January 14, 2013

From “The Halfling Tuesday” by Jordan Iverson Peers

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

They call me Tuesday because that’s the name on the door. It’s not my name, mind you; it’s just on the door. The last gumshoe in this office went by that name; fittingly enough, he disappeared on a Saturday. but his last rent check was dated Tuesday, or so the landlord tells me.

I really ought to change the name on the sign. But Tuesday is a good name for drumming up private investigation business, much more so than my given name of Hurgo Smendlings IV.

When the dame called at my door, she looked down the length of her nose at me. It wasn’t because of the fifth of gin in my hand or the revolver on the table or the stains from last week’s lunch on my suspenders so much as the fact that she was two and a half feet taller than me. Also she was in stiletto heels and I was at my desk.

“You Tuesday?” she said in a sultry voice. I mean that in the most literal way possible; even at my desk I could feel the humidity rolling off her tongue.

“That’s what the sign says. You need something detected?” I took in her dark sunglasses and the subtle bobbing and weaving of her headscarf…clearly a Gorgon, maybe even one with a real license instead of the fake ones passed around at the docks by snakeladies who petrify people for kicks. Luckily, my shades were Gorgon-proof–basic tool for the private investigator gig. Unfortunately, they were also in my coat pocket at the dry-cleaners.

“One of your people stole something from me,” the Gorgon said, still exhaling moist snake-breath all over my otherwise dry and pleasant office. “I’m looking for someone who knows the halflings and their ways to retrieve it.”

I leaned back casually and put my shoes up on the table. It hurt my back to do that, but people expected it of a private investigator almost as much as the gin and the gun and the fedora. “I have my sources, sure,” I said. “I can give it a shot. But you ought to know that ‘my people’ in Halftown don’t fully trust people like me who leave the community and do unhalflingish things like wear shoes and ask a lot of questions.” That was kind of true, but I was also a little anxious to hurry the humid snake-lady from a people famous for their duplicity and cruelty out the door so I could get back to my nap.

“I’ll pay the full going rate plus expenses and double it if you find the item.”

“Deal.” Then again, a customer was a customer. “What are you looking for?”

“A single lock of my hair,” hissed the Gorgon.

  • Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!
 

October 8, 2012

From “An iPod Unstuck in Time” by Lelia Jacqueline Brock

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: , , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

I’m sorry that you feel that way, and I’m sorry if you were offended by anything I did. Take this back and we’ll call it even.

The note that had arrived with the junky old iPod made even less sense now than it had before. Other than the fact that it was perhaps the least apologetic apology note Milly had ever read, there was nothing to be gleaned from it. Wasn’t even handwritten. And the rainstorm had smudged the return address and postmark beyond all legibility.

Milly wished that the allure of a free iPod, even a beat-up first-generation one with only 10 gigs of space, hadn’t appealed so deeply to her inner cheapskate. She wished that her sleek new model hadn’t gone through the wash that same week, leaving a ‘Pod-sized hole in her workout routine.

But as she looked at her computer screen, the fifteenth crash of the day over an iTunes list full of songs with bizarre titles incorporating her name and add dates that predated the release of the gen one iPod by six months to a year, Milly wished one thing in particular.

That she’d returned the package, unopened, to the post office.

  • Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!
 

October 3, 2012

From “The Lost and Found Parlor” by Carla Minch Betts

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: , , , , , , |
[3] Comments 

Officer John Daniels, Deerton PD retiree, walked briskly toward the door of 1057 South County Way just off US 313. The umbrella that had popped up in the Deerton Public Library’s lost and found bin had the place listed on an “if found return to” tag sewn into it, which was just fine with John. Reuniting people with thelir lost stuff was his detective hobby, and even when it wasn’t much of a detective job it was still out and about and away from daytime TV gnawing away at his brain cells.

When he reached the front steps of the old farmhouse, Officer John was greeted at the door before he could even knock. He thought that a little odd, since scuttlebutt had it that the ornate old farmhouse, once owned and improved by a lumber baron, had been caught up in legal squabbles and abandoned. The person at the door was a woman of indeterminate age dressed in her Sunday finest (or perhaps, Officer John thought, what would pass as the Sunday finest for someone who only left the house on Sundays).

“I’m quite quite thankful you’ve finally arrived,” the woman–a shut-in? An ex-farmer? The cleaning lady?–said.

“Really?” Officer John said, clutching the umbrella a bit tighter. “Why’s that?”

“We have been expecting you.”

Before he could ask any other questions, Officer John was ushered into a home that looked nothing like the dilapidated state of the exterior. The interior furnishings were grand and well-kept, and only a few modern conveniences were older than the gilded age furnishing old Mr. Dounton himself would’ve preferred. With the mystery lady alternately shoving and grunting him along, Officer John emerged into the dining room, which was full of people peering at him from under the glow of smoky and dim incandescents. There was a single seat open; the lady (perhaps she was an Amway representative gone to seed?) guided the officer toward it.

When he sat down at the beautifully ornate Second Empire table, Officer John was able to get a good look at the others. There was Mamie Saunders, last scion of the old Saunders family in town and perennial instigator of book-banning drives at the public library. She was carrying and nervously shifting a brown paper bag in her hands, and a slip allowed a quick peek of the volume within: The Joy of Sex. Next to her was Harry Watkins, owner of the sleazy Gun Rack Bar and Grill on Dounton St., who gave Officer John an oily smile even as he nervously twirled a bottle of fine aged wine with a 1927 date.

As much of a surprise as it was to see people he hadn’t particularly liked as a police officer, the other two were even greater shocks. Retired Judge Cynthia Crewe was at the head of the table with a pair of ornate ladies’ gloves still fastened to each other by an anti-theft ink tag before her. And next to Officer John? None other than Popcan Pete, Deerton’s resident (and perhaps only) bum. He was idly flicking around a membership car for the Tecumseh County country club while talking to himself about CIA transmitters concealed in the table.

Officer John had some choice words for some of the folks at the table, most of whom had made regular careers out of rubbing each other the wrong way. But before he could say a word the indeterminate lady parted a curtain and a tall, dignified figure entered the room.

“Luminaries and ex-luminaries of dear Deerton, I’m so glad that we were able to arrange invitations guaranteed to attract your interest,” he said. “My name is Ernest Dounton, and I’ve brought you here to discuss which of the five of you has murdered me.”

From an idea by breylee.

  • Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!
 

September 2, 2012

From “The Borgesian Books” by Chauncey Zulema Smart

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Borges once wrote of a secret society dedicated to bring about the replacement of our world by another by methodically documenting every facet of the new world in an encyclopedia; the facts about the new world would gradually replace those of the old through substitution, forgery, and dissemination of altered or completely fictional books. After all, if books (and their successors) can be altered, and they form the only record of the world beyond what people have seen with their own eyes, to change them is to change all.

I believe that someone may have taken that tale to heart.

In my role as a regional coordinator for a major consortium of libraries, I hear a lot of scuttlebutt about books and such; in my previous life I worked for Merchant & Field Booksellers and still maintain some contacts there. Lately my librarians on the one hand and my booksellers on the other have been bringing me texts that, quite frankly, don’t make any sense.

They run the gamut from leather-bound to cheap pulp and bear realistic-sounding but totally false publishers. Real love went into their creation, unlike some of the publish-on-demand crap that bubbles up. Yet the world they describe so blithely and without elaboration is an alien one, like the place I live but in many ways completely different.

The publication dates, for one. Who would create a fake book with a date fifty or a hundred years in the future, or one using a date system (PC) that seems to have begun counting three or four years ago? I’ve read many of the titles, and they are rife with descriptions of kingdoms and empires alongside cell phones and sports cars–the sort of thing many cheap and terrible books aspire to, it’s true. I think they describe a world like ours in which most nation-states have collapsed and in which technology has largely stagnated among the ruins of a fragmented USA. Stagnation and fragmentation, or stagmentation, or fragnation if you prefer.

The kind of internal consistency I’ve seen seems to belie the theory that it’s a single kook slipping these onto shelves. It’s almost enough to make me believe that these crazyquilt places, these Beral Lands, Vativia, Eastern and Outland Empires, or the Rift actually exist somewhere.

That’s crazy of course. But is a Borgesian attempt to alter the fabric of our reality any less so, or an elaborate and expensive literary prank so obtuse that only a handful of booksellers and archivists worldwide could get the joke? Next to that, sometimes I’m willing to allow that these books, these tawdry novels and single volumes of larger works, have simply slipped through some crack from one place to another.

After all, as Borges said, what would someone in another world make of one of our encyclopedias? What would the advanced but fragmented, stagnant but vibrant places I read in these mystery books think if this writing wound up on their own computer screen?

  • Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!
 

August 24, 2012

From “Syncope Walks the Halls” by Siobhán Burrowes

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Now Jones may just have been working the Viper Security Systems gig to pay his way through college since a twisted ankle on the practice field cost him a scholarship, but he took the job seriously. Seriously enough to have a go at investigating reports of break-ins and trespassing, anyway; he hoped to get good references for a future career in criminal justice.

Most of the work was collaring drunk freshmen hog-wild with being out from under the apron strings for the first time in 18 years. But the recent rash of calls from Schumann Hall was puzzling. The people there, Engineering and Physics mostly, tended to work long hours and a lot of calls had been coming in about intruders in the building post-9pm, when the doors were locked.

Jones would get the call, respond, and find that the caller had no memory of any intruder.

He suspected crank calls at first, at least until Dr. Chandraputra had called–there was no mistaking that accent. There was also no mistaking the fact that Chandraputra resolutely denied ever having placed the call. Viper, as the security contractor, had access to phone logs; Jones checked and found that the call had indeed been placed. Confronted with that information, Chandraputra had grown quiet and confused.

More calls arrived, gradually building until there seemed to be one every other week. The descriptions were similar: someone was rustling about the building, likely a freshman, likely a girl. They were always more annoyed than scared, and more than one had promised to shoo the offending interloper away before Jones or one of his boys could arrive.

“It’s…I remember placing the call,” one Physics adjunct said when grilled by Jones. “If I really think hard there are…snatches, you know? Images. But the more I think about it, the more I realize there’s a gap, like the time was ripped right out of my memory.”

By then, Jones had resolved to stake out the building himself. If nothing else, he could trust his own memory.

Or so he thought.

  • Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!
 

August 11, 2012

From “The Secret of Charles de Vézelay” by Adriana Eve Claudine

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Even though he was a trusted advisor and friend of the king, the Comte de Vézelay always attracted scandal at the court in Paris largely because of his family life. His first marriage to the Vicomte de Foix’s daughter had led, on the latter’s death, to an expansion of his lands but the marriage had been loveless and when the Comtesse de Vézelay died, many suspicions were voiced, especially after the Comte married again less than a fortnight later. This second marriage was with Madelaine de Lara, and the scandal of the first liaison paled in comparison to that of the latter. For one, the new Comtesse was from a branch of the nobility so debased and degraded in the eyes of the court that the marriage was practically a morganatic one. But King Henry was fond of the Comte and would brook no gossip about him within earshot, even after the new Comtesse gave birth to a son with bright red hair–a trait which neither his father nor mother shared.

The child, Charles, was precocious. He walked and spoke at much earlier ages than his contemporaries, and by the age of eight had composed poetry and chamber music that were performed for adult audiences. This did little to dull the harsh whispers about Madelaine de Vézelay; one of the long-running rumors about the de Laras was that their fall had been in part due to dabbling in witchcraft and making pacts with darker powers. Madelaine’s quietness and Charles’ intense and aloof demeanor for a youth were often cited as proof.

Eventually, young Charles de Vézelay was presented at court to Henry IV; the king enjoyed the youth’s seriousness and dedication, so unusual in an era of decadent and spoiled princes. Not long afterwards, Charles approached his father, troubled, and declared that he had a secret that was only for the king’s ears. The Comte, unable to glean the nature of this secret or how Charles came by it, arranged the meeting.

Observers in court saw Charles approach the king and whisper in his ear, after which Henry reacted by violently pushing the youth away. He called for the guard and ordered that Charles be executed immediately. This order, so out of character with the normally conscientious and fair King Henry, was questioned by many but the king was resolute and refused to discuss the secret. Charles, likewise, refused to reveal what he had said; indeed, the young man reportedly never spoke another word for the rest of his short life.

At the exhortation of Madelaine de Vézelay, Henry consented to tell her (and only her) what Charles had said. The interview, in the king’s private chambers, lasted scarcely five minutes. Madelaine emerged, shaken, and agreed that her son needed to be put immediately to death. She collapsed not long after and spent her remaining months as an invalid.

Charles was executed by swordstroke on the first of May. With the assassination of Henry fourteen days later and death of his mother in a sanitarium seven months after that, no one ever learned what the fatal secret had been.

  • Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!
 

July 16, 2012

From “Last Survivor of Kellett Island in the High Arctic” by Val Briles

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Irene Keruk Qikiqtagruk was seated in a rocking chair, wrapped in a shawl and threadbare quilts. She smiled at the guests, bright eyes shining behind thick glasses seeming to belong to a woman much younger than 101.

“I’ll put some tea on,” her granddaughter said. “Give you a moment alone. But like I told you, she doesn’t speak much anymore. And never of the…unpleasantness.”

Adrienne sat down on the couch nearby and gestured for the others to find seats. “That’s a lovely quilt you’ve got there,” she said, gesturing to Irene’s wrappings. “Did you make that?”

“It is kind of you to pretend to care about my old sewing.” Irene’s voice was soft but surprisingly deep, issuing from some great well in her weak frame. “You hope to get me talking and turn things to the unpleasantness. It is the way of all the more considerate people who come to visit.”

The reporter’s face fell. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose there’s not much I can say to change your mind, is there?”

Irene’s expression turned thoughtful. “When I walked however many miles it was over the ice, after everyone had died, I promised myself that I would never speak of what had happened as long as I lived.” She laughed. “I did not expect it to be so long. It’s been almost ten years since the last person came to ask, and somehow I do not think I will last another ten. Tell me what you know, and I will think about filling in some of the blank spots.”

“You, your parents, and your uncle were recruited by a Canadian man to participate in the Imperial Arctic Expedition of 1914,” Adrienne said carefully. “Your ship was trapped in ice, drifted into Russian waters, and crushed. There was…unpleasantness…among the expedition members, and you and your parents followed a group to Kellett Island while the others made for Tikegen Island. You walked nearly fifty miles to Tikegen, alone, nearly a year later to find the others just before they were rescued by an American icebreaker, and you refused to discuss what had happened.”

Irene laughed. “You are too kind in leaving out the juiciest part,” she said over the whistle of a teakettle in the kitchen. “When they searched Kellett Island, they found what was left of the people who I had departed with. All dead, even though they had shelter and supplies enough to last a whole year.”

  • Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!
 

May 2, 2012

From “Last Known Whereabouts” by Kim Licorice

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Everything would have been fine if the Spanish tourists had arrived on time.

Kay and Alice had met them at the bus stop, clearly bamboozled and lost (as the island’s easygoing bus schedule was wont to do for foreign tourists). As it so happened, no one at the bus stop spoke any more than pidgin Spanish…that is, except the two young American education students fresh out of Advanced Spanish 499.

There were still problems, largely because the tourists were Galician and spoke Castilian Spanish with a heady cocktail of Galician loanwords and a strong accent. Kay and Alice, who had studied Latin American Spanish–specifically the Mexican variety–were able to communicate only with considerable difficulty. Still, they had been able to describe the bus schedule, tell the Spaniards when the next bus was probably due, give them directions to their hotel, and even attempted to impart a few useful English phrases.

That would have been that, deeds done by good Samaritans, if the Spanish tourists had arrived on time.

Only they hadn’t.

The two Spaniards, Isabella Sanchez and Inez De Rojo, never arrived at their hotel, and never left on any of the ferries. There were no bodies, and no leads–except for Kay and Alice, who were the last ones to have any contact with the missing and who had spent the following week at a rustic and secluded beach on the leeward side.

It wasn’t until they tried to take the ferry home that Kay and Alice realized they were the only suspects in a missing persons case.

 

April 26, 2012

From “Plastic Bumper Mystery Symbols” by Clint Zackary Tanner

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

I first noticed the symbol on the back of a car in the student lot. It was one of those little raised plastic badges that get slapped on bumpers by dealers so you’ll be free advertising for them and that don’t come off without taking some of your pain with them.

But instead of a dealer’s name, or even a please-don’t-pull-me-over Fraternal Order of Police badge, there was only an odd abstract symbol. Even up close I couldn’t quite place the very complex and artfully molded sign; maybe two dogs eating a zipper or a pomegranate being pulled apart with tongs. Either way, I shrugged it off as a curiosity.

The next week, walking through that same lot for the same class, I saw that there were now half a dozen plastic bumper mystery symbols. I recognized that one was on Craig’s car, ans asked him about it when we were smalltalking before class.

“Oh, it is what it is,” he said, and quickly changed the subject.

A month later I was seeing the mystery badges all over town, on bumpers attached to everything from pot junky junkers to police cars and EMTs. People also started wearing it as a lapel pin, and I saw it embroidered on a scarf and embossed into a fancy cellphone case.

In addition to my own innate it’ll-get-you-into-trouble-someday curiosity about what the hell the symbol actually depicted, I was ravenously curious why, despite its increasing ubiquity, no one would tell me why they were displaying it:

“It is what is is.”

“If you have to ask you don’t want to know.”

“It only means what you believe it means.”

At the beginning of summer term people like me without a car badge or a lapel pin or an embossed/knit/whatever were a distinct minority. Oddly—maddeningly—the other “have-nots” seemed blithely unconcerned, regarding the symbol as just another vague fad like slap bracelets or pogs.

I would sometimes lay awake at night—now that there were no classes to otherwise occupy me—and think about those zipper-eating dogs or pomegranate-pulling tongs. At this rate, the time would soon come when I was the only one in town without the symbol. Or perhaps whatever the other people had done to display it would have to happen to me.

Can’t say which of the two possibilities creeped me out more.

 

April 23, 2012

From “Mystery on Mt. Bronson” by Samuel B. Pressor

Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

In October 1979, a group of seniors from the University of Colorado Boulder Alpine Club resolved to use their week of “winter break” to go hiking and climbing in the remote Branson Pass area in Montana. Eight set out, all of whom were experienced hikers and climbers; two of the students had climbed all of Colorado’s peaks above 14,000ft. in elevation. They left a copy of their itinerary and explicitly requested a search if they had not reported in by November 4.

The small town of Alexander served as their base camp, and local residents later recalled being mildly annoyed by the group’s antics as they purchased supplies and film for their three 35mm and one Super 8 cameras. Just before the ascent, which had Mt. Bronson (14,987ft.) as its goal, two of the club members fell ill with food poisoning. The party was reduced to six and begun its ascent on October 27.

None were ever seen alive again. A storm blew up on the 31st, and on November 4 the Iran Hostage Crisis exploded, greatly hindering the two ill climbers from beginning a search. It wasn’t until November 8 that one was mounted; searchers found the bodies of the climbers, each over a mile from their campsite. Their tent had been torn to pieces, apparently from the inside, and the climbers appeared to have fled into the storm wearing only their underwear or scraps of clothing.

Despite that, they hadn’t all died of exposure. Each had a number of cuts and broken bones, and one of the climbers had a jaw fractured with such violence that her tongue had apparently been bitten off; searchers were unable to locate it. Despite the winter season, searchers reported that the bodies were all quite tan, and then a Geiger counter in a survival kit was accidentally turned on it registered significant radiation from the bodies. No cause for the hikers’ sudden and panicked flight, or their injuries, were ever ascertained.

Once the furor over the hostage crisis died down, the mystery became popular among conspiracy theorists. Most notably, the film that was left in the tent was subsequently developed, and some have claimed to see a tall shadow in the background of several shots in Alexander and at the campsite. The Montana government holds that this so-called “Thin Man” is simply a processing artifact. The final shot in one of the cameras also, according to some, shows lights in the sky or a mysterious form visible behind tearing fabric; skeptics argue that the shot is a simple artifact.

 

« Previous Page — Next Page »