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:
His better satisfaction, though, was that editors began to do less violence to his sentences. His style of writing was still hobbledehoy, he thought, but it was better left alone than improved. At least something of the intensity of his visions flamed through, even if sensual nuance was lost. The essential strangeness of the tales did not diminish. He wrote, for instance, a story based on the idea that the positions of the stars in our galaxy had been designed by the immensely powerful science of an ancient superrace as a kind of wallpaper. In another story the ghost of a dismantled robot visited its inventor and sat each night silent and reproachful at the foot of his bed. In “Black Receiver” an intelligent butterfly composed of a carbon gas picked up through its antennae the radio communications of a space fleet and thus formed a very surprising view of humankind.
So he was fairly content and hoped for better things to come, even though it was clear that the times were verging on catastrophe. Arthur was no great reader of newspapers, but no one could escape hearing about the events in Europe, and all the world was darkened by suspicion.
Arthur’s own apprehensiveness deepened when he was visited by a man who claimed to be a government agent and asked whether he knew Sheila Weddell. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
The agent gave him a long stare. Then he said, “All right, sport. I’ll have coffee.”
When Arthur set the thick mug before him, the squat little man added cream and three spoons of sugar before saying, “You sure?”
“Sure of what?”
“About the woman. Sheila Weddell.”
“I don’t know her.” He knew, however, that he didn’t like this dumpy little man with his false smile that let the sneer show through and his slicked-back silver-blond hair. He had a firm impression of the fellow as one who took deep satisfaction in feeling contempt. His bored eyes and twisted mouth betrayed a jaded spirit.
“I got a picture.” He reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced a crinkled photograph.
The picture, as Arthur had expected, was of the woman who called herself Francesca, and he already had decided to keep this agent—if that’s what he was— at arm’s length. “Pretty,” he said, and handed it back.
The man laid it carefully on the Bakelite counter, then turned it around to face Arthur. “You’ve seen her before, haven’t you? About two years ago?”
“Two years is a long time.”
“It’s longer inside the jailhouse than it is outside. Even in a fleabite place like this.” He giggled. “What do you call it here? Cherry Cola?”
“Cherry Cove,” Arthur said. “You’re in Cherry Cove, North Carolina.”
“And I want to know if you ain’t seen this woman, Sheila Weddell, in Cherry Cove, North Carolina, about two years ago.”
“You say you’re some kind of an agent? I’d like to see your identification.”
He drew a toothpick from an upper vest pocket and stuck it in the front of his mouth, so it bobbed up and down as he spoke. “You know, sport, I don’t think you’d be asking for identification unless you were trying to hide something. I got me an idea you’re hiding something.”
“And I have an idea you’re no government agent of any kind,” Arthur said. “I have an idea you’re a lawyer or a Pinkerton who is meddling in a lady’s private affairs.”
“I see. You kinda like her, do you? Well, let me tell you, you don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know the least little thing. If you did, you wouldn’t be calling Sheila Weddell no lady. I guess she must have been real nice to you, am I right?” “You better leave now,” Arthur said. “Your coffee is cold and we have just run fresh out.”
“Sure, I understand,” the oily blond man said. “She let you have a piece and you think you’re Sir Galahad or somebody. But, brother, if you knew what I know ...”
“Since you’re a government agent, you’ll be glad to talk to Robie Calkins. He is our sheriff here in Jackson County. Would you like to wait here for him? I’ll give him a call right now.”
“That’s all right. I believe I’ve already found out what I needed to know. It’s pretty clear she passed through here two years back.” He laid a nickel on the counter and pushed it toward Arthur with one finger. “Here’s what I owe.” Arthur pushed it back. “Keep it,” he said. “I don’t believe the coffee agreed with you.”
The man smiled his twisted smile but did indeed rescue his nickel and make his surprisingly quick way to the door with an odd waddling stride. Arthur expected him to stop at the door and turn and make a last curdled remark, but he only pushed the screen open and stepped out into the late September sunlight that streamed saffron through the leaves of the big poplar there.
Arthur sighed tiredly and looked up and down the long room with its empty tables covered with red oilcloth and the big iron coal stove in the center of the aisle and the long counter with the five stools before it. When he emptied the remains of the coffee into the zinc sink behind him, he saw that his hands were shaking. He washed his hands and dried them on his apron and headed toward the storeroom in back to sit down and collect himself for a moment.
But Farley Redmon opened the kitchen door and called him back. “Arthur,” he said, “could I talk to you just a minute?”
“Sure thing.” He retraced his steps and when the older man held the door for him, he entered the kitchen.
“Sit down,” Redmon said, indicating a tall wooden stool by the chop block. When Arthur sat, Redmon leaned back against the wall counter and folded his arms. “What was that all about with the little stout feller that come in?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “He was asking questions about a woman I met one time.”
“You got woman trouble, Arthur? Hard to believe.”
“I’ve got an outstanding lack of woman trouble,” he said. “It’s hard for me to add up how much woman trouble I don’t have.”
“Ain’t that kind of burdensome?”
“I just hope it’s not fatal.”
“Generally it ain’t,” Redmon said. “Not till some ornery husband stirs things up with a shotgun. You want to be careful now.”
“I am careful,” Arthur said. “I’m a careful man.”
“Yes you are. That’s the truth.” Redmon produced a new package of Luckies from his shirt pocket, zipped it open, and tapped one out. He lit it with a kitchen match from a box on the counter. “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said, “and how careful you are. I don’t know what it was all about with that stout feller, but I thought you handled it okay.”
“I don’t usually drive away the customers.”
“You did fine. You would’ve had your reasons.” He looked into the cloud of smoke he exhaled toward the ceiling. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. You know how it’s been here at the cafe. Business is steady, what with the sawmill and the railroaders, but there ain’t much profit. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do better by you, but I don’t see no way I can come up with much more in terms of wages.”
“That’s all right,” Arthur said. “I know how it is.”
“Yeah. But you’ve been doing a good job. I don’t know when I’ve seen a steadier man. I never could figure why you stuck.”
“The arrangement suits me. I get time to write my stories.”
“Your stories, yeah.” Redmon tapped his ash into a soiled plate and smiled. “You know, I read one of your stories one time. I went down to the news store and bought one of them magazines and read it. Just to see. Beginning to end, I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. It was about some animals on another world— that was all I understood. Do you believe there are other worlds with animals on them?”