The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 24 by Stephen Jones (ed)

Author:Stephen Jones (ed) [Jones, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Anthology, Fiction
ISBN: 9781472100283
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

GLEN HIRSHBERG

His Only Audience

A Normal and Nadine Adventure

GLEN HIRSHBERG’S story collections include The Janus Tree and Other Stories, American Morons and The Two Sams, and have earned him a Shirley Jackson Award and three International Horror Guild Awards.

His most recent novel, Motherless Child, originally published by Earthling in 2012, will be reprinted by Tom Doherty Associates/Macmillan in 2014 and followed by two sequels. He is also the author of two previous novels, The Book of Bunk and The Snowman’s Children.

With Peter Atkins and Dennis Etchison, he co-founded the Rolling Darkness Revue, an annual touring show composed of live music, performance and ghost story readings that travels the west coast of the United States each autumn.

“‘His Only Audience’ appeared originally in The Raven of October, the 2012 Rolling Darkness Revue chapbook,” explains Hirshberg. “It inaugurated a new, occasional series of occult detective-derived pieces featuring Normal (aka the Collector) and his long-time partner, Nadine.

“That gives me the excuse to write about pretty much everything I love thinking about when I’m not teaching, parenting or writing other stuff. In this case, that means sea stories, crazy collectors and subcultures, disappearing radio signals, music. And people, and their ghosts, of course . . .”

AROUND AND BENEATH them, the houseboat thumped and shuddered, and, as usual on their visits here, Nadine wished the Collector and his client would just turn off the shortwave and sit still for a while. Maybe, instead of hunching forever at the wooden table in this windowless hold, they could try the deck in the starlight, or the porthole down below, and let the world bring its wonders to them, for once. All those things down there in the bay, living or just floating. Knocking against hulls. Murmuring hello.

“Got one,” Spook said, straightening in his chair as though called to attention. Out of the hiss and static, the spurts of Iranian classical music and snippets of BBC-wherever broadcasts, the dot–dash chirruping from ships so out of time that they still used Morse code as though anyone were out there to receive or translate it, a voice flared. Flickered out. Caught as Spook worked the console knob, locked in on the signal, and held.

Ice-voice. The voice ice would speak in, if ice spoke. Female, if ice had gender.

“Seven. Three. Six. Eight. Five. No.” Crackle. Empty frequency. And then again. “Seven. Three. Six . . .”

And by the third repetition, as always, Nadine felt herself leaning forward, too, forgetting the bay, uncrossing her legs, lowering her ear toward the receiver with its console knob and compass face, its wooden casing warped and blistered.

“A new one?” she said.

“I think so.” Spook grabbed his notebook off the shelf behind him and scrolled quickly through his pages and pages and of charts. Lists, mostly, of all the numbers stations he’d ever located in decades of scouring the shortwave bands. Usually, he could tell just by the voice if he’d heard the signal before, though Nadine wasn’t sure how, given that so many of them used identical, inflectionless tones.

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