Fantastic Metropolis

Important: The novel excerpted here is a work in progress. As such, the text in these pages is still subject to editing and rewriting, and may even be omitted from the finished novel. Please bear this in mind when reading the excerpt, and do not quote any part of it in reviews without first checking against a published copy.

My new novel is set in the fantastical city of Ambergris, the same setting as City of Saints & Madmen. In it, Janice Shriek tells the odd story of her brother Duncan Shriek, and his quest for the truth about the indigenous, subterranean-dwelling gray caps. In this scene, Duncan has just returned to Ambergris after a six-month disappearance. I’ll leave it to you to guess what the parenthetical asides are all about.

—Jeff VanderMeer

Now I should start again. Now I should skip six months of worry. Now I should tell you how I came to see Duncan again. This is such a difficult Afterword to write. Sometimes I am at a loss as to what to put in and what to leave out. Sometimes I do not know what is appropriate for an Afterword and what is not. Is this an Afterword or an Afterwards? Is this pamphlet a history essay or something else? (Perhaps we are too close to the story.)

Regardless, Duncan reintroduced himself to me six months later with a knock on my door late one night in the Spring. The prudent Ambergrisian does not eagerly open doors at night. I called out, “Who is it?” and received, in such a jubilant tone that I could not at first place the voice, the response, “Your brother, Duncan!” Shocked, relieved, perplexed, I opened the door to a pale, worn, yet strangely bulky brother wrapped in an old gray overcoat which he held closed with both hands. A sailor’s hat covered his head. His face was flushed, his eyes too bright as he staggered past me, pieces of debris falling from him onto the floor of my living room.

I locked the door behind him and turned to greet him, but any words I might have spoken died in my throat. For he held his overcoat open like the wings of some great bat, and what I saw I could not at first believe. Just brightly-colored vest and pants I thought, but protruding, like barnacles on a ship’s hull. I took a step closer…

“That’s right,” Duncan said, “step closer and really see.” He tossed his hat onto a chair. He had shaved off his hair and his scalp was stippled and layered in a hundred shades of blue, yellow, green, orange. “Mushrooms. Hundreds of mushrooms. Your eyes do not lie, sister. I had to wear the overcoat and hat or every casual tourist on Albumuth Boulevard would have stared at me.” He looked down at his body. “Look how they glow! What a pity to be rid of them, and yet I must.” He saw me staring unabashedly. “Stare all you like, Janice. I’m a dazzling butterfly, not a moth… well, for another hour or two at least.”

He did not lie. From the collar of his shirt to the tips of his shoes, Duncan was covered in mushrooms and other fungus in a riot and welter and rash of colors so varied that they expanded the spectrum of perceivable hues. I walked up to him, still speechless. His eyelashes and eyebrows were lightly dusted with purple spores. The fungus had needled his head, burrowed into the skin, forming whorls of brightness that hummed with fecundity. I took his right hand in mine, examined the palm, the fingers. The palms had a vaguely greenish hue to them. The half-moons of finger nails had turned a luminous purple. His flesh had a rubbery feel, as if it not completely real. Looking up into his eyes, I saw that the spark there came from a pale red ringing the pupil. Suddenly, I was afraid.