Charles L. Grant by Whose Ghosts These Are

Author:Whose Ghosts These Are [Are, Whose Ghosts These]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-12-21T12:45:42+00:00

He walked.

He window-shopped.

He spent some time in a showroom, pretending he was thinking about buying a car.

He had lunch in a place he had never been to before; he spent a couple of hours on a tourist bus, seeing things he had never seen before; he watched the sunset from a bench in a park he had never been to, and when the sun’s reflection slid out of the windows and let in the dark, he flipped up his collar and made his way to a bus stop, where a trio of kids cut in front of him so they could get on first. When he said, “Hey, dammit,” only one looked back, gave him a sorry didn’t see you shrug; the others played push-and-shove until they found their seats.

Hank didn’t get on.

He let the bus go, turned away from the exhaust wash, let his temper subside to a more manageable level. It wasn’t easy. His jaw was so taut it trembled, and heat behind his eyes made him slightly dizzy until he closed them, tightly. It wasn’t easy. If he had had the uniform, they wouldn’t have done it. Maybe they would have been just as smart-ass, just as rude, but they wouldn’t have done it.

Uniform or no, they never did it to him on the block.

A step back from the curb, head lowered, throat working to swallow, he stared at the tips of his shoes until the night’s chill and the traffic’s clamor forced him to move.

He found the museum a few minutes later.

There was nothing special about it that he could see—a single door in a narrow building that could have used renovation a decade or two ago. Lana hadn’t been here herself; it was one of those heard-about-it-from-a-friend things, but she figured he would be interested, being a cop and all.

He hadn’t been, and had been avoiding actively searching for it since she had first brought it up.

He was a beat cop, for God’s sake. Didn’t she understand that? An ordinary beat cop. He saw bodies, he saw blood, he saw the instruments that had drawn one from the other, but he wasn’t the one who hunted the killers down. No, he was the one who found what was left of their prey.

On the other hand, he thought as he glanced up and down the avenue, feeling vaguely uneasy, as if he were about to walk into a porn shop or something, maybe this was a sign. What the hell. At the very least, it would keep her off his back for a while.

He grunted, shook his head quickly, scolded himself for being unfair. She meant well. She cared.

The museum door opened, and he looked down in surprise at the hand, his hand, that had turned the dull brass knob.

Okay, it was a sign.

A half-smile took him over the threshold and out of the cold. A brief unsettling sensation of dйjа vu before he noticed a tiny wood table on his left that held an untidy stack of pamphlets—The Museum of Horror Presents.

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