EQMM, Sep-Oct 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  There are four stages of the disease before an individual's life ends. The first is progressive insomnia.... If homozygous for the mutation, = mean 9.1 months to fatality.... Not contagious. Only inherited. Always fatal, and so far, no cure.

  "Who-all knows he's got it?” I asked.

  "Everybody up there.” Jake nodded toward the house. “Except Sochi.” We looked at each other. “He knows he should've told her. She still believed the curse was nothing but superstition."

  * * * *

  Somehow we got through the rest of the day. The televised news from the county seat described three known fatalities from the storm, but no names yet. “Tomorrow it starts,” Farley said.

  The pot of chili had scorched, you could smell it all over downstairs. We had cold duck sandwiches for supper, and a very good Riesling. Tang leaned against the back wall of the kitchen, smiling.

  "This place,” Leonor said to him. “When did you last get it cleaned, anyway? You must have a statement there someplace.” She pointed at his piled-high desk. “You can't possibly find anything in that mess. Probably forgot to pay the bill."

  Leonor put down her fork and went to rummage around on the desktop, and a pile started to slide. “Oops!” Papers cascaded onto the floor, and Sochi's red hair clip bounced free.

  Farley groaned.

  "Well.” Leonor picked up the clip. “It was here all the time.” Tang looked at her. Then he tipped his head back and chuckled to himself. Nobody spoke. I opened my mouth, and closed it again. I would wait and talk to the sheriff.

  * * * *

  Jagged metal lightning, and then a terrible racket dissolved into a big dead bell tolling—I came awake sitting up and saw Jake the same, grabbing our robes and scrambling into slippers as the measured CLONK, CLONK, CLONK went on, and a man's voice shouted something, over and over. Jake opened the door and I smelled the smoke.

  "Fire!” Tang was yelling. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” The dim hallway was already fogged and acrid and my nose and eyes stung. Farley was ahead of us on the stairs, and here came Evan, staring like a wild animal. Down the stairs as roaring and snapping bonfire sounds came from the bright glowing kitchen and the smoke billowed out, flowing toward the open double doors.

  "It's climbing up,” Tang yelled. “It's going for the attic."

  "Where's my mother?” Evan shouted.

  "She got out already.” Tang pushed him toward the doors. “Go round to the barn, I told her. Quick! Go on, get out!” We ran down the wide steps into the cold dark and sloshed after Evan along the sodden path. Farley stood at the far edge of the wide gravel turnaround with both hands pressed to his chest, shouting something. When we turned the corner of the house I saw the barn looming out there dark and still, with only gleams of light reflected from the flames. Nothing moved. Behind us the roar of the fire grew.

  "Mother?” Evan yelled. “Mom?” Evan whirled around and crashed past us running back toward the front of the house again. The whole kitchen end of the house was going up, windows glaring orange and the music of glass popping, the blaze barely contained in its stone cave.

  "Where is she?!” Evan screamed.

  "And where is Tang?” Farley called out. Evan ran up the steps to the front entrance, dark now, the doors closed. Through the tall side windows the back-lit smoke glowed in the hall rosy gold and weirdly beautiful, like angel hair.

  "Oh my God.” Evan grabbed the doorknob and yanked at it as the roaring beyond grew. The door was locked. “Mother? Tang? Open this door!” He threw himself against it, and then again, the noise of the fire drowning out his shouts.

  The left-hand window shattered and fell soundlessly: Evan flinched away and then tried to climb through the broken window. Jake and I dragged at him to pull him away. The old dry walls flared like chaparral, the timbers shrieked and roared as they fell. The heat drove us all back.

  * * * *

  Six weeks later Jake and I flew north again for the memorial service at the mission. Afterwards we walked with Evan across the sun-dappled plaza under a tender blue sky scattered with cloudlets.

  "I want to tell you what happened with Sochi,” Evan said. It wasn't necessary, I started to say, but he stopped me with a look. “Please?"

  She was supposed to come to him last thing that night so they could talk; he waited with his door ajar. He heard her say goodnight to Tang and he shut his door, waiting. “Then I heard her out there talking to somebody. But after that—nothing.” He looked at me and then away. “It was my mother. So then I figured my mother had managed to buy her off, and Sochi just went on to bed. God! If only I'd..."

  "Stop it,” Jake said. “It's done."

  "Tang must've heard them together, too,” Evan said, “and jumped to his own conclusions.” A gust of wind ruffled our hair and pulled at our jackets, and my eyes stung. I figured Sochi had actually known about Evan's condition, and wanted his child anyway. I figured Tang would have told her.

  "Funny.” Evan smiled behind his dark glasses. “Mother made me promise I'd never kill myself. And now I'm the only one left.” He raised both bandaged hands to the big old sycamores just starting to push out their bitter green buds. “Beautiful day, isn't it? Come on, I'll buy you guys coffee."

  Copyright © 2006 Jean Femling

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  THE KILLER WHO DISAPPEARED by Richard Macker

  The disused underground railway station lies within the great circle that makes up the city's center. It is many years since any suburban train stopped here. Now they rush past with their human load, rows of anonymous faces, deathly pale in the glare of the harsh neon light. The clattering of the wheels on the rail, steel upon steel, creates a deafening echo between the dirty grey concrete walls. Down here it's like some great, gloomy burial vault. But the corpses have long since been transformed to a dense, stinking dust. On the wall are the words “DOWN WITH FRANCO” painted in writing that once had the radical red tinge of current interest.

  A clammy, biting November cold pervades this dreary hole. Nonetheless, here I stand—Jorunn Vindmo—and shiver in abject solitude. It's past one in the morning. The last trains have gone. I'm not waiting on anyone. I came here because something drew me here. I close my eyes, and for some seconds I hear the resonance of that terrifying scream from a young girl in fear of her life. I open my eyes again and see only the cold grey walls, and hear nothing but a charged stillness.

  It is ten years to the very hour that Lilly Meinert's murder happened. A murder that only I know the truth of. The killer disappeared long ago. But still I don't go to the police with what I know. How could I ever be in a position to denounce Kjell Bakk, with whom I have been intimately linked for so many years, and whom I still think of with that mixture of deep affection and frenzied hatred? At one point we studied economics together at high school. It was a platonic relationship between us but an emotionally profound one nonetheless. His was a strange and tragic fate, but his imprint is still with me. Now and then he pitches up like a shadow in my dreams, a small dark-haired lad with restless motions; a boy with plenty of common sense but problems concentrating because of the conflicts that were always raging inside him.

  Lilly Meinert was in the class below us, doing social studies. She was the type of girl everyone knew about, although, because of her natural modesty, perhaps she would not have wanted it that way. Clichés such as “beautiful, charming, and charismatic” are not enough to capture her. I have never met a livelier human being. It was as if she had a small nuclear power station inside her—how else to explain the continual radiation that put such light into her big green eyes and such warmth into her graceful smile? Hers was a flashing, artistic intelligence, with a compelling talent for singing, dance, and drama. I often used to ask myself how it was that some individuals were gifted with everything by Nature. Besides, Lilly was an only child with well-educated and hard-working parents who did everything to make life easy for her.

  Most of the boys in school were in love with Lilly Meinert.
To display interest in her was a sort of necessity, a social demand, even where natural emotions for her were absent. She had just as great an appeal as the most beautiful movie stars of the time. Kjell Bakk could no more remain unmoved than could the other boys, despite the fearsome consequences it would have for them both.

  But for Lilly there was only one boy—Stein Vangsvik. He was her male counterpart. And once more I have to wonder at Fate's random and strange apportionment of intellectual and artistic talents, charm and physical attributes. Stein Vangsvik was tall and well-built, with open, clean-cut features and blond curling hair. Of course he distinguished himself in sports. In addition, he was a brilliant pupil, firmly resolved to study economics. He was in my class, and of course he was elected School Captain.

  Lilly and Stein. They were a catchword in those days. “Legendary” is the word used of this beautiful couple when old schoolmates gather. Lilly's fate evokes in us a profound fear of the evil that will exist as long as there are humankind. Lilly and Stein. What could they have achieved together if she had been allowed to live? Their future together was such a matter of course.

  Other love affairs at school paled in comparison with that of Lilly and Stein. That's what happens when young people have idols they are seeking to emulate. Copies are never more than anemic imitations of the genuine article. We dressed like Lilly and Stein, we pursued the same interests, and we were willing to suppress our true selves to become like them. And of course I was madly in love with Stein Vangsvik; I dreamt he kissed me, made love to me, and afterwards lay in my arms as I caressed his blond curls. But in reality, to him I was completely invisible. He didn't even know that I existed. He only had eyes for Lilly. They fueled and fortified one another in a way that seemed to give them a double dose of energy and lust for life. Strangely enough, there was not a trace of superiority about them; they were easy to get along with and slow to find fault.

  Then the terrible thing happened, on that bleak November evening ten years ago. Lilly and Stein had been to the late-night cinema. Lilly lived closer to the city center and she got off the train at exactly the station where I now stand. Even then the decision had been taken to close the station and the process of decline was under way. No one was more preoccupied with Lilly and Stein than Kjell Bakk, and he knew when and to which cinema they were going that night. He was waiting down here, hidden behind a projecting brick wall in the corner closest to the stairs. He had his ghastly plans ready. If she got off the train alone, and this was likely, he would kill her down here. If other passengers got off, then he would follow her and carry out the killing in a bleak passage she went through on her walk home. As it turned out, Lilly was surprisingly unafraid, despite the fact that the “Plastic Sack Killer” had committed his crimes only six months previously. Mind you, it was in another part of the city, but fear had spread out over the whole of the capital and even throughout that entire region of the country. But Lilly wasn't afraid.

  The Plastic Sack Killer had raped and killed two young girls. He had stuffed the badly molested corpses into big black plastic sacks and dumped them in a roadside ditch on the outskirts of the city, probably from a car. The police had gotten nowhere with their investigations. Kjell Bakk was not the Plastic Sack Killer. I knew him well enough to say that with one-hundred-percent certainty. But he was intelligent enough to commit a murder on the same pattern. Suspicion would inevitably fall upon the person who committed the two previous crimes.

  Ten years back. Through Kjell Bakk I know almost every detail of what happened. The train stops. Lilly Meinert gets off. She smiles and waves to Stein and blows him a kiss as the train leaves. Neither of them knows what is in store. They have been sitting excitedly discussing the film. Lilly is flushed and her cheeks are warm. She hurries along the grey platform. Her high heels clatter energetically on the concrete.

  Just as she is about to take her first step up the stairs Kjell Bakk comes upon her from behind. Suddenly an arm is round her waist, another is on her mouth. With a fearsome force she is dragged backwards into the dark space below the stairs. For a few seconds she is able to pull herself free and catch a glimpse of the creepy, blurred face beneath the brown silk stocking. Then she cries out in fear of death. The next moment he knocks the back of her head against the concrete wall with the mad power of desperation. She crumples up, unconscious. And there she lies flat on her back, Lilly Meinert. Still so beautiful, rosy-cheeked and quivering with a life that might still be lived.

  Ten minutes later she is no longer alive. I shall not say what Kjell Bakk did to her, but I know the physical and psychological reasons for what he did. He had never achieved intimate contact with any girl. He was incapable, and he didn't want to anyway. On the other hand, he was still very much a man and Lilly Meinert represented for him the ultimate in feminine beauty. He loved, he envied, and he hated her so much that she drove him, an unsure and sensitive youth, to become a bestial murderer.

  Kjell Bakk killed Lilly Meinert to put a distance between himself and what he was.

  The next day the first train runs over a plastic sack containing the dismal, maltreated corpse of Lilly Meinert. She had been desecrated, but not raped.

  A few hours later the entire school knew what had happened. After the first shock came the ghastly paralysis. Our homes were filled with manic thoughts completely devoid of logic or realism. No! No! It can't be true.

  Kjell Bakk is at school, apparently paralysed too. In the days that followed he was still Kjell Bakk in a physical sense, but psychologically, he was in the process of becoming a different, softer person. Softer, but firm and purposeful at the same time. He is about to accept that he is soon going to disappear, to be obliterated.

  Who could ever suspect him? He often spoke and joked with Lilly Meinert. They were both interested in ballet. They performed together in the school show, and laughed together. Lilly had never done him any wrong. No, who would ever suspect Kjell Bakk?

  The school principal gave a moving speech and could not restrain his tears. Then he allowed us to take the rest of the day off. Home to our grief. But Stein Vangsvik did not go home. He went to pieces and had to be taken in hand. Time and again, he muttered, “Why did I not take her home?"

  Now, more or less the whole country is up in arms about the Plastic Sack Killer. The investigations intensify. Every technical and psychological tool is brought to bear. But without result. The first two murders are and will be a mystery for me, too. But I know the murderer in the third.

  So here I stand, ten years after the deed. The thoughts flash through my mind. I try to conjure up Kjell Bakk and I see he slowly became sickly in the years that followed. And soon it is eight years since he vanished completely. He got his punishment. They put him on a couch, doped him, castrated him, and made deep incisions in him with their scalpels. And then he was no more.

  It's soon half-past one in the morning. The light down here is as pale as death itself. This burial chamber should be filled in. Many people have demanded it. I go slowly along the platform, up the stairs, and into the still night street.

  After a quarter of an hour I am home. There are lights on in the windows of the great old house. In the studio on the second floor I see something moving behind the flaming red drapes. Stein Vangsvik is walking to and fro there. I know that he is in the phase just before he begins a new painting. He only has two subjects: Lilly Meinert or the Plastic Sack Killer. Over the years he has been unable to paint anything but these two subjects. He, who was going to conquer the whole world! He paints and paints, but he is no great artist. With paints and brush he tries to bring Lilly to life again, but he always fails, and eventually casts the pictures aside in a rage. The Plastic Sack Killer is portrayed with the most grotesque features, and when Stein is through, he takes his vengeance for Lilly by slashing the painted faces with a long sharp knife.

  No one but me can put up with him. Had it not been for me, he would have been put away in an asylum. I am the only one who can tackle him, calm him d
own. I have always loved him, and I always will. When he puts his head with those beautiful blond curls on my shoulder I reach the peak of happiness. I have bleached my own hair and made my nose smaller. I do my best to look like Lilly. More and more he thinks that I am her. Then he strokes my hair and my cheeks and he kisses me, and lets his beautiful hands slide over my breasts, which the surgeons have filled with silicone. Then he makes love to me, as he used to make love to Lilly. With outstanding skill the doctors have made me into a woman.

  We have each other. Two wounded people in a world of deceit, fraud, and brutality. And I am the center of his life. It is the ultimate happiness for me.

  Copyright © 2006 Richard Macker

  Translated from the Norwegian by Jorunn and Michael Fergus ©2006.

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  NEXT MONTH...

  All New Orleans issue: a celebration in story, art, poetry, and reviews.

  Fiction by 10 of the city's authors, including Barbara Hambly, Tony Dunbar, Julie Smith, Dick Lochte, and Sarah Shankman.

  With information on how to contribute to Katrina recovery.

  * * * *

  Visit us at www.themysteryplace.com

  * * * *

  ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Vol. 128, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 781 & 782, September/ October 2006. USPS 523-610, ISSN 0013-6328. Dell GST: R123054108. Published monthly except for combined March/April and September/ October double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. 1 year subscription $43.90 in U.S.A. and possessions, $53.90 elsewhere, payable in advance and in U.S. funds (GST included in Canada). Call 800-220-7443 with questions about your subscription. Subscription orders and mail regarding subscriptions should be sent to Ellery Queen, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Editorial Offices, 475 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016. Executive Offices 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855-1220. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and at additional mailing offices. © 2005 Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. Protection secured under the Universal Copyright Convention and the Pan American Copyright convention. ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE® is the registered trademark of Ellery Queen. Submissions must be accompanied by self-addressed stamped envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. POSTMASTER: Send Change of Address to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855-1220. In Canada return to Quebecor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4. For back issues, send your check for $5.00 (U.S. funds) to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Suite SM-100, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855-1220. Please specify the issue you are ordering. Add $2 per copy for delivery outside the U.S.