EQMM, January 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  But why? Why?

  Because none of the therapy had helped. Countless conversations that had served only one purpose: to make sure her therapist could pay the rent. Because yes, Peter's death was her fault. It was her fault. The Clarks were right, dammit, even if they didn't know why. The why had begun hours earlier, before that critical moment when Antonia and Peter had decided to go home separately.

  * * * *

  Antonia became aware of a pair of feet in sturdy black shoes, planted in front of her own feet, which she was pressing together. There were legs attached to the feet, legs in gray trousers, of the same fabric as the uniform jacket. Cerberus was staring down at her. A short exchange followed: The guard pointed at her watch and held it up for Antonia to see, and Antonia stammered out an answer. Cerberus pointed at the platform and touched Antonia's arm, and Antonia burst into tears. Never. Niemals. Jamais. Was there any language at all that would soften the heart of this adversary?

  As Antonia wiped the smears of mucus from her face, she saw that her hand had become a claw with bloodless yellow knuckles. All that hanging on for dear life had to be paid for—in blood. Ha! Ha ha. Were the condemned always that funny? A figure wearing a sweet perfume squatted next to her. The figure's high-pitched voice and a third, sonorous voice began to duel with the flat, dead voice of Cerberus. Their bodies swayed back and forth, accommodating the day's last surge of courageous visitors up the stairs. Allegedly, fear of heights diminished in the dark. Antonia did her best to hold on to that thought, but her body resisted, shaking.

  Never. Not even in a formless nothing. Because the formlessness was just to fool the eyes. Her head knew better. A2 plus b2. A hand pulled her up. For the first time, Antonia looked at her new tormenters. They were even smiling soothingly. What now? “We'll hold on to you?” “We'll push you?” Just try! I'll take you all over the edge with me!

  The roar in her ears thinned, began to admit other noises. What language did people speak here? She was in England. English. Think, Antonia! Something like “You don't have to” trickled through to her consciousness. Her eyes followed the couple's waving, gesturing arms. They were pointing down the spiral staircase. Antonia's glance sought Cerberus's, who was looking at her with a mixture of condescension and capitulation. Could it be true? Certainty arrived in the form of gentle urging in the direction of the stairs and a swift glance downward by the man to assure himself that the stream of visitors had stopped. The miracle had happened. She would never have to go out onto the platform again.

  * * * *

  What madness! She'd spent hours in deathly fear just because of the smug stubbornness of a security guard. Clack. Clack. Her heels clattered on the metal steps of the spiral staircase, just like in a comic book. Clack. The jerking in her brain had the same noise. What utter madness.

  Antonia stepped out onto the wide ring of the Stone Gallery and took a deep breath of the evening air. It was already cooler. The lights of London twinkled in the distance. The view must be impressive, and she could have been enjoying it here, ten feet from the balustrade. But no: Like an idiot she'd had to run after a beret-wearing stranger. Was he French? Antonia giggled, feeling foolish at the way she kept thinking in clichés. The giggling became louder and louder. She held her breath. If she couldn't stop, the other tourists here on the Stone Gallery would think she really was crazy. But her mouth stretched against her will, wider and wider, and she laughed uncontrollably. An elderly lady coming around a corner stared at her indignantly. Antonia waved her arms in a paroxysm of excuses. The elderly lady appeared to understand her; at least, she smiled reassuringly. Then Antonia understood. The woman was one of the last visitors to the Golden Gallery; she'd witnessed Antonia's hysteria. The embarrassment of this recognition choked off the laughter. Antonia moved away from the woman, using her flight to inspect the other side of the gallery. On that side was also the door to the exit—to an interior flight of stairs!—because the helpful couple had just come down and was giving her a friendly wave. They tried to start a sensible conversation with her, but Antonia nipped that abruptly in the bud with a cold nod and an even colder smile.

  What madness.

  She'd made an utter fool of herself over a couple of yards of concrete. She couldn't let that happen anymore. And she had to get over her obsession with Peter, too. From now on, she'd look at London through her own eyes, not through Peter's. She straightened her head, and her eyes fell to the floor across from the stairs. Suddenly, everything began to swim. Slowly she dropped, shaking, into a crouch, and put her fists against her eyes, pressing away the tears. The paper from the vitamin candy was green, and the writing on it was familiar. Antonia's hand trembled its way over to the scrap of paper, the second hand followed the first, and together they smoothed out the paper. It was the same writing. Yes. Really. From the company that made the vitamin candies Peter always ate.

  A flood of tears burst from Antonia's eyes and then stopped just as suddenly as it had started. At the same time, she felt the cold and the trembling creep into her limbs. Still crouching, she began to rock back and forth. Before the roar in her ears crowded out everything else, she heard a woman explain to a man that the figure squatting over there probably first had to get over the shock caused by her fear of heights. The woman spoke German. Tourists. Think, Antonia. There were only tourists here, nothing but tourists. No ex-husbands all shot to pieces. Think. It was a syllogism. Peter was a fan of vitamin candies wrapped in green paper. The vitamin candies came from England. She was in England. So it was nothing more than—indeed, it was almost certainly—coincidence to find green vitamin-candy wrappers in England on the floor of the Stone Gallery in St. Paul's Cathedral. It was only logical. Period.

  Antonia forced her knees to stretch. Felt her way to the protruding base of the stone wall. Using her arms for support and taking what seemed like an eternity, she managed to sit down on it. It was just a candy wrapper, of a sort sold all over England. Nothing else. Nothing more, nothing less. Something utterly, completely normal. But what about the man in the beret? The same blond hair? The figure? The way he walked? The duffle coat? The clump of flesh for a face. The scar. The waiting shadow. His knowledge of her fear of heights. The man's nonexistence? His funeral. His parents’ grief. Falling into nothing?

  Breath got stuck in her chest, couldn't find its way out. And her heart thudded in her neck, the echo ringing in her ears. Roaring. Taking off. Think, Antonia! Look at yourself. Breathe. Think!

  This was madness. A clear sign of clinical insanity. She shouldn't have quit her therapy, because it definitely wasn't healthy to be seeing ghosts everywhere. Ha, ha. Antonia's fingers fumbled for her mobile phone, pressed the speed-dial button for Valentina. It rang only twice, and then the voice of her sister dispelled the hammering noise of her own heart. Antonia's report on the last few hours came out disjointedly, but her sister understood even the words Antonia didn't say. She responded with a “Mmmph!", a familiar, annoyed snort. Antonia felt the world enclose her, take her up in its midst again. And then came the sentences that broke up the frozen brittleness in her body, word for word: Saw body. Funeral. Valentina herself saw body. Just imagination. Silly thing. Other mothers have “wonderful” sons, too. Berets “in” again. And if not, then logically and probably Peter not the only freak on earth. Valentina loves Antonia. Even if she is going around the bend. Laughter. Hugs. Valentina feeling better. Hungry. Antonia come home, time for pub. Nothing but a stupid trauma.

  Or madness. Antonia wasn't sure what she ought to think of herself as she hung up. At any rate, she was back in the Here and Now. She got up in almost childish anticipation of the remainder of the descent.

  * * * *

  Amazing. The Whispering Gallery. In her rush to the top, she'd completely overlooked it. Antonia looked around her, saw no security guards. Which was logical if you consider that genuine tourists go all the way up, which is to say keep strictly to the order in which you're supposed to tour the points of interest in the cathedral. First
the Whispering Gallery, then the Stone Gallery, then the Golden Gallery. And then down and out to the next tourist attraction. Based on that approach, Antonia had missed a stop on her tourist itinerary. She looked around again and stepped out onto the empty Whispering Gallery, where allegedly a word whispered on this side of the gallery would reach the ear of a listener on the other side, across the cathedral, with complete clarity.

  Amazing. Sweat poured from every pore even though the distance to the railing was at least a yard and she hadn't even looked over it. But she felt it. Just ninety-nine feet, that's what it said in the guidebook. Antonia pressed herself back onto the stone bench. She'd give anything to feel Peter's hand in hers. Hear his reassuring murmur that he would carry her, Superman-style, across every abyss. Peter. He'd loved teetering on the edge of a sheer drop. The police had made that much clear to her. If he hadn't died at the hands of those thugs, he'd have shuffled off his mortal coil in the thin air of his high-flying business deals, that's what they meant. It hadn't comforted her to hear that, it had been more of an illuminating shock. His stock deals had been nothing more than hide-and-seek. Insider trading and a few other tricks had contributed to soiling his image. She hadn't wanted to believe it, even after all those months of therapy. She'd found excuse after excuse for him. He'd been blackmailed, he'd been naive. But never guilty.

  Antonia ran her hand across the stone of the bench rubbed smooth by billions of visitors. Her new insights felt smooth like that. There was no way to evade them anymore. She'd been blinded by love like a teenager. The thought relieved her mind, because in a strange way it excused her as well. Peter had been her first love. She'd had sex before, and what people generally referred to as “relationships.” But love, she'd only found that with Peter. He'd been her God. Antonia laughed. The sound died away, nothing came back to her. Would it work if she giggled quietly against the wall, her hand held in front of her mouth? Abruptly the giddy feeling dissipated and gave way to strange sentences and images that came into her mind. There was something negative and important about them, but Antonia couldn't pin them down. Never mind.

  Amazing. An experience as mean as her fear of heights had brought her to this insight. And when she looked at it like that, Peter's death wasn't her fault. Yes, the fight they'd had was bound to happen, but it could just as easily have happened any other time, given the foundation of their relationship. It was all the same whether she'd spoken of her desire for children that day or any other day. He would always have reacted the same way, because he would always have had problems with his illegal business deals. He would always have gotten angry, and she would always have responded by bursting into tears. And they would have sworn eternal enmity, as they always did. And in time he might have gotten into another nasty situation, probably one that had more to do with his business. Oh yes. And when you looked at it that way, his death at the hands of those thugs was merely justice served a little early. But why justice, why did she think of it as justice? Because the images rose up, unbidden, that's why.

  The color green. A bloodbath. A dead mobile phone. Arriving home late. Green.

  That strange raid on the nightclub around eighteen months ago. It had been green candy wrappers and his image in that blurry newspaper photo, but she'd buried that fact deep inside her, so deep that she hadn't known it anymore. Amazing, the admission didn't hurt at all. Yes, admission—because those vitamin candies might be common in England, but they weren't in Austria. Who was he, really, the man she'd been planning to grow old with?

  Antonia sat hunched on the stone bench. Maybe there really were hobgoblins, spirits with a strange sense of humor who thought they knew what was good for us. She had to travel to London and climb to dizzying heights chasing after a stupid and insignificant beret wearer to realize that the great love of her life had been a ridiculous self-deception. At least her fear had been productive. She didn't need any more therapy. She'd probably jerk instinctively the rest of her life every time she saw a green candy wrapper, but that was nothing in comparison with the feeling of seeing Peter around every corner.

  Amazing how easy it was.

  Antonia looked around. Other than her, there was just one solitary figure on the other side of the gallery. She glanced from a distance down into the cathedral. Visitors were scarce down there, too. She leaned against the wall: The guidebook said you had to whisper behind your hand.

  "Peter can kiss my ass."

  She smiled, because she knew she was free.

  "I've always liked doing that."

  Antonia stared, first at the wall, and then at the man across from her, but he was looking out into the air. There was no one else there. She was crazy after all. The hallucinated answer was proof of that. She'd only imagined she was cured. Wished it. She was a nutcase. Yes, he'd always had fun saying the things she knew but didn't want to say. And she'd enjoyed it. Her fantasy, her longing—they'd all played tricks on her. Was that necessary for the healing process, too? Whispering her feelings in public? What would her imagination answer?

  "You're the nightclub murderer."

  "You're right about that."

  Yes, it was her imagination that said this thing she'd never admitted to herself. How liberating. But did it free her from every fear? Antonia leaned forward, peered over the railing down into the depths. It wasn't that far down at all. It wasn't dizzying in the least. What was it about her fear of heights? It was a childish refusal to grow up. Nothing more. That's right. Children live in a fantasy world; adults live in the real world. And reality knows no fear of heights. Antonia leaned on the railing and looked down into the cathedral. Looking downward had a liberating beauty. Exhausted, she fell back onto the stone bench. She'd overcome her worst fear. She'd have to tell Valentina right away. She was free. Yes, she was. Smiling, she leaned toward the wall, held her hand in front of her mouth, and whispered.

  "You're dead, Peter."

  She felt the sound wave reproduce itself down the length of the smooth marble wall. What would all the tourists think of that sentence if they could hear it? But they weren't there; they were all being ushered out by the security guards. There was only the one man on the other side, staring into the air. Who pulled something out of his coat pocket. Something soft, that looked to her, standing on the other side, like a hat made of felt. And then he bent toward the wall.

  "You're wrong about that, Butterfly."

  That name, his pet name for her, drove her to her feet like a jolt of electricity. She looked out across the divide, which dissolved before her eyes into a nothingness that invited panic. She pressed her fists to her eyes, against the tears, and for a fraction of a second her vision cleared and she saw the man unwrap something from a piece of paper. Green rushed across the distance between them. Reflexively she dropped her eyes and the pews began to rush up at her. Or was she rushing at them? The floor of the cathedral tilted and began to pump like a huge heart. At the same time, its surface became soft, tempting her to jump. It looked like one of those rescue air-cushions used by the fire department. How long would the fall last? Ten seconds? Twenty? Or just five? Her eyes registered, only half aware, that the man put the candy into his mouth and pulled on the beret. Peter was alive. And the fall didn't even take two seconds.

  Amazing.

  (c)2007 by Sabina Naber: first published in the anthology Morderisch unterwegs (Milena-Verlag); translation (c)2007 by Mary Tannert

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: THE MOORHEAD HOUSE by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Art by Mark Evans

  * * * *

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch is equally comfortable writing either mystery or science fiction. A former editor-in-chief of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, she has authored many works that belong purely to science fiction. And she is also, under the pseudonym Kris Nelscott, the author of an Edgar-nominated mystery series. Her most recent book, Recovery Man, is part of an ‘interplanetary detective series,” and combines her talents in both genres.

/>   * * * *

  The house on the hill had Christmas lights.

  I stopped beside my van—white, with DUSTY'S CLEANINGlettered in discreet gold. The van was camouflage—official enough, without advertising the kind of work I actually did—but people knew anyway. Hard to miss when the guy down the street offs himself and a woman in a hazard suit, driving a van loaded with cleaning supplies, shows up a few days later.

  But that day, I was alone. I was touring a cleaned scene, making sure my team had gotten every last bit. I wore my coveralls, a mask, and three pairs of gloves, but I hadn't gone for the full treatment, thinking it unnecessary.

  The neighborhood was solidly Oregon middle-class: old Victorians, 1930s bungalows, a few ranches; late-model cars, all probably bought on time; and lovely yards with only a little grass and lots of perennials. The kind of neighborhood a prospective buyer would look at and think of as a nice place to raise kids, the kind of place you grow old in, where your neighbors watch out for you and keep track of every little thing.

  But I'd been here four times in the ten years I'd owned this business—for the Hansen suicide (right in the living room, where the kids couldn't miss it. Bastard); the Palmer home-invasion-gone-wrong (the crime-scene techs had missed the cat, curled up under the stove where it had apparently crawled to nurse its wounds); the well-known Bransted murder (the little girl had been dragged into a nearby garage and gutted there, mercifully after death); and the Moorhead ritual slaughter in the Victorian up the hill.