Ghouljaw and Other Stories by Clint Smith

Author:Clint Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Hippocampus Press
Published: 2014-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

Corbin’s Gore

Where to begin? Where to begin . . . ?

Well, we could start with Cassidy, she was wealthy—that is to say her family, the Davenports, were wealthy—and that has some bearing on all this, because Corbin would have been rich too, by way of nothing else but relational proximity, if he would have just been a little more ambitious, if he would have just cooperated, if he would have just capitulated. If only you could see the big picture . . .

On second thought, maybe we should begin with the Gore, or at least the old gypsy-witch woman at the end of his fifth-floor apartment hallway. Corbin Hollis had noticed her on the first day after moving into that dreary, uptown dwelling. Of course she was no gypsy or witch at all, but as she resembled somebody’s mummified but animated hippie grandma, sometimes staring vacantly down the fifth-floor passage, it was difficult for Corbin not to conjure a few entertaining associations.

Northern sections of the city were funny like that: there was always some weird block or two where the eccentricity of elderly affluence commingled with the voguishly antisocial segment of artsy punks.

Corbin was neither elderly nor artsy nor affluent. Corbin couldn’t tell you what he was, and frankly didn’t give a fuck about it—about anything, really.

His hometown of Colfax, Indiana, was a dismal, social-noose of a community that hung around residents’ necks just waiting for the trapdoor of independent thought or—God save us—self-reliant deviation to open up beneath their feet. Corbin hadn’t waited for that to happen as it did to his mom and dad, and he’d departed on an existential exodus as soon as he could. That had been about three years ago.

But he had only lived in this uptown apartment for the last nine months or so. Last fall, during that first week here—the first week following his clumsy retreat from Cassidy’s impeccably decorated apartment—Corbin had been walking home from an underwhelming day with the moving company—packing, stacking, lifting, and wheeling (repeating this routine several times a day)—when, from the sidewalk, he happened to glance up to the fifth-floor corner window of the weathered brick façade of his building, up to his apartment window. Corbin stopped walking and narrowed his eyes. An old, ill-pallid woman was standing there, looking out the window. Because of the overcast sky reflected in the already hazy-wavy glass, she seemed immaterial at first, as if floating in a frame of smoke-swirled murk. The curtains were parted on either side of her. A ghost can’t move curtains, can it? But there was no mistaking it—fifth floor: northwest corner—Corbin’s apartment. Even from the sidewalk Corbin was startled by how ghastly-gray the woman was—a scrambled bulb of white hair haloing her gaunt face—standing with her arms dangling at her sides staring down at the street below.

Sprinting through the lobby, Corbin took the steps two at a time as he ran up the stairwell, jogging along the jaundice-tinted hallway and fumbling for the right key on his key ring.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.