999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [74]
I suppose they just aren’t very strong. Bred for something else, after all, not strength.
Mr. Alice took it really hard. He was inconsolable—wept like a baby all the way through the funeral, tears running down his face, like a mother who had just lost her only son. It was pissing with rain, so if you weren’t standing next to him, you’d not have known. I ruined a perfectly good pair of shoes in that graveyard, and it put me in a rotten mood.
I sat around in the Barbican flat, practiced knife throwing, cooked a spaghetti bolognaise, watched some football on the telly.
That night I had Alison. It wasn’t pleasant.
The next day I took a few good men and we went down to the house in Earls Court to see if any of the Shahinai were still about. There had to be more Shahinai young men somewhere. It stood to reason.
But the plaster on the rotting walls had been covered up with stolen rock posters, and the place smelled of dope, not spice.
The warren of rooms was filled with Australians and New Zealanders. Squatters, at a guess. We surprised a dozen of them in the kitchen sucking narcotic smoke from the mouth of a broken R. White’s Lemonade bottle.
We searched the house from cellar to attic, looking for some trace of the Shahinai women, something that they had left behind, some kind of clue, anything that would make Mr. Alice happy.
We found nothing at all.
And all I took away from the house in Earls Court was the memory of the breast of a girl, stoned and oblivious, sleeping naked in an upper room. There were no curtains on the window.
I stood in the doorway, and I looked at her for too long, and it painted itself on my mind: a full, black-nippled breast, which curved disturbingly in the sodium-yellow light of the street.
T. E. D. Klein
GROWING THINGS
Though he might deny it, T. E. D. Klein is something of a legendary—and enigmatic—figure. His legendary status was established in a rush in the 1980s; he was the first editor of the slick newsstand magazine The Twilight Zone even while he was distinguishing himself with such stunning stories as “Children of the Kingdom” and “Petey.” In 1984 came his eagerly awaited novel The Ceremonies, which was virtuosic in its execution and firmly established Klein in the top pantheon of horror writers. The novel was followed in 1985 by Dark Gods, which collected the two stories already mentioned with two other long pieces.
Since that amazing torrent of work, T. E. D. Klein has been quieter, but not quiet. The following story is both a treat and a pleasure to present.
“Hey, honey, listen to this one. It’s downright scary.”
The magazine, drawn from near the middle of the pile, was yellowed, musty-smelling. Herb licked his lips with a fat tongue and squinted at the page with the corner turned down. “ ‘Dear Mr. Fixit: Early this spring a peculiar roundish bulge appeared under the linoleum in my bathroom, and now with the warm weather it’s beginning to get larger, as if something is sprouting under there. My husband, who is not well, almost tripped over it yesterday. What is it, some sort of fungus? How can I get rid of it without having to rip up the linoleum? As we cannot afford expensive new flooring, we are relying on you.’ Signed, ‘Anxious.’ ”
“I shouldn’t wonder she was anxious,” said Iris from her cloud of lemon oil and beeswax. She’d been giving the old end table a vigorous polishing and was slightly out of breath. “Who wants to share their bathroom with a bunch of toadstools?”
“Don’t worry, Fixit’s got it under control. ‘Dear Anxious: Sounds as if you have a pocket of moisture trapped between the floorboards and the linoleum. Often a damp basement is the culprit. Simply drill a hole up from the basement to release the moisture buildup, then seal the area with flash patch or creosote.’ “ Herb rubbed his chin. “Sounds simple