Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Эллин Стенли
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Год: Penny Publications
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016». Краткое содержание книги:
Porn.
But I don’t want to think about that.
It proved what I’d always suspected: Computers are a tool of the devil.
That’s right: the devil.
And I’m not even religious.
But still...
It wasn’t long after Gene died that I found I couldn’t sleep with the lights out. Inconsistent, some would say. But electricity’s been around a long time. Silicon chips haven’t.
I argued about that with Bruce, Maryanne’s husband, the last time they visited.
“Ben Franklin would’ve approved of computers,” he said. “He discovered electricity, which is what they run on.”
“Ben never envisioned a world like this,” I replied.
“Probably not in his time, but he was a very forward-looking individual.”
“He’d wish he’d never flown that old kite if he could see the way we live today.”
“So you’d rather give up your TV shows and yapping at people on the phone all the time?”
Yapping!
Well, that did it. We argued, and that’s why Maryanne and Bruce don’t feel welcome in my home anymore.
Snow’s really coming down now. Even with the furnace on high I can feel the cold. Genie and I are huddled under an old quilt in the den, watching The Big Prize quiz show. The prize tonight was an iPad with a year’s service contract. I grabbed the remote and tuned in to an old sitcom, but right away a commercial came on. I switched to another channel.
Local news show: “... sex offender who has been stalking our Houghton River Valley for the past four months struck again last night, raping and critically injuring a twenty-seven-year-old woman—”
I changed channels again. These young women today! Probably had been showing herself off in some bar, and the guy had followed her home or wherever. I hold no brief for that type. Or for the ones around my age, fifty-three, who show themselves off. Cougars, I think they call them.
I was getting hungry, thought I’d heat up a cup of soup. It would take awhile, since my old gas stove wasn’t firing so well these days, but what the hell. Time I had. All the time in the world.
Genie started whining to go out again; silly dog always has to pee at the most inconvenient times. I opened the door for her, then went to check on the soup. It was stone cold; the pilot light must’ve gone out. Come to think of it, everything was cold. Was the furnace on the blink?
Oh, hell. I’d been planning to get the filters changed, but hadn’t made the call. Hadn’t wanted to make the call because last year the guy who came out was so unpleasant, tried to tell me I needed a whole new furnace, and I’d screamed at him and made a complaint to his employers. Then I’d decided I needed to contact a different company, but hadn’t gotten around to it.
Cold, way too cold.
I opened the door and called Genie. Damn dog didn’t come. The snow was really coming down now; she’d probably taken shelter with one of the neighbors. I could call around to them...
I went to the kitchen, grabbed the receiver from the rotary phone, and started to dial. No tone. Great. The storm must have done something to the phone lines or the junction box. Either that or AT&T had messed up again.
Maybe Genie’d come to the back door for a change. I called out there. She didn’t respond.
Got to gather quilts and blankets, I thought. Going to be a long, icy night. I went upstairs, pulled both from the linen closet along with my big down pillow and a heavy Hudson Bay blanket. I threw them all on the bed, started to arrange them.
And then all of a sudden the electricity went out.
Oh, damn the power company! Why couldn’t they keep things like that from happening every time there was a big storm?
A good thing the stairs were familiar. The bannister posts too. I groped my way down. There was a flashlight in the pantry, candles too. Matches someplace; I could locate them with the flash. And then read for a while by candlelight, which I’d done before. Spend a cozy night, in any case. The emergency crews would be on the job before morning.
I felt my way to the kitchen, fumbled around till my fingers touched the pantry’s doorknob. Once inside, they easily found the flashlight. Good big one. I pushed the On button.
Nothing.
Batteries. When had I last changed them? Eveready. Didn’t that mean ever ready? I ought to sue the bastards for giving them that name!
Candles. Where were the candles? And the matches? Wait, there were some that I kept in the bedroom nightstand for lighting candles. I made my way back to the stairs, started up.
A noise. At the front door.
Genie? No, she always scratched at the door and barked—
The noise came again. Then I heard the sudden shriek of the wind, felt a cold blast of air.
Someone had come into the house!
I thought I’d locked the front door when I last called Genie, but I must not have. Where was Genie? She was supposed to protect me.
Footsteps in the hall, slow and stealthy. I wanted to scream, but my throat closed up.
The steps kept coming.
I turned and stumbled upstairs into the bedroom and locked the door. If only the old dial-phone line hadn’t gone out I could hide in here and call for help! If only I had one of those cell phones that didn’t need cable lines or electricity—
The footsteps were in the upstairs hallway now. They stopped outside the bedroom door. Oh God, he must’ve heard me come in here.
The knob rattled. Then there were a couple of loud thumps and the lock broke and the door burst open.
Oh no!
A match flared. A big man in a snow-covered coat and cap, somebody I’d never seen before, stepped through the doorway holding the match high. I knew he could see me by the bed.
No!
He kept coming.
Closer.
Closer...
All That Dark Water Moving
by Tim L. Williams
Since 2005, when his work first appeared in EQMM, Tim L. Williams has twice won the International Thriller Award for work published in our pages; he is also an Edgar nominee and a multiple Shamus Award nominee for EQMM stories. In a recent review of his story collection Skull Fragments, reviewer Jon L. Breen said: “For style, structure, suspense, and sheer narrative mastery, this is one of the finest collections of short stories I’ve ever read.”
Three or four times a week Ezell slipped away from the house where his son, Miller, kept him like a book on a dusty library shelf and hiked through canebrakes and briar-choked bottoms to a finger-shaped, sandstone ledge that jutted over a bend in the Green River. He was certain this spot or the small fishing cabin visible through the branches of weather-bare trees had been the site of a great tragedy. And although the particulars of that tragedy es-caped him, he came back again and again to watch the river and to steal glances at the pine cabin and the people who lived there as if the shadows over his memory were no more than a fleck in his eye which might yet be blinked away.
On smothering summer afternoons, the river moved as sluggishly as bathwater seeping through a partially clogged drain, its surface black and sheened with sludge from the Paradise Mine. But this was November, cold, drizzling, windy. The water pounded its banks like an enraged lover banging on a bedroom door. Ezell shivered in a wind gust and then pulled out the crumpled pack of Camel Lights he’d stolen from the hatchet-faced girl they sent to feed him his lunch when Miller didn’t want to drag himself home from the Harps County Public Library. He patted his pockets until he found a pink Bic lighter. He supposed he must have taken it from the hatchet-faced woman the same as he had the cigarettes, but he couldn’t say for sure. For all he knew, it might have materialized out of thin air.