Gaslight Grimoire_ Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Barbara Hambly [115]
Doctor Rhys regarded John Watson, his eyes wide with sympathetic horror.
“I can’t help but think of all those young men,” John continued, waving towards the door and indicating the whole of Holloway Sanatorium beyond, “those tending the garden, or around the snooker table, or else just lounging in the corridors. So young, with so much life ahead of them, and yet their minds are fixed on the horrors of the trenches, their attentions forever fixed on the Great War.”
John leaned forward, meeting the doctor’s gaze.
“If it were up to me, doctor,” John went on, “you would spend less time studying how it is that we remember, and marveling over the prodigious memories of the past, and instead devote your attentions to discovering how it is that we forget.”
John closed his eyes, and eased back in his chair.
“Memory is no wonder, Dr. Rhys, nor is it a blessing.”
John pressed his lips together tightly, trying to forget that awful day, and the smells that lingered beneath the scent of bleach and lye.
“Memory is a curse.”
Red Sunset
Red Sunset
by Bob Madison
The sky was red when a hot wind blew in from the south. Sunset in Los Angeles can be a funny thing. It can make a man feel beaten and maybe a little lonely. Whichever, it didn’t make me feel good.
I had never met the old man before. They moved him over the big drink for safe keeping when Hitler started bombing London. They said that morale would crumble if the Nazis took him out, so he was smuggled into New York by submarine and wheeled over like a pasha to the coast. Then, we pretty much forgot about him, warehousing him with the other fossils once we got into the war ourselves. I heard that the old guy was screwy, but I thought screwy was just what I needed about now.
They set him up in an old folk’s home near Santa Monica Boulevard. It was a gray old dump, crumbling and shaky, just like the people who lived there. The nurse at the front desk made a big show getting me ‘approved’ to see the old man, even though I flashed my badge and explained that it was business. When she thought I had waited long enough, she led me down a dimly lit hall and knocked on the door.
A reedy voice said, “Yes?”
“Visitor for you,” she said.
“Send him away.”
She smiled at the door. A cruel smile, I thought. “He always says that. Just go in.”
I watched her walk away before I took hold of the doorknob and entered.
It was rank in the old man’s room. It smelled of stale clothes and medicine and something vaguely sick in the air. There were two windows facing south and the room was flooded with the red sunset. Books, some opened, some not, were scattered about, and the floor was littered with copies of The Times. The drapes were a little ragged and the carpet frayed. On the desk was an old photograph of a good looking man with a thick moustache.
The old man sat huddled in a wheelchair, small and brittle in his clothes. He wore an over-sized dressing gown and the collar of his shirt needed ironing. He had a beaky face that was a battlefield of wrinkles, and his gray hair was pulled far back from his temples. His lips were thin and blue with age, his teeth brown with nicotine. I heard he was over one hundred, and it was a miracle that the old man was still alive.
His brows came together and he squinted at me. “You smoke cigarettes, I perceive.”
I nodded.
“Give me one.”
I fished a pack of Luckies from my jacket pocket and handed it to him. His clawed fingertips touched mine and they were cold. “They think that smoking is bad for me and have taken away my pipe,” he wheezed. “Colossal stupidity.”
The old man wheeled over to his desk and took down a large box of wooden matches. He lit a Lucky and inhaled gratefully. Then he coughed, his bones rattling. When he started breathing again, he looked at me.
“Oh,” he croaked. “Thank you. That will be all.” He put the cigarettes in his dressing gown pocket.
“Wait a minute. I need to talk to you.”
He sighed heavily and blew smoke at the