Love, Death and Robots. Volumes 2 & 3

THE TALL GRASS Joe R. Lansdale

I can’t really explain this properly, but I’ll tell it to you, and you can make the best of it. It starts with a train. People don’t travel as readily by train these days as they once did, but in my youthful days they did, and I have to admit that day was some time ago, considering my current, doddering age. It’s hard to believe the century has turned, and I have turned with it, as worn out and rusty as those old coal-powered trains.

I am soon to fall off the edge of the cliff into the great darkness, but there was a time when I was young and the world was light. Then there was something that happened to me on a rail line that showed me something I didn’t know was there, and since that time, I’ve never seen the world in exactly the same way.

What I can tell you is this. I was traveling across country by night in a very nice rail car. I had not just a seat on a train, but a compartment to myself. A quite comfortable compartment, I might add. I was early into my business career then, having just started with a firm that I ended up working at for twenty-five years. To simplify, I had completed a cross-country business trip, and was on my way home. I wasn’t married then, but one of the reasons I was eager to make it back to my home town was a young woman named Ellen. We were quite close, and her company meant everything to me. It was our plan to marry.

I won’t bore you with details, but, that particular plan didn’t work out. And though I still think of that with some disappointment, for she was very beautiful, it has absolutely nothing to do with my story.

Thing is, the train was crossing the western country, in a barren stretch without towns, beneath a wide-open night sky with a high moon and a few crawling clouds. Back then, those kinds of places were far more common than lights and streets and motor cars are now. I had made the same ride several times on business, yet, I always enjoyed looking out the window, even at night. This night, however, for whatever reason, I was up very late, unable to sleep. I had chosen not to eat dinner, and now that it was well passed, I was a bit hungry, but there was nothing to be had.

The lamps inside the train had been extinguished, and out the window there was a moonlit sea of rocks and sand and in the distance beyond, shadowy blue-black mountains.

The train came to an odd stretch that I had somehow missed before on my journeys, as I was probably sleeping at the time. It was a great expanse of prairie grass, and it shifted in the moonlight like waves of gold-green sea water pulled by the tide making forces of the moon.

I was watching all of this, trying to figure it, determining how odd it looked and how often I had to have passed it and had never seen it. Oh, I had seen lots of tall grass, but nothing like this. The grass was not only head high, or higher, it was thick and it had what I can only describe as an unusual look about it, as if I were seeing it with eyes that belonged to someone else. I know how peculiar that sounds, but it’s the only way I know how to explain it.

Then the train jerked, as if some great hand had grabbed it. It screeched on the rails and there was a cacophony of sounds before the engine came to a hard stop.

I had no idea what had occurred. I opened the compartment door, though at first the door seemed locked and only gave way with considerable effort. I stepped out in the hallway. No one was there.

Edging along the hallway, I came to the smoking car, but there was no one there either. It seemed the other passengers were in a tight sleep and unaware of our stopping. I walked through the car, sniffing at the remains of tobacco smoke, and opened a door that went out on a connecting platform that was positioned between the smoking car and another passenger car. I looked in the passenger car through the little window at the door. There was no one there. This didn’t entirely surprise me, as the train had taken on a very small load of passengers, and many of them, like me, had purchased personal cabins.

I looked out at the countryside and saw there were lights in the distance, beyond the grass, or to be more exact, positioned out in it. It shocked me, because we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and the fact that there was a town nearby was a total surprise to me.

I walked to the edge of the platform. There was a folded and hinged metal stair there, and with the toe of my shoe I kicked it, causing it to flip out and extend to the ground.

I climbed down the steps and looked along the rail. There was no one at first, and then there was a light swinging its way toward me, and finally a shadowy shape behind the light. In a moment I saw that it was a rail man, dressed in cap and coat and company trousers.

“You best stay on board, sir,” he said.

I could see him clearly now. He was an average looking man, small in size with an odd walk about him; the sort people who practically live on trains acquire, as do sailors on ships at sea.

“I was just curious,” I said. “What has happened?”

“A brief stop,” he said. “I suggest you go back inside.”

“Is no one else awake?” I said.

“You seem to be it, sir,” he said. “I find those that go to sleep before twelve stay that way when this happens.”

I thought that a curious answer. I said, “Does it happen often?”

“No. Not really.”

“What’s wrong? Are there repairs going on?”

“We are building up another head of steam,” he said.

“Then surely I have time to step out here and have a smoke in the open air,” I said.

“I suppose that’s true, sir,” he said. “But I wouldn’t wander far. Once we’re ready to go, we’ll go. I’ll call for you to get on board, but only a few times, and then we’ll go, no matter what. We won’t tarry, not here. Not between midnight and two.”

And then he went on by me swinging the light.

I was intrigued by what he had said, about not tarrying. I looked out at the waving grass and the lights, which I now realized were not that far away. I took out my makings and rolled a cigarette and put a match to it and puffed.

I can’t really explain what possessed me. The oddness of the moment, I suppose. But I decided it would be interesting to walk out in the tall grass, just to measure its height, and to maybe get a closer look at those lights. I strolled out a ways, and within moments I was deep in the grass. As I walked, the earth sloped downwards and the grass whispered in the wind. When I stopped walking, the grass was over my head, and behind me where the ground was higher, the grass stood tall against the moonlight, like rows of spear heads held high by an army of warriors.

I stood there in the midst of the grass and smoked and listened for activity back at the train, but neither heard the lantern man or the sound of the train getting ready to leave. I relaxed a bit, enjoying the cool, night wind and the way it moved through the prairie. I decided to stroll about while I smoked, parting the grass as I went. I could see the lights still, but they always seemed to be farther away than I thought, and my moving in their direction didn’t seem to bring me closer; they receded like the horizon.

When I finished my cigarette, I dropped it and put my heel to it, grinding it into the ground, and turned to go back to the train.

I was a bit startled to discover I couldn’t find the path I had taken. Surely, the grass had been bent or pushed aside by my passing, but there was no sign of it. It had quickly sprung back into shape. I couldn’t find the rise I had come down. The position of the moon was impossible to locate, even though there was plenty of moonlight; the moon had gone away and left its light there.

Gradually I became concerned. I had somehow gotten turned about, and the train would soon be leaving, and I had been warned that no one would wait for me. I thought perhaps it was best if I ceased thrashing about through the grass, and just stopped, least I become more confused. I concluded that I couldn’t have gone too far from the railway, and that I should be able to hear the train man should he call out for All Aboard.

So, there I was, standing in tall grass like a fool. Lost from the train and listening intently for the man to call out. I kept glancing about to try and see if I could find a path back the way I came. As I said before, it stood to reason that I had tromped down some grass, and that I couldn’t be that far away. It was also, as I said, a very well-lit night, plenty of moonlight. It rested like swipes of cream cheese on the tall grass, so it was inconceivable to me that I had gotten lost in such a short time walking such a short distance. I also considered those lights as bearings, but they had moved, fluttering about like will-o-the-wisps, so using them as markers was impossible.

I was lost, and I began to entertain the disturbing thought that I might miss the train and be left where I was. It would be bad enough to miss the train, but here, out in the emptiness of nowhere, if I wasn’t missed, or no one came back this way for a time, I might actually starve, or be devoured by wild animals, or die of exposure.

That’s when I heard someone coming through the grass. They weren’t right on top of me, but they were close, and of course, my first thought was it was the man from the train come to look for me. I started to call out, but hesitated.

I can’t entirely explain the hesitation, but there was a part of me that felt reluctant, and so instead of calling out, I waited. The noise grew louder.

I cautiously parted the grass with my fingers, and looked in the direction of the sound, and coming through the grass were a number of men, all of them peculiarly bald, the moonlight reflecting off their heads like mirrors. The grass whipped open as they came and closed back behind them. For a brief moment I felt relieved, as they must be other passengers or train employees sent to look for me, and would direct me to back to the train. It would be an embarrassing moment, but in the end, all would be well.

And then I realized something. I hadn’t been actually absorbing what I was seeing. They were human shaped alright, but… they had no faces. There was a head, and there were spots where the usual items should be — nose, eyes, mouth — but those spots were indentions. The moonlight gathered on those shiny, white faces, and reflected back out. They were the lights in the grass and they were why the lights moved, because they moved. There were other lights beyond them, way out, and I drew the conclusion that there were many of these human-shaped things, out in the grass, close and far away, moving toward me, and moving away, thick as aphids. They had a jerky movement about them, as if they were squirming on a griddle. They pushed through the grass and fanned out wide, and some of them had sticks, and they began to beat the grass before them. I might add that as they did, the grass, like a living thing whipped away from their strikes and opened wide and closed up behind them. They were coming ever nearer to where I was. I could see they were of all different shapes and sizes and attire. Some of them wore very old clothes, and there were others who were dressed in rags, and even a couple who were completely devoid of clothes, and sexless, smooth all over, as if anything that distinguished their sex or their humanity had been ironed out. Still, I could tell now, by the general shape of the bodies, that some of them may have been women, and certainly some of the smaller ones were children. I even saw moving among them a shiny white body in the shape of a dog.

In the same way I had felt it unwise to call out to them, I now felt it unwise to wait where I was. I knew they knew I was in the grass, and that they were looking for me.

I broke and ran. I was spotted, because behind me, from those faces without mouths, there somehow rose up a cry. A kind of squeal, like something being slowly ground down beneath a boot heel.

I heard them as they rushed through the grass after me. I could hear their feet thundering against the ground. It was as if a small heard of buffalo were in pursuit. I charged through the grass blindly. Once I glanced back over my shoulder and saw their numbers were larger than I first thought. Their shapes broke out of the grass, left and right and close and wide. The grass was full of them, and their faces glowed as if inside their thin flesh were lit lanterns.

Finally, there was a place where the grass was missing and there was only earth. It was a relief from the cloying grass, but it was a relief that passed swiftly, for now I was fully exposed. Moving rapidly toward me from the front were more of those moon-lit things. I turned, and saw behind me the others were very near. They began to run all out toward me, they were also closing in from my right.

There was but one way for me to go, to the left, and wide, back into the grass. I did just that. I ran as hard as I could run. The grass sloped up slightly, and I fought to climb the hill; the hill that I had lost such a short time ago. It had reappeared, or rather I had stumbled up on it.

My feet kept slipping as I climbed up it. I glanced down, and there in that weird light I could see that my boots were sliding in what looked to be rotting piles of fat-glazed bones; the earth was slick with them.

I could hear the things closing behind me, making that sound that a face without a mouth should be unable to make; that horrid screech. It was deafening.

I was almost at the peak of the hill. I could see the grass swaying up there. I could hear it whispering in the wind between the screeches of those pursuing me, and just as I made the top of the hill and poked my head through the grass and saw the train, I was grabbed.

Here is a peculiar thing that from time to time I remember, and shiver when I do, but those hands that had hold of my legs were cold as arctic air. I could feel them through my clothes, they were so cold. I tried to kick loose but wasn’t having any luck. I had fallen when they grabbed me, and I was clutching at the grass at the top of the hill. It was pulling through my hands and fingers, and the edges were sharp; they cut into me like razors. I could feel the warm blood running through my fingers, but still I hung to that grass.

Glancing back, I saw that I was seized by several of the things, and the dog like shape had clamped its jaws on the heel of my boot. I saw too that the things were not entirely without features after all; or at least now they had acquired one all-encompassing feature. A split appeared in their faces, where a mouth should be, but it was impossibly wide and festooned with more teeth than a shark, long and sharp, many of them crooked as poorly driven nails, stained in spots the color of very old cheese. Their breath rose up like methane from a privy and burned my eyes. There was no doubt in my mind that they meant to bite me; and I somehow knew that if I was bitten, I would not be chewed and eaten, but that the bite would make me like them. That my bones would come free of me along with my features and everything that made me human, and I knew too that these things were originally from train stops, and from frontier scouting parties, adventurers and surveyors, and all manner of folks who had at one time had been crossing these desolate lands and found themselves here, a place not only unknown to the map, but unknown to human understanding. All of this came to me and instantly filled me up with dread. It was as if their very touch had revealed it to me.

I kicked wildly, wrenching my bootheel from the dog-shape’s toothy grasp. I struggled. I heard teeth snap on empty air as I kicked loose. And then there was warmth and a glow over my head. I looked up to see the train man with a great flaming torch, and he was waving it about, sticking it into the teeth-packed faces of those poor lost souls.

They screeched and they bellowed, they hissed and they moaned. But the fire did the trick. They let go of me and receded into the waves of grass, and the grass folded back around them, like the ocean swallowing sailors. I saw last the dog-shape dive into the grass like a porpoise, and then it and them were gone, and so were the lights, and the moonlight lost its slick glaze, and it was just a light. The torch flickered over my head, and I could feel its heat.

The next thing I knew the train man was pulling me to the top of the hill, and I collapsed and trembled like a mass of gelatin spilled on a floor.

“They don’t like it up here, sir,” the train man said, pushing the blazing end of his torch against the ground, rubbing it in the dirt, snuffing it out. The smell of pitch tingled my nostrils. “No, they don’t like it at all.”

“What are they?” I said.

“I think you know, sir. I do. Somewhere deep inside me, I know. There aren’t any words for it, but I know, and you know. They touched me once, but thank goodness I was only near the grass, not in it. Not like you were, sir.”

He led me back to the train. He said, “I should have been more emphatic, but you looked like a reasonable chap to me. Not someone to wander off.”

“I wish I had been reasonable.”

“It’s like looking to the other side, isn’t it, sir?” he said. “Or rather, it is a look to one of many sides, I suspect. Little lost worlds inside our own. The train breaks down here often. There have been others who have left the train. I suspect you met some of them tonight. You saw what they have become, or so I think. I can’t explain all the others. Wanderers, I suspect. It’s always here the train stops or breaks down. Usually, it just sort of loses steam. It can have plenty and still lose it, and we have to build it all up again. Always this time of night. Rarely a problem, really. Another thing, I lock all the doors at night to keep folks in, should they come awake. I lock the general passenger cars on both ends. Most don’t wake up anyway, not this time of night, not after midnight, not if they’ve gone to sleep before that time, and are good solid in. Midnight between two a.m., that’s when it always happens, the train losing steam here near the crawling grass. I guess those of us awake at that time can see some things that others can’t. In this spot anyway. That’s what I suppose. It’s like a door opens out there during that time. They got their spot, their limitations, but you don’t want to be out there, no sir. You’re quite lucky.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Guess I missed your lock, sir. Or it works poorly. I apologize for that. Had I done right, you wouldn’t have been able to get out. If someone should stay awake and find the room locked, we pretend it’s a stuck doorway. Talk to them through the door, and tell them we can’t get it fixed until morning. A few people have been quite put out by that. The ones who were awake when we stopped here. But it’s best that way. I’m sure you’ll agree, sir.”

“I do,” I said. “Thank you again. I can’t say it enough.”

“Oh, no problem. You had almost made it out of the grass, and you were near the top of the hill, so it was easy for me help you. I always keep a torch nearby that can easily be lit. They don’t like fire, and they don’t come up close to the train. They don’t get out of the grass, as far as I can determine. But I will tell you true, had I heard your scream too far beyond the hill, well, I wouldn’t have come after you. And they would have had you.”

“I screamed?”

“Loudly.”

I got on the train and walked back to my compartment, still trembling. I checked my door and saw that my lock had been thrown from the outside, but it was faulty, and all it took was a little shaking to have it come free of the door frame. That’s how I had got out of my room.

The train man brought me a nip of whisky, and I told him about the lock, and drank the whisky. “I’ll have the lock fixed right away, sir. Best not to mention all this,” he said. “No one will believe it, and it could cause problems with the cross-country line. People have to get places, you know.”

I nodded.

“Goodnight, sir. Pleasant dreams.”

This was such an odd invocation to all that had happened, I almost laughed.

He went away, closing up my compartment, and I looked out the window. All there was to see was the grass, waving in the wind, tipped with moonlight.

The train started to move, and pretty soon we were on our way. And that was the end of the matter, and this is the first time I have mentioned it since it happened so long ago. But, I assure you. It happened just the way I told you, crossing the Western void, in the year of 1901.