Weird Tales #325 by Tanith Lee & Thomas Ligotti & Darrell Schweitzer

Author:Tanith Lee & Thomas Ligotti & Darrell Schweitzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: weird tales, magazine, horror, fantasy, short stories
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2011-08-05T04:00:00+00:00

WHERE ALL THINGS PERISH, by Tanith Lee

From a Tailored Concept by John Kaiine

I.

It was glimpsing Polleto again, between trains, at that hotel in Vymart, which made me remember. Which, in its way, is quite curious, for how ever could I have forgotten such a thing? So impossible and terrible a thing. And yet, the human mind is a strange mechanism, and the human heart far stranger. Sometimes the most trivial events haunt our waking hours, even our dreams, for years after they have happened. While episodes of incredible moment, perhaps only because they have been marked indelibly upon us, stand back in the shadows, mute and motionless, until some chance ray of mental light discovers them. And then they are there, burning bright, towering and undismissable once more. At such times one knows they are more than memories, more than the mere furniture of the brain. Rather, they have become part of it, a part of oneself.

* * * *

“What is it, Frederick, that you are staring at?”

“That little man at the table over there.”

“What, that little clerkish chap in the dusty overcoat? He hardly looks worthy of your curiosity. Of anyone’s, come to that,” added Jeffers.

“No, he probably isn’t. A very ordinary fellow, the sort you wouldn’t recall, I suppose, in the normal way of things.”

“I should think not. But you do?”

“Well, as it happens, he was resident in a place where something very odd once happened to me. And not to myself alone.”

“He was involved in this odd thing? He looks blameless to the point of criminality.”

“I imagine that he is. No, he was simply living there at the time, had been there two or three years, if I remember correctly. I met him once, in the street, and my aunt introduced him as a Mr Polleto. We exchanged civilities, that was all. He had the faintest trace of a foreign accent, but otherwise seemed a nonentity. My aunt confessed they had all been very disappointed in him because, learning his name before his arrival, they’d hoped for some sort of flamboyant Italian theatrical gentleman, or something of the sort.”

“He looks more like a grocer.”

“My aunt’s words exactly. Those were the probable facts, too, I believe. He’d been a shopkeeper, but had come into some funds through a legacy. He bought a house in Steepleford, which was where I was visiting my aunt.”

“This is a remarkably dull story, Frederick.”

“Yes.” I hesitated then. I added, “The other story isn’t, I can assure you.”

“The story which you recollect only since you caught sight of your Mr Polleto? Well, are you going to blab? We have four long hours before the Wassenhaur train. Let’s refresh our glasses, and then you can tell me your tale.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Oh, come, this is too flirtatious. What have you been doing all this while but trying to engage my attention in it?”

“I protest.”

But the brandy bottle intervened. And presently, sitting on that sunny terrace of the Hotel Alpius, I recounted to Jeffers, my friend and travelling companion, the story which I will now relate.

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