bore the slight twang of his native Virginia, for Sir Robert Aylesworth was by birth an American, though he had long since renounced the country of his origin, and taken up wholeheartedly with the zealous little Republic whose navy he had almost single-handedly rebuilt. It was during that younger period of his life, when he had been driven forth a pariah from the United States, that he wandered like a troubadour, offering his services as a soldier of fortune throughout the world, like so many of his countrymen.
Somehow, he had landed in the pitiful navy of Hy-Brasil; he had risen through its ranks, attained the largely ceremonial rank of Admiral-of-the-Seas, and proceeded to reorganize, and breathe new life, into the weak and enervated thing he had found. Many years prior to Sir Aylesworth’s arrival, the Navy of Hy-Brasil had been the scourge of the world’s oceans; there was a time, not so long ago, when the navies of the United States, Great Britain, and France (all enemies the one to the other in some form) had made common cause, and combined against this upstart menace of the Central Atlantic.
Since those days, however, the Republican Navy had degraded to an ignominious, a shameful and lubberly state, and the Republic had largely given up any hope of an Overseas Empire. But with the arrival of the Yankee Aylesworth, its fortunes had rallied. Once more, her ships rode the purple waves proudly, her pennons were lofted over countries and races distant and outlandish, and her cannon struck terror into the quavering hearts of friend and foe alike.
Her Armada, with Sir Robert upon the flagship, cowed the blustering American President Taylor into submission, after he had made some rash threats, when it appeared opposite Boston Harbor; the mere rumor of her approaching guns was sufficient to lift the British bombardment of Alexandria; and the incessant patrols of her warships was enough to secure once and for all the victory of Hy-Brasil in the “Scramble for Africa,” and to chase away the European powers forever from that rich and mysterious continent. And all of this, the grateful country knew, was due to the ambition and the intelligence of the expatriate American—and they honored him accordingly as a Hero of the State.
But it was this Sir Robert Aylesworth, sitting peacefully in the Count’s drawing-room, this quiet and reflective old man, that represented the true Robert Aylesworth. From the first, he was an explorer—and the Poles were his chosen theaters of inquiry.
His very face and form bore the stamp of his obsession: the blackened and mutilated tip of his nose attested to the dreadful scourge of frostbite, experienced on some earlier Polar adventure; while the ruddy and peeling skin of his cheeks hinted at a more recent encounter with the horrors of exposure. And the man seemed a very being of chill—he was cold, and readily communicated this feeling to everyone in the room, though without it was a warm, humid, tropical summer’s night. Still he wore a coat, and seemed—every so often—to shift and rearrange himself within it, as though to increase his warmth, and chase away the cold, and...was that a cloud of chill water vapor on his exhaled breath? No, that it could not be—it must have been merely a puff of tobacco-smoke.
The Count was proposing a toast to the hero of the hour, the dauntless Sir Robert Aylesworth, the greatest man in the Republic, her greatest explorer, favored (if adopted) son—and the first man, of any nationality, to breach 80° South.
To Sir Aylesworth!, and to his next attempt—the Pole, or bust!
The man so honored gravely rose to his feet, and graciously accepted the toast, however bestowed (so he humbly submitted) upon a most unfitting recipient.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you most warmly for the great honor you do me. And yes, my dear Validus”—turning to the Count—“I intend to return to Antarctica very shortly. But first, some enjoyment, perhaps,” and he smiled, strangely, at the assembled company.
The Viscount Baskings, an abrupt and straightforward man, suddenly shouted:
“Oh, relieve us of this great mystery, man! Let us see what strange thing you have bagged in all that icy wilderness,” and the notion was enthusiastically seconded by all present.
They referred, of course, to the great wooden crate that lay upon the terracotta-tiled floor at the back of the drawing-room. It was a makeshift sort of thing, its lid securely shut with a surfeit of nails; and it was ensconced amidst a bulwark of ice-bags freshly carted that morning from the summit of Big Solomon to the ice-shops along the wharf.
Stenciled in bold, black lettering upon its sides was the admonition: “DO NOT OPEN!”
Sir Robert re-seated himself upon his stool, chuckling a little, and regarded each inmate of the room with a queer smile.
“In a moment, my friends, I shall reveal everything. But before I do that, I was invited here, by my friend the Count, so that I might share with you something of my experiences, and my adventures, in the strange realms about the South Pole.”
Sir Robert re-lit his waning pipe, and slowly inhaled a long draught of smoke.
“Have any of you ever been in Antarctic waters?” he asked, with great seriousness.
His listeners all replied in the negative, the two ladies laughing, and rolling their eyes and fluttering their eyelashes at the great comedy of such a suggestion.
“’Tis a great shame,” sighed Sir Robert, “yes, ’tis a terrible shame indeed, my friends. I highly recommend it, you know—and no recommendation comes with higher credentials than mine.” His face crinkled into a smile, and a puff of smoke escaped his lips.
Before anyone could reply, he seemed to become infused with a sudden and vigorous animation, and he leaned forward in his stool, placing one hand on a knee, brandishing his pipe-stem with the other, and fixed in turn every member of the party with his great, blue eyes—blue as the drifting icebergs of that land he so dearly loved.
“Have you ever seen the ‘ice-blink,’ my friends?” he asked, his voice a harsh whisper.
“No, I thought you hadn’t. Or perhaps the ‘nunatak,’ that peak of bald, ancient rock protruding like an oasis of desolation amidst that desert of snow and ice? Have you seen the ‘Fata Morgana,’ that lying mirage in Polar waters? It promises land, and maybe even food (which isn’t really there, of course) just over the horizon—if only you could find a single, merciful lead of open water to carry you there, through the implacable ice. Have you seen the unnamed constellations, and the frightful apparitions, that haunt the night skies near the South Pole? Have you, Duke? Have you, Count? Someday, I think, you will...”
The Duchess, impatient of this mysterious talk, leaned forward in her seat with the utmost deliberation and grace, determined to employ her wiles to induce the great explorer to relent, and show them what they had all come to see.
“But I didn’t know, Sir Robert, that there were any living things in all that beastly place, save for those darling little penguins you Polar explorers so love to entertain us ladies with tales of,” and she sighed, and fluttered her eyelashes, and blushed, and fanned herself, and otherwise made herself excruciatingly lovely and exquisitely feminine.
Sir Robert, old hand that he was, would have none of it.
“Oh, but you are wrong, my fairest Duchess. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Frozen Continent is absolutely teeming with living things of every description. But the trick of it is, my Lady—you must know where to look, and how to look for it.”
The Lady Cynthia Markward frowned at this—it was not the response she had expected to elicit, not at all, and she was not used to being thwarted in her wishes. She flounced back into the sofa, beside her husband, with an unmistakable air of utter dejection.
“Yes, gentlemen, and ladies—the Antarctic is a place of riotous Life, of the sublimest and most enchanting kind.”
Sir Robert paused a moment, and that queer little half-smile appeared again upon his lips; he nodded toward the wooden crate, and folded his arms across his breast, in a genial attitude that seemed to portend the communication of a great secret.
“But you can scarcely comprehend the magnitude of my astonishment, my friends, when I saw that thing”—a gesture to the crate with the stem of his pipe—“shambling toward me across the snow and ice of that frozen land. It was unlike anything...it was utterly unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life before. It was as if the sudden onset of a marvelous and wholly unexpected new world of living things had befallen me; a world whose very existence I had never even conceived, nor thought in my wildest imaginings possible.
“All my life, you see—as is doubtless the case with yourselves—I had only ever known that world of life that fell within my immediate experience. How wonderful, then, how mysterious, how frightening, to find that comfortable world upset, upheaved so utterly, by the sudden appearance of that. Well, as you may imagine, I was absolutely terrified of the thing, and”—with a strange sort of half-glance at the inmates of the room—“I still am.”
During the lull provided by the speaker’s quick sip at his pipe, the Lady Cynthia chose the opportunity to voice her concerns, that had suddenly afflicted her with a species of dread that was quite becoming in one with her lovely features, flushing her cheeks in a way very much to her advantage in the light of the drawing-room. Doubtless, she was not entirely unaware of this effect her terror had on her beauty, and so gave full play to her sudden access of fear.
“Pray, do reassure us, Sir Robert, that this ghastly creature, or whatever it is you are hiding in that awful box of yours, is really dead, and not alive?” she gasped, her delicate little hand fluttering to her breast in a pretty gesture of alarm, as her query was seconded with a breathless, “Yes, yes, do reassure us,” by the startled Viscountess, to whom the idea that a nonhuman creature could be in the room—with her—seemed utterly appalling.
Sir Robert Aylesworth laughed gustily, his condescension ill-concealed, and leaned back on the stool and crossed his legs as if to express his disdain for and amusement at the question.
“Yes, well—I can assure you, ladies, that the thing in that crate is absolutely and utterly extinct. You needn’t trouble yourselves with any fears of it,” he chuckled, inhaling another draught of smoke.
“I wonder, Sir Robert,” Sir Reynolds spoke up for the first time that evening, “if you might not be willing to gift the thing to the Office of Exploration and Diplomacy? If it really is as extraordinary as you say, then what better place for it than to be stuffed and displayed in the halls of the Lyceum?”
Sir Robert was already shaking his head ere the Honorable Sir Reynolds Bryant had even finished his speech; at its conclusion, he looked the questioner straight in the eye.
“No, Sir Reynolds, I think that would not be wise.”
“Pray, why ever not sir?” pressed the nonplussed Officer.
“I really don’t believe the public would take too well to that thing, in the halls of the Lyceum. It really is very disturbing...”
Sir Reynolds Bryant replied to this with a contemptuous little sniff, but did not press the matter, after so ambiguous an answer.
“No, but it is disturbing, gentlemen, and ladies,” continued Sir Robert, ignoring Sir Reynolds’ expressions of disdain. “I wonder that such a thing could even be suffered to exist on this pleasant Earth of ours...”
The Duke, who had hitherto remained silent that night, had long since noticed that there was something peculiar about Sir Robert—in his manner, and even in his appearance. It was somewhat dark, and enveloped in a sort of gloom, in that corner of the room where the great explorer sat, so it was difficult to clearly see him, and the changing lights and expressions of his countenance. There was something about the man—his tone of voice, his flippancy?—that was productive of not a little unease.
What was the thing in the crate?
“Well, it is obvious, Sir Robert,” Lord Markward finally spoke, “that you dearly love that terrible White Land; as dearly, I should say, as we here love this little island of ours.”
It was, perhaps, an awkward compliment—but a grave silence had fallen on the room, and the Duke wished to break it, somehow, and perhaps put the great explorer in a mood to conclude the party, and reveal the mystery they were all awaiting with such breathless expectancy. The atmosphere of the room, and the unplaceable smell emanating from that wooden crate, somehow engendered a vaguely disturbing feeling in the Duke; he wished to have done with this party, and be away from this place! His wife seemed to share the feeling, fanning herself and daubing her flushed breast with a kerchief—but, of course, she seemed always slightly flustered and disarrayed at these informal gatherings, so who could know for sure what she was thinking?
“Yes, Duke...that is true,” Sir Robert murmured, almost whispering to himself. “Yes...I do love that land, and I shall return shortly...” He fixed the wooden crate with his glacial eyes, absently drawing on his little pipe.
“Well!” he suddenly proclaimed, starting up from his stool. “You have all come here for one thing—let us see what is in the crate!”
“Oh, excellent, excellent, Sir Robert!” exclaimed the Count rapturously, while the two ladies clapped and giggled enthusiastically, and Viscount Baskings guffawed loudly, and Sir Reynolds sniffed disinterestedly, and the Duke watched Sir Robert closely. They all of them stood up, and crowded about the crate.
“Oh, how very outré and occult this all is,” exclaimed the Duchess, clapping her hands and sighing like a little girl who has just been invited to her first ball.
“If I don’t see my dear mother’s ghost tonight, I shall be very cross with you, Sir Robert,” she laughed, playfully.
“Oh, I believe I can top that, my Lady,” responded the addressed, with that familiar, queer smile of his. “Be so kind as to hand me that crowbar over there, will you Count? Many thanks.”
Sir Robert carefully pried the lid off of the crate, but when he was finished, he left it lying where it was. Then, somewhat melodramatically, he announced:
“Gentlemen, and ladies—this is what I found, expiring in the snows of Antarctica...” And he removed the lid from the crate.
Everyone in the party—save for Sir Robert, who moved off to his wonted corner—leaned forward.
The Viscountess uttered a strangled shriek, and then fainted away—but there were none to catch her.
“Good Lord!” gasped the Viscount, too bewildered to stammer another word.
The Count merely looked at his friend, the great Polar explorer, gaping his incredulity, his complete lack of comprehension.
“Oh, now this is interesting,” whispered the Duchess, with the ghost of a smile upon her beautiful red lips, and a look of horror in her great, green eyes.
“Explain yourself, man!” commanded Sir Reynolds, too prosaic, too unimaginative to understand the magnitude of what he beheld.
Lord Markward looked, and he saw in the crate...the naked corpse of a man, evidently dead by freezing.
But what is more—he recognized the man, everyone recognized the features of that dead man stuffed amongst the packing in that great wooden crate. It was Sir Robert Aylesworth, the twin in every detail—every detail—to the man now standing beside them, and a little in the shadows, and with whom they had conversed throughout the evening.
Lord Markward—horrified, bewildered, seized by the terrible conviction that he had lingered overlong in the lion’s den—looked closely at the figure of the great Polar explorer, standing in the corner of the room. It seemed different, now, after he had seen that corpse in the crate. He wondered how he could ever have confused that dim shape for Sir Robert Aylesworth. He felt a dulling of his perception, a fogging of his senses—akin to the sensation of emerging from a kind of hypnosis.
That was no grizzled old man over there! Who was that in the corner...what was that in the corner? He felt the Duchess clutch his arm, as she exhaled a voiceless scream.
“Imagine what was my astonishment, gentlemen, and lady,” came a voice from the corner, “to discover this extraordinary creature amidst all the white and windy waste of Antarctica...imagine how startling it was to encounter something so singular, so unfamiliar, so horrifying as that.”
The five still-conscious members of the party instinctively clustered about one another, and recoiled from that shapeless figure looming in the shadows, beyond the glow of the lamplight.
“And now, gentlemen and lady—do you wish to know what I am...shall I show you what Sir Robert Aylesworth discovered amidst the snows of Antarctica...?”
[Hmm…it seems poor Sir Robert found more than he bargained for in the white wastes of the South Pole. Some things are better left alone—as my dear mother always said, don’t go looking for trouble, for you’re bound to find it…
Anyhow, join us in the next issue of The Florilegium for another thrilling—and slightly disturbing—fairy tale by Julie Jaquith.]