Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen
- Автор: Артур Роберт, Брэдбери Рэй Дуглас
- Год: 1962
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Publishing
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen». Краткое содержание книги:
“Now!” cried the husband in the dark cellar. “Quiet!”
Everybody settled.
The room was black black. Not a light, not a shine, not a glint of an eye.
A scraping of crockery, a metal rattle.
“The witch is dead,” intoned the husband.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeee,” said the children.
“The witch is dead, she has been killed, and here is the knife she was killed with.”
He handed over the knife. It was passed from hand to hand, down and around the circle, with chuckles and little odd cries and comments from the adults.
“The witch is dead, and this is her head,” whispered the husband, and handed an item to the nearest person.
“Oh, I know how this game is played,” some child cried, happily, in the dark. “He gets some old chicken innards from the icebox and hands them around and says, ‘These are her innards!’ And he makes a clay head and passes it for her head, and passes a soup-bone for her arm. And he takes a marble and says, ‘This is her eye!’ And he takes some com and says, ‘This is her teeth!’ And he takes a sack of plum pudding and gives that and says, ‘This is her stomach!’ I know how this is played!”
“Hush, you’ll spoil everything,” some girl said.
“The witch came to harm, and this is her arm,” said Mich.
“Eeeee!”
The items were passed and passed, like hot potatoes, around the circle. Some children screamed, wouldn’t touch them. Some ran from their chairs to stand in the center of the cellar until the grisly items had passed by them and on to the next child.
“Aw, it’s only chicken insides,” scoffed a boy. “Come back, Helen!”
Shot from hand to hand, with small scream after scream, the items went down the line, down, down, to be followed by another and another.
“The witch cut apart, and this is her heart,” said the husband.
Six or seven items moving at once through the laughing, trembling dark.
Louise spoke up. “Marion, don’t be afraid; it’s only play.”
Marion didn’t say anything.
“Marion?” asked Louise. “Are you afraid?”
Marion didn’t speak.
“She’s all right,” said the husband. “She’s not afraid.”
On and on the passing, the screams, the hilarity.
The autumn wind sighed about the house. And he, the husband, stood at the head of the dark cellar, intoning the words, handing out the items.
“Marion?” asked Louise again, from far across the cellar.
Everybody was talking.
“Marion?” called Louise.
Everybody quieted.
“Marion, answer me, are you afraid?”
Marion didn’t answer.
The husband stood there, at the bottom of the cellar steps.
Louise called, “Marion, are you there?”
No answer. The room was silent.
“Where’s Marion?” called Louise.
“She was here,” said a boy.
“Maybe she’s upstairs.”
“Marion!”
No answer. It was quiet.
Louise cried out, “Marion, Marion!”
“Turn on the lights,” said one of the adults.
The items stopped passing. The children and adults sat with the witch’s items in their hands.
“No.” Louise gasped. There was a scraping of her chair, wildly, in the dark. “No. Don’t turn on the lights, don’t turn on the lights, oh, God, God, God, don’t turn them on, please, please don’t turn on the lights, don’t!” Louise was shrieking now. The entire cellar froze with the scream.
Nobody moved.
Everyone sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game; the wind blew outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with the smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy cried, “I’ll go upstairs and look!” and he ran upstairs hopefully and out around the house, four times around the house, calling, “Marion, Marion, Marion!” over and over and at last coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting, breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, “I can’t find her.”
Then... some idiot turned on the lights.
Stop Calling Me “Mister”
Jonathan Craig
An occasional reminder about good manners can be helpful to all. I thus offer this chilling little study wherein a man’s insistence that formality be dropped led to the most dire consequences.
Harvey Wilson was trying his best to be a proper host, but it was difficult to restrict his thoughts to the present, to keep them from exploring the possibilities of the hours ahead. Tonight might very well be the night, he knew. And again, it might not; it might be just like any one of the previous nights when there’d been a fatal hitch at the last moment. All he could do was wait and see — and that was the worst part of all, the waiting.
Harvey’s guest took another sip of his drink and glanced about the tiny living room appreciatively. “Nice place you got here, Harve,” he said. “You say you built it all by yourself? Everything?” He had been drinking steadily ever since he arrived, and his voice was a little blurred.
Harvey nodded. “All except the plumbing, Mr. Lambert. I figured I’d better leave that to an expert.” He smiled at his wife, who sat on the sofa beside Calvin Lambert. “And Doris did some of the inside painting. Picked it up in no time at all.”
Doris crossed her legs and frowned at the wall above Harvey’s head. She was in her late twenties, a doll-faced woman with shoulder-length black hair, exquisite legs, and a lush, provocative body that in another year or two would be overripe. She, too, showed the effects of drinking a great deal, and the dark eyes behind their incredibly long lashes were very bright.
“I only did it because Harvey kept after me so,” she said defensively. “I’m really not the kind of woman who enjoys wielding a paint brush, Mr. Lambert.” She looked at her glass, then held it out toward her husband. “Refill, Harvey. And this time, for God’s sake, put some whiskey in it.”
Harvey rose, took the glass, and glanced at Lambert. “How about you, sir?” he asked. “You about ready for another?”
“Good thought, Harve,” Lambert said. He handed his glass to Harvey and nodded solemnly. “When a night’s as cold as this one, a man needs a little extra anti-freeze.”
“That’s right,” Harvey said, smiling. Lambert was probably a much better looking man at forty than he had been at twenty, Harvey reflected; two decades had touched his temples with just the right amount of gray and had erased all but a few of the acne scars.
“We must apologize for its being so chilly in here,” Doris said. “Everything about this house is too small, even the furnace.” She grimaced at the portable gas heater in the middle of the floor. “We’ve had to help the furnace along with that ever since the cold spell started.”
“Me, I’m quite comfortable,” Lambert said.
Doris would be too, Harvey thought, if she’d only wear something under her dress. But she never did. She never wore anything at all, winter or summer, but dresses and rolled stockings and high-heeled pumps.
“Two drinks coming right up,” Harvey said. “You want yours the same way, Mr. Lambert?”
“Yes,” Lambert said. “And listen here, Harve. I wish you’d call me Cal. It feels pretty awkward to drink a man’s liquor and enjoy his hospitality, and have him call you Mr. Lambert that way.” He turned to smile at Doris. “Why don’t you both call me Cal? Then it’ll be just Cal and Harve and Doris. Okay?”