The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

Some might question the editorial decision to include research from Amal El-Mohtar and Caitlín R. Kiernan, given their criticism of, and wild theories about, Lambshead. However, it should be noted that the doctor himself, in his will, cited both “as members of the loyal opposition” who should be given “as much equal opportunity to feast on my corpse as anyone else. They’ve earned it.”

The Thing in the Jar

Researched and Documented by Michael Cisco

The Thing in the Jar was presented to Dr. Lambshead by an African anthropologist specializing in the study of Europeans, one Prof. Manjakanony Ramahefajonatana, of the University of Antananarivo, Antananarivo, Madagascar, in exchange for some assistance rendered in accumulating a representative collection of items of contemporary everyday English use. The object was discovered by Prof. Ramahefajonatana’s principal research assistant, Vololoniaina Rasendranoro, who, owing to a condition of amnesia brought on by a clout she received on the head as she was escaping from a burning barn in Essex, was entirely unable ever to account for how she came across it. The only definitely known fact about the jar’s past is that it was found in England, and does not appear to have originated elsewhere.

The object is a cylindrical glass jar, fifteen inches tall and six inches in diameter, weighing about twenty-five pounds, with a bronze base and lid. The bottom is wrapped in a fringed skirt of faded red velvet with gold tassels, and bears at its center an engraving of an owl in semi-profile and the legend “Griscyple Bros.—1737.” The top is hermetically sealed with black wax.

The jar contains an anthropic creature.

This object is associated with a manuscript in Dr. Lambshead’s own hand, consisting of a great many sheets of different hotel stationery, contained in a manila file folder. The folder’s projecting tab is covered with a stack of adhesive labels, one laid atop another. The exposed, uppermost label had something written on it which was then aggressively scribbled over, and the rest of the folder is leopard-spotted with scribbled-out words or phrases. The only unmarred writing on the folder itself consists of three words inscribed in a column on the inner surface of the front, or untabbed, half of the folder. They are, from top to bottom: MUSHROOMS, BACON, OVALTINE.

Not unlike the folder, the manuscript is also heavily emended, with many strikethroughs and insertions. The battered, fraying pages show signs of having been much handled. Not only are all the pages from different hotels, but they are written and marked in a variety of media, including ink, pencil, lipstick, crayon, pastels, and, in one case, a dry and crusty reddish-brown fluid that has the characteristics of blood. The alterations are, more often than not, written in a medium different from that of the older text. The implements used also must have been highly varied, ranging from rare and expensive Sheaffer or Pelikan fountain pens to the quills of exotic birds to ordinary run-of-the-mill ballpoint pens and No. 2 pencils to sharpened fragments of bone or medical implements dipped in ink or stain. In one case, a correction is actually cut into the paper with a sharp instrument, perhaps a scalpel, and there are minute discolorations around the incisions suggesting the scalpel had been in surgical use quite recently when the correction was made, or, perhaps, that Dr. Lambshead had been struck by an idea in the very midst of performing an operation, and had paused to make the change in the text using literally what he had in his hand just at that moment.

In content, the manuscript consists of a list and seven fragmentary narratives or descriptions, all of which seem intended to account for the existence of the Thing in the Jar. All of them are, also, mutually exclusive, and it is impossible to ascertain which of them, if any, is the true explanation.

The list reads, in part, as follows:

imp / witch’s brat

immature yeti

immature yama / yamantaka

buffalo spirit

buffalo minotaur

hoax by M.

motile fruiting body from enormous Kamchatkan mycelium

found in meteor / chrysolite

automaton replacement for lost child, abused, becomes monster

Japanese legend: pregnant mother murdered, stillborn child avenger

stillborn specimen, ankylopsoriasis

found blocking sewer drain under big city

infant gorilla raised by crocodiles

wandered into small German town in 1762 with note

discovered in exhumed coffin in place of body: cadaver changeling

conceit of insane taxidermist

small island North Atlantic where wrecked Vikings married wolves

mature specimen of gnome

“Thing in Jar” as first reproduced within Ramahefajonatana’s dissertation, Les Articles des Usages Quotidiens des Communautes Rurales et Semi-Rurales de l’Angleterre du milieu du Siècle Vingtième (Paris: Plon, 1957)