Then, he recognized the sound in the strobe-effect lighting. It built until he thought it would burst him open, and he fell.
A short soft shock of waking.
His cheek rested against cool metal. A weight pressed against his other side. Groggily, Cowdrey sat up. He was in a bus parked in the dark. The student leaning against him groaned, rubbed her eyes, then sat up too. Other bodies stirred in front and behind them. Outside the window, a streetlight showed a long chain link fence and a sign, POLICE EVIDENCE YARD.
“My god,” said someone in a voice filled with disbelief. “We’re home.”
Someone started crying. Their voices mixed. Some whooped and yelled. Some laughed, all at once, voices and sounds mixing.
They poured from the bus into the parking lot, still in uniform, holding on to each other. A boy rattled the gate locked by a large chain and a hefty padlock. A head poked up in the lit window of the building beyond. A few seconds later two policeman carrying flashlights ran out the back door. Cowdrey started counting heads, but someone noticed before he did.
“Where’s Elise?”
For a second, the happy noise continued.
“Where’s Elise?”
Cowdrey stood on the step into the bus, looking over the crowd. One by one, they stopped talking. They didn’t appear so old now, the streetlight casting dark shadows on their faces. He stepped down, walked through them, checking each expression. No crooked glasses. No clipboard tucked under the arm.
Cowdrey pictured her alone in the empty auditorium. Were the lights still flickering? She, the one who wanted to go home the most, stood now, among the silent folding chairs, staring back at the swirling smoke behind windows. What had they wanted from us? What had they wanted?
The band looked at each other, then down at their feet, unable to meet each others’ gaze. They looked down, and Cowdrey couldn’t breathe.
He moved through the darkness surrounding the band, turning the ones toward him who faced away, searching their faces, but he already had accepted it. He’d lost her. Elise was gone.
As the cops unlocked the gates, shouting their questions, Cowdrey could see the days coming: the interviews, the articles in magazines, the disbelief, the changes in his life. One day, though, after the story had passed, he’d stand in front of another junior high band. He’d raise arms high before the first note, encouraging the players to take that first good breath, but Cowdrey could already feel in his chest the tightness, the constriction, and he knew he’d never be able to make the music good again.
He wouldn’t be able to breathe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Van Pelt teaches high school and college English in western Colorado. He has been publishing fiction since 1990, with numerous appearances in most of the major science fiction and fantasy magazines, including Talebones, Realms of Fantasy, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Analog, Asimov’s, Weird Tales, SCIFI.COM, and many anthologies, including several “year’s best” collections. His first collection of stories, Strangers and Beggars, was released in 2002, and was recognized as a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. His second collection, The Last of the O-Forms and Other Stories, which includes the Nebula finalist title story, was released in August 2005 and was a finalist for the Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award. His novel Summer of the Apocalypse was released November, 2006. His third collection, The Radio Magician and Other Stories, was released in 2009. James blogs at http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com
Publication History
Praise for James Van Pelt’s The Radio Magician
“Musicians and magicians, terraforming and trans-dimensional inns, ice cream as a means to defuse interspecies warfare—James Van Pelt has a wide-ranging imagination, but that’s only the first of these stories’ many pleasures. Van Pelt has an unerring eye for the perfect detail, the understated emotion, and the character that unexpectedly splits your heart along its seam. Read these stories. You will remember them for a long, long time.”
— Nancy Kress, author of Steal Across the Sky
“There may not be a better science fiction or fantasy writer today, working in the short form, than James Van Pelt. From the story of a boy stricken with polio who learns magic from a radio magician to the sacrificial figure of a musical genius abducted by aliens, these tales will amaze and move you, all written in Van Pelt’s smooth, lyrical style, with convincing and memorable characters. This collection is a jewel, polished to the high sheen of the literary short story, but with the heart and muscle of great science fiction.”
— Louise Marley, author of Singers in the Snow
“James Van Pelt brings a polished, literary style to some of my favorite SF themes. I thoroughly enjoyed every one of the stories in this collection. Jim’s characters and the places he takes them are real and delightfully detailed. Each story has its own unique feel.”
— Brenda Cooper, author of The Silver Ship and the Sea
“Humane, fascinating, original—Van Pelt’s best stories excite the reader in a manner reminiscent of great past masters like Jack Finney and Charles Beaumont. Reading the title story, I yearned toward the page, believing an important truth was about to be revealed or confirmed. It was: James Van Pelt is one of the best short story writers at work today.”
— Jack Skillingstead, author of Harbinger
Also by James Van Pelt
Strangers and Beggars
The Last of the O-Forms
Summer of the Apocalypse
Plot is a Metaphor (forthcoming)
Copyright
A Fairwood Press Book
September 2009
Copyright © 2009 by James Van Pelt
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Fairwood Press
21528 104th Street Court East
Bonney Lake, WA 98391
www.fairwoodpress.com
Front cover illustration & design by Paul Swenson
Book Design by Patrick Swenson
ISBN13: 978-0-9820730-2-5
First Fairwood Press Edition: September 2009
Printed in the United States of America
eISBN: 978-1-61824-977-7
Electronic Version by Baen Books
http://www.baen.com
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The Radio Magician and Other Stories Page 34