The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection
- Автор: Датлоу Эллен, Виндлинг Терри
- Год: 1992
- Язык: английский
- Год: St.Martin’s Press
- Жанр: Ужасы
Электронная книга - «The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection». Краткое содержание книги:
“So long! I haven’t been there since ...”
“Nineteen forty-one? That’s what I mean, June. It’s time. It’s finally time.”
Through biting wind and chilling rain, you escort June from the ghost of the synagogue into the sheltering warmth of your car. You’re so angry that you don’t bother taking an indirect route. You don’t care if ... in fact, you almost want . . . Chief Kitrick to see you driving past the tavern. You steer left up the bumpy road out of town, its jolts diminished by the storm-soaked earth. When you reach the coastal highway, you assure June yet again and prompt her for further directions.
“It’s been so long. I don’t . . . Yes. Turn to the right,” she says. A half mile later, she trembles, adding, “Now left here. Up that muddy road. Do you think you can . . . ?”
“Force this car through the mud to the top? If I have to, I’ll get out and push. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll walk. God help me, I’ll carry you. I’ll sink to my knees and crawl.”
But the car’s front-wheel drive defeats the mud. At once you gain traction, thrust over a hill, swivel to a stop, and scowl through the rain toward an unexpected meadow. Even in early October, the grass is lush. Amazingly, horribly so. Knowing its secret, you suddenly recall—from your innocent youth—lines from a poem you studied in college. Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”
You force your way out of the car. You struggle around its hood, ignore the mud, confront the stinging wind and rain, and help June waver from the passenger seat. The bullet-dark clouds roil above the meadow.
“Was it here?” you demand. “Tell me! Is this where . . . ?”
“Yes! Can’t you hear them wail? Can’t you hear them suffer?”
“June! In the name of God”—rain stings your face—“tell me!”
“Tell me, June!”
“Can’t you sense? Can’t you feel the horror?”
“Yes, June.” You sink to your knees. You caress the grass. “I can.”
“How many, June?” You lean forward, your face almost touching the grass.
“Two hundred. Maybe more. All those years. So many babies.” June weeps behind you. “I finally couldn’t count anymore.”
“But why?” You raise your head toward the angry rain. “Why did they have to die?”
“Some were sickly. Some were deformed. If the Gunthers decided they couldn’t sell them ...”
“They murdered them? Smothered them? Strangled them?”
“Let them starve to death. The wails.” June cringes. “Those poor, hungry, suffering babies. Some took as long as three days to die. In my nightmares, I heard them wailing. I still hear them wailing.” June hobbles toward you. “At first, the Gunthers took the bodies in a boat and dumped them at sea. But one of the corpses washed up on the beach, and if it hadn’t been for the chief of police they bribed ...” June’s voice breaks. “So the Gunthers decided they needed a safer way to dispose of the bodies. They brought them here and buried them in paper bags or potato sacks or butter boxes.”
“Butter boxes?”
“Some of the babies were born prematurely.” June sinks beside you, weeping. “They were small, so terribly small.”
“Two hundred?” The frenzied wind thrusts your words down your throat. With a shudder, you realize that if your mother was Mary Reilly, Irish, there’d have been a chance of your having been born with red hair. The Gunthers might have decided that you looked too obviously gentile. They might have buried you here with . . .
Your brother or your sister? Your twin? Is your counterpart under the grass you clutch? You shriek. “Two hundred!”
Despite the howl of the storm, you hear a car, its engine roaring, its tires spinning, fighting for traction in the mud. You see a police car crest the rain-shrouded hill and skid to a stop.
Chief Kitrick shoves his door open, stalking toward you through the raging gloom. “God damn it, I told you to leave the past alone.”
You stand, draw back a fist, and strike his mouth so hard he drops to the mushy ground. “You knew! You son of a bitch, you knew all along!”
The chief wipes blood from his mangled lips. In fury, he fumbles to draw his gun.
Thats right! Go ahead, kill me!” You spread out your arms, lashed by the rain. “But June’ll be a witness, and you’ll have to kill her as well! So what, though, huh? Two murders won’t matter, will they? Not compared to a couple of hundred children!”
“I had nothing to do with—”
“Killing these babies? No, but your father did!”
“He wasn’t involved!”
“He let it happen! He took the Gunthers’ money and turned his back! That makes him involved! He’s as much to blame as the Gunthers! The whole fucking town was involved!” You pivot toward the ridge, buffeted by the full strength of the storm. In the blinding gale, you can’t see the town, but you shriek at it nonetheless. You bastards! You sons of bitches! You knew! You all let it happen! You did nothing to stop it! You’re responsible, as much as the Gunthers, for killing all these babies! That’s why your town fell apart! God cursed you! Bastards! Sons of—!”
Abruptly you realize the terrible irony of your words. Bastards? All of these murdered children were bastards. You spin toward the grass, the beautiful uncut hair of graves, and lose control. Falling, you hug the rain-soaked earth, the drenched lush leaves of grass. “Poor babies! Poor sweet babies!”
“You can’t prove anything, Weinberg,” Chief Kitrick growls. “All you’ve got are suppositions. After fifty years, there won’t be anything left of those babies. They’ve long since rotted and turned into—”
“Grass,” you moan, tears scalding your face. “The beautiful grass.”
“The doctor who delivered the babies is dead. The Gunthers—my father kept track of them—died as well. In agony, if that satisfies your need for justice. Orval got stomach cancer. Eve died from alcoholism.”
“And now they burn in hell,” June murmurs.
“I was raised to be . . . I’m a Jew," you moan and suddenly understand the significance of your pronouncement. No matter the circumstances of your birth, you are a Jew, totally, completely. “I don’t believe in hell. But I wish . . . Oh God, how I wish ...”
“The only proof you have,” Chief Kitrick says, “is this old woman, a Catholic who goes every afternoon to pray in a ruined synagogue. She’s nuts. You’re a lawyer. You know her testimony wouldn’t be accepted in court. It’s over, Weinberg. It ended fifty years ago.”