St. Blaise’s Toad—A 6-inch × 6-inch × 3-inch plastered and gilded wood, glass-and-taxidermied common toad. Referred to as “the miracle of the toad.” In 1431, a vision of St. Blaise appeared to a farm boy catching toads near a spring in Bromley, Kent. The saint called upon the boy to be kind to all amphibians. After the vision, an image of St. Blaise appeared on the back of a toad near the edge of the pool. The creature was skinned, stuffed, and enshrined by the church. This gilded toad reliquary was decommissioned by the church during the Calvinist reformation. The toad remained in the collection of Rawsthorne Family of Denbies Hall, Dorking, until won from Lord Rawsthorne by Dr. Lambshead in a game of skittles. Glass damaged in lower right corner resulting in mild molding and mouse damage to the epidermis. Papal seal on verso, canceled promissory note pasted on side. (Dr. Galubrious)
The St. Blais Toad at rest, as photographed by Dr. Galubrious.
Tomb-Matches—Half a dozen square-stick lucifers, secured in a waxed-paper wrapping. The attached card indicates, in slightly shaky, faded handwriting, that these matches, when struck, produce not light, nor a means of igniting a cigarette, pipe, candle, or lamp, but instead a bloom of impenetrable, sound-muffling darkness. This darkness lasts for as long as the match burns. If, the card notes, members of the match-striker’s party are missing when the light returns, it is only to be expected. (Nadine Wilson)
Tycho’s Astronomical Support Garment—Designed by the sixteenth-century astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) as a device to combat chronic neck and back pain caused by years of stooping over observational instruments. The garment resembles an oversized corset stiffened by stays of horn, buckram, and whalebone. The center front is further reinforced by a busk made of ivory. The garment was fastened to the body via a complicated system of leather straps. How this was done remains a subject of controversy, as it is not obvious how certain straps were used. Tycho was not wearing the garment on October 13, 1601, when his bladder burst after he drank too much wine at a dinner party, which resulted in his eventual death. It is not clear that the abdominal support afforded by the garment could have prevented this tragedy. (Steven M. Schmidt)
Unhcegila’s Scales—Vacillating between sickly virescent and rotted plum hues, these peculiar lamina are rumored to be found in the darkest corners of the North American Badlands’ caverns. Thirty were found in Lambshead’s cabinet, with each being roughly the size of a fig leaf. He said that he won them in a poker game with a hand of aces and eights in the Berlin Hellfire Club on April 28, 1945. The graybeard he won them from claimed to be the bastard son of Jesse James and said that he stole them from Bill Hickock as a boy. Hickock had told the boy that Sitting Bull gave them to him when they toured together in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows. The scales are said to allow a man to make his enemies mysteriously disappear, when ground up and put into their food or drink. Curiously, his ledger shows he sold some to gangsters with connections to both Jimmy Hoffa and Elvis. (Christopher Begley)
Untitled Booklet—Consists of six bound pages obtained by Dr. Lambshead from a Prague antiquarian bookshop in January 1948, one month before the Czechoslovak coup d’état, donated to him for safekeeping. The booklet appeared to contain a short story in a Central Moravian Czech dialect. Dr. Lambshead, however, was assured the booklet was not what it appeared to be, but an insect able, through mimicry, to imitate any inorganic object placed within a short distance (including its smell). The creature was discovered in one of the “Stránska Skála” Upper Paleolithic caves in the northern outskirts of Brno not long after Professor Svoboda’s archaeological excavations in the summer of 1946. Despite attempting escape many times, the insect was finally secured amongst a collection of obscure short stories by forgotten Czechoslovak writers of early twentieth-century Weird Fiction. The insect (booklet) is presumed dead. (Tony Mileman)
Tartarus Press edition of Jean Lorrain’s Nightmares of an Ether-Drinker. In this instance, the insect documented by Tony Mileman had insinuated itself under the dust jacket and wrapped itself around the pages, replacing the boards and simulating a cloth binding.
Von Slatt Harmonization Device—A system and method for cultural transmission scrambling, patent application number 15/603976. Assignee: Harmonization Incorporated. Summary of the Invention from the patent application: “Very soon, science will confirm that cultural information passes from one entity to another using devices accessed psionically via instructional facilities. It is the object of this device to locate, demodulate, and scramble cultural transmissions passing between hostile social formations. This novel device allows operators to inject false vernacular and traditions into cultural signals as they pass between entities. It can also hijack signals carrying historical intelligence by providing a stronger signal on the same frequency.” (Annalee Newitz)
Wax Phonograph Cylinder, Unlabeled—Object appears to be over a century old, but is still functional. When played, the sound of a percussive instrument, possibly a large tubular drum, can be heard for approximately the first forty seconds of recording time. During this sound, the murmurings of a man’s voice become interpolated with the beat. The syllables are indistinguishable, but as the drumbeat continues, the voice rises until it becomes a series of shouted plosives. At around the four-minute mark, both sounds stop completely and are replaced by a series of high-pitched cries, from which can be gleaned the only coherent word of the entire piece: “Alley-Caster,” or perhaps “Snally-Gaster.” The final sound heard on the recording is an extremely loud screeching whistle, which sounds reptilian in origin. An attached note indicates that Dr. Lambshead acquired the object from a motel-room drawer in Braddock Heights, Maryland. (Michael J. Larson)
Artist and Author Notes
An unprecedented panoramic view of the East End of Lambshead’s cabinet, taken surreptitiously by photographer Bruce Ecker in 1999.
Story Contributors
Kelly Barnhill has had fiction published in Fantasy, Weird Tales, Clockwork Phoenix, and many other publications. Her first novel, The Mostly True Story of Jack—a lyrical fantasy for middle-grade readers—is set for a 2011 release by Little, Brown.
Holly Black is a best-selling author of contemporary fantasy novels for teens and children, including The Spiderwick Chronicles and the Curse Workers series.
S. J. Chambers has had fiction and nonfiction published by Fantasy, the Baltimore Sun’s Read Street Blog, Yankee Pot Roast, and Tor.com. Her most recent projects include The Steampunk Bible, a coffee-table book coauthored with Jeff VanderMeer.
Stepan Chapman is the author of The Troika, which won the Philip K. Dick Award. His short fiction can be found in magazines and anthologies such as Analog, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Leviathan, Polyphony, and Album Zutique.
Ted Chiang is a multiple award–winning short story writer. His work has won the Nebula, the Hugo, the Locus Award, and others. His latest book is the novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects, published by Subterranean Press in 2010.