Электронная книга - «The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection». Краткое содержание книги:
This acclaimed series, winner of numerous World Fantasy Awards, continues its tradition of excellence with scores of short stories from such writers as K. W. Jeter, Karl Edward Wagner, Terry Bisson, S. P. Somtow, Charles de Lint, Kobo Abe, Jane Yolen and many others. Supplementing the stories are the editors' invaluable overviews of the year in fantastic fiction, Edward Bryant's witty roundup of the year's fantasy films, and a long list of Honorable Mentions—all of which adds up to an invaluable reference source, and a font of fabulous reading.
Ah; and she smiles despite everything. Not a book of the Dead. A weird sensation rises up in her like a gulp of air turned inside out. Coming Forth Into Day: a book of Life! A book of instruction!
All the beautiful girls on Haight-Ashbury twenty years ago claimed to be Egyptian princesses in a previous lifetime. How she remembers their sandalwood incense and their sloe-eyes and their young breasts naked under Egyptian cotton. But Laurel knows better now. Who would want to return to this world of shadows after coming forth into day?
She takes her sketchpad, the pastels, her cigarettes, the last of the good cabernet out on her deck. She slides the glass door shut behind her and sits. The little pale green plastic flying saucer with the bright red plastic flower decals sways gently in the Pacific breeze.
She doesn’t wait long before her dependable Allen’s hummer comes. What a hungry guy he is, visiting her morning ’til night. Wouldn’t she love a guy like that, couldn’t stay away from her all day long?
Then a Calliope comes, candy-cane striped gorget, gleaming gold-green back, cinnamon belly. A Calliope, she’s never seen a Calliope before!
And a Costa’s, with his violet-purple crown and his dark leaf-green feathers, and a Lucifer, with his violet-red gorget and his distinctive forked emerald tail.
The air all around her is filled with flitting, winged jewels.
Her lazy little black-chinned hummer perches and sips for a while, but then a tiny, tinny belligerent chup-chup-chup! pierces the morning blaze, and the black-chin and the Lucifer spiral away.
She sees a magnificent hummer.
Hovering over her. A tiny, exquisite golden body, levitating on gleaming fans of silver and vermilion and chrysolite, chupping excitedly. And looking down at her, a pale, round, flat face. A sad and lovely face.
Of course she knows that face, has rendered it in countless self-portraits, idealized it, corrupted it, broken it into planes and angles, rendered it fantastic with electric-blue tears sliding from the eyes. She’s always been proud of the eyes. Not so proud of the mouth that has uttered meanness and nasty words, but she cannot do anything about that now.
The hummer darts away.
There is a sort of click, a huge compression in her chest, and she screams, the pain is terrifying, and she screams again, eyes wide open, every nerve snapping, and then she swoons.
There is a clanging noise that almost disturbs her from the task at hand. Go away, go away. If that’s Jerry banging at her front door, he’ll have to let himself in.
She looks down and sees the body crumpled there, so much baggage that must be left behind. The grief passes quickly now.
She soars up into the turquoise sky. The sun is dazzling. Bright beating wings take her.
SANTA’S WAY
James Powell
From James Powell, author of the offbeat police procedural “A Dirge for downtown” (winner of the Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine Reader’s Poll and reprinted in our Third Annual Collection), comes a hard-boiled Christmas tale.
James Powell is a popular mystery writer whose work appears regularly in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. “Santa’s Way” comes from their mid-December, 1991 issue.
—T.W.
Lieutenant Field parked behind the Animal Protective League van. The night was cold, the stars so bright he could almost taste them. Warmer constellations of tree lights decorated the dark living rooms on both sides of the street. Field turned up his coat collar. Then he followed the footprints in the snow across the lawn and up to the front door of the house where a uniformed officer stood shuffling his feet against the weather.
Captain Fountain was on the telephone in the front hallway and listening so hard he didn’t notice Field come in. “Yes, Commissioner,” he said. “Yes, sir, Commissioner. ” Then he laid a hand over the mouthpiece, looked up at a light fixture on the ceiling, and demanded, “Why me, Lord? Why me?” (The department took a dim view of men talking to themselves on duty. So Fountain always addressed furniture or fixtures. He confided much to urinals. They all knew how hard-done-by Fountain was.) Turning to repeat his question to the hatrack he saw Field. “Sorry to bring you out on this of all nights, Roy,” he said. He pointed into the living room and added cryptically, “Check out the fireplace, why don’t you?” Then he went back to listening.
Field crossed to the cold hearth. There were runs of blood down the sides of the flue. Large, red, star-shaped spatters decorated the ashes.
A woman’s muffled voice said, “I heard somebody coming down the chimney. ” A blonde in her late thirties sitting in a wing chair in the corner, her face buried in a handkerchief. She looked up at Field with red-rimmed eyes. “After I called you people I even shouted up and told him you were on your way. But he kept on coming.”
Captain Fountain was off the telephone. From the doorway he said, “So Miss Doreen Moore here stuck her pistol up the flue and fired away.”
“Ka-pow, ka-pow, ka-pow,” said the woman, making her hand into a pistol and, in Field’s opinion, mimicking the recoil quite well. But he didn’t quite grasp the situation until men emerged from the darkness on the other side of the picture window and reached up to steady eight tiny reindeer being lowered down from the roof in a large sling.
“Oh, no!” said Field.
“Oh, yes,” said Fountain. “Come see for yourself.”
Field followed him upstairs to the third-floor attic where the grim-faced Animal Protective League people, their job done, were backing down the ladder from the trap door in the roof.
Field and Fountain stood out on the sloping shingles under the stars. Christmas music came from the radio in the dashboard of the pickle-dish sleigh straddling the ridge of the roof. Close at hand was Santa, both elbows on the lip of the chimney, his body below the armpits and most of his beard out of sight down the hole. He was quite dead. The apples in his cheeks were Granny Smiths, green and hard.
Only the week before Field had watched the PBS documentary “Santa’s Way.” Its final minutes were still fresh in his mind. Santa in an old tweed jacket sat at his desk at the Toy Works backed by a window that looked right down onto the factory floor busy with elves. Mrs. Claus, her eyes on her knitting, smiled and nodded at his words and rocked nearby. “Starting out all we could afford to leave was a candy cane and an orange,” Santa had said. “The elves made the candy canes and it was up to me to beg or borrow the oranges. Well, one day the United Fruit people said, 'Old timer, you make it a Chiquita banana and we’ll supply them free and make a sizable donation to the elf scholarship fund.’ But commercializing Christmas wasn’t Santa’s way. So we made do with the orange. And look at us now.” He lowered his hairy white head modestly. “The Toy Works is running three shifts making sleds and dolls and your paint boxes with your yellows, blues, and reds. The new cargo dirigible lets us restock the sleigh in flight.” Santa gave the camera a sadder look. “Mind you, there’s a down side,” he acknowledged. “We’ve strip-mined and deforested the hell out of the North Pole for the sticks and lumps of coal we give our naughty little clients. And our bond rating isn’t as good as it used to be. Still, when the bankers say, 'Why not charge a little something, a token payment for each toy?’ I always answer, ‘That isn’t Santa’s way.’ ”
