Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: The Twelfth Guest

"I DON'T see how it happened, for my part," Mrs. Childs said. "Paulina, you set the table."

"You counted up yesterday how many there'd be, and you said twelve; don't you know you did, mother? So I didn't count to-day. I just put on the plates," said Paulina, smilingly defensive.

Paulina had something of a helpless and gentle look when she smiled. Her mouth was rather large, and the upper jaw full, so the smile seemed hardly under her control. She was quite pretty; her complexion was so delicate and her eyes so pleasant. "Well, I don't see how I made such a blunder," her mother remarked further, as she went on pouring tea.

On the opposite side of the table were a plate, a knife and fork, and a little dish of cranberry sauce, with an empty chair before them. There was no guest to fill it.

"It's a sign somebody's comin' that's hungry," Mrs. Childs' brother's wife said, with soft effusiveness which was out of proportion to the words.

The brother was carving the turkey. Caleb Childs, the host, was an old man, and his hands trembled. Moreover, no one, he himself least of all, ever had any confidence in his ability in such directions. Whenever he helped himself to gravy, his wife watched anxiously lest be should spill it, and he always did. He spilled some to-day. There was a great spot on the beautiful clean table-cloth. Caleb set his cup and saucer over it quickly, with a little clatter because of his unsteady hand. Then he looked at his wife. He hoped she had not seen, but she had.

"You'd better have let John give you the gravy," she said, in a stern aside.

John, rigidly solicitous, bent over the turkey. He carved slowly and laboriously, but everybody had faith in him. The shoulders to which a burden is shifted have the credit of being strong. His wife, in her best black dress, sat smilingly, with her head canted a little to one side. It was a way she had when visiting. Ordinarily she did not assume it at her sister-in-law's house, but this was an extra occasion. Her fine manners spread their wings involuntarily. When she spoke about the sign, the young woman next her sniffed.

Gerardo Cornejo Murrieta: Declaración

¡¿Culpable?!... pues… sí, verá:

Su pelo era negro y muy largo, por eso digo que era como la noche; sus ojos muy grandes y oscuros, por eso digo que eran como estanques interiores; su mirada imantaba la de los hombres, por eso digo que era como culebra hipnótica, como frío vaho que me atrajo al abismo…

Su… su voz era como vidriosa, por eso digo que se quebró entre mis manos; su vida como un veneno azogado, por eso digo, Señor de Ley, que se me chorreó entre los dedos cuando la estrangulé junto al río.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Green Meadow

INTRODUCTORY NOTE: The following very singular narrative or record of impressions was discovered under circumstances so extraordinary that they deserve careful description. On the evening of Wednesday, August 27, 1913, at about 8:30 o’clock, the population of the small seaside village of Potowonket, Maine, U.S.A., was aroused by a thunderous report accompanied by a blinding flash; and persons near the shore beheld a mammoth ball of fire dart from the heavens into the sea but a short distance out, sending up a prodigious column of water. The following Sunday a fishing party composed of John Richmond, Peter B. Carr, and Simon Canfield caught in their trawl and dragged ashore a mass of metallic rock, weighing 360 pounds, and looking (as Mr. Canfield said) like a piece of slag. Most of the inhabitants agreed that this heavy body was none other than the fireball which had fallen from the sky four days before; and Dr. Richmond M. Jones, the local scientific authority, allowed that it must be an aerolite or meteoric stone. In chipping off specimens to send to an expert Boston analyst, Dr. Jones discovered imbedded in the semi-metallic mass the strange book containing the ensuing tale, which is still in his possession.

In form the discovery resembles an ordinary notebook, about 5 × 3 inches in size, and containing thirty leaves. In material, however, it presents marked peculiarities. The covers are apparently of some dark stony substance unknown to geologists, and unbreakable by any mechanical means. No chemical reagent seems to act upon them. The leaves are much the same, save that they are lighter in colour, and so infinitely thin as to be quite flexible. The whole is bound by some process not very clear to those who have observed it; a process involving the adhesion of the leaf substance to the cover substance. These substances cannot now be separated, nor can the leaves be torn by any amount of force. The writing is Greek of the purest classical quality, and several students of palaeography declare that the characters are in a cursive hand used about the second century B. C. There is little in the text to determine the date. The mechanical mode of writing cannot be deduced beyond the fact that it must have resembled that of the modern slate and slate-pencil. During the course of analytical efforts made by the late Prof. Chambers of Harvard, several pages, mostly at the conclusion of the narrative, were blurred to the point of utter effacement before being read; a circumstance forming a well-nigh irreparable loss. What remains of the contents was done into modern Greek letters by the palaeographer Rutherford and in this form submitted to the translators.

Prof. Mayfield of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who examined samples of the strange stone, declares it a true meteorite; an opinion in which Dr. von Winterfeldt of Heidelberg (interned in 1918 as a dangerous enemy alien) does not concur. Prof. Bradley of Columbia College adopts a less dogmatic ground; pointing out that certain utterly unknown ingredients are present in large quantities, and warning that no classification is as yet possible.

The presence, nature, and message of the strange book form so momentous a problem, that no explanation can even be attempted. The text, as far as preserved, is here rendered as literally as our language permits, in the hope that some reader may eventually hit upon an interpretation and solve one of the greatest scientific mysteries of recent years.

—E.N.B.—L.T., Jun.

Adrián Ramos Alba: Milagros

Todos los días a la misma hora, Milagros daba a luz un cadáver. Los médicos se contradecían en sus diagnósticos y las funerarias de la ciudad hacían el agosto. Muy pronto el cementerio se quedó pequeño y tuvieron que enviar a los recién fallecidos a otras ciudades colindantes. Con el paso del tiempo no quedó lugar para los vivos.

Algernon Blackwood: Ancient Sorceries

I

There are, it would appear, certain wholly unremarkable persons, with none of the characteristics that invite adventure, who yet once or twice in the course of their smooth lives undergo an experience so strange that the world catches its breath — and looks the other way! And it was cases of this kind, perhaps, more than any other, that fell into the wide-spread net of John Silence, the psychic doctor, and, appealing to his deep humanity, to his patience, and to his great qualities of spiritual sympathy, led often to the revelation of problems of the strangest complexity, and of the profoundest possible human interest.

Matters that seemed almost too curious and fantastic for belief he loved to trace to their hidden sources. To unravel a tangle in the very soul of things — and to release a suffering human soul in the process — was with him a veritable passion. And the knots he untied were, indeed, after passing strange.

The world, of course, asks for some plausible basis to which it can attach credence — something it can, at least, pretend to explain. The adventurous type it can understand: such people carry about with them an adequate explanation of their exciting lives, and their characters obviously drive them into the circumstances which produce the adventures. It expects nothing else from them, and is satisfied. But dull, ordinary folk have no right to out-of-the-way experiences, and the world having been led to expect otherwise, is disappointed with them, not to say shocked. Its complacent judgment has been rudely disturbed.

“Such a thing happened to that man!” it cries —“a commonplace person like that! It is too absurd! There must be something wrong!”

Yet there could be no question that something did actually happen to little Arthur Vezin, something of the curious nature he described to Dr. Silence. Outwardly or inwardly, it happened beyond a doubt, and in spite of the jeers of his few friends who heard the tale, and observed wisely that “such a thing might perhaps have come to Iszard, that crack-brained Iszard, or to that odd fish Minski, but it could never have happened to commonplace little Vezin, who was fore-ordained to live and die according to scale.”

Kahlil Gibran ( جبران خليل جبران ) : Rey ( اﻟﻤﻠﻚ )

أحاط شعبُ مملكةِ صادقٍ بقصر الملك، وراحت الجماهير تصرخ ثائرةً عليه، فنزل هذا من علياء قصره، وقد حمل تاجه بيدٍ، وصولجانه باليد الأخرى، واستحوذ على الجماهير حين أبصرته صمتٌ مهيبٌ وقورٌ، ووقف أمامهم وقال: "أيها الأصدقاء، لستم بعد اليوم رعايايَ، فها أنا أتخلّى عن تاجي وصولجاني لكم، وبودّي أن أكون واحداً منكم. لست سوى رجلٍ عاديٍّ، غير أني أودُّ كرجلٍ، أن أعمل معكم، ونجهدَ جميعاً في أن يكون حظّنا أوفى وأجملَ وأحسن. لا حاجة إلى ملْكٍ! فلنذهب إذن إلى الحقول والكروم ونشتغل يداً بيَد. كلّ ما أريد منكم أن تدلّوني على الحقل أو الكرم الذي ينبغي لي أن أذهب إليه' فكلُّ واحدٍ منكم الآن ملكٌ!".

وعجب الناس، وخيَّم عليهم الهدوء، فالملك الذي حسبوه مصدر بلائهم، تخلّى الآن عن تاجه وصولجانه، وسلّمها لهم، وأصبح كأيِّ واحدٍ منهم.

ثم ذهب كلٌّ منهم في سبيله، ومشى الملك مع أحدهم إلى بعض الحقول.

إلا أن مملكة صادقٍ لم تسرْ أحسنَ مما كانت, وعادت سُحُب السّخط والاستياءتتلبّدُ وتتراكم في آفاقها وعلى أرضها، وعاد الناس يصرخون بأعلى أصواتهم، في الساحات العامة، إنهم يريدون مَن يحكم بينهم ويدير أمورهم، وصاح الشّيَّبُ والشّبّانُ قائلين بصوتٍ واحدٍ: "نريد ملِكَنا".

وبحثوا عن الملك فوجدوه يكدح في الحقل وأتوا به إلى مكانه، وسلّموه تاجه وصولجانه، وقالوا له: "الآن احْكُمنا بعزم وعدل".

قال: "سأحكُمُكم في الحقيقة بعزمٍ وأدعو آلهة السّماء والأرض أن تعينني على أن أحكُمَكُم أيضاً بعدلٍ".

ثم جاءه رجالٌ ونساءٌ كلّموه في شأنِ والٍ أساء معاملَتهم واتّخذ منهم عبيداً، وما كان ينظر إليهم إلا على أنهم عبيدٌ، فأمر الملك رأساً بإحضار الوالي، حتى إذا مثُل بين يديه قال له: "إن حياة إنسان في موازين الله تعادل حياة أيِّ إنسانٍ غيره. وما دمتَ لا تعرف كيف تزنُ حيواتِ هؤلاء الذين يعملون في حقولك وكرومك، فقد نفيتُكَ وعليكَ أن تترك هذه المملكة إلى الأبد".

وفي اليوم التالي جاءت الملك جماعةٌ أخرى وكلّمتْه في شأن أميرة قاسية القلب تقيم وراء التّلال، وحدّثتْه وحدَّثتْه عن البؤس الذي نشرتْه في البلاد فجيءَ فوراً بالأميرة، وحكَمَ الملك عليها الملك أيضاً بالنفي قائلاً: "إن هؤلاء الذين يحرثون حقولنا ويبذلون العناية بكرومنا أشرفُ منا نحن الذين نأكل الخبز الذي يصنعون، ونشرب الخمرة التي يعصرون. وما دمتِ لا تعرفين ذلك، فإن عليكِ أن تتركي هذه الأرض وتبتعدي عن هذه المملكة".

ثم جاءه رجالٌ ونسوةٌ أخبروه أن الأسقف يرغِمهم على حمل الحجارة ونحتها لإقامة الكنيسة، ثم لا يعطيهم شيئاً لقاءَ عملهم هذا، وهم يعرفون أن خزائن الأسقف ملأى بالذّهب والفضّة، ويبيتون مع ذلك على الجوع لا يجدون ما يقتاتون به.

Bertalicia Peralta: La oreja del suicidado

El muerto hurgó su corazón y lo sintió henchido de amor. Buscó ansiosamente alguien a quién amar. Alguien que lo amara. Movió a la derecha, a la izquierda sus fosas oculares y se le saltaron las lágrimas cuando sintió el beso de la hermosa muerta sobre sus labios.

Charlaine Harris: One Word Answer

BUBBA the Vampire and I were raking up clippings from my newly-trimmed bushes about midnight when the long black car pulled up. I'd been enjoying the gentle scent of the cut bushes and the songs of the crickets and frogs celebrating spring. Everything hushed with the arrival of the black limousine. Bubba vanished immediately, because he didn't recognize the car. Since he changed over to the vampire persuasion, Bubba's been on the shy side.

I leaned against my rake, trying to look nonchalant. In reality, I was far from relaxed. I live pretty far out in the country, and you have to want to be at my house to find the way. There's not a sign out at the parish road that points down my driveway reading "Stackhouse home." My home is not visible from the road, because the driveway meanders through some woods to arrive in the clearing where the core of the house has stood for a hundred and sixty years.

Visitors are not real frequent, and I didn't remember ever seeing a limousine before. No one got out of the long black car for a couple of minutes. I began to wonder if maybe I should have hidden myself, like Bubba. I had the outside lights on, of course, since I couldn't see in the dark like Bubba, but the limousine windows were heavily smoked. I was real tempted to whack the shiny bumper with my rake to find out what would happen. Fortunately, the door opened while I was still thinking about it.

A large gentleman emerged from the rear of the limousine. He was six feet tall, and he was made up of circles. The largest circle was his belly. The round head above it was almost bald, but a fringe of black hair circled it right above his ears. His little eyes were round, too, and black as the hair and his suit. His shirt was gleaming white, but his tie was black without a pattern. He looked like the director of a funeral home for the criminally insane.

"Not too many people do their yard work at midnight ," he commented, in a surprisingly melodious voice. The true answer - that I liked to rake when I had someone to talk to, and I had company this night with Bubba, who couldn't come out in the sunlight - was better left unsaid. I just nodded. You couldn't argue with his statement.

Enrique Anderson Imbert: El cigarrillo

El nuevo cigarrero del zaguán –flaco, astuto– lo miró burlonamente al venderle el atado.

Juan entró en su cuarto, se tendió en la cama para descansar en la oscuridad y encendió en la boca un cigarrillo.

Se sintió furiosamente chupado. No pudo resistir. El cigarro lo fue fumando con violencia; y lanzaba espantosas bocanadas de pedazos de hombre convertidos en humo.

Encima de la cama el cuerpo se le fue desmoronando en ceniza, desde los pies, mientras la habitación se llenaba de nubes violáceas.

Ambrose Bierce: A Jug of Sirup

This narrative begins with the death of its hero. Silas Deemer died on the 16th day of July, 1863, and two days later his remains were buried. As he had been personally known to every man, woman and well-grown child in the village, the funeral, as the local newspaper phrased it, “was largely attended.” In accordance with a custom of the time and place, the coffin was opened at the graveside and the entire assembly of friends and neighbors filed past, taking a last look at the face of the dead. And then, before the eyes of all, Silas Deemer was put into the ground. Some of the eyes were a trifle dim, but in a general way it may be said that at that interment there was lack of neither observance nor observation; Silas was indubitably dead, and none could have pointed out any ritual delinquency that would have justified him in coming back from the grave. Yet if human testimony is good for anything (and certainly it once put an end to witchcraft in and about Salem ) he came back.

I forgot to state that the death and burial of Silas Deemer occurred in the little village of Hillbrook , where he had lived for thirty-one years. He had been what is known in some parts of the Union (which is admittedly a free country) as a “merchant”; that is to say, he kept a retail shop for the sale of such things as are commonly sold in shops of that character. His honesty had never been questioned, so far as is known, and he was held in high esteem by all. The only thing that could be urged against him by the most censorious was a too close attention to business. It was not urged against him, though many another, who manifested it in no greater degree, was less leniently judged. The business to which Silas was devoted was mostly his own - that, possibly, may have made a difference.

At the time of Deemer’s death nobody could recollect a single day, Sundays excepted, that he had not passed in his “store,” since he had opened it more than a quarter-century before. His health having been perfect during all that time, he had been unable to discern any validity in whatever may or might have been urged to lure him astray from his counter and it is related that once when he was summoned to the county seat as a witness in an important law case and did not attend, the lawyer who had the hardihood to move that he be “admonished” was solemnly informed that the Court regarded the proposal with “surprise.” Judicial surprise being an emotion that attorneys are not commonly ambitious to arouse, the motion was hastily withdrawn and an agreement with the other side effected as to what Mr. Deemer would have said if he had been there - the other side pushing its advantage to the extreme and making the supposititious testimony distinctly damaging to the interests of its proponents. In brief, it was the general feeling in all that region that Silas Deemer was the one immobile verity of Hillbrook, and that his translation in space would precipitate some dismal public ill or strenuous calamity.

Harold Kremer: La casa

Otra vez aquí -dijo la abuela-. Ven.

Cada vez que soñaba la abuela me llevaba por la casa, señalaba las puertas de los cuartos y decía: Aquí vive tu bisabuelo, aquí tu hermano José, aquí Salvico, aquí... Y así, en cada sueño, la casa crecía con los cuartos de mis antepasados.

Alguna vez pregunté por uno de los nombres y la abuela me dijo: Es el bisabuelo de tu abuelo.

Esta noche recorrimos la casa entera, repasamos los nombres y llegamos a un cuarto nuevo. Miré a la abuela. Me dijo: Este es tu cuarto.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon: The Hall Bedroom

MY name is Mrs. Elizabeth Jennings. I am a highly respectable woman. I may style myself a gentlewoman, for in my youth I enjoyed advantages. I was well brought up, and I graduated at a young ladies' seminary. I also married well. My husband was that most genteel of all merchants, an apothecary. His shop was on the corner of the main street in Rockton, the town where I was born, and where I lived until the death of my husband. My parents had died when I had been married a short time, so I was left quite alone in the world. I was not competent to carry on the apothecary business by myself, for I had no knowledge of drugs, and had a mortal terror of giving poisons instead of medicines. Therefore I was obliged to sell at a considerable sacrifice, and the proceeds, some five thousand dollars, were all I had in the world. The income was not enough to support me in any kind of comfort, and I saw that I must in some way earn money. I thought at first of teaching, but I was no longer young, and methods had changed since my school days. What I was able to teach, nobody wished to know. I could think of only one thing to do: take boarders. But the same objection to that business as to teaching held good in Rockton. Nobody wished to board. My husband had rented a house with a number of bedrooms, and I advertised, but nobody applied. Finally my cash was running very low, and I became desperate. I packed up my furniture, rented a large house in this town and moved here. It was a venture attended with many risks. In the first place the rent was exorbitant, in the next I was entirely unknown. However, I am a person of considerable ingenuity, and have inventive power, and much enterprise when the occasion presses. I advertised in a very original manner, although that actually took my last penny, that is, the last penny of my ready money, and I was forced to draw on my principal to purchase my first supplies, a thing which I had resolved never on any account to do. But the great risk met with a reward, for I had several applicants within two days after my advertisement appeared in the paper. Within two weeks my boarding-house was well established, I became very successful, and my success would have been uninterrupted had it not been for the mysterious and bewildering occurrences which I am about to relate. I am now forced to leave the house and rent another. Some of my old boarders accompany me, some, with the most unreasonable nervousness, refuse to be longer associated in any way, however indirectly, with the terrible and uncanny happenings which I have to relate. It remains to be seen whether my ill luck in this house will follow me into another, and whether my whole prosperity in life will be forever shadowed by the Mystery of the Hall Bedroom. Instead of telling the strange story myself in my own words, I shall present the journal of Mr. George H. Wheatcroft. I shall show you the portions beginning on January 18 of the present year, the date when he took up his residence with me. Here it is:

Salomé Guadalupe Ingelmo: Non omnis moriar: Fahrenheit 1400

Ahí donde se queman libros se acaba quemando también seres humanos.
Heinrich Heine, Almansor

Ante sus ojos horrorizados, la bárbara purga continúa. Lenta, pero inexorable. Los hombres uniformados, como aliviados de un peso insoportable, se deshacen metódicamente de su pasado. Sin embargo no hay regocijo en sus rostros inexpresivos. Sencillamente cumplen órdenes. Para cuando la grabación acaba, él ha tomado ya una determinación. No puede dar la espalda a sus responsabilidades.

El Nuevo Testamento, El Quijote, Los miserables, 1984, Un mundo feliz… Uno tras otro van desapareciendo en el horno crematorio.

Primero fue el papel. Luego, los CD y las memorias portátiles. Y así cada nuevo soporte, hasta que ya sólo quedó uno. El más sofisticado y sagrado; el supremo tabernáculo. Porque ellos son los últimos guardianes de la palabra, los únicos custodios de la memoria. Y no están dispuestos a rendirse. Quien deja arder su pasado, sólo puede encontrar cenizas en su futuro.

“Has de darte prisa; no queda mucho tiempo. Han descubierto tu identidad y pronto te darán caza”.

Guy se dirige por última vez al altar y apoya su mano sobre el metacrilato. “El Bombero, Galaxy, 1951”, lee inconscientemente en voz alta. Los hermanos lo toman por un rezo. El papel amarillento, probablemente el último que quede en el mundo desde hace siglos, se diría una piel madura. La reliquia le infunde valor. Comprende que todos formamos parte de un proyecto. Un tejido cuya integridad siempre habrá alguien dispuesto a defender. Un organismo en el que él seguirá viviendo.

Ray Bradbury: The Scythe

Quite suddenly there was no more road. It ran down the valley like any other road, between slopes of barren, stony ground and live oak trees, and then past a broad field of wheat standing alone in the wilderness. It came up beside the small white house that belonged to the wheat field and then just faded out, as though there was no more use for it.

It didn't matter much, because just there the last of the gas was gone. Drew Erickson braked the ancient car to a stop and sat there, not speaking, staring at his big, rough farmer's hands.

Molly spoke, without moving where she lay in the corner beside him. "We must of took the wrong fork back yonder."

Drew nodded.

Molly's lips were almost as white as her face. Only they were dry, where her skin was damp with sweat. Her voice was flat with no expression in it.

"Drew," she said. "Drew, what are we a-goin' to do now?"

Drew stared at his hands. A farmer's hands, with the farm blown out from under them by the dry, hungry wind that never got enough good loam to eat.

The kids in the back seat woke up and pried themselves out of the dusty litter of bundles and bedding. They poked their heads over the back of the seat and said:

"What are we stoppin' for, Pa? Are we gonna eat now, Pa? Pa, we're awful hungry. Can we eat now, Pa?"

Drew closed his eyes. He hated the sight of his hands.

Molly's fingers touched his wrist. Very light, very soft. "Drew, maybe in the house there they'd spare us somethin' to eat?"

A white line showed around his mouth. "Beggin'," he said harshly. "Ain't none of us ever begged before. Ain't none of us ever goin' to."

Molly's hand tightened on his wrist. He turned and saw her eyes. He saw the eyes of Susie and little Drew, looking at him. Slowly all the stiffness went out of his neck and his back. His face got loose and blank, shapeless like a thing that has been beaten too hard and too long. He got out of the car and went up the path to the house. He walked uncertainly, like a man who is sick, or nearly blind.