The Year's Best Horror Stories 05 by Gerald W. Page

Author:Gerald W. Page [Page, Gerald W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Horror, Short Stories
Publisher: Vati
Published: 1977-01-15T23:00:00+00:00

SHATTERDAY

Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison’s work has generated so much discussion and controversy that it’s easy to overlook the fact that things said about the Harlan Ellison of just a few short years ago are not necessarily true of the Harlan Ellison of today. The pyrotechnics that so often dazzled us, the sheer fevered energy that dragged us, willingly or not, along in his stories seem to be if not gone these days, at least tempered and hushed. The result is a more mature Ellison still producing stories that intrigue us, surprise us, delight us. Stories like “Shatterday.”

I: Someday

Not much later, but later nonetheless, he thought back on the sequence of what had happened, and knew he had missed nothing. How it had gone, was this:

He had been abstracted, thinking about something else. It didn’t matter what He had gone to the telephone in the restaurant, to call Jamie, to find out where the hell she was already, to find out why she’d kept him sitting in the bloody bar for thirty-five minutes. He had been thinking about something else, nothing deep, just woolgathering, and it wasn’t till the number was ringing that he realized he’d dialed his own apartment. He had done it other times, not often, but as many as anyone else, dialed a number by rote and not thought about it, and occasionally it was his own number, everyone does it (he thought later), everyone does it, it’s a simple mistake.

He was about to hang up, get back his dime and dial Jamie, when the receiver was lifted at the other end.

He answered.

Himself.

He recognized his own voice at once. But didn’t let it penetrate.

He had no little machine to take messages after the bleep, he had had his answering service temporarily disconnected (unsatisfactory service; they weren’t catching his calls on the third ring as he’d insisted), there was no one guesting at his apartment, nothing. He was not at home, he was here, in the restaurant, calling his apartment, and he answered.

“Hello?”

He waited a moment. Then said, “Who’s this?”

He answered, “Who’re you calling?”

“Hold it,” he said. “Who is this?”

His own voice, on the other end, getting annoyed, said, “Look, friend, what number do you want?”

“This is BEacon 3-6189, right?”

Warily: “Yeah . . .?”

“Peter Novins’ apartment?”

There was a silence for a moment, then: “That’s right.”

He listened to the sounds from the restaurant’s kitchen. “If this is Novins’ apartment, who’re you?”

On the other end, in his apartment, there was a deep breath. “This is Novins.”

He stood in the phone booth, in the restaurant, in the night, the receiver to his ear, and listened to his own voice. He had dialed his own number by mistake, dialed an empty apartment. . and he had answered.

Finally, he said, very tightly, “This is Novins.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the High Tide, waiting for Jamie.”

Across the line, with a terrible softness, he heard himself asking, “Is that you?”

A surge of fear pulsed through him and he tried to get out of it with one last possibility.

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