When the bird swung its beak savagely into the thing’s middle once again, it flinched, but there was no sound of pain this time, no agony in its eyes, which remained fixed upon Ralphie, as though speaking to him.
Set me free, said its eyes. And I shall right the wrongs.
Ralphie understood, nodding, almost smiling. Slowly he approached the bird on its perch, seeing that it was almost equal in size to him and could tear him to ribbons with razorlike talons. A man would normally fear this thing from the myth time, but Ralphie was beyond fear now. He had peered into the eyes of the thing on the rock, sharing the greatest pain, the hate, and the betrayal. Ralphie could feel these things pulsing out of the creature, especially the hate, which had been bubbling like lava for untold ages. It raged to be free upon the world that had twisted its gift, forgotten its sacrifice. It reached out and touched Ralphie, suffusing him with strength, and he stepped closer to the bird, his left foot sliding upon the cavern floor.
Hearing the sound, the bird paused, turning its skullish head, cocking it to the side, to regard the odd little creature that stood below it. As it watched, Ralphie bent to pick up a fist-sized rock. In one motion he stood and hurled it at its head, striking one of its great yellow eyes, puncturing it like the delicate yolk of an egg. The bird screamed as its empty socket oozed, then launched itself upward with a furious beating of its thick wings. It shrieked as it hovered for a moment above Ralphie, then it rose up into the darkness, leaving only the echo of its wings smacking the dead air.
Once again, Ralphie looked up to the figure on the rock, transfixed by its ravaged entrails and the stains on the stone below, where the excess of its torture had dripped for millennia. Stepping forward, he touched one of the chains; it was hot to his touch. There was a large pin holding the chain to a hasp cut into the rock, and Ralphie pulled upon it. He could hear a chinking sound as the chain fell free, and the great thing with the eyes that spoke to him surged against the remaining bonds. Its wailing had ceased, replaced by a gathering vortex of excitement and power. The sensation grew like an approaching storm, filling the cavern with a terrible static charge.
Ralphie reached up and loosed another pin; the chain fell away from the harnessed body as it moved against the last two restraints. It gave out a great cry—a cry born of eons of humiliation and defeat, but now almost free. The cavern walls shook from the power of the cry and the remaining chains exploded in a shower of metallic fragments. Ralphie backed away, for the first time awed by the power he had unleashed, seeing that its face had changed into something dark and nameless. For an instant, the thing’s eyes touched him, and he felt immediately cold. Then there was an eruption of light and a clap of thunder. Ralphie fell backward as the great thing leaped from its prison rock, past him, and toward the exit from the depths.
Darkness and cold settled over Ralphie as he lay in the emptiness of the cavern. He knew where the thing would be going, and he knew what terrible lessons it would wreak upon the world, what payments would be exacted upon the dead souls. All the centuries of twisted vision would soon be put aright. His thoughts were coming slower and his limbs were becoming numb as he surrendered to the chilling darkness. He knew that he was going to fall asleep, despite the rumblings in the earth, despite the choirlike screams that were rising up from the city.
And when he awoke, he was not surprised to find himself upon a rock, bound by great chains of silver light, spread-eagled and suspended above the cavern floor. The air was filled with the smells of death and burning, of unrelenting pain, but he did not mind.
Out of the darkness, up from Gehenna, there came a deliberate flapping. It was the sound of wings, beating against the darkness, closer, and closer, until Ralphie could see the skull-like face, the beak, and the one good eye.
Stoner
William F. Nolan
William F. Nolan has been writing since the fifties and getting better as he goes. He’s probably most famous for the novel Logan’s Run but his stories, varied and pleasing as they are, are what I like best. He’s one of those writers whose anthologies I keep close to hand for needed injections of inspiration and just pure pleasure.
First published in 1988.
The thing is, thought Stoner, I shouldn’t have gone into this lousy wax museum, that’s for damsure. Plenty to see here in Frisco without me buying a ticket and going into this frigging museum of corpses.
I mean, said Stoner to Stoner, that’s what they look like, right? Like dead people standing there staring at you with those glassy dead eyes of theirs.
It was a rainy Tuesday, late in the afternoon, and Stoner was alone in the place. The heavy-lidded ticket-taker hardly blinked when he took Stoner’s money. Looked like a big fat frog to Stoner. Ought to be out on some pond sitting on a lily pod or whatever the hell frogs sat on in ponds.
Stoner was crazy and it bothered him, being crazy, but then a lot of things about Stoner bothered Stoner. Always had, ever since he’d been a kid. Fought with himself a lot.
When he was walking along the street Stoner would argue violently with himself in a loud voice. Some people would turn and look at him but most people ignored Stoner. Most of his life, except when he did really crazy things, Stoner had been ignored. Stoner was used to people moving away from him when he walked toward them while he was scowling and swearing at Stoner.
Stoner didn’t like dead people. They reminded him he’d maybe be dead someday and Stoner hated the whole idea of being dead. He swore to himself he wouldn’t be. I’ll never be dead, said Stoner, and that’s for damsure.
The museum entrance was at the bottom of a long flight of stairs and Stoner smelled the rubber matting on the stairs. It smelled like ether in a hospital. Or in a morgue.
The guard who was supposed to watch people in the museum was snoozing on his high wooden stool, tipped back against the puke-colored wall at the foot of the stairs. Maybe he was dead, too. Frigging dead guard!
“How are things?” a voice asked him as Stoner walked into the museum. It was Stoner’s voice.
“Not so damn good,” said Stoner.
“You should maybe have killed that guy today, the one who gave you the ride up from San Diego,” said Stoner. “He probably had some cash on him and a watch or a ring you could’ve hocked.”
“I don’t kill people,” said Stoner. “You’re nuts.”
“Hey, we’re both nuts,” said Stoner. “So what else is new?”
“Why don’t you just shut yer gob?” asked Stoner. “Give me some frigging peace.”
“Smoke?” And a dark hand, very tan with a lot of hair at the wrist, held out a cigarette. The hand looked like Stoner’s. Sometimes, though, it was hard to tell.
“Obliged,” said Stoner, taking the cigarette. The hand lit it. Stoner inhaled deeply.
“Sign says no smoking in here,” said Stoner.
“Frig the sign.”
Stoner was walking along a kind of aisle with ropes at both sides. Old velvet ropes smelling of dead cats. Behind the ropes were the wax people, staring out at Stoner.
He walked up to a buxom young woman. Redhead. She had on one of those long, flouncy Gone With the Wind kind of dresses, with a low-cut front. Stoner liked the low-cut front. He put his hand inside the dress.
“Sign says don’t touch them,” said Stoner.
“So what? So who’s to see what I do in here? We’re all alone, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Stoner kept walking. He stopped in front of a bearded guy in a tall stovepipe hat who was standing with his hand on the shoulder of a little black kid in tattered overalls and a checkered shirt. He was Abe Lincoln, the guy with the beard.
Stoner reached across the rope and knocked his hat off.
“Why’d you do that?” asked Stoner.
“ ’Cuz I think it’s a friggin’ dumb hat is all,” said Stoner.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” said Stoner. “You got no respect for the President.”
“I got no respect f
or nobody,” said Stoner.
Stoner kept going and turned a corner into another room. This one spooked Stoner. It was a room where the French Revolution cut people’s heads off. There was a young girl with her hands tied behind her kneeling at the guillotine with her head already off and in a basket.
Stoner reached in and picked up the head.
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Stoner.
Stoner didn’t answer. He tossed the girl’s severed head into the air and caught it by its long golden hair. Then he put the head inside his shirt. It made him look pregnant.
“They’ll never let you take that out of the museum,” said Stoner.
“Frig what they won’t let me do.”
And he walked into a room full of pirates who were in the middle of a big fight on the deck of a ship. There was a painted ocean around the deck with the paint peeling off the waves.
Stoner stepped over the rope and went up to one of the fighting pirates with a patch over his eye and took the guy’s sword.
“It’s probably fake,” said Stoner.
It wasn’t.
It was real. And it was sharp. He cut the pirate’s head off with it.
“Fake, my ass,” said Stoner.
“You’re acting crazy again.”
“That’s what crazy people do, right? Act crazy?”
And Stoner snorted out a laugh. Sometimes he got a laugh out of things.
He walked through the museum, cutting off heads. Every wax figure he came to he cut the head off. Zip-zap. Zip-zap. Zip-zap.
Stoner was having fun. Maybe coming here into this museum wasn’t such a lousy idea after all.
Which was when the guard showed up. The one who’d been snoozing at the bottom of the stairs.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” he yelled at Stoner.
“I’m cutting off heads,” said Stoner.
“You’re under arrest, man,” said the guard, reaching for the bright gun at his belt.
“Frig you!” said Stoner. And cut off his head. Zip-zap.
“I thought you said you don’t kill people,” said Stoner.
“Up to now, I didn’t,” Stoner replied. “But he was going to arrest me and put me in a cell and you know how much we hate being put in cells.”
“Yeah,” nodded Stoner.
“Boy, oh, boy,” said Stoner, sitting on the floor. “I probably made a big mistake cutting off this guy’s head.” He put down the sword and lit another cigarette. The smoke made his mother’s face in the air. He didn’t like that.
“What you gonna do now?” asked Stoner.
“I have to think. To plan and figure and work things out.”
“Hey, you!” It was the froggy ticket-taker and he was walking down the aisle toward Stoner. “Closin’ time,” he said. “We’re closin’ up.”
When he got to Stoner he stopped and looked down at the dead guard and then he looked at Stoner.
“Jeez,” the ticket-taker said softly. And he began to back away, his face all green. Stoner had to laugh, because now he really did look like a frog.
“Where you going off to?” asked Stoner.
But the froggy little man didn’t answer. He turned to run.
Stoner finished him.
Zip-zap.
“Okay, boy, you’ve had it now,” said Stoner. “The cops will come and put you in the gas chamber or hang you or put you in the electric chair or inject you with some kind of killer drug.”
“I don’t think so,” said Stoner.
“You gonna plead self-defense?” And Stoner chuckled.
“I’m insane, right? Just like you are. Insane people do insane things. That’s logic.”
Stoner shook his head. “You never should of bought a ticket to a place like this,” he said.
“I won’t argue with you on that one,” nodded Stoner. “I guess I really screwed up, buying a ticket to this lousy place.”
He took the girl’s head out of his shirt and looked at it. She was very pretty. He smoothed the long blonde hair and put the head down, gently, next to the dead guard’s head.
Then he walked back to the French Revolution room and stopped in front of the guillotine. He looked up at the suspended blade. A release cord was hanging down from it.
Stoner pushed aside the body of the girl with her hands tied and took her place, kneeling down to put his neck into the wooden groove underneath the blade. Then he jerked the cord.
“It’s probably fake,” said Stoner.
It wasn’t.
Introduction to
Anatomy of a Killer
Ed Gorman and Bill Crider
Peter Rabe was a major figure in the Gold Medal movement of the fifties. At his recent death, Mystery Scene magazine ran the following tributes.
In the spring, he would come to Cedar Rapids on a train from California. He would stay for three or four days and then he’d head east.
I’m not sure how long we planned this trip. Two years maybe. He talked about it long before he got sick; and with a certain sad desperation once he knew he had lung cancer.
Peter Rabe is not much remembered now, not in America anyway. In Europe he’s still regarded as one of the seminal crime writers of his generation, and deservedly so. Along with John D. MacDonald and Charles Williams, he was one of Gold Medal’s Holy Trinity. When he was rolling, crime fiction just didn’t get much better.
He was equally good as a friend, shy, wry and always just a bit mysterious. I didn’t know much about his background until after he died—Russian Jewish father; German mother; raised in both Europe and the United States—or even about his publishing history. He was that most remarkable of creatures, a good listener. He took pains to understand what you were talking about
—the nuances, the implications—and then he would give you his somewhat halting but always considered (and considerate) opinion. He almost never laughed but when he did, you felt as if you’d just won over the toughest room you’d ever played.
The night he got copies of his Black Lizard reprints, he called me. He took an almost child-like pride in seeing three of his best books in print once more, even though he spent most of his time telling you how much he wished he could rewrite them. At one point that evening, I told him how much he meant to my generation of crime writers and for the first time ever, I heard tears in his voice.
He died quickly. I hadn’t spoken to him for a month and suddenly I learned that he was in the hospital; and then, American doctors giving up on him, he was on his way to a Laetrile clinic in Mexico. We talked several times; he was optimistic; and in fact Mexico seemed to cheer him up. He sounded much better.
But not many days later, I phoned the California hospital where he now resided, and a nurse hesitated when I asked about his condition and said I’d have to speak to another department, and when she said, “Are you a relative of Mr. Rabe’s?” I knew, of course, he was dead.
Goodbye, my friend. Your books stand as testimony to the sad and rueful way you saw life, and yet—like you—they shine with hard humor and forgiveness.
I drove pass the train depot the other night and imagined you stepping off an Amtrak at midnight, ghostly in the darkness.
I wish it could have been, Peter. I really do.
—Ed Gorman
Peter Rabe is dead. I suspect that the majority of Mystery Scene readers are asking themselves right now, “Who’s Peter Rabe?” That’s too bad.
Peter Rabe was a damned fine writer of paperback original fiction who began his career in the 1950s. He wrote mostly for Gold Medal, but he didn’t have the success of a John D. MacDonald, whose books continue to sell in the millions, or even an Edward S. Aarons, whose Sam Durrell series was so popular that it was continued by another writer after his death. He never even achieved the sort of cult following attained by Jim Thompson. And that’s a shame, because many of Rabe’s novels rank with the best paperback originals ever published, back in the days when writers like MacDonald and Thompson and Charles Williams were all doi
ng books better and more daring than anything the hardback houses were publishing then. Or now. This isn’t to imply that Rabe was “like” any of those other writers. He was no more like them than they are like each other. He was an original.
Rabe wasn’t a mystery writer, for the most part. He wrote crime stories that were tough, bitter, real, and powerful. What’s more, he wrote them with economy, understatement, and cool precision. Anthony Boucher recognized Rabe’s talent early and reviewed many of his books favorably in his “Criminals at Large” column. Gold Medal, publisher of most of Rabe’s work, gave him a big push at the beginning and plugged his books hard. Yet with all these things going for them, Rabe’s books never really took off. By the mid-sixties he was down to doing a spy-spoof series that ran for three books; in the early seventies, he did a couple of mafia books when GM was trying to capitalize on the success of The Godfather in any way that it could. Hardly anyone cared about or remembered the fine books that Rabe had been doing only ten years before, books like The Box, Kill the Boss Good-by, Benny Muscles In, or the books in the Daniel Port series.
When he was at his best, Rabe brought to his books an intensity that you could feel in your gut as you read, and he wrote stories that were unlike anything else on the racks. In Kill the Boss Good-by, for example, Fell, a crime boss is under treatment for a manic psychosis. He leaves the sanitarium in order to fight off a threat to his organization, and in the course of the book he degenerates into genuine madness—while retaining the sympathy of the reader. It’s an incredible book. Pick it up, read the first couple of chapters, and then put it down. Just try. The ending is a kick in the kidneys. Power? Intensity? Rabe’s got it all going here. Or read The Box. Hell, you won’t be able to put this one down after the first page or two. It’s the north African town of Okar, and a box is unloaded from a ship. The box stinks, and there are funny noises inside. Let the blurb writer take from there: “Out of the box comes Quinn, a screaming, filthy madman who’d been packed alive in his coffin as punishment for losing out in a gangland feud halfway around the world in New York.” What happens after that? Read it and see.
Great Noir Fiction Page 32